Natural Resources committee  Yes, you are on both counts. I hinted in my opening comments that I wanted to have the opportunity to correct some of the earlier testimony that your committee has received. In particular, I noted that during a previous meeting, the senior vice-president of Talisman was quoted

Natural Resources committee  No, that's not accurate.

Natural Resources committee  No, not at all. I'm not a politician. I don't have any conflict of interest here. I'm not running for office; I don't hold office. I'm a professor at Cornell University and a licensed professional engineer. I have tremendous experience in oil and gas well development, hydraulic f

Natural Resources committee  What I've heard so far in your characterizing of the seemingly disparate viewpoints voiced by the three of us today is, to put it mildly, a somewhat pie-in-the-sky naive view of how everything is going to work out just fine, thank you.

Natural Resources committee  I don't think adequate background research has been done. There's a boom and bust cycle associated with resource developments, as you know. I haven't heard anybody today say anything about the detrimental side in the social, economic, and infrastructure levels to what will be an

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  No, I was not just talking about the water. I dropped the hint that there are solids and gases downstream, with potential impacts on the environment and human health. On a small scale, around a development near a compressor station, near a pad, in addition to sound there are gase

Natural Resources committee  I'll try to. Accidental spills and discharges happen daily in Arkansas and Pennsylvania--not the blowouts experienced in the Gulf of Mexico, but truck accidents, valve failures, tank leaks, and pipeline failures. These are daily occurrences in shale development activities. Perh

Natural Resources committee  That's an excellent question. I'll amplify on the comment I made earlier. It's all about the scale of an operation. It takes upwards of 30,000 cubic metres of water to hydraulically fracture a shale gas well. That's 50 to 100 times more water than has traditionally been used in

Natural Resources committee  Multiply the tens of thousands of wells by the high volume per well and you get astronomically large numbers, which the industry hasn't shown it's able to dispose of yet.

Natural Resources committee  I'll try to answer those three questions very quickly. In a typical high-volume slick-water hydraulic fracturing operation in a shale gas formation, there are roughly five types of chemicals that are necessary. I won't give you their chemical names—one can look those up—but one

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  My answer is yes. I wouldn't exactly call it magic. I'd call it black magic, not in the sense that more scientific investigation needs to be done, but that more technology needs to be developed. Let me be very specific. In regard to the liquid waste stream, the fluids, the flow

Natural Resources committee  My direct answer is yes, emphatically. Let me support that by saying a few things about a moratorium that exists in my home state of New York. At the same time that Pennsylvania, a sister state, and Ohio, a sister state, and West Virginia, a near sister state, began full-scale

Natural Resources committee  Good afternoon, and thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to present testimony to your committee. I do apologize for not being there, and I also compliment your staff for setting up this video conference on short notice. I want to make it clear that all of my testim