Fracking

[boutons_deux]

Fracking Loses Huge Fight, In Texas No Less

In yet another signal that era of fossil fuels is drawing to a close, a jury has just awarded a whopping $3 million to a Texas family for health and property impacts linked to a nearby Aruba Petroleum fracking operation. The Texas fracking verdict is being billed as the first case in which fracking has been put on public trial in the US, and it is all the more significant because of the large size of the award and the location of the trial in the nation’s historical epicenter of oil and gas development.

An even more significant aspect of the case is the fact that the family, Bob and Lisa Parr, brought their case to public trial rather than going the conventional route of settling privately under a gag order. The Texas fracking verdict could open the floodgates to many more expensive lawsuits, finally revealing the true cost of “cheap” fossil fuel.

Why A Jury’s Historic $3M Award To A Family Sickened By Fracking May Never Be Paid

when the jury verdict came down, there was one big thing that seemed to be overlooked in the optimism: appeal. According to the Parr’s attorneys, Aruba has already begun the process of appealing the decision. And if it gets to the Texas Supreme Court, it’s doubtful the Parrs will ever see that $3 million.

“I wouldn’t put it past the Supreme Court to overturn it on some ground, reasonable basis or not,” said Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas law school professor who specializes in environmental law. “The law [in Texas] is the law of men, and not of principles.”


The family was happy, their attorney Richard Capshaw told ThinkProgress, but they were well aware that they were nowhere near out of the woods. They had always known that even if they won in the trial courts, there was a chance the Texas Supreme Court would rule against them in the end.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/23/3434385/texas-fracking-verdict/

BigCorps hire the judges of SCOTX and their employees return the favor.

[boutons_deux]

what was that bull about fracking being much deeper than water wells, and therefore no risk to ground water pollution?

"That's resulted in even deeper wells that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and require more energy to pump water to the surface. As recently as two decades ago, a well several hundred feet would suffice. Today, large farms are drilling to depths of 2,000 feet in anticipation of falling water levels."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...726-story.html

fracking as no ground water pollution risk is as big a LIE that "drill here, drill now" would save US drivers $Bs in gasoline savings!

[boutons_deux]

Oil drilling in North Dakota raises concerns about radioactive waste

Every weekday, about a dozen large garbage trucks peel away from the oil boom that has spread through western North Dakota to bump along a gravel road to the McKenzie County landfill.

The trucks drive up to a scale flanked by something seldom found in rural dumps — two 8-foot-tall yellow panels that essentially form a giant Geiger counter.

Two or three times a day, the radiation detector blares like a squad car, because under tons of refuse someone has stashed yard-long filters clotted with radioactive dirt from drilling sites.

The "socks" are supposed to be shipped to out-of-state processing plants. But some oil field operators, hoping to save tens of thousands of dollars, dump the socks in fields, abandoned buildings and landfills.

"It's a game of cat-and-mouse now," said Rick Schreiber, the landfill's director. "They put the sock in a bag inside a bag inside a bag."

Nearly 1,000 radioactive filters were found last year at the landfill, part of a growing tide of often toxic waste produced by the state's oil and gas rush. Oil field waste includes drill cuttings — rock and earth that come up a well bore — along with drilling fluids and wastewater laced with chemicals used in fracking.

To many local and tribal officials, environmentalists and some industry managers in North Dakota, the dumping of the socks and the proliferation of other waste shows the government falling short in safeguarding the environment against oil field pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency decided during the Reagan era to classify oil field waste as not hazardous, THANKS, REPUGS!. exempting it from tight controls and leaving it to be managed by widely varied state laws.

Nationally, no one tracks how many millions of tons of waste the fossil fuel boom generates, or where it ends up.
The EPA exempts the waste, in part, because it considers state oversight adequate, despite what the agency calls "regulatory gaps in certain states."

Most oil companies dump drilling waste into thousands of pits by their wells, but North Dakota, the second-largest oil-producing state behind Texas, does not test the pits' contents or monitor nearby groundwater for contamination.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...ry.html#page=1

Wonderful ING INDUSTRY!

After the oil field operators/violators fold up and disappear, guess who gets stuck with their "external" cleanup costs?

[boutons_deux]

How Fracking Is Blowing Up Balance Sheets of Oil and Gas Companies

Based on data compiled from quarterly reports, for the year ending March 31, 2014, cash from operations for 127 major oil and natural gas companies totaled $568 billion, and major uses of cash totaled $677 billion, a difference of almost $110 billion.

To fill this $110 billion hole that they’d dug in just one year, these 127 oil and gas companies went out and increased their net debt by $106 billion. But that wasn’t enough. To raise more cash, they also sold $73 billion in assets. It left them with more cash (borrowed cash, that is) on the balance sheet than before, which pleased analysts, and it left them with a pile of additional debt and fewer assets to generate revenues with in order to service this debt.

It has been going on for years. In 2010, the hole left behind by fracking was only $18 billion. During each of the last three years, the gap was over $100 billion. This is the chart of an industry with apparently steep and permanent negative free cash-flows:




Of the three sources of cash – operations, net increase in debt, and asset sales – during the first quarters going back six years, net increases in debt accounted for over 20% of the incoming cash since 2012. For instance, In 2013, cash from operations supplied only 60% of the cash needs; most of the rest was borrowed, and some was covered by asset sales:


this ballooning debt would be “met with increased production, generating more revenue to service future debt payments.”

This is where debt smacks into fracking. Fracked wells have nasty decline rates. They differ from well to well, with some estimates pegging the average declines at 50% to 78% by the end of the first year. After a few years, production might be down to less than 10% of production in the first year. In other words, the cash that has been drilled into ground has to be earned back within a terribly short time and has to be used to pay off the debt incurred in drilling the well. If not, the debt is left over, when the well is producing just a trickle.

This is exactly what is happening. It’s a horrendous treadmill. Just to maintain production, companies have to drill more and more and incur more and more debt, even as revenues are disappointing. In addition, drillers with heavy reliance on natural gas have faced prices for dry gas that have been so low for years that most wells will never generate enough cash to cover the costs of production.

And much of the capital that went into them has been destroyed.

A Bloomberg analysis of 61 companies drilling for shale oil and gas found that debt among them nearly doubled over the past four years, while revenues inched up only 5.6%. And interest payments on that ballooning debt is taking up an ever larger portion of the revenues – even at today’s record low interest rates – with 12 of the companies already paying over 10% of their revenues in interest.

The financial hype around fracking, the limitless, nearly free liquidity provided by the Fed since late 2008, and investors so desperate for yield that they’re willing to incur just about any risks in their vain battle to come out ahead have had Wall Street frothing at the mouth. The sweeps of creative destruction have broken down.

Instead, the boundless stream of money has been searching for a place to go, and it went to an economic activity – fracking – where money goes to die. What’s left is debt, and wells, especially gas wells, that will never produce enough to pay off the debt that was incurred to drill them.

These binges can go on for a long time, for far longer than a sane person in normal times would think possible. But with revenues barely growing, cash flows from operations stagnant, and debt levels that are soaring, at some point, something has to give.

Fracking isn’t the only place where the Fed’s policies created havoc: homeownership hit the skids when homes became a highly leveraged asset class, flipped and laddered by speculators, rather than lived in by normal folks. Read….

Here’s the Chart that Shows Why the Housing Market Is Sick http://wolfstreet.com/2014/07/29/heres-the-chart-that-shows-why-the-housing-market-is-sick/

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/...+capitalism%29

aka, fracking's Red Queen, running faster and faster just to stay in one place.

the surplus of natgas will certainly get exported as LNG as soon and as fast at the terminals can be built. Domestic gas prices will rise to world levels, 3x or 4x current domestic prices.

[boutons_deux]

Beneath new energy abundance, a slow-boil oil crisis

The disconnect between the still sluggish economy and the stock market which keeps hitting new highs is one indication that dangers lurk in the world economy.

On the energy front, new hydraulic fracturing technology combined with horizontal drilling is being touted as the answer to high oil prices. But oil prices remain stubbornly elevated. And, the technology itself is designed to harvest oil from shale layers thousands of feet below conventional reservoirs, layers which are far more difficult and expensive to exploit. In a way, our extraction of shale-based oil should be considered an emergency measure, one designed to forestall a decline in world oil production and one that would never have been taken if the easy-to-get oil hadn't already been gotten.

Likewise, attempts to exploit oil under the Arctic Ocean (so far unsuccessful) are opening a new front in the era of "extreme oil" and should also be classified as emergency measures.

But the public and policymakers generally do not view these developments in oil exploration with concern. On the contrary such efforts are touted as evidence of humankind's inevitable advance through clever manipulation of the environment using technology. It is just this idea of inevitability which holds the public mind in thrall regarding the economy with a promise that conditions will return to normal sometime soon--normal being defined down to include all sorts of emergency measures.

As long as we ignore the role of climate change and resource and energy depletion, we can delude ourselves that somehow things will return to the way they used to be--before the long emergency began--that political or ethnic factors are the main problems and that it has ever been thus! So, we tell ourselves not to worry too much since these problems are really local or regional; as long as we can stay out of the way, we think we can safely ignore them.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0729/Beneath-new-energy-abundance-a-slow-boil-oil-crisis

[boutons_deux]

Drilling Company Owner Gets 28 Months In Prison For Dumping Fracking Waste Into River

The owner of a small Ohio oil and gas drilling company who ordered his employees to dump tens of thousands of gallons of fracking waste into a tributary of the Mahoning River was sentenced to a 28 months of prison on Tuesday, according to a Cleveland Plain Dealerreport.

U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent also ordered 64-year-old Benedict Lupo, owner of Hardrock Excavating LLC, to pay $25,000 for unlawful discharge of pollutants under the U.S. Clean Water Act.

Lupo pleaded guilty to the charges in March, admitting to having his employees dump fracking wastewater into the Mahoning River tributary 33 times.

According to the Dealer, the wastewaster consisted of “sal er brine and a slurry of toxic oil-based drilling mud, containing benzene, toluene and other hazardous pollutants.” The recurring pollution had a devastating effect on the creek’s ecosystem, according to assistant U.S. attorney Brad Beeson.

“Even the most pollution-tolerant organisms, such as nymphs and cadis flies, were not present,” Beeson said in a court do ent. “The creek was essentially dead.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...ison-sentence/

$25K?

no employees fined or jailed?

Where is the famous "corporate veil"? Shouldn't the Corporate-American be jailed and fined? Looks like this non-financial/non-BigOil company simply wasn't Too Big To Jail.

[boutons_deux]

Frackers are strip-mining the Midwest for sand

There’s a new gold rush: sand. The golden-brown stuff has become the latest, hottest commodity on the market — actually, that’s inaccurate. It’s Northern White sand that’s all the rage now, according to The Wall Street Journal, because it can withstand intense heat and pressure underground. Why is that important? Because what’s driving the white sand demand is fracking.

The process of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas involves blasting a mixture of sand, water and chemicals into the underground shale rock. It can take millions of gallons of water for a fracking operation (which can result in poisoned groundwater). But dig the numbers on sand: It can take 4 million pounds of sand to frack a single well, according to WSJ’s Alison Sider.
Which is why sand prices and stock values are going up and mining activities for sand are expanding, notably in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“Residents of those areas are less than happy — the hyperactive mining of sand has seen a massive public backlash about the truck traffic, dust, and breathing problems,” wrote Cassie Werber in theWSJ’s Energy Journal newsletter today.


Frackers are expected to use nearly 95 billion pounds of sand this year, up nearly 30 percent from 2013 and up 50 percent from forecasts made by energy-consulting firm PacWest Consulting Partners a year ago.

It can take four million pounds of sand to frack a single well, but several companies are experimenting with using more. Companies like Pioneer Natural Resources Inc., which recently received a ruling from the U.S. Commerce Department allowing it to export unrefined ultralight oil produced from shale formations, are finding that the output of wells is up to 30% higher when they’re blasted with more sand. About a fifth of onshore wells are now being fracked with extra sand, but the technique could expand to 80% of all shale wells, according to energy analysts at RBC Capital Markets.

http://grist.org/list/frackers-are-s..._campaign=feed

and apparently, the used sand is left in open ponds that dry up, allowing the sand to be blown into residential areas. Siicosis!

http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/epitox/silicosis.shtm

https://www.osha.gov/silica/

http://www.regblog.org/2013/11/26-verchick-silica.html

https://www.osha.gov/dts/hazardalert...ard_alert.html

pollution from fracking sand, silicosis: just more "external costs" BigOil will never pay for.

[boutons_deux]

Enviros Blamed for Bursting Frack Bubble


Here’s The Script, in four de able acts:

Act 1. Fracking boom goes bust as production from shale gas and tight oil wells stalls out and lurches into decline.

Act 2. Oil and gas industry loudly blames anti-fracking environmentalists and restrictive regulations.

Act 3. Congress rolls back environmental laws.

Act 4. Loosened regulations do little to boost actual oil and gas production, which continues to tank, but the industry wins the right to exploit marginal resources a little more cheaply than would otherwise have been the case.




The industry continues to claim that tight oil and shale gas are “game changers” and that these resources will last many decades if not centuries. Though the CEOs of companies engaged in shale gas and tight oil drilling are undoubtedly aware of what’s going on in their own balance sheets, hype is an essential part of their business model—which can be summarized as follows:

Step 1. Borrow money and use it to lease thousands of acres for drilling.

Step 2. Borrow more money and drill as many wells as you can, as quickly as you can.

Step 3. Tell everyone within shouting distance that this is just the beginning of a production boom that will continue for the remainder of our lives and the lives of our children and that everyone who invests will get rich.

Step 4. Sell drilling leases to other (gullible) companies at a profit, raise funds through Initial Public Offerings or bond sales, and use the proceeds to hide financial losses from your drilling and production operations.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/11/enviros-blamed-for-bursting-frack-bubble/?utm_source=EcoWatch+List&utm_campaign=3963588ebc-Top_News_8_11_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_49c 7d43dc9-3963588ebc-85879165

[boutons_deux]

More Repug whoring misgovernance, dancing to BigOil's pipe:

Unprecedented Investigation Finds PA Prioritizes Fracking at Expense of Health, Environment & Law

Pennsylvania has been a hot spot for fracking—and many consequences of this from of gas drilling in the state have come to light, from social to health to environmental costs, as well as controversies, including contaminated drinking water in the town of Dimock, gag orders on doctors and victims, and the state health department’s enforced silence on the practice.
While that sounds ominous enough, a new report released by Earthworks, after a year in the making, proves that the rush to drill undermines the protection of Pennsylvanians and the enforcement of regulations. Blackout in the Gas Patch: How Pennsylvania Residents are Left in the Dark on Health and Enforcement for the first time definitively connects health and environmental impacts of fracking with a lack of state oversight on a site-by-site basis.

[Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection] DEP

The report concludes that the oversight of Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry is occurring with three inherent contradictions at play, which are as follows:

1. DEP is charged with protecting the environment and the public, but is under strong political pressure to advance an industry that harms water, air and health.

2. Steep budget cuts to DEP during a shale gas boom means the agency has to do more with less—which in effect has meant insufficient oversight and enforcement.

3. As the number of people impacted by and concerned about the impacts of gas development grows, public access to information on the activities of both operators and DEP remains limited, inconsistent and restricted.

While the report, which offers many recommendations for the state, is a firm indictment of the current situation in Pennsylvania, as Bruce Baizel, director of Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project, points out: “There’s a national crisis in fracking oversight. This report focuses on Pennsylvania, but it easily could have been written about Ohio, or the federal Bureau of Land Management, or Denton, Texas. Blackout illustrates why many residents across the United States have given up on the idea that regulators can manage the oil and gas boom, and are working so hard to stop fracking.”

http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/07/pa-pr...vironment-law/

[boutons_deux]

Top 20 Oil Projects Put Investors’ Billions at Risk

LONDON—If you want a safe bet, don’t invest in some of today’s tempting oil and gas projects. That’s the message from a UK-based financial thinktank that aims to align the global energy market with climate reality.

The report, by the not-for-profit Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), warns that US$ 91 billion of investors’ money risks going to waste over the next decade because of the industry’s plans.

It highlights a top 20 of the world’s most expensive future oil projects being considered for development, and concludes that, to be profitable, some of them will need oil prices to be far higher than today’s levels.

The findings in the report, CTI says, demonstrate the mismatch between continuing oil demand and reducing carbon emissions to limit global warming.

Economic justification

Since an earlier CTI report in May this year, ins utional investors have been asking for more details of the economic justification for projects that require high oil prices.
This latest research ranks oil majors according to their capex (capital expenditure) exposure to undeveloped, high-cost projects, and reveals the projects at highest risk.

The companies, CTI says, need to reduce exposure to exploration projects that must earn the highest prices for their oil, and that this is the principle that should determine investment decisions, rather than the simple pursuit of production volume.

All the fields require at least $95 a barrel to be sanctioned, identified by CTI as the key risk level—the market price required to go ahead with the project, assuming a $15 contingency allowance or “risk premium” on top of the break-even price.

Some projects will need prices above $150 per barrel. The global Brent oil benchmark has ranged between $99 and $114 per barrel over the past 12 months.

Using data from the independent consultants Rystad Energy, CTI finds that BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, Eni and Royal Dutch S are considering investing a total of $357 billion over the next decade on new production in costly and often technically-challenging projects—ranging from Canadian oil sands to deep water finds in the Gulf of Mexico and discoveries in the Arctic.

Both BP and Total have particularly high exposure to deep water and ultra-deep water projects, while ConocoPhillips is heavily exposed to Arctic projects. High carbon-emitting oil sands projects account for 27% and 26% respectively of S ’s and Conoco’s potential high-cost development spend.

“This analysis demonstrates the worsening cost environment in the oil industry, and the extent to which producers are chasing volume over value at the expense of returns,” said Andrew Grant, CTI analyst.

Projects shelved

Some majors have started cutting already. For example, in the Canadian oil sands sector so far this year, Total and Suncor have shelved the $11bn Joslyn mine project, and Royal Dutch S has put on hold its Pierre River project.

With deep-water projects, BP has delayed/cancelled its Mad Dog extension in the Gulf of Mexico, and Chevron is reviewing its $10bn Rosebank project in the North Sea.
In the Arctic, Statoil and Eni have deferred a decision on the $15.5bn Johan Castberg project.

The CTI report says projects that depend on sustained high prices for a return are at risk from a future double hit of falling oil prices and growing climate regulation in an increasingly carbon-constrained world.

Its study in May this year showed that oil prices have twice fallen as low as $40 per barrel in the last decade.

The US Energy Information Administration recently reported that the oil and gas sector has increased borrowing heavily to cover spending and dividends.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print..._risk_20140816

[boutons_deux]

Quiet Trading Markets as Banks Depart, Norwegian Oil & Gas and Bearish US Nat Gas Signals

the continuing trend of big banks unwinding their trading operations amid increased regulatory oversight and proprietary trading prohibitions.

Many of the big players have left the space that’s increasingly being filled by new entrants like major trading houses.

‘“Today’s markets are ‘boring,’ said Thomas Thees, a former head of North American credit trading at Morgan Stanley and a former co-head of fixed income at Jefferies Group.

“This is affecting the opportunity to make money, and ultimately the earnings these [trading] businesses can provide.”’

http://breakingenergy.com/2014/07/14/energy-news-roundup-quiet-trading-markets-as-banks-depart-norwegian-oil-gas-and-bearish-us-nat-gas-signals/

So it looks sucky for BigCarbon, pushed expensively to "Drill Crazy, Drill Non-stop" of rapid-depletion frack wells, and pushed into super-expensive, super-risky super-deep ocean drilling and Arctic drilling.

Now all we need now is transformative, scaleable breakthrough in EV batteries, and BigCarbon will be badly ed.

[boutons_deux]

Repugs just takin' care of (BigOil) business

Doctors Outraged By Claims That Health Officials Ignored Residents Sickened By Drilling

Pennsylvania doctors, nurses, and health policy experts are calling for a statewide investigation into claims that the state Department of Health has a policy of telling its employees never to talk to residents who complain of negative health effects from fracking, according to letter sent to state Gov. Tom Corbett and other elected officials on Tuesday.

The letter — spearheaded by the groups Physicians for Social Responsibility, Alliance of Nurses for Health Environments, and PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center, and signed by more than 400 individual health professionals — says doctors and nurses statewide are “very concerned” about a story published in NPR’s StateImpact Pennsylvania this June. In that story, two retired employees of the health department said they were instructed not to return phone calls from citizens who said they may be experiencing sickness from fracking and other natural gas development.

The letter calls for an independent investigation into the claims, and reform of the health department’s response procedures.

“When it comes to fracking, the DOH has done little to prevent exposure or lead policy development,” Dr. Julie Becker, board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said in a statement. “The PA DOH does not provide accurate data to address the health needs of fracking communities, thereby hindering research, and permitting poor decisions to be made based on inaccurate information.”

According to the groups’ letter, the DOH has not done enough since StateImpact’s revelations that the agency may be mishandling citizen complaints. In response, the agency originally said it would improve its policies for handling environmental health complaints, and updated its website to provide a better explanation on how to file them.

In addition, the groups are asking the DOH to make public all past and future health complaints that citizens make to the agency through a public health registry.”This will allow local officials, medical providers, researchers, public health experts, and others to determine how oil and gas operations are impacting people’s health in Pennsylvania, including both residents and industry workers,” the letter reads.

Since the story broke in StateImpact that the state Department of Health may be ignoring health complaints, the issue has received more attention — not only about whether the misconduct occurred, but also whether it’s criminal. Earlier this month, officials from the Pennsylvania state Attorney General’s office said it they would begincontacting and interviewing residents who say they reached out to state health officials about symptoms with no response.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...acking-health/

Up next: Repugs propose yet again to defund totally PBS/NPR

[TDMVPDPOY]

what i dont get is these western nations are chargin its ppl market rates, while gulf oil producing nations charging its ppl jack for oil

even a country like mine down here who has most of the worlds LPG reserves charges its ppl around 80cents a litre compared to what gulf wankers charges its ppl for oil....

this is re ed.....last time oil/petrol was 80cents a litre was exactly 10yrs ago....

[boutons_deux]

what i dont get is these western nations are chargin its ppl market rates

The BigOil cartel and oil speculators set the price as high as they can without cratering the economy, maiking BigOil the most profitable industry.

Most countries force down the retail demand for oil, call it a carbon tax, with high taxes on gasoline and diesel because those countries aren't dictated to by BigOil corporations as the US govt controlled by BigOil is.

[boutons_deux]

North Carolina Newspapers Keep Fracking Data in the Dark

If North Carolina's proposed regulations are implemented, some of the state's most visited areas will be industrialized and public health may be compromised.

Water and natural landscapes are the epicenter of North Carolina's booming tourism and recreation economy. In 2013, domestic tourists spent a record $20.2 billion in the state, up from $19.4 billion in 2012. After ten years of slickwater, horizontal, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in Pennsylvania, where tourism is also a major economy, a lot of lessons have been learned at a price the public and elected leaders are just now beginning to understand.

For example, in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, Chesapeake Energy had to perform 23 cement squeezes on gas wells in a roughly 28-mile area where well casing failures led to water contamination.

Image: Screenshot of water complaint map in southeast Bradford County, PA
where Chesapeake Energy operations caused water contamination. Read all complaints in the #fileroom,PublicFiles.org

Cement squeezes" are attempts to fill cracks in casing and cement where gas and production fluids leak out and contaminate aquifers. In Pennsylvania, methane and other contaminants have repeatedly leaked into groundwater aquifers through these cracks. In one case, methane reached four times the explosive level for a home, forcing the landowner to relocate after signing a non-disclosure agreement or 'gag order' in exchange for financial settlement from the company.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/25...ta-in-the-dark

Thanks, NC/PA Repugs!

anybody know the failure rate, often at water-well depths, of oil/gas well casings over a 20-year span? or is that BigCarbon "trade secret"?

[boutons_deux]

Pennsylvania Finally Reveals Fracking Has Contaminated Drinking Water Hundreds Of Times

For the first time, Pennsylvania has made public 243 cases of contamination of private drinking wells from oil and gas drilling operations.

As the AP reports, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection posted details about the contamination cases online on Thursday. The cases occurred in 22 counties, with Susquehanna, Tioga, Lycoming, and Bradford counties having the most incidences of contamination.

In some cases, one drilling operation contaminated the water of multiple wells, with water issues resulting from methane gas contamination, wastewater spills, and wells that simply went dry or undrinkable. The move to release the contamination information comes after years of the AP and other news outlets filing lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests from the DEP on water issues related to oil and gas drilling and fracking.

The Pennsylvania DEP has been criticized for its poor record of providing information on fracking-related contamination to state residents. In April, a Pennsylvania Superior Court caseclaimed that due to the way DEP operates and its lack of public record, it’s impossible for citizens to know about cases where private wells, groundwater and springs are contaminated by drilling and fracking.

“The DEP must provide citizens with information about the potential harm coming their way,” John Smith, one of the attorneys representing municipalities in the lawsuit, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “If it doesn’t record and make available the violations records then it is denying the public accurate information, which is unconscionable.”

Thomas Au of the Pennsylvania Sierra Club told the AP that the state DEP’s decision to unveil the 243 cases of water contamination was a “step in the right direction.”

Considering Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale boom started six years ago, however, “this is something that should have been made public a long time ago,” Au said.

The release of contamination information also comes about a month after a report from the state’s Inspector General that found that the rapid growth of the state’s gas industry “caught the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) unprepared to effectively administer laws and regulations to protect drinking water and unable to efficiently respond to citizen complaints.”

“It is almost like firefighters trying to put out a five-alarm fire with a 20-foot garden hose,” Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said in a statement. “There is no question that DEP needs help and soon to protect clean water.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...contamination/

Repug MISgovernance, always sucking up to BigOil. And the vast majority of the polluted ground water is in rural DEEPLY RED PA.

But somehow, REPUG TX frackers NEVER cause any pollution!

[Cry Havoc]

Boutons doing some serious work in this thread. Daps for that.

[boutons_deux]

wow, even crazy red state UTAH?

Utah fracking fine highlights wastewater pond threat


Wastewater ponds dot the landscape in states that produce gas; environmentalists say they’re a growing threat

When fracking causes controversy, it’s often because of wells — either the ones used to inject chemicals and water into the ground to break up gas-rich shale rock or the ones used to dispose of all the waste and water left over from the injection process.

Often overlooked is a another way to dispose of that waste: massive surface ponds in which fracking water is stored until it can be recycled or buried or is left to slowly evaporate. Those ponds, which can grow to several acres in size, dot the landscapes of virtually every state that produces natural gas.

Now environmentalists say a recent controversy over the ponds in Utah highlights their increasing impact across the U.S.

The scandal at Danish Flats Environmental Services, in Clark County, next to Colorado, began as soon as the ponds were developed in 2007. The facility, which consists of 14 ponds filled mainly with oil and gas wastewater from Colorado, had been allowing the water to evaporate without an air quality permit from the state. Until early August the state considered the facility — and every other wastewater pond in Utah — below the de minimis pollution standard, meaning it wasn’t emitting enough to be regularly inspected by air quality regulators or to need a permit.

But after an updated analysis of its emissions was conducted, regulators found that Danish Flats was allowing fracking chemicals like methanol and other volatile organic compounds into the air and fined the facility $50,0000 in early August.

“These places are the size of football fields, they’re all across the state, and none of them were declared above de minimis,” said Chris Baird, director of the Canyonlands Watershed Council, a western Utah environmental group. “They’ve just kind of resisted regulatory control.”

Now the state is looking into the dozens of other wastewater facilities across the state.

But as Utah begins to clamp down on the facilities, environmentalists say the type of ponds that got Danish Flats in trouble is still an environmental concern elsewhere as hydraulic fracturing expands across the U.S.

http://america.aljazeera.com/article...waterutah.html

In case any of you motherfrackers forget, or never knew, Mr head Cheney Halliburton got fracking EXEMPTED from the Clean Water Act. He and Halliburton KNEW fracking has been/was going to be a huge water polluter.

Thanks, Repugs!

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paraphrase: "fracking is no threat to water wells because fracking is much deeper"

There is wonderful OVERLAP between Eagle-Ford and the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer.



Guess who's drilling for water in the C-W aquifer?

drilling how deep?


Water of the Future

A new desalination project will transform salty water right in our backyard into millions of gallons of drinkable water – further securing our city's water future.

In just a few years, San Antonians will have a new source of water coming out of their taps. And it'll come from an unlikely source – brackish water from the Wilcox Aquifer in southern Bexar County.


The once-overlooked pool of groundwater will be made drinkable using a reverse osmosis water treatment facilty. That plant will be located at the existing SAWS Twin Oaks Aquifer Storage and Recovery site, and draw brackish water from 13 production wells more than 1,500 feet deep


http://www.saws.org/desal/

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somehow, fracking well are not "fracking"

Well Leaks, Not Fracking, Are Linked to Fouled Water

A study of tainted drinking water in areas where natural gas is produced from shale shows that the contamination is most likely caused by leaky wells rather than the process of hydraulic fracturing used to release the gas from the rock.

the researchers found no evidence that fractured shale led to water contamination. Instead, they said cement used to seal the outside of the vertical wells, or steel tubing used to line them, was at fault, leading to gas leaking up the wells and into aquifers.

it basically showed well integrity was the problem

improvements in well integrity can probably eliminate most of the environmental problems with gas leaks

( as if drillers were going to do that after decades of not doing it! )

Well integrity is a widespread problem in the oil and gas industry, with one often-quoted statistic suggesting that 15 percent of all cement sealing of wells may be imperfect,

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/science/study-points-to-well-leaks-not-fracking-for-water-contamination.html

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Scientists Find ‘Direct Link’ Between Earthquakes And Drilling Wastewater Injection

A team of scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have found evidence “directly linking” the uptick in Colorado and New Mexico earthquakes since 2001 to wastewater injection, a process widely used in the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and conventional drilling.

In a study to be published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America on Tuesday, the scientists presented “several lines of evidence [that] suggest the earthquakes in the area are directly related to the disposal of wastewater” deep underground, according to a BSSA press release. Fracking and conventional natural gas companies routinely dispose of large amounts of wastewater underground after drilling. During fracking, the water is mixed with chemicals and sand, to “fracture” underground shale rock formations and make gas easier to extract.

The USGS research is just the latest in a string of studies that have suggested the disposed water is migrating along dormant fault lines, changing their state of stress, and causing them to fail.

For their research, the four California-based USGS scientists monitored the 2,200 square mile Raton Basin, which goes from southern Colorado into New Mexico. They pointed out that the Basin had been “seismically quiet” until 1999, when companies began “major fluid injection” deep into the ground. Earthquakes began in 2001 when Colorado wastewater injection rates were under 600,000 barrels per month, and and since then there have been 16 earthquakes that could be considered large (above a magnitude of 3.8, including two over a 5.0 magnitude), compared with only one — a 4.0 magnitude quake — in the 30 years prior.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...cking-process/

[boutons_deux]

the sky people defraud, steal from the Na'vi! say it ain't so

Texas Supreme Court Weighs Oilfield Fraud Case

Texas’ drilling bonanza can mean long-lasting windfalls for mineral owners in the state’s hottest shale plays – if those lessors make sure oil and gas operators pay what they promise. But doing so can prove incredibly difficult, as shown in a case the Texas Supreme Court will soon decide.

The court heard arguments on Wednesday in an East Texas dispute over just how much “due diligence” a mineral owner must show in auditing his or her payments. The case concerns whether a mineral owner should get extra time to sue for fraud after discovering that an operator provided false information about drilling plans. The legal team for Charles Hooks, the plaintiff, calls the matter “perhaps the single most important policy issue in Texas oil and gas today.”

A Jefferson County jury returned a verdict in Hooks’ favor, saying Samson Lone Star, an oil and gas partnership, owed him more than $21 million for withholding royalties. The First Court of Appeals in Houston reversed the ruling, saying Hooks waited too long to file the suit, and could have discovered payment discrepancies years earlier by poring over public records.

Samson, backed by Texas’ biggest energy groups, argues that the four-year statute of limitations on fraud cases is appropriate, and that mineral owners should take more initiative in auditing their royalty payments. Looser limits would create uncertainty for oil and gas operators, the company argues, making it difficult for them to balance their books.

The Texas Supreme Court has set a high bar for mineral owners in past disputes. no ? in Texas, can't happen!

John McFarland, an oil and gas attorney who filed a brief in support of Hooks, said he knows of no similar case in which the mineral owner prevailed.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/09/...ld-fraud-case/

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Pennsylvania Natural Resources Agency Ordered To Delete Climate Change Info From Website

The Pennsylvania state agency that regulates gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing was explicitly ordered by members of Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration to remove several references to “climate change” from the agency’s website, a former agency employee told the Allegheny Front on Friday.

Adrian Stouffer, a former Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) marketing manager, told the paper that she and other agency employees were told to delete the references to climate change during a meeting at Corbett’s offices in 2012. The administration officials reportedly didn’t want all mentions of climate change taken off the website, but did want references taken off “in cases where we looked like we were giving a position” on whether or not humans cause global warming.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...-climate-info/

Kock suckers

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For Oil and Gas Companies, Rigging Seems to Involve Wages, Too

U.S. Department of Labor investigations have uncovered hundreds of cases in which oil and gas workers, many involved in dangerous jobs, are being cheated of earnings.


A ProPublica review of U.S. Department of Labor investigations shows that oil and gas workers – men and women often performing high-risk jobs – are routinely being underpaid, and the companies hiring them often are using accounting techniques to deny workers benefits such as medical leave or unemployment insurance.

The DOL investigations have centered on what is known as worker "misclassification," an accounting gambit whereby companies treat full time employees as independent contractors paid hourly wages, and then fail to make good on their obligations. The technique, investigators and experts say, has become ever more common as small companies seek to gain contracts in an intensely compe ive market by holding labor costs down.

In the complex, rapidly expanding oil and gas industry, much of the day to day work done on oil rigs and gas wells is sub-contracted out to smaller companies. For instance, on one gas rig alone, the operator might hire one company to construct the well pad, another to drill the well, a third company to provide hydraulic fracking services and yet another to truck water and chemicals for disposal.

But for the thousands of workers in the hundreds of different companies, a single standard is supposed to apply: by law, they must be paid more than minimum wage and they must be fairly compensated for any overtime accrued.

In 2012, the DOL began a special enforcement initiative in its Northeast and Southwest regional offices targeting the fracking industry and its supporting industries.

As of August this year, the agency has conducted 435 investigations resulting in over $13 million in back wages found due for more than 9,100 workers. ProPublica obtained data for 350 of those cases from the agency. In over a fifth of the investigations, companies in violation paid more than $10,000 in back wages.

http://www.propublica.org/article/fo...ailynewsletter

Nice ing industry, huh?

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A ‘frac sand’ boom is sweeping the midwest

Victoria Trinko says she hasn’t opened the windows to her home in Bloomer, Wisconsin, in more than two years. That’s around the time a mining company began churning up silica sand a half-mile from her family farm, filling the air with tiny particles and making it harder for her to breathe. “I could feel dust clinging to my face and gritty particles on my teeth,” Trinko recalls.

Silica sand is one of many ingredients used in the hydraulic fracturing process. During fracking, operators blast thousands of tons of sand and millions of gallons of water and chemicals into the ground to release oil and natural gas deposits stored in shale formations.

As fracking accelerates in the United States, demand for "frac sand" could climb 30 percent from 2013 to 2015, an increase of about 95 billion pounds of sand, according to industry projections. Sand miner U.S. Silica Holdings Inc. said demand for its own volumes of sand could double or triple in the next five years, Reuters reported last week.

In a report released Thursday, environmental groups and residents like Trinko said they are worried that expanding sand production will lead to increased health, air and water complications in communities near the mines. In Wisconsin and Minnesota, the states where most silica sand is produced, regulations are fairly lax for monitoring air pollution and water contamination at these sites, the groups said. Those states have more than 160 active fracking sand facilities combined, and another 20 projects are in the works.

Given the pace of the fracking boom, silica extraction could spread to a dozen other states with untapped or largely untapped sand deposits, including Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.


Most silica sand used in fracking operations comes from Minnesota and Wisconsin. But production could expand to 12 other states with untapped or largely untapped industrial sand deposits, according to a report. Civil Society Ins ute's Boston Action Research

Grant Smith, the report’s lead author, raised three key concerns with the expansion of silica production in any state.

First, water quality. Chemicals used in the mining process can enter the groundwater or surface water from dumping ponds at mining sites, raising the risks of contaminating drinking water supplies. Second, air quality. Small particles of silica dust can easily enter the lungs and bloodstream, and in the worst cases lead to silicosis, a lung disease. And third, financial effects. A major mining operation can depress nearby real estate values, and increased activity of heavy trucks and transportation equipment can shorten the lifespan of roads and bridges, requiring governments to pay for expensive repairs.

The rapid expansion of U.S. oil and gas drilling “has a hidden side filled with problems,” Smith, a senior energy policy adviser at the Civil Society Ins ute in Massachusetts, said in a call with reporters. For state and local governments, “health, water and other economic concerns should be addressed comprehensively, rather than just being ignored or dismissed.”

Spokespeople for the Wisconsin and Minnesota departments of natural resources were not immediately available for comment.

A related map published Thursday (see below) examined the impacts of existing mining operations. Researchers at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy organization, studied a 33-county area in southern Minnesota, southwestern Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa.

The area contains more than 70 sand mining operations and 27 sites for processing, transporting or loading sand onto trucks or rail cars -- a nearly 150 percent increase compared to just a decade ago. Another 82 mines or associated sites have been proposed or granted permits in the tri-state region.

Researchers found than more than 58,000 people live less than half a mile from existing, permitted or proposed facilities -- a range at which silica particles are known to degrade air quality. More than 162,000 people live within a mile of these sites.

“None of the states at the center of the current frac sand mining boom have adopted air quality standards for silica that will adequately protect those exposed,” Heather White, the group’s executive director, told reporters.


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/a...e+Raw+Story%29

one the really great results of silicosis is pulmonary fibrosis which has a 5-year mortality rate of about 90%. A fanstastic way to die, slow, painful, can't breathe so can't exercise or even move much, atrophied muscles everywhere, congestive heart failure. lovely