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posted by mrcoolbp on Thursday October 02 2014, @07:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the we'll-research-anything-for-$10M dept.

The Huffington Post reports:

Penn State University said Wednesday that General Electric Co. will give the school up to $10 million to create a new center for natural gas industry research.

Penn State President Eric Barron said in a statement that the center will produce tangible benefits to the industry, to communities that are affected by drilling or related activity, and to consumers.

[...] Charles Whiteman, dean of the Smeal College, said the center opens up "great new opportunities for research" on real-world problems. Whiteman said that over time the project could lead to more efficient drilling and gas distribution, reduced pollution, and even lower prices for consumers. He said Penn State will be able to hire new faculty members for the project and that a couple of dozen teachers plus students will be involved each year.

[...] GE said the money will be donated over the next five years and earmarked for different uses. The company will also have engineers in residence to work with faculty and students.

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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 02 2014, @07:37AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday October 02 2014, @07:37AM (#100849) Journal

    Every once in a while we have an article that just leaves you saying: "Inconceivable!" Of course, first, this is not one of those. And second, someone will always pop up to say: "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means." Pennsylvania, Penn's Woods, now Penz Fracking.

    • (Score: 2) by crutchy on Thursday October 02 2014, @09:31AM

      by crutchy (179) on Thursday October 02 2014, @09:31AM (#100882) Homepage Journal

      makes me wonder what's in it for GE.. there will be something for sure

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday October 02 2014, @10:55AM

        by sudo rm -rf (2357) on Thursday October 02 2014, @10:55AM (#100893) Journal
        From TFA (<em> mine):

        The Marcellus Shale is a gas-rich formation that lies deep under large parts of Pennsylvania and nearby states. A drilling boom that began in 2008 has made the Marcellus the most productive natural gas field in the nation, but also has led to concerns about air and water pollution, leaky pipelines, and local zoning authority

        let x be the gains for GE:

        gas-rich + concerns = x + $2million/annually

        concerns and $2million/annually cancel each other out [duckduckgo.com], that leads us to

        x = gas-rich

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @05:08PM (#101029)

      University with highly ranked geology programs located in the Appalachian Mountains gets money for drilling and mining research.

      Just simply shocking.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mauAtzori on Thursday October 02 2014, @08:33AM

    by mauAtzori (4759) on Thursday October 02 2014, @08:33AM (#100872)

    I come from a small town where attempts to do "research" and "preliminary investigations" for natural gas have been undergoing for the last 6 years and I find this outrageous.

    In Italy, nowadays, there are companies applying for licenses to do whatever they think falls in the domain of "preliminary investigations", which sometimes means "let us frack here, 100m from the aquifer that serves your SPAs and public water supplies. We will be careful!". Opposition is fierce.

    I wonder where exactly GE wants to drill and if whoever lives in that area knows what they are really talking about.

    For a lot less of drilling than what companies would have wanted for their projects, we are now seeing arsenic and other not-so-healthy substances being released from the same ground that was dug and then re-used to build roads: dark yellow water pouring from the concrete that makes up bridges and road borders.
    Once you get that kind of substances back into the soil and, ultimately, in the water you drink.. does money make any difference?
    To me, it sounds as "do whatever you want with my body for the next five years; just give me the money". A collective form of prostitution with a lot of penetration planned.

    • (Score: 2) by carguy on Thursday October 02 2014, @12:41PM

      by carguy (568) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 02 2014, @12:41PM (#100912)

      I wonder where exactly GE wants to drill

      Maybe they will drill on the Penn State campus? Easy access for faculty and students...

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday October 02 2014, @01:32PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday October 02 2014, @01:32PM (#100935)

      Once you get that kind of substances back into the soil and, ultimately, in the water you drink.. does money make any difference?

      From the point of view of the people making these decisions: The bad water is in the Pittsburgh area, they're living quite comfortable near New Haven CT. So basically it's rich people profiting off of other people's misery and health problems. If you're the kind of sociopath that often ends up as a captain of industry, the decision is easy.

      I don't see this sort of thinking going away anytime soon.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday October 02 2014, @02:52PM

        by paulej72 (58) on Thursday October 02 2014, @02:52PM (#100968) Journal

        Fracking is not an issue for me. I have a place in western PA and the water is crap right now not from fracking, but strip mining of coal. 1/2 of my 10 acre property was stripped at one point and so has most of the near by land. And areas that were not stripped were deep mined. The amount of damage that these two mining operation have on the aquifer is 1000 times more than what will happen with fracking.

        Just my $0.02.

        --
        Team Leader for SN Development
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday October 02 2014, @03:06PM

          by Thexalon (636) on Thursday October 02 2014, @03:06PM (#100975)

          I see this is the same basic problem: You're going to be spending lots of money dealing with the damage that coal company did to your property and that aquifer, which were really part of the costs of mining the coal but were never paid by the coal company. Multiply that by all your neighbors in the same situation, and effectively the owners of the coal company swindled all of you.

          Replace "coal" with "gas" and you have the same problems with fracking.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.