Any effort which would be rapidly effective would cost a small fortune. The gas is invisible, and the PR people have managed to keep public outrage to a minimum, and no birds are floating around with tar all over them there is no reason to take the matter seriously.

Saner heads realize there is a finite amount of methane in the ground. It will cease leaking eventually no matter what efforts are made, so there really isn’t much sense in spending the limited resources of the company.

I’m glad those special cameras are available to show what’s going on. But I’m appalled at how easy it was to sweep it under the rug. What would we be saying about BP and the neutered government regulators if they’d been able to keep their drilling rig disaster a secret for months? Wow.

If any other entity- say ISIS- were poisoning the drinking wells of entire towns, and causing damage to homes and structures over an entire state we would go to war- probably nuke them…

But the companies doing it have bought the politicians and sold the populace a pack of lies- so instead of being annihilated, they get record profits… of which they use a small percentage to buy off the next round of politicians.

In oklahoma, and other states, you can own a piece of land, build a house on that land, raise a family on that land- and if a gas company owns the ‘mineral rights’ to that land they can come in and destroy the land to put in gas wells, and holding ponds… they can poison your water and make your land unfit for living- because the companies have bought the process and fixed it so that mineral rights will trump property rights.

If you buy some land and don’t buy the mineral rights as well, a company can do whatever they want to your land.

Chris Hayes has made the comparison that the value of fossil fuels still in the ground, and the assets of the energy companies that are dedicated to exploiting them, are worth as much to our society as the value of the slaves and slave industries were worth to Southern society at the start of the Civil War.

Both slaves and fuel represent energy: the ability to do work. Whether you accept this or not, one thing is certain: Southern society was ready to start a five year war that killed a half million Americans and devastated the nation in order to keep that asset (slavery) on line, and under their control. Is there any doubt that they won’t be ready to do it again?

“In the absence of proper government, the powerful will simply take from the weak.”

Chris Hayes

Oklahoma surpassed California last year as the earthquake capital of the lower 48 states and will likely beat the Golden State in 2015. Nearly 700 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater have rocked Oklahoma this year, a more than 300-fold leap from the start of the drilling boom in 2008. Insurance claims are rising as foundations crack and bricks crumble, while geologists are warning of the unknown long-term effects of continuously rattling an entire state and pumping it full of wastewater.

http://www.ibtimes.com/oklahoma-earthquakes-2015-tremors-rise-oklahoma-officials-struggle-stem-fracking-2138124
We should remove the burden of regulation and let the free market take over- after all, I am sure these companies have our best interests in their heart…

And all those scientists proving the connection between fracking and earthquakes must be part of some inexplicable conspiracy- just like global warming….

Despite Oklahoma’s insistent shaking, state officials for years expressed skepticism that the earthquakes could be linked to the dramatic climb in underground wastewater disposal. The Oklahoma Geological Survey, part of the University of Oklahoma, resisted making definitive statements about the cause of quakes, and often implied the tremors were natural. The Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, an industry group that works closely with regulators, insisted more research was needed to prove a correlation.

Energy companies have said that disposing of wastewater is central to their operations, and that any effort to halt or significantly curb injections would bring their oil drilling and fracking operations to a halt. Continental Resources, one of Oklahoma’s largest oil and gas companies, pioneered the technology to draw water from aging wells.

Recent investigations by Bloomberg, EnergyWire and other media outlets suggested the energy industry steadily pressured scientists in Oklahoma to slow their research on earthquakes and injection wells, or at least keep their findings from the public. Emails obtained by the outlets through public-records requests implied that Continental in particular played a role in fostering confusion among agencies and the public.

In one instance, Austin Holland, then the state’s seismologist, was reportedly summoned in 2013 to a meeting with Harold Hamm, Continental’s influential founder, and David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma and a Continental board member.

Holland and his colleagues were inching closer to linking quakes to wastewater injections. During the meeting, Hamm requested that Holland be cautious when publicly discussing his research. “It was just a little bit intimidating,” Holland, who has since left the job, told Bloomberg this spring.

And the projected earliest it can be plugged is March?