Cement Casings will Protect our Water ..... Just Ask Halliburton

Saturday I was at a meeting where a speaker, talking about hydro-fracking, emphasized the importance of casings in gas wells. A good cement casing will protect your groundwater from potential contamination, he said. The problem with Dimock was the casing, not the fracking, he insisted.

OK. So now in both PA and NY the regs call for cement casings in the gas wells. Layers and layers of protective casings. But, according to John Broder's article in today's New York Times, both Halliburton and BP knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable. And they still went ahead with the job.

It won't matter how many layers of cement casing they put in if the cement is no good.