Good news! The mysterious drilling equipment located in the hills north of Newhall Ranch Road isn’t pulling natural gas out of the ground, it’s actually putting natural gas into the ground:
Despite concerns raised online and in local media reports over implications of the gas company’s stepped-up drilling near Interstate 5, no hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is taking place there, a SoCalGas spokeswoman said.
“At SoCalGas’ Honor Rancho facility, our current project involves drilling injection and withdrawal wells to increase the storage capacity of our underground storage reservoir,” spokeswoman Denise King said Friday.
“Our drilling operations do not involve fracking.”
That’s an out and out denial right there.
Apparently the site is a major storage facility for the Gas Company:
“SoCalGas purchases most of its natural gas supplies from out-of-state sources,” King said. “We store natural gas more than a mile beneath the surface in porous sandstone, which is capped by solid rock.
“Our storage facility plays an important role, particularly during the high winter demand periods when customers are using natural gas for heating,” she said.
What was confusing about the initial reporting on this is that the word “production” was mentioned several times. Indeed, it’s still used in Jim Holt’s latest piece. He says CPUC documents state that “the gas company wants to boost production and storage of natural gas from about 2,000 barrels daily to ’4,500 barrles per day on a continuous basis for several years.”
My bad for reading hydraulic fracturing into the words “natural gas production” but kudos for the Signal for clearing it up.
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Not “your bad”. The most common way gas companies around the country are increasing production is from hydraulic fracking, which starts with sending equipment down existing or new wells.
It’ s more like “shame on The Signal” for not asking the fracking question and writing a clear answer to an obvious question. Of course, that’s typical. They’re too afraid of offending The Signal’s commercial display advertisers, who threaten to pull all of their ads (and in the past have done so) when The Signal carries stories the advertisers don’t like. No, the gas company isn’t a big advertiser, but those who like to threaten The Signal over its editorial content are always happy to use their influence on behalf of friends, acquaintances and even strangers…just for the fun of it. So if you wonder why The Signal is so useless from a reporting point of view, fears of advertising cash loss drive the enterprise.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/391552/july-11-2011/anti-frack-attack?