natural gas extraction
The Pipe Documentary Film Review
The Pipe is your classic David vs Goliath story, except that it’s not. It follows a small Rossport community fighting against an invasion by Shell Oil and the Irish State. Gas found off the remote coastal village prompted a clash between farmers, fisherman and huge numbers of private security and police.
Behind the scenes, you experience the tragic division of community, neighbors and friends when things turn dire. 5 locals decide to spend 94 days in jail when faced with an ‘eminent domain’ situation, protesting the pipeline’s path across their farming fields and land.
All seems lost for this town of age-old way community residents, with trades and a way of life passed down for generations. Beat in the courts, on their land and with seemingly no recourse for the destruction of their livelihood, desperation is apparent and a true theme of the film. › Continue reading
GASLAND
After receiving a letter in the mail proposing $100,000 to lease his 19.5 acre property, filmmaker Josh Fox embarked on a multi-state mission to explore the source, reason, and consequences of hydraulic fracturing; a relatively new process of extracting natural gas. Fox’s documentary, ‘GASLAND,’ paints an in-depth picture of the new part of our county, GASLAND, in what their website calls part travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, and part showdown.
I mention that hydraulic fracturing is a relatively new process; within the last 50-60 years. In a Q & A session at the Sundance Film Festival Fox states that fracturing was used only as a last resort process in the past. Fox mentions the interesting point that “as we are running out of [natural gas] the desperation technique becomes the primary way”. The process of hydraulic fracturing (also known as ‘fracking’) is aimed at forming a fracture within shale or formation rock to make it easier and more efficient to extract natural gas that is trapped within the rock. A hydraulic fracture is formed by injecting 207 million gallons of water per well into a well which creates a pressure that cracks the rock, and allows the fracturing fluid to expand the crack further into the rock. In order to keep the fracture open, the fracture water includes materials such as grains of sand or ceramics. The fluid itself can also be gel, foam, nitrogen or carbon dioxide. In addition to this, there are also 596 (according to Fox) different chemicals used in this process, injected underground, and most of the fluid is left there. It is estimated that 90% of the natural gas wells in the United States actually rely on hydraulic fracturing in order to release and collect natural gas at the demanded rates. › Continue reading
