Grist is vying with Propublica to be the most disreputable commentator on shale gas, with an article today about the sudden appearance of what they initially called a "fracking rig" in a suburban location in Colorado. As readers in the comments were quick to point out, there is no such thing as a fracking rig - what had appeared was a drilling rig, and the article was quickly corrected:
When my wife and I pulled into a relative’s subdivision in Frederick, Colo., after a wedding on a recent weekend, it was a surprise to suddenly find a 142-foot-tall drill rig in the backyard, parked in the narrow strip of land between there and the next subdivision to the east. It had appeared in the two days we’d been gone.
However, the article is at pains to insinuate that the rig will be illuminated at night for the foreseeable future - nowhere in the article do you learn that the drilling rig is a temporary feature of a shale gas well, one that will disappear just as quickly in a few weeks' time.
By coincidence, a reader posted a link to this video about oil wells in urban Los Angeles (I have a vague feeling I've posted this before but it's worth another look). The impact of an oil well seems to be rather greater than that of a gas well, but you come away with the impression that the extractive industries can live in peaceful coexistence with people and property.