Yes it was very interesting and somewhat off topic...but relavent in another manner. It shows that Obama is willing to sacrifice the low hanging fruit to get at the good stuff. Next will be the offshore drilling and with the additional pressure on coal as a dirty fuel it will play into the hands of the NG developers. I hope that the NG players start to show more respect for the environment rather than just hanging their hat on the clean fuel issue as their silver bullet.solution to environmental matters The potential environmental impacts created by fracturing the bedrock and potentially connecting shallower groundwater aquifers is only starting to be an issue. It is a real potential risk. I know of a farmer in the lowlands who has been using the NG that comes out of the ground through his water well to heat his barn. A rather industrious guy but it demonstartes that the NG can easily make it to surface through shallow water wells so if the much deeper NG wells are fracturing rock in any connected zone they will cross contaminate a drinking water aquifer. Therein lies a significant potential environmental risk and the drilling companies need to understand the geologic conditions of the overburden and non-bearing zones as much as they understand the pay dirt.

From what I've seen of the geology in the lowlands and in particular the devonian in this region it appears that the isolation between natural gas bearing shales and the water bearing aquifers is well protected by masive aquitards. So vertical drilling would be the main source of potential cross contamination between the Loraine and the upper water bearing zones IMHO. But there is always a risk if the drillers take shortcuts.

Let's hope our QEC and Talisman are all over this.