Fracking

[TeyshaBlue]

Las Cruces is "across the border" from El Paso, closer to Arizona than the panhandle, and is in the middle of a fucking desert.

Just sayin'

[boutons_deux]

TB :lol

just saying nuttin, as usual

[TeyshaBlue]

just bitch slapping you, as usual. lol panhandle.

[boutons_deux]

panhandle up your ass

TB :lol

[TeyshaBlue]

:cry I got bitch slapped again!:cry

[Halberto]

Has anyone met this boutons guy in person?

[boutons_deux]

More on BigCarbon stealing royalties from landowners

Unfair Share: How Oil and Gas Drillers Avoid Paying Royalties

Don Feusner ran dairy cattle on his 370-acre slice of northern Pennsylvania until he could no longer turn a profit by farming. Then, at age 60, he sold all but a few Angus and aimed for a comfortable retirement on money from drilling his land for natural gas instead.

It seemed promising. Two wells drilled on his lease hit as sweet a spot as the Marcellus shale could offer – tens of millions of cubic feet of natural gas gushed forth. Last December, he received a check for $8,506 for a month’s share of the gas.

Then one day in April, Feusner ripped open his royalty envelope to find that while his wells were still producing the same amount of gas, the gusher of cash had slowed. His eyes cascaded down the page to his monthly balance at the bottom: $1,690.
Chesapeake Energy, the company that drilled his wells, was withholding almost 90 percent of Feusner’s share of the income to cover unspecified “gathering” expenses and it wasn’t explaining why.

“They said you’re going to be a millionaire in a couple of years, but none of that has happened,” Feusner said. “I guess we’re expected to just take whatever they want to give us.”

Like every landowner who signs a lease agreement to allow a drilling company to take resources off his land, Feusner is owed a cut of what is produced, called a royalty.

In 1982, in a landmark effort to keep people from being fleeced by the oil industry, the federal government passed a law establishing that royalty payments to landowners would be no less than 12.5 percent of the oil and gas sales from their leases.

From Pennsylvania to North Dakota, a powerful argument for allowing extensive new drilling has been that royalty payments would enrich local landowners, lifting the economies of heartland and rural America. The boom was also supposed to fill the government’s coffers, since roughly 30 percent of the nation’s drilling takes place on federal land.

Over the last decade, an untold number of leases were signed, and hundreds of thousands of wells have been sunk into new energy deposits across the country.

But manipulation of costs and other data by oil companies is keeping billions of dollars in royalties out of the hands of private and government landholders, an investigation by ProPublica has found.

An analysis of lease agreements, government documents and thousands of pages of court records shows that such underpayments are widespread. Thousands of landowners like Feusner are receiving far less than they expected based on the sales value of gas or oil produced on their property. In some cases, they are being paid virtually nothing at all.

In many cases, lawyers and auditors who specialize in production accounting tell ProPublica energy companies are using complex accounting and business arrangements to skim profits off the sale of resources and increase the expenses charged to landowners.

Deducting expenses is itself controversial and debated as unfair among landowners, but it is allowable under many leases, some of which were signed without landowners fully understanding their implications.

But some companies deduct expenses for transporting and processing natural gas, even when leases contain clauses explicitly prohibiting such deductions. In other cases, according to court files and documents obtained by ProPublica, they withhold money without explanation for other, unauthorized expenses, and without telling landowners that the money is being withheld.


http://www.propublica.org/article/unfair-share-how-oil-and-gas-drillers-avoid-paying-royalties

probably a lot of these rural land owners are tea baggers wishing their hated BigBadGovt was around to help them get their contracted money. :lol

[boutons_deux]

Foreseeing Trouble in Exporting Natural Gas

As Dow Chemical’s chief executive, Andrew N. Liveris has made himself into something of an outcast among his fellow business leaders.

The reason? He is spearheading a public campaign against increased exports of natural gas, which he sees as a threat to a manufacturing renaissance in the United States, not to mention his own company’s bottom line. But many others say such exports would provide far more benefits to the country than drawbacks, all part of a transformation that promises to increase the nation’s weight in the global economy.

Now it seems that one constituency where Mr. Liveris had gained a sympathetic ear, the federal government, may also have turned against him. Last week, the Energy Department approved another planned project to export natural gas, the second such proposal it has accepted since May.

But that windfall is at risk if the government permits natural gas exports to increase quickly, Mr. Liveris warns.

To nurture the nation’s good luck, he says, the government needs to plan an energy policy that carefully balances the interests of the oil and gas companies that want to freely export natural gas with those of industries like Dow Chemical that fear that an export boom could outpace domestic gas supplies and bring higher energy prices. ( b!ngo! higher prices in USA is exactly what BigCarbon is dreaming about and trying to hasten )

After spiking in the last decade, natural gas prices in the United States have hovered between $3 and $4 per million B.T.U.’s this year. That is down from a high of $12 before the recession, and a fraction of what it costs in Asia and Europe.

That price differential is one reason exports are so appealing for domestic energy companies, who are willing to spend billions to build export facilities to ship liquefied natural gas in tankers in the hopes of selling it overseas.

On the other hand, cheap domestic supplies mean Dow — one of the biggest private consumers of natural gas in the country — and other chemical companies are now paying much less than their foreign competitors for the raw material they turn into products like plastic, raising profit margins. It could also bring back jobs to the United States as manufacturers that use natural gas for energy benefit, Mr. Liveris says, although that renaissance is just in its infancy.

So far, the Obama administration has granted permits to three terminal projects, two in Louisiana and one in Texas, and it appears to be on a gradual path to approve a handful more over the next several years to avoid risking the natural gas price spike Mr. Liveris fears.

In the United States, roughly 15 proposed gas projects await regulatory approval; if all were approved they could export the equivalent of more than a third of the domestically consumed natural gas. Along with an expected future increase in natural gas consumed by vehicles and industry, such an export boom would undoubtedly push prices up.

he remembers the impact of escalating domestic natural gas prices between 2001 and 2005, when the company was forced to cancel plans to build a $4 billion chemical plant in Texas.

“I’m protecting my shareholders,” he said, adding that $5 billion to $6 billion in new Dow Chemical investments were depending on the continuation of low gas prices “and not repeating the ’01-to-’05 movie.”

his native Australia, which he said exported 90 percent of its gas. That has caused, he sayid, “the collapse of the manufacturing sector — and, by the way, the retail sector’s paying through the nose. We’re paying Japanese electricity prices in Australia, yet Australia is gas-rich.”

Exporting natural gas is fine, he says, but not at the price of importing it back in the form of goods made with cheap gas elsewhere.

I’m not importing finished goods. I’m making them in the United States of America.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/business/energy-environment/foreseeing-trouble-in-exporting-natural-gas.html?from=homepage

BigCarbon will fuck Human-Americans by exporting LNG in large quantities, make $Ts doing it, then gouge Human-Americans with $10+ domestic natural gas prices.

[Halberto]

Boutons, what's your aim with these articles? To protect the environment or talk finance?

[boutons_deux]

Boutons, what's your aim with these articles? To protect the environment or talk finance?

they're all related to fracking industry

what's your point in asking about my point?

[Halberto]

they're all related to fracking industry

what's your point in asking about my point?


If you were concerned with the financial aspect you would be happy with fracking. But you never post that stuff, leading to my point: you're ignorant. You're a naive, simple minded person.

[boutons_deux]

If you were concerned with the financial aspect you would be happy with fracking. But you never post that stuff, leading to my point: you're ignorant. You're a naive, simple minded person.

what specific financial aspects are you mumbling about?

there PLENTY of financial angles in the stuff I post.

[Halberto]

what specific financial aspects are you mumbling about?

there PLENTY of financial angles in the stuff I post.


How about the contributions fracking brings to GDP and job creation in a time of economic challenges? Do I need to mention the huge impact it has with foreign oil?

[Nbadan]

Remember when oil companies used to pollute the rivers in Nigeria and rape the country and its people of a finite natural resources...now we get to have that here..

Yeahhh

[boutons_deux]

How about the contributions fracking brings to GDP and job creation in a time of economic challenges? Do I need to mention the huge impact it has with foreign oil?

Growth in GDP and national wealth is not being shared equally, no matter what the economic activity, but going to the top 5% or less.

BigCarbon is fucking up the planet which in your calculation is acceptable as long as GDP and a few jobs are increased.

[Das Texan]

Natural Gas prices are way too low to be sustainable as far as from a production standpoint.

They went from the stupid highs in 2008 to even stupider lows here now for the last 3 years.

Allowing real exporting of Natural Gas would help push up the prices. The cost that I have paid for my natural gas from CPS hasnt really changed any in the last 5 years, and with the amount of supply we have in Texas alone (not even factoring in there other large handful of gas rich states), its highly stupid for us to not export it, if we arent going to actually change our vehicles to run on natural gas.

If we as a nation take that step, then I'm all for not allowing exportation. We wont, so fuck it. Ship it out.

Boutons should be all for this anyway. Pollution from Natural Gas < Pollution from Crude Oil < Pollution from Coal

Unless Boutons thinks its actually economically sustainable to put electrical outlets at every rest stop in mass and to increase the capacity of electrial lines and produce said electricity from the sun, wind and water.

[boutons_deux]

Unless Boutons thinks its actually economically sustainable to put electrical outlets at every rest stop in mass and to increase the capacity of electrial lines and produce said electricity from the sun, wind and water.

auto mfrs should get out of the fuel business. batteries should be generic, swap plugins.

"increase the capacity of electrial lines and produce said electricity from the sun, wind and water."

the national grid is a disaster waiting to happen, from the many articles I've, none of which have ever hinted the national grid is in wonderful conditon.

There are areas producing and/or could produce 100s of GWs of, eg, wind power electricity that is being dumped because the grid can't handle it, etc, etc, etc.

The country needs a national grid investment and grid management govt policy, but that would be blocked by right-wingers and the corps as socialism. One of their BIG LIES is that capitalism, the market always provides the optimum solution (but only for capitalists).

[Das Texan]

auto mfrs should get out of the fuel business. batteries should be generic, swap plugins.

"increase the capacity of electrial lines and produce said electricity from the sun, wind and water."

the national grid is a disaster waiting to happen, from the many articles I've, none of which have ever hinted the national grid is in wonderful conditon.

There are areas producing and/or could produce 100s of GWs of, eg, wind power electricity that is being dumped because the grid can't handle it, etc, etc, etc.

The country needs a national grid investment and grid management govt policy, but that would be blocked by right-wingers and the corps as socialism. One of their BIG LIES is that capitalism, the market always provides the optimum solution (but only for capitalists).


who exactly is going to fund this national grid investment?

question


how will funds be raised for said investment and what are the projected costs for this to occur? Are we just upgrading electric lines or what else is going to be upgraded along the way? Explain to me how you are going to get to a system where 100% of the electricity is garned by renewable sources and how long it will take for it to occur and how long it will take for this to happen.

Don't link me to any propaganda articles, facts and facts alone. Thanks.

[boutons_deux]

some big picture items here:

As Worries Over the Power Grid Rise, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/us/as-worries-over-the-power-grid-rise-a-drill-will-simulate-a-knockout-blow.html

[boutons_deux]

who exactly is going to fund this national grid investment?

question

how will funds be raised for said investment and what are the projected costs for this to occur? Are we just upgrading electric lines or what else is going to be upgraded along the way? Explain to me how you are going to get to a system where 100% of the electricity is garned by renewable sources and how long it will take for it to occur and how long it will take for this to happen.

Don't link me to any propaganda articles, facts and facts alone. Thanks.

roll back at tax cuts on everybody and everything to 1980

add a 2% tax on all financial transactions.

cut $300B+ annually from MIC

increase federal tax on transport fuel.

Lots of way to increase federal revenue to INVEST in America's infrastructure and keep the country PROGRESSing as it did before the VRWC's policies got going in the 1970s, resulting in an impoverishing of the 99% and the country while concentrating national wealth in the 1%. The more the Corporate-Americans control America, the more Human-Americans suffer and are impoverished.

You right wingers always bitching about how poor little America is so poor and can't do shit are fucking shilling for the 1%.

[Das Texan]

Of course I don't get hard numbers. Just more hyperbole.

Oh and go fuck yourself boutons. The last thing I am is a fucking right winger. But bravo on the labeling game. Asshole

[boutons_deux]

also,

no mortgage interest deduction for 2nd, etc and vacation homes

no mortgage interest deduction for mortgages 100% above the median house price for a city or region.

capital gains tax at least 25% if not higher

etc,etc, etc. Lots of ways to finance infrastructure construction, maintenance, repair (electrical, water/sewer, roads, railways, public transport).

numbers? you need steenkin numbers? GFY

the above strategy will raise $Ts.

[Halberto]

Growth in GDP and national wealth is not being shared equally, no matter what the economic activity, but going to the top 5% or less.

BigCarbon is fucking up the planet which in your calculation is acceptable as long as GDP and a few jobs are increased.


its funny how you say that. In the field I've meet hundreds of people making $70k+ a year, half of them with just a high school education. You should ask them if they mind that their employee is raking in way more money.

[boutons_deux]

Texas is Fracked: More than 30 Towns Will be Out of Water due to Fracking

http://c1gas2org.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2013/08/texas.jpg


http://c1gas2org.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2013/08/haha.jpg

More than 30 towns in West Texas will soon be out of water as a direct result of diverting their underground water supplies for use in hydraulic fracking. Largely unregulated (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=west-texas-could-happen-anywhere) fracking, it should be said.

Largely unregulated fracking that is definitely putting arsenic into the ground (http://gas2.org/2013/08/08/heavy-metals-contaminate-groundwater-near-fracking-sites/) it happens to be drying out. Before you start acting horrified, though, consider: this is exactly what Texas’ mental-midget teabillies voted for (http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2011/12/19/rick-perry-on-fracking-contamination-bring-me-the-evidence/).

http://gas2.org/2013/08/16/texas-is-fracked-more-than-30-towns-will-be-out-of-water-due-to-fracking/

[boutons_deux]

Nav'i people getting fucked by the SkyPeople

Imagine If There Were A Town In The USA Where You Couldn't Get Any Water. You Can Stop Imagining.http://www.upworthy.com/imagine-if-there-was-a-town-in-the-usa-where-you-couldnt-get-any-water-its-not-imaginary-anymore-10?c=upw9

Nav'i done lost and gonna stay lost

praying? yeah, that fixes everything. What if God loves fracking more than the Nav'i? :lol

[boutons_deux]

Texas Converts 80 Miles Of Paved Road To Gravel Thanks To Lack Of Funds (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/08/19/2490151/texas-converts-80-miles-of-paved-road-to-gravel-thanks-to-lack-of-funds/)lawmakers found $225 million (http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/04/shale-counties-could-be-back-2015-needing-more-fun/) to repair county roads affected by energy development, and the same amount for repairs to state-owned roads. That funding, though, was only a temporary fix.

Efforts to increase taxes on the companies that are profiting from the energy boom to cover the road repair costs failed to gain traction. TxDOT said repairing and maintaining the oil field roads into the future will cost about $1 billion a year in additional funding.

The conversions will affect roads in four South Texas counties — Live Oak, Dimmit, LaSalle and Zavala — and two West Texas counties — Reeves and Culberson. Glessner said the farm-to-market roads that will be turned to gravel were picked, in part, because they are rural routes that are ineligible for federal funds.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/19/conversion-of-roads-to-gravel-met-with-concern/

You lovers of fracking remain silent on the externalities unpaid by BigCarbon and dumped on taxpayers.

[Das Texan]

You realize that the only real reason there is now such a huge rainy day fun that the Texas Government refuses to really use for some reason is due to taxes paid by the oil and gas industry right?

[boutons_deux]

You realize that the only real reason there is now such a huge rainy day fun that the Texas Government refuses to really use for some reason is due to taxes paid by the oil and gas industry right?

fixing roads destroyed by fracking industry isn't an emergency "rainy day", it's an continuing disaster.

"As drilling has boomed in the state, the fund is now sitting with over $8 billion, an is projected to grow to nearly $12 billion by 2014-15. That’s more than double what it had in 2010-11."

http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/tag/rainy-day/

[Das Texan]

fixing roads destroyed by fracking industry isn't an emergency "rainy day", it's an continuing disaster.

"As drilling has boomed in the state, the fund is now sitting with over $8 billion, an is projected to grow to nearly $12 billion by 2014-15. That’s more than double what it had in 2010-11."

http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/tag/rainy-day/


no its that the state of texas in its wonderful wisdom should be diverting some of funds that are now going to the rainy day fund to fix roads in the Eagleford and other oil rich areas since this is where the fucking money is coming from.

If they were to divert half of the funding coming into the rainy day fund from the oil and gas industry into fixing the infastructure in those areas, this wouldnt be such a problem.

The morons in Austin are the ones who refuse to actually properly fund transportation like they should be.

[TeyshaBlue]

yup...there's billions in taxes being paid by the companies already. It's flowing into the treasury and apparently being partially socked away.
That being said, I don't have any real problems with a road use tax being levied specifically other than the fact that's already being done. lol

[boutons_deux]

yup...there's billions in taxes being paid by the companies already. It's flowing into the treasury and apparently being partially socked away.
That being said, I don't have any real problems with a road use tax being levied specifically other than the fact that's already being done. lol

TxDOT says they need several $Bs for road construction and maintenance. Are they lying?

[Das Texan]

yup...there's billions in taxes being paid by the companies already. It's flowing into the treasury and apparently being partially socked away.
That being said, I don't have any real problems with a road use tax being levied specifically other than the fact that's already being done. lol


I believe there is already something similar to that existing in the eastern counties of the Eagleford.

Now the Western moronic counties.....eh not so much.

[CosmicCowboy]

:lmao @ Boutons crying alligator tears for those multi millionaire ranchers that are going to have to drive down those gravel roads to get to their ranches being drilled by the oil companies that tore up the roads to their ranches.

boo fucking hoo.

[TeyshaBlue]

TxDOT says they need several $Bs for road construction and maintenance. Are they lying?

No, they say they need 1 billion a year.

And they only need less than half that to save that 80 miles of FM road...that 80 mile chunk out of about 15k miles of FM which is a subset of the 300k miles of roads in Tx.

[TeyshaBlue]

And TxDOT can suck my dick. They ain't all that anymore.

[TeyshaBlue]

This is not a BigCarbon(:lol) problem. It is a Governor Goodhair and his weak legislature problem.

[boutons_deux]

This is not a BigCarbon(:lol) problem. It is a Governor Goodhair and his weak legislature problem.

BigCarbon is destroying the taxpayer's, BigCarbon must pay for the destruction.

[boutons_deux]

Shale Grab in U.S. Stalls as Falling Values Repel BuyersOil companies are hitting the brakes on a U.S. shale land grab that produced an abundance of cheap natural gas -- and troubles for the industry.

The spending slowdown by international companies including BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BHP:AU) and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/RDSA:LN) comes amid a series of write-downs of oil and gas shale assets, caused by plunging prices and disappointing wells. The companies are turning instead to developing current projects, unable to justify buying more property while fields bought during the 2009-2012 flurry remain below their purchase price, according to analysts.

The deal-making slump, which may last for years, threatens to slow oil and gas production growth as companies that built up debt during the rush for shale acreage can’t depend on asset sales to fund drilling programs. The decline has pushed acquisitions of North American energy assets in the first-half of the year to the lowest since 2004.

North American oil and gas deals, including shale assets, plunged 52 percent to $26 billion in the first six months from $54 billion in the year-ago period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. During the drilling frenzy of 2009 through 2012, energy companies spent more than $461 billion buying North American oil and gas properties, the data show.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-18/shale-grab-in-u-s-stalls-as-falling-values-repel-buyers.html

[boutons_deux]

New Fracking Reports: Gas Bubble About To BustTwo new fracking reports (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/02/19/fracking-wall-street-housing-bubble) came out earlier this week, and they reveal some serious new cracks in the booming natural gas industry. Fracking, the drilling method that involves pumping a chemical brine underground, has already been linked to the risk of water contamination, significant methane gas leakage, and even earthquakes. The two reports add another angle of risk, making the case that the gas boom hides a financial bubble that is headed for a bust of epic proportions.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/20/new-fracking-reports-show-bubble-about-to-bust/

BigCarbon will put tremendous pressure on govt to approve LNG terminals so it can export US "God-given because God Loves America" natural resources and drive up the price for domestic gas sales to the world price.

iow Drill Here Drill now is Repug bullshit.

[TeyshaBlue]

BigCarbon is destroying the taxpayer's, BigCarbon must pay for the destruction.

First of all, tap the brakes on destruction. Taxpayers are getting a shitload in return.
Second, they are paying. But Goodhair ain't spreading it around, per par.

[TeyshaBlue]

Shale Grab in U.S. Stalls as Falling Values Repel BuyersOil companies are hitting the brakes on a U.S. shale land grab that produced an abundance of cheap natural gas -- and troubles for the industry.

The spending slowdown by international companies including BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BHP:AU) and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/RDSA:LN) comes amid a series of write-downs of oil and gas shale assets, caused by plunging prices and disappointing wells. The companies are turning instead to developing current projects, unable to justify buying more property while fields bought during the 2009-2012 flurry remain below their purchase price, according to analysts.

The deal-making slump, which may last for years, threatens to slow oil and gas production growth as companies that built up debt during the rush for shale acreage can’t depend on asset sales to fund drilling programs. The decline has pushed acquisitions of North American energy assets in the first-half of the year to the lowest since 2004.

North American oil and gas deals, including shale assets, plunged 52 percent to $26 billion in the first six months from $54 billion in the year-ago period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. During the drilling frenzy of 2009 through 2012, energy companies spent more than $461 billion buying North American oil and gas properties, the data show.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-18/shale-grab-in-u-s-stalls-as-falling-values-repel-buyers.html




Welcome to the boom/bust cycle. It's been a normal way of life for the last 100 years in Texas.

[Halberto]

New Fracking Reports: Gas Bubble About To Bust

Two new fracking reports (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/02/19/fracking-wall-street-housing-bubble) came out earlier this week, and they reveal some serious new cracks in the booming natural gas industry. Fracking, the drilling method that involves pumping a chemical brine underground, has already been linked to the risk of water contamination, significant methane gas leakage, and even earthquakes. The two reports add another angle of risk, making the case that the gas boom hides a financial bubble that is headed for a bust of epic proportions.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/20/new-fracking-reports-show-bubble-about-to-bust/

BigCarbon will put tremendous pressure on govt to approve LNG terminals so it can export US "God-given because God Loves America" natural resources and drive up the price for domestic gas sales to the world price.

iow Drill Here Drill now is Repug bullshit.




Old fucking news, you'd know that if you're in the industry. Nobody actively pursues more natural gas, not until our country can finally utilize it. Calling it a "bust" because gas isn't marketable currently shows ignorance. In hindsight those companies who threw all their eggs in the gas basket are regretting it, but only because they bought acreage that would cover multiple counties. Fracking for oil is going to grow and it won't be halted by the market, especially now that OPEC is growing weaker by the day.

[CosmicCowboy]

Old fucking news, you'd know that if you're in the industry. Nobody actively pursues more natural gas, not until our country can finally utilize it. Calling it a "bust" because gas isn't marketable currently shows ignorance. In hindsight those companies who threw all their eggs in the gas basket are regretting it, but only because they bought acreage that would cover multiple counties. Fracking for oil is going to grow and it won't be halted by the market, especially now that OPEC is growing weaker by the day.

X2

The guys in the wet part of the Eagle Ford are killing it.

[Das Texan]

ya and if they actually enable natural gas to be exported, the dry stuff will start to rebound and then all hell is going to break loose from an economic aspect down here.

[mouse]

Has anyone met this boutons guy in person?

Yes I have.

[Nbadan]

http://ecowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/dimockwater.jpg

EPA Censored Dimock’s Fracking Water Contamination Study


In an internal EPA PowerPoint presentation obtained by the Tribune/Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau, staff members warned their superiors that several wells had been contaminated with methane and substances such as manganese and arsenic, most likely because of local natural gas production.

The presentation, based on data collected over 4 1/2 years at 11 wells around Dimock, concluded that "methane and other gases released during drilling (including air from the drilling) apparently cause significant damage to the water quality." The presentation also concluded that "methane is at significantly higher concentrations in the aquifers after gas drilling and perhaps as a result of fracking and other gas well work."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa-dimock-20130728,0,4847442.story

[boutons_deux]

Dissolving the Planet for Oil

But just when you thought that the oil companies couldn't possibly put more poison into our air and water, do more damage to the earth, to our climate, to our future and our hope for survival, along comes "matrix acidizing," the oil industry's latest stroke of genius to extract oil from shale formations by literally disintegrating underground rock formations using - you guessed it, hydrofluoric acid.

During the summer of 1986, Amoco, Allied-Signal, Du Pont and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory voluntarily conducted a series of six experiments involving atmospheric releases of HF in an attempt to characterize its behavior. These studies, known as the "Goldfish studies," were conducted at the Department of Energy Liquefied Gaseous Fuels Spill Test Facility in Nevada and showed that the HF did not remain a liquid following accidental release. Instead, under the conditions simulating a petroleum refinery explosion (HF above its boiling point and liquefied under pressure), 100 percent of the released liquid HF formed dense, rolling clouds of toxic vapor. The clouds expanded rapidly, and researchers measured dangerous concentrations at distances of three to six miles downwind. A person caught in this cloud would experience burning eyes, nose and throat. Soon their lungs would become inflamed and overwhelmed with fluid, followed by acute respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS, and most likely death within a few hours.

But maybe I worry too much. Maybe the oil and gas industry can pump millions of gallons of HF in wells underground all over America, fill thousands of diesel trucks with it, have them drive all over our roads - next to commuters who are texting on their cellphones - through rain, ice and snow, not cut any corners, never go too fast or lose their brakes. None of that HF will corrode any well cement or casings in the next 50 years and seep into our water supply, will it? This will all work out fine, right?

Actually we already know a fair amount about the risks of HF because of its current aboveground use in several applications, most importantly by about one-third of the oil refineries in the United States.

A 2013 survey (http://assets.usw.org/resources/hse/pdf/A-Risk-Too-Great.pdf) of 50 US oil refineries by the United Steelworkers union, makes this statement.

"No industrial process risks more lives from a single accident than does the subject of this report - alkylation using hydrogen fluoride in oil refining. Fifty American refineries use HF alkylation to improve the octane of gasoline. Many are situated in or close to major cities, including Houston, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Memphis. In some cases, more than a million residents live in the danger zone of a single refinery. All in all, more than 26 million Americans are at risk."


The survey found that over a five-year period, the refineries in the study experienced 131 HF releases or near misses and committed hundreds of violations of the OSHA rule regulating highly hazardous operations. Some specific historical examples illustrate the point.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/18369-mankind-death-by-corporation-part-iv-disintegrating-the-planet-for-oil

[Winehole23]

http://grist.org/news/fracking-triggered-more-than-100-earthquakes-in-ohio/

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrb.50247/full

[dbestpro]

Texas Converts 80 Miles Of Paved Road To Gravel Thanks To Lack Of Funds (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/08/19/2490151/texas-converts-80-miles-of-paved-road-to-gravel-thanks-to-lack-of-funds/)lawmakers found $225 million (http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/04/shale-counties-could-be-back-2015-needing-more-fun/) to repair county roads affected by energy development, and the same amount for repairs to state-owned roads. That funding, though, was only a temporary fix.

Efforts to increase taxes on the companies that are profiting from the energy boom to cover the road repair costs failed to gain traction. TxDOT said repairing and maintaining the oil field roads into the future will cost about $1 billion a year in additional funding.

The conversions will affect roads in four South Texas counties — Live Oak, Dimmit, LaSalle and Zavala — and two West Texas counties — Reeves and Culberson. Glessner said the farm-to-market roads that will be turned to gravel were picked, in part, because they are rural routes that are ineligible for federal funds.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/19/conversion-of-roads-to-gravel-met-with-concern/

You lovers of fracking remain silent on the externalities unpaid by BigCarbon and dumped on taxpayers.




From my inbox.

After not passing a temporary solution to road funding in the regular session and two consecutive special sessions, the Governor called the Texas Legislature back for a third and final special session on July 31st to again attempt to resolve the issue of transportation funding.

After having kicked around several different proposals, the legislature passed a plan that mirrored a constitutional amendment that I filed back in January and which I strongly encouraged the legislature to adopt—taking a portion of severance tax dollars (state taxes that oil and gas companies pay) that typically go to the "Rainy Day Fund," and rerouting it toward transportation funding.

The difference between my plan and this final plan is that my plan would have dedicated the funding to Shale production areas—the areas that sent the vast majority of this money to the state in the first place and the areas struggling the most with road conditions. The plan that finally passed on August 5th dedicates the funding to transportation projects throughout the state and is estimated to yield $1.2 billion per year. This is in addition to the $.6 billion per year increase given to TXDOT in the regular session.

TXDOT, however, says they need $4 billion per year to keep up with construction and maintenance and have abruptly begun to implement a plan that takes paved farm-to-market roads and converts them to gravel, contending that it'll save $165 million.

Although it is the responsibility of the legislature to fund TXDOT through taxpayer dollars, the Texas Transportation Commission (TTC), a governor appointed, 5-member board, is the entity responsible for adopting TXDOT operational rules and for planning, designing, and policy making for the location, construction, and maintenance of state highways. TXDOT first introduced this idea on July 25th at the TTC regular meeting where the TTC took no action on the proposal. This allowed TxDOT to implement the plan within only a few weeks.

In early August, about a week after TxDOT's announcement, during the final debate over the transportation funding bill in the 3rd Special Session, Tracy King, Harvey Hilderbran and I, in response to TxDOT's plan, introduced an amendment that would have prioritized keeping paved roads paved. It required that new funding would first be used to keep paved roads from being diverted to gravel. After first winning on a motion to table, the amendment was then voted down by the House.

My South Texas colleagues and I have since corresponded and have had several meetings with state transportation officials urging them to reconsider. They have since, delayed implementation of this plan by 60 days.

After meeting with stakeholders in Austin again in a few days, Senator Zaffirini and I, along with other Eagle Ford Shale Caucus members, will be meeting in Cotulla next week with TxDOT Executive Director Phil Wilson, local leaders, and other interested parties to again attempt to work out a solution to this problem.

For rural communities like ours, these roads are not just farm roads and highways; they are the only ways. This move is a threat to our safety, our economy, and our way of life. It's embarrassing for a state that touts its economic strength to downgrade its farm-to-market road system—the very roads that for generations have led us to our economic success. Downgrading from pavement to gravel is a road that Texas must not take. Together, we MUST find a solution.

Ryan Guillen
Texas State Rep.

[boutons_deux]

In Repug, BigCarbon=friendly PA?

ExxonMobil company charged with fracking-related crimes

ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy (http://www.xtoenergy.com/index.html) is being prosecuted for alleged environmental crimes after it spilled fracking wastewater into a Pennsylvania river in 2010.

The company’s response? It claims the criminal charges could harm the environment.

We told you about this spill in July (http://grist.org/news/exxonmobil-subsidiary-with-arm-twisted-behind-back-agrees-to-treat-fracking-wastewater/) — that’s when the company agreed to pay a $100,000 federal fine for spilling 57,000 gallons of contaminated fluids out of sloppily maintained tanks in Penn Township and into a tributary of the Susquehanna River. It also agreed to spend $20 million to get its frackwater treatment and disposal facilities up to scratch in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Following a grand jury investigation, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office announced this week (http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press.aspx?id=7191) that XTO was also being charged with five counts of violating Pennsylvania law:


The grand jury found that XTO hired a company to recycle waste water at the Marquardt site from Nov. 4, 2010 through Nov. 11, 2010. After that one-week period, XTO directed that company to remove their processing equipment from the site and transport it to another XTO well site in West Virginia. However, XTO allegedly continued to transport and store gas well waste water at the Marquardt site despite not having the proper equipment on site to safely store or process it.


Prosecuting fracking companies when they piss their toxic waste all over nature would seem to be a good way of encouraging them to be better environmental stewards. But XTO begs to differ — because every day is opposite day in Frack Land.

“Charging XTO under these circumstances could discourage good environmental practices, such as recycling,” XTO said in a statement (http://www.xtoenergy.com/pressreleases/xto-energy-to-challenge-charges-by-pennsylvania-attorney-general) responding to the charges.

http://grist.org/news/exxonmobil-company-charged-with-fracking-related-crimes/

:lol fucking BigCarbon.

My guess is that you BigCarbon suckers 100% agree with the XTO's "logic"

[boutons_deux]

Secrets of Fracking Fluids Pave Way for Cleaner Recipe


The myriad liquid concoctions used in hydraulic fracturing make for quite a recipe book. Since January 2011, FracFocus, an online chemical-disclosure registry, has assembled a list of the mixtures used at more than 52,000 oil and gas wells across the United States. In these data, geochemist Brian Ellis sees opportunity. He plans to mix different chemicals into oil- and gas-rich shale rock inside a pair of high-pressure chambers that he is building. This will allow him to explore the reactions that occur when these ‘fracking’ fluids are injected deep underground.

The fluids, which are mixed with sand, are predominantly water (http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=water), laced with 1% ‘special sauce’. The recipes for that fraction — a mixture that includes acids, solvents and corrosion inhibitors — were until the last few years secrets guarded by the companies that seek to penetrate shale formations to release stores of fossil fuels (http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=fossil-fuels). But in the face of widespread concern about water contamination, 21 US states have adopted mandatory disclosure rules for the mixtures, making it easier for scientists such as Ellis, of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to assess their impacts.

Much of the data end up in registries such as FracFocus, which is overseen by state energy and water organizations. “There are still a lot of bugs, but the vast majority of companies are now disclosing their chemicals,” says Scott Anderson, a senior policy adviser for the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin, Texas, which advocates for greener fracking procedures.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=secrets-of-fracking-fluids-pave-way-for-cleaner-recipe&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20130916

I read where 30% of TX water is going to fracking while:

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/pics/south_dm.png

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DM_south.htm

[Das Texan]

Medina Lake would still be at record lows with or without fracking.

[mouse]

Agloco?

[boutons_deux]

Medina Lake would still be at record lows with or without fracking.

and?

[Das Texan]

and?



trying to figure out what point you are trying to make at this point, though i should scold myself for thinking any type of real discussion would occur.

[boutons_deux]

Frackademia: The People and Money Behind the EDF Methane Emissions Study

UT-Austin has released the Steering Committee roster for the study (http://dept.ceer.utexas.edu/methane/study/steering.cfm). It consists of lead author David Allen, two EDF employees, and nine oil industry representatives, including lobbyists and PR staff from ExxonMobil, Shell, Southwestern Energy and more. :lol

One of the report's co-authors currently works as a consultant for the oil and gas industry, while another formerly worked as a petroleum engineer before entering academia.
The study will likely be paraded as "definitive" by Big Oil, its front groups and the media in the days and weeks to come.

"How can we explain this huge discrepancy?" Howarth asked (http://desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Howarth%20press%20release%20on%20Allen%20et%20al.% 20PNAS.pdf). "[Industry does] it better when they know they are being carefully watched. When measurements are made at sites the industry chooses and at times the industry allows, emissions are lower than the norm."

Lastly, Howarth points out that unlike his April 2011 study, this study didn't do a lifecycle analysis, limiting the data set to fracked well sites.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/18915-frackademia-the-people-and-money-behind-the-edf-methane-emissions-study (http://truth-out.org/news/item/18915-frackademia-the-people-and-money-behind-the-edf-methane-emissions-study)

[boutons_deux]

Colorado’s Fracking Disaster

In Colorado's flood-struck areas, a tsunami of floodwater and destructive debris swamped fracking infrastructure.

now comes the added horror of unknown levels of poisonous contaminants pouring out of many of the thousands of fracking sites that pock this area.

Big Oil frackers were already notorious in Boulder and Weld Counties for the environmental, health, and economic damage being done by this ravaging method of forcing gas out of the rock deep under Earth’s surface. Now, though, the corporate wells, tanks, ponds, and other fracking infrastructure (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/19/did-floods-cause-a-fracking-disaster-in-colorado.html) have been swamped by a tsunami of floodwater and destructive debris.

http://otherwords.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Hightower-Fracking-East-Boulder-County-United-300x225.jpgEast Boulder County United/Facebook


Even in the chaos of people scrambling to get out of the flood’s way and to secure their property, many residents were so alarmed by seeing this mess of flooded wells, overturned tanks of highly toxic chemicals and wastewater, and ruptured lines that they paused to take pictures and videos (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/first-colorado-was-on-fire-then-it-flooded-now-its-fracked).

They then posted these on websites and Facebook pages to document this unexpected threat of widespread, long-term damage from fracking contaminants and to alert neighbors to the dangers.

After all, the frackers themselves weren’t telling the public about this unfolding disaster, the big media outlets were curiously incurious about it, and regulators were also silent. So, like the pamphleteers of old, the people formed their own network of communication — and they’ve now turned it into a citizens’ action network. To see some of their photos, videos, and actions, go to www.facebook.com/EastBoulderCountyUnited (http://www.facebook.com/EastBoulderCountyUnited).

http://otherwords.org/colorados-fracking-disaster/

[mouse]

Its one thing for the Conspiracy bashing douche bags to disagree with us it's another when they run and hide when the shit turns out to be true.

[boutons_deux]

Radioactive Water Streaming Out of Pennsylvania Fracking Waste Site

Report reveals 'surprising magnitude of radioactivity' in local water sources from fracking waste

http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/fracking_4.jpg

Waste-water from a hydraulic fracturing site in Pennsylvania that is treated and released into local streams has caused high levels of toxic contamination, including elevated levels of radioactive materials, a report released Wednesday exposes (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es402165b).

"We were surprised by the magnitude of radioactivity" downstream from the plant, said (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/02/fracking-radioactive-water-pennsylvania/2904829/) co-author Avner Vengosh, geochemistry professor at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "It's unusual to find this level,"

The Duke University study, published on Wednesday, examined the water discharged from Josephine Brine Treatment Facility into Blacklick Creek, which feeds into a water source for western Pennsylvania cities, including Pittsburgh. Scientists took samples upstream and downstream from the treatment facility over a two-year period, with the last sample taken in June this year.

Elevated levels of chloride and bromide, combined with strontium, radium, oxygen, and hydrogen isotopic compositions, are present in the Marcellus shale waste waters

radium levels in the Pennsylvania stream sediments where waste-water was discharged were about "200 times greater than upstream and background sediments and above radioactive waste disposal threshold regulations, posing potential environmental risks of radium bio-accumulation in localized areas of shale gas waste-water disposal."

“Each day, oil and gas producers generate 2 billion gallons of waste-water,” said (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/fracking-study-pennsylvania_n_4030748.html) co-author Robert B. Jackson, Duke professor of environmental science, Tuesday. “They produce more waste-water than hydrocarbons. That’s the broader implication of this study. We have to do something with this waste-water."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/02-7

The sky people unstoppable, winning! Will they ever pay for their pollution from their "externalities", or their kids drink the water they pollute?

[boutons_deux]

Shut It All Down: Report Calls for Nationwide Ban on Fracking

Hydraulic fracturing gas drilling turning America's water into cancer-causing, radioactive waste

The explosion of hydraulic fracturing in the last several years, according to a new report, is creating a previously 'unimaginable' situation in which hundreds of billions of gallons of the nation's fresh water supply are being annually transformed into unusable—sometimes radioactive—cancer-causing wastewater.

According to the report, Fracking by the Numbers (http://www.environmentamerica.org/news/ame/fracking-numbers), produced by Environment America, the scale and severity of fracking’s myriad impacts betray all claims that natural gas is a "cleaner" or somehow less damaging alternative to other fossil fuels.

The report explores various ways in which gas fracking negatively impacts both human health and the environment, including the contamination of drinking water, overuse of scarce water sources, the effect of air pollution on public health, its connection to global warming, and the overall cost imposed on communities where fracking operations are located.

“The bottom line is this: The numbers on fracking add up to an environmental nightmare,” said John Rumpler, the report's lead author and senior attorney for Environment America. “For our environment and for public health, we need to put a stop to fracking.”

In fact, the report concludes that in state's where the practice is now occurring, immediate moratoriums should be enacted and in states where the practice has yet to be approved, bans should be legislated to prevent this kind of drilling from ever occurring.

Though the report acknowledges its too early to know the full the extent of the damage caused by the controversial drilling practice, it found that even a look at the "limited data" available—taken mostly from industry reports and government figures between 2005 and 2012—paints "an increasingly clear picture of the damage that fracking has done to our environment and health."

So what are the numbers?

The report measured key indicators of fracking threats across the country, and found:


• 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated in 2012,
• 450,000 tons of air pollution produced in one year,
• 250 billion gallons of fresh water used since 2005,
• 360,000 acres of land degraded since 2005,
• 100 million metric tons of global warming pollution since 2005.


“The numbers don't lie," said Rumbpler. "Fracking has taken a dirty and destructive toll on our environment. If this dirty drilling continues unchecked, these numbers will only get worse."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/04-5

skypeople winning

[boutons_deux]

Welcome to Gasland: Denton, Texas Residents Face Fracking Impacts From EagleRidge Energy

In Denton, Texas, 40 miles northwest of Dallas, residents and students at the University of North Texas are getting a free course in what it’s like to live in the middle of a fracking field.

Although Denton officials created an ordinance mandating that fracking sites be at least 1,200 feet from homes, sites with gas wells already in place are exempt from the new rule. Some are less than 200 feet away from homes. Since Denton is full of existing drill pads, many find themselves living in the shadow of a fracking installation that exposes them to chemicals (http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used), noise and bright lights (http://fracdallas.org/docs/ambient.html).

"Now we have a frack site across the street from our dorms and the drill extends underneath half of the campus,” Hinojosa says. "Our campus looks pathetic with a fracking site situated 100 feet away from the university’s three wind turbines and platinum LEED certified football stadium, surrounded by signs saying, ‘We mean green!’ ”

industry used the “vested rights” (http://www.cityofdenton.com/Home/ShowDocument?id=14316) loophole that allows them to work on sites with existing gas wells.

When the students and larger numbers of the public began attending city council meetings, industry started to bring in their own representatives. Hinojosa says, "Fake grassroots organizations would send vans full of people with prepared speeches that claimed fracking to be safe and clean. No matter how hard we worked on our speeches, our voices seemed mute compared to the fracking industry." (and TB :lol laughed and laughed and laughed at these silly Na'vi simpletons! )

“Incompatible With Neighborhoods:” Homeowners Complain of Toxic Fumes

Many homeowners who purchased property in subdivisions near Bonnie Brae Street and Vintage Boulevard (http://www.dentonrc.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20131026-denton-pulls-suit-weighs-options.ece)have had a rude awakening too. Drilling rigs were set up a few hundred feet from the developments. No one in the neighborhood retained their mineral rights. Homebuyers were not explicitly informed about the mineral rights or that not owning them could become an issue. Disclosure laws have not kept pace with the increasing threat industry poses to homeowners.

Many worry their property values will nose dive and they won’t be able to sell now that fracking is in full swing.

"Texas is conducting real world experiments in people's backyards without their consent,” he said. “Though legally you can sell homes to people without their informed consent, it is not ethical."

Insurance companies (http://sustainability.thomsonreuters.com/2012/09/10/the-changing-business-of-fracking-insurance/) have taken notice of risks associated with fracking and don’t cover fracking-related risks to homeowners.

“According to Mark Grawe, Chief Operating Officer at EagleRidge Energy (EagleRidge), Denton residents who object to his company’s reckless operations way too close to their homes, schools and parks are terrorists worthy of inclusion on the Department of Homeland Security’s watch list."

http://truth-out.org/news/item/20519-welcome-to-gasland-denton-texas-residents-face-fracking-impacts-from-eagleridge-energy

Sky People winning, Na'vi people screwed.

[Winehole23]

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/11/26/oil-company-caught-illegally-dumping-fracking-discharge-in-central-valley/

[ErnestLynch]

They've been fracking for 50 years.

[boutons_deux]

Protest Fracking, End Up on a Terrorist Watchlist

Eagleridge Inc. Chief Operations Officer Mark Grawe brought an armed cop with him to a November 13 Homeowners Association meeting in Mansfield, a suburb of Fort Worth, Tex., and told residents that anyone who protested his company’s gas wells — some of which are located less than 200 feet from homes, schools and playgrounds — would find themselves on Department of Homeland Security terrorist watch lists.


Though “terrorism” is understood to mean the use of violence and intimidation for political coercion, Grawe showed no sense of irony bringing a guard armed with a gun, a taser and a can of pepper spray to a neighborhood meeting to help deliver his pro-fracking message.


It’s unclear whether Grawe’s statements were off-the-cuff errors or part of a deliberate strategy. The remarks certainly aren’t winning him PR victories, as the response from a blogger with the Drilling Awareness Group (DAG), based in Denton, Tex., makes clear.


The DAG blogger asserts, indignantly, that citizens opposing fracking wells in their back yards “are not radicals” and do not break the law for holding their beliefs. The odd insinuation here, of course, is that so-called “radicals” who do break the law are deserving of the terrorist label, even though the rapidly growing nationwide movement against fracking has been almost entirely peaceful.


Grawe seems to be operating straight out of the frack industry playbook. In a document leaked earlier this year, one of the largest corporate intelligence firms, Stratfor, laid out a strategy for defeating public opposition to petrochemical infrastructure. Stratfor categorizes activists as “radicals,” “idealists,” “realists,” and “opportunists.”


Stratfor analysts define their “realists” as willing to “live with trade-offs” and “work within the system.” In that sense, the Drilling Awareness Group would be labeled “realists”: they want to regulate fracking, not ban it.

According to Stratfor, “realists” should be given highest priority attention because they are more likely to capitulate than radicals. The strategy, as stated by the firm, is to “isolate the radicals” and “co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.”

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/10/hydraulic-fracturing-protesters-targeted-texan-company/#OAvPgOISwmvfXWf5.99

Sky People are mean, nasty sons of bitches

[boutons_deux]

Fort Worth Shows Why So Many Towns Are Banning Fracking (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/10/3044761/fort-worth-fracking/)


Several cities and counties (http://keeptapwatersafe.org/global-bans-on-fracking/) in the U.S. have instituted bans (http://wesa.fm/post/discussing-municipal-bans-fracking) or moratoria on the oil and gas extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in recent years and Fort Worth’s experience with urban fracking shows why.

“Fort Worth has been fracked to capacity,” resident Don Young told DeSmog Blog (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/12/10/urban-fracking-bonanza-threatens-dallas-suburbs). “There is no turning back. Some days the air is so bad you can’t see downtown.”
Chesapeake Energy began offering $300 and a pizza party for owners of mineral rights in predominantly poor and working class African American neighborhoods in 2003 and encountered little resistance, DeSmog Blogreported (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/12/10/urban-fracking-bonanza-threatens-dallas-suburbs). Now Fort Worth has around 2,000 wells.

Residents have been sickened (http://www.fwweekly.com/2012/03/21/vapors-sicken-arlington/) by vapors from drilling operations, found their neighborhoods suddenly ruined (http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/10/14/mansfield-residents-upset-about-fracking-near-their-homes/) by noise and fumes, and had their water sucked up (http://www.fwweekly.com/2012/08/29/sucking/) by drilling operations in the middle of severe drought. Five sites were found in 2011 to be emitting pollution above state limits, according to a study (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-14/air-pollution-found-at-five-natural-gas-sites-in-north-texas-1-.html) commissioned by the Fort Worth City Council, and most of the 388 sites studied released visible emissions.

Right next door to Fort Worth, the Dallas city council is considering letting fracking start up in town with a vote likely to come next week, capping a three-year fight over the future of fracking in the city. Until recently, Dallas had rejected attempts (http://www.texasobserver.org/dallas-city-council-rejects-fracking/) to frack in town, but that stance seems to be over. Current debate (http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/12/04/citizens-argue-for-against-dallas-fracking-ordinance/) is over the distance required between wells and homes or wells and other wells: 1,500 feet or 1,000.

Dallas’ fracking ordinance is being considered just as researchers from Southern Methodist University linked a series of Texas earthquakes (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/06/3029951/texas-fracking-earthquakes/) to injection of fracking wastewater into the ground. The Fort Worth Basin hadn’t experienced an earthquake prior to 2008, but 2009 and 2010 saw over 50 occur (http://keranews.org/post/what-s-causing-texas-earthquakes-smu-study-explores-injection-wells-drilling).

Experiences like Fort Worth’s are a key reason communities across the U.S. and the world have mobilized to place bans or moratoria on fracking. Four Colorado cities passed fracking bans in November by popular vote, in spite of drilling industry campaigns against the initiatives. Their ultimate success is uncertain, as the Colorado gas industry is suing to try and block three of the four (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/04/3018331/colorado-towns-ban-fracking-suit/), a battle that will likely end in the state Supreme Court, but towns in New York and Pennsylvania, and counties in New Mexico and Hawaii maintain theirs.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/10/3044761/fort-worth-fracking/

[boutons_deux]

Experts Eye Oil and Gas Industry as Quakes Shake Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY — Mary Catherine Sexton has been rattled enough.

This fall her neighborhood in the northeastern part of this city has been shaken by dozens of minor earthquakes. “We would just have little trembles all the time,” she said.

Even before a magnitude 4.5 quake on Saturday knocked objects off her walls and a stone from above her neighbor’s bay window, Ms. Sexton was on edge.

“People are fed up with the earthquakes,” she said. “Our kids are scared. We’re scared.”

Oklahoma has never been known as earthquake country, with a yearly average of about 50 tremors, almost all of them minor. But in the past three years, the state has had thousands of quakes. This year has been the most active, with more than 2,600 so far, including 87 last week.

While most have been too slight to be felt, some, like the quake on Saturday and a smaller one in November that cracked a bathroom wall in Ms. Sexton’s house, have been sensed over a wide area and caused damage. In 2011, a magnitude 5.6 quake — the biggest ever recorded in the state — injured two people and severely damaged more than a dozen homes, some beyond repair.

State officials say they are concerned, and residents accustomed to tornadoes and hail are now talking about buying earthquake insurance.

“I’m scared there’s going to be a bigger one,” Ms. Sexton said.

Just as unsettling in a state where more than 340,000 jobs are tied to the oil and gas industry is what scientists say may be causing many of the quakes: the widespread industry practice of disposing of billions of gallons of wastewater that is produced along with oil and gas, by injecting it under pressure into wells that reach permeable rock formations.

“Disposal wells pose the biggest risk,” said Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, who is studying the various clusters of quakes around the state.

Oklahoma has more than 4,000 disposal wells for waste from tens of thousands of oil and gas wells. “Could we be looking at some cumulative tipping point? Yes, that’s absolutely possible,” Dr. Holland said. But there could be other explanations for the increase in earthquakes, he added.

Scientists have known for years that injection wells and other human activities can induce earthquakes by changing pressures underground. That can have the effect of “unclamping” old stressed faults so the rocks can slip past each other and cause the ground to shake.

The weight of water behind a new dam in China, for example, is thought to have induced a 2008 quake in Sichuan Province that killed 80,000 people. In Australia, a 1989 quake that killed 13 people was attributed in part to the opposite effect — the removal of millions of tons of coal during more than two centuries of mining.

In other places, including California and Switzerland, enhanced geothermal projects, in which water is pumped into hot rocks deep underground to produce energy, have caused quakes.

In Texas, some earthquakes have been connected to the industry practice of “water flooding,” increasing the yield of older oil wells by pumping water into nearby wells to force the oil out, said Cliff Frohlich, a University of Texas scientist. In other cases, Dr. Frohlich said, just the extraction of oil and gas from a long-producing field has been seen to induce quakes.

The practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — injecting liquid at high pressures into shale rock — causes very small tremors as the rocks break, releasing trapped oil or gas. The technique has also been linked to a few minor earthquakes — in Oklahoma about a year ago, and in England and British Columbia. Yet unlike the continuing clusters of quakes elsewhere, the fracking-related earthquakes occurred only over short time periods, scientists say.

Of greater potential concern, scientists say, is wastewater disposal — from fracked or more conventional wells. Disposal wells linked to quakes have been shut down in a few states, including Arkansas and Ohio.

Along with oil and gas, water comes out of wells, often in enormous amounts, and must be disposed of continuously. Because transporting water, usually by truck, is costly, disposal wells are commonly located near producing wells.

The oil and gas industry points out that many of Oklahoma’s disposal wells are in areas with no earthquake activity, and that the practice of injecting wastewater has been going on for years.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time and it hasn’t been an issue before,” said Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association.

But Dr. Frohlich said that what had changed was where the disposal was occurring. With the boom in production of oil and gas from shale formations, he said, “People are disposing of fluids in places they haven’t before.”

Still, it is difficult to show a definitive link between a group of quakes and nearby disposal wells, and Dr. Holland thinks there may be other explanations for some of the recent quakes, including the largest one, which occurred on a known fault line about 50 miles east of Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma does have natural seismic activity, he noted, and has had a few powerful quakes in the past, including one with a magnitude of 5.5 in 1952 and one estimated at about a magnitude of 7 that the geological record shows occurred 1,300 years ago. He also thinks changes in the water level of a large nearby lake may be responsible for some of the quakes around Oklahoma City, although he says this is not the most likely explanation.

The swarm of quakes has state regulators concerned, but cautious.

“We have to look at what data and scientific evidence supports some connection,” before deciding on steps to manage the risk, said Dana L. Murphy, a commissioner with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Theoretically, at least, the commission could order some wells to be shut.

Already the commission has reached an agreement with a disposal well operator in Love County, about 100 miles south of Oklahoma City, to reduce the amount of wastewater injected into his well. The facility had been operating for only two weeks, injecting up to 400,000 gallons of water a day from nearby fracking operations, when earthquakes started occurring in September, including one that toppled a chimney and caused other damage.

All the shaking in the state has people talking about what to do if a bigger one were to hit. “I’ve been through a lot of tornadoes — you can go hide from them,” said Bill Hediger, whose home in Edmond, just north of Oklahoma City, shows cracks in the walls from the magnitude 5.6 quake. “But you can’t hide from an earthquake.”

Dr. Holland said that given the geological record, he could not rule out the possibility that a larger quake may occur in the state.

Ms. Sexton said she was not against the oil and gas industry, but added that if the quakes in her area were definitively linked to disposal wells, they should be shut down.

“It would hurt oil and gas,” she said. “But it’s oil and gas hurting homeowners and making people fearful.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/science/earth/as-quakes-shake-oklahoma-scientists-eye-oil-and-gas-industry.html?from=homepage

[boutons_deux]

Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals Found in Water at Fracking SitesWater samples collected at Colorado sites where hydraulic fracturing was used to extract natural gas show the presence of chemicals that have been linked to infertility, birth defects (http://www.latimes.com/topic/health/physical-conditions/birth-defects-HEISY000097.topic) and cancer, scientists reported Monday.
The study, (http://endo.endojournals.org/content/early/2013/12/16/en.2013-1697.abstract) published in the journal Endocrinology, also found elevated levels of the hormone-disrupting chemicals in the Colorado River, where wastewater released during accidental spills at nearby wells could wind up.
Tests of water from sites with no fracking activity also revealed the activity of so-called endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs. But the levels from these control sites were lower than in places with direct links to fracking, the study found.
"With fracking on the rise, populations may face greater health risks from increased endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure," said senior author Susan Nagel, who investigates the health effects of estrogen at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.
Fracking involves injecting millions of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand deep underground to crack shale formations and unlock oil and gas. The process is exempt from some regulations that are part of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and energy companies do not have to disclose the chemicals they use if they consider that information a trade secret.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/20696-hormone-disrupting-chemicals-found-in-water-at-fracking-sites

"Honey, sorry I get get a hard on anymore, but our stock in the BigOil is way up. That should help pay our co-pays for your reproductive organ cancers, and trying to fix our baby boy's hypospadia!"

[m>s]

Thats crazy, all that Mansfield and Fort Worth stuff happened right down the street not too terribly far from here. If that scum threatened me with homeland security I would have Got dead in his ass. chump cop or not that little pussy.

[mouse]

LvbxQRjpB4c

iiLQqykoWb4

LAxsTJd7VCA

[boutons_deux]

Marc McCord on How Dallas Was Saved From Frac'ing

On December 11, the Dallas City Council (http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/12/not_ready_gas_industry_would_r.php) passed America's most restrictive hydraulic fracturing ordinance. In nearby cities, including Fort Worth, Arlington (http://truth-out.org/news/item/20563-urban-fracking-bonanza-threatens-dallas-suburbs) and Denton, (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/12/04/welcome-gasland-denton-texas)drilling less than 300 feet from residences is not unknown; in Dallas, the new restrictions - including outlawing drilling closer than 1,500 feet from residences and other sensitive areas - essentially prevent drilling from taking place at all, according to oil and gas industry representatives.

FracDallas, a community activist group (http://fracdallas.org/) dedicated to keeping hydraulic fracturing out of Dallas, waged a campaign for more than four years to keep it out of the city. The organization was founded and directed by Marc McCord, an avid outdoorsman who has been involved in environmental protection efforts for more than 20 years. He holds degrees in electrical engineering and aviation electrical engineering, as well as certificates in IBM Systems 3x technology, microcomputer systems technology and video production/broadcast engineering and started educating himself about hydraulic fracturing in 2009. Once he realized the hazards that would follow in its wake, he and FracDallas worked relentlessly to keep it out of Dallas. Their victory is seen as a major blow against industry and sets a precedent that cannot be ignored.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20697-marc-mccord-on-how-dallas-was-saved-from-fracing

[mouse]

I wonder how long they can hold on to that decision. and if the fracking is done horizontally what is keeping them from just drilling outside the Dallas area to get to the source?

[Nbadan]

As Texas Towns Shake, Regulators Sit Still
State Oil and Gas Regulator Says No Changes Needed After Latest Earthquake Swarm


After twenty minor earthquakes in a month, residents in the small towns of Azle and Springtown outside of Fort Worth are understandably confused about why their once-stable region is now trembling on a near-daily basis.

Teachers in the Azle school district are taking a page from the California playbook and holding earthquake drills for students. Inspectors are making regular visits to the earthen Eagle Mountain Lake dam, as well as others in the area, checking for damage. (So far they’ve found none.) And locals like Rebecca Williams are constantly looking at their own homes for damage. So far she’s found cracks in her home, driveway and in a retaining wall in her backyard.
more
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2013/12/06/as-north-texas-shakes-railroad-commission-sits-still/

[boutons_deux]

"homes for damage. So far she’s found cracks in her home, driveway and in a retaining wall in her backyard. more"

who is responsible? who is going to pay for the damages, which are probably just beginning. BigOilGas? yeah, right :lol

[boutons_deux]

Texas Waste Water Disposal Wells: map

http://www.texastribune.org/series/water-for-fracking/map/

[boutons_deux]

The culture of safety, (BigOil) profits always trump human life.

On-The-Job Deaths Spiking As Oil Drilling Quickly Expands

Blue-collar workers, hit hard by automation and factory offshoring, have been struggling to find high-paying jobs.

One industry does offer opportunity: As baby boomers retire and drilling increases, oil and gas companies are hiring. They added between 2009 and 2012.

But the hiring spree has come with a terrible price: Last year, 138 workers were killed on the job — an increase of more than 100 percent since 2009.

In fact, the fatality rate among oil and gas workers is now nearly than the all-industry rate of for every 100,000 workers.

The spike in deaths may reflect the inexperience of the workforce, as well as worker exhaustion and other factors, experts say.

"During times of high demand like now, there are new workers brought into this industry, and these are workers that may not have relevant training and experience," says Ryan Hill, who heads the oil and gas extraction program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. "They didn't grow up around the industry, especially in some of the newer oil fields."

Hill says the tough working conditions add to the dangers.

"Workers in this industry typically work 12- to 14-hour shifts for a week or two consecutively. The type of work that workers do often requires performing repetitive and physical labor."

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/27/250807226/on-the-job-deaths-spiking-as-oil-drilling-quickly-expands?sc=17&f=1001

[Darius McCrary]

The number of earthquakes in Tarrant county area over the last few months is nothing short of remarkable.

[Nbadan]

Scientists have found a nearly 7,500-square-mile ring of land and water contaminated by mercury surrounding the tar sands in Alberta, where energy companies are producing and shipping oil throughout Canada and the U.S.


Government scientists are preparing to publish a report that found levels of mercury are up to 16 times higher around the tar sand operations, principally due to the excavation and transportation of the bitumen in the sands by oil and gas companies, according to Postmedia-owned Canadian newspapers like the Vancouver Sun.

Environment Canada researcher Jane Kirk recently presented the findings at a toxicology conference in Nashville.

The revelations add to a growing concern over the environmental impacts of the tar sands. Many environmentalists charge that the exploitation of the sands for oil will lead to an increase in carbon emissions, the destruction and contamination of land and water and health problems for Canadians. The debate over the tar sands crossed over into the United States when energy company TransCanada proposed building the Keystone XL pipeline to transport the crude oil to the southeastern U.S. for refining and distribution.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/29/7-500-mile-ring-ofmercuryfoundaroundcanadastarsands.html

[boutons_deux]

Continued Shaking Has Texans Considering Earthquake Insurance


Earthquakes have hit the northwest part of the metroplex for the eighteenth time since November 20 — 11 of those quakes have been near Azle.
There were two more tremors in recent days, including one around 7:10 a.m. Monday – the epicenter for that one was about half a mile southwest of Reno and was felt throughout the area.

“The bed shook and there was a loud noise at the same time,” Azle Cafe owner Beverly Moore told CBS 11 News. One of her employees, Brittany Vicchiollo was in the cafe at the time. ”A lot of shaking, and there was big ‘boom’ before it happened,” she said.

Customer Brenda Burks echoed sentiments inside the cafe recalling, “It was a big ‘boom’ and then it started shaking my bedroom, my dining room and everything. You’ve got to watch the TV because it’s sitting on a dresser and it shook the TV, rattled the TV and scared my dogs.”

but there have been so many recently everyone seems to take them in stride now, including cafe owner Moore.

beginning to worry about foundational (sic) problems in our house, things like that that I never thought of.”

consistent tremors prompt infrastructure worries in towns like Reno. Mayor Pro Tem Bonnie Black told CBS 11 News, “There was a water main that they had to repair after one of them; we have not tied [the damage] to that yet but it was quite a coincidence.”

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/12/23/continued-shaking-has-texans-considering-earthquake-insurance/

And of course, if the Na'vi do suffer $1000s in earthquake damage, the army of SkyPeople's lawyers will deny all responsibility, and tie up the Na'vi in court for decades.

[boutons_deux]

Eagle Ford Shale: Breathe at Your Own Risk

On March 1, 2012, the commission responded to a complaint made by the Cerny family (also Karnes County residents) about Marathon’s Sugarhorn Central facility (http://www.eaglefordshaleresources.com/news/marathon-sugarhorn-central-facility-in-eagle-ford-shale/), and evacuated the area to prevent exposure — yet the investigators didn’t warn the Cernys, even though they live less than a mile away.

Earthworks took air samples and used an infrared camera, which makes the release of methane and other volatile organic compounds visible. They concluded:

"Evidence from TCEQ and Earthworks/ShaleTest investigations indicate that air pollution from oil and gas development in the Eagle Ford Shale definitely threatens, and likely harms, the health of Karnes County Texas residents including the Cerny family. Despite these findings, no action has been taken by regulators to rein in the irresponsible operations, or otherwise protect area residents."


The Eagle Ford Shale region has transitioned rapidly from pastoral to industrial over the last two years with few regulatory roadblocks.

Karnes Country now has frack ponds, drill sites, tank battery and saltwater treatment facilities and wastewater injection wells for disposing contaminated water. There are short-term housing units, called "man camps," for the workers and a steady flow of 18-wheelers on the local two-lane highways.

Others are wary after a saltwater disposal plant exploded (http://www.kens5.com/news/At-least-one-person-injured-in--226880101.html) across the street from a residence in nearby Gillett in October, leveling the facility, injuring a worker and spreading toxic fumes over the city. Area roads now have a seemingly constant stream of 18-wheelers. This truck traffic creates its own air pollution threats, as well as increasing the number of fatal traffic accidents, as reported in the 2013 Texas Public Safety Threat Overview. (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/director_staff/media_and_communications/threatOverview.pdf)


Since the inspector didn’t smell any odors on Dupnik’s property and a portable monitor didn’t detect any chemicals, the investigator opted not to use the Summa canisters (http://summacanister.com/) she had with her. The canisters collect air samples over a period of days and provide an accurate analysis of the air.

Dupnik was dumbfounded by the report. “I told the investigator conditions are much worse at night and that the smell isn’t always present,” she said.

The investigator recommended closing the file on Dupnik’s complaint since she could not confirm the problem.

Without an air analysis, the investigation is inconclusive. But the commission’s spokesperson, Marrow, wrote, “If there were an immediate threat to health, residents would be
alerted.”

The question is: when inspectors go by what they smell and what can be monitored in the air days after a claim is made, rather than long-term air testing, how can homeowners know if they’re safe?


“The facilities in the various phases that are required for drilling production of crude oil and natural gas in the Eagle Ford Shale, and the emissions being released by these facilities, have the potential to cause severe health impact to the communities surrounding them."

Residents like Dupnik are left to figure out if she should risk her family's health, or stay and be part of an unofficial case study on the health problems of those living in a gasland.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/20989-eagle-ford-shale-breathe-at-your-own-risk

TCEQ, Texas' relentless advocate .... for BigCarbon.

[Halberto]

bouton you spend so much time and effort preaching on the internet... if you spent half that time doing something productive you probably wouldnt be such a **** all the time

[boutons_deux]

bouton you spend so much time and effort preaching on the internet... if you spent half that time doing something productive you probably wouldnt be such a **** all the time

GFY

[boutons_deux]

Water pollution in four states linked to oil and gas drilling

In at least four states that have nurtured the nation's energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil (http://america.aljazeera.com/topics/topic/issue/oil.html) or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.

The Associated Press requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas and found major differences in how the states report such problems.

Among the findings in the AP's review:

- Pennsylvania has confirmed at least 106 water-well contamination cases since 2005, out of more than 5,000 new wells. There were five confirmed cases of water-well contamination in the first nine months of 2012, 18 in all of 2011 and 29 in 2010. The Environmental Department said more complete data may be available in several months.

- Ohio had 37 complaints in 2010 and no confirmed contamination of water supplies; 54 complaints in 2011 and two confirmed cases of contamination; 59 complaints in 2012 and two confirmed contaminations; and 40 complaints for the first 11 months of 2013, with two confirmed contaminations and 14 still under investigation, Department of Natural Resources spokesman Mark Bruce said in an email.
None of the six confirmed cases of contamination was related to fracking, Bruce said.

- West Virginia has had about 122 complaints that drilling contaminated water wells over the past four years, and in four cases the evidence was strong enough that the driller agreed to take corrective action, officials said.

- A Texas spreadsheet contains more than 2,000 complaints, and 62 of those allege possible well-water contamination from oil and gas activity, said Ramona Nye, a spokeswoman for the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees drilling. Texas regulators haven't confirmed a single case of drilling-related water-well contamination in the past 10 years, :lol she said.

( aka total "regulatory capture" at (red-)state and Fed levels by BigCarbon )

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/5/some-states-confirmwaterpollutionfromdrilling.html

[boutons_deux]

Steve Lipsky Responds to Report Clearing EPA of Wrongdoing in Fracking Water Contamination Study


In 2010, Mr. Lipsky alerted the agency to his contaminated well water and the fact that he could light his water on fire. An EPA investigation determined (http://www.dallasobserver.com/2012-04-26/news/fire-in-the-hole/full/)that Range Resources' hydraulic fracturing activities caused the contamination.

Republican senators had quickly initiated an investigation (http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=04ea78d0-802a-23ad-46ae-efcc940aad59&Region_id=&Issue_id=87c0f70e-7e9c-9af9-742c-e26bf9b76447) of the report, questioning the agency's motivation and the validity of its findings.

According to the Associated Press, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has dismissed the Inspector General's report confirming that the EPA was justified in issuing anEmergency Order to Range Resources (http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/EPA-orders--111474704.html), the drilling company. But others, including Sharon Wilson, Gulf Regional Organizer for environmental group Earthworks (http://www.earthworksaction.org/),filmmaker Josh Fox (http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/) and former EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/epa-probe-demands-more-water-testing-texas) see the report as vindication of the EPA and Steven Lipsky.

So does Mr. Lipsky feel vindicated? No, he does not, and he says he won't until the entire story is told and the truth is completely revealed. Additionally, Lipsky wants to see an end to the $3 million defamation lawsuit filed by Range Resources against him (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/11/06/steve-lipsky-s-flaming-tapwater-no-joke).

http://truth-out.org/news/item/21183-steve-lipsky-responds-to-report-clearing-epa-of-wrongdoing-in-fracking-water-contamination-study

[boutons_deux]

Are Fracking Fluids to Blame for Rail Car Explosions?

In order to extract oil in the Bakken the oil companies use fracking to split apart the shale rock and gain access to the tight light oil trapped there. A special mix of chemicals is used to split the rocks underground, and while companies refuse to disclose the exact composition of this cocktail of chemicals, claiming that it is a trade secret, there is a high possibility that they are extremely flammable. Some of these chemicals remain mixed up in the crude oil, thereby increasing its flammability.

Some initial inspections have found that the oil includes chemicals that mean it is combustible at very low temperatures, meaning that it should be transported in special, secure rail cars reserved for extremely flammable products. Instead the crude is being loaded onto normal tankers that are designed with fewer safety precautions and intended for less flammable liquids.

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Are-Fracking-Fluids-to-Blame-for-Rail-Car-Explosions.html

[RandomGuy]

Are Fracking Fluids to Blame for Rail Car Explosions?

In order to extract oil in the Bakken the oil companies use fracking to split apart the shale rock and gain access to the tight light oil trapped there. A special mix of chemicals is used to split the rocks underground, and while companies refuse to disclose the exact composition of this cocktail of chemicals, claiming that it is a trade secret, there is a high possibility that they are extremely flammable. Some of these chemicals remain mixed up in the crude oil, thereby increasing its flammability.

Some initial inspections have found that the oil includes chemicals that mean it is combustible at very low temperatures, meaning that it should be transported in special, secure rail cars reserved for extremely flammable products. Instead the crude is being loaded onto normal tankers that are designed with fewer safety precautions and intended for less flammable liquids.

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Are-Fracking-Fluids-to-Blame-for-Rail-Car-Explosions.html


Over the past year or so there seems to have been far more train derailments of cars carrying crude oil that have resulted in huge, deadly explosions, and it is not a coincidence that the oil in these explosions originated from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota.

Post hoc, propter hoc fallacy.


We have not moved much oil at all by rail until recently. The author has not accounted for the fact that there is simply a massive uptick in rail shipments of oil. Even if the rate of accidents on a per mile basis has never changed, the number of such incidences is sure to go up. One would have to compare scopes and scales of previous accidents to support that statement.

(edit)
I don't dismiss the possibility that he is right, just that his reasoning was a tad sloppy.

[boutons_deux]

Post hoc, propter hoc fallacy.


We have not moved much oil at all by rail until recently. The author has not accounted for the fact that there is simply a massive uptick in rail shipments of oil. Even if the rate of accidents on a per mile basis has never changed, the number of such incidences is sure to go up. One would have to compare scopes and scales of previous accidents to support that statement.

(edit)
I don't dismiss the possibility that he is right, just that his reasoning was a tad sloppy.

agreed, but what about his point that the fracking crap in fracked crude makes it more flammable, dangerous? of course, fracking fluids are trade secrets so maybe we can't really know, and BigOil will probably block anybody from studying the flammability since it's "trade secret".

[boutons_deux]

Radioactive Waste Dumped by Oil Companies Is Seeping out of the Ground in North Dakota

After oil companies and state executives in North Dakota hid the news from the public that nearly 300 oil spills occured between 2011 and 2013, radioactive toxic sludge is brimming back up to the surface, bubbling forth from the ground and mixing with fresh water across the state.

In late 2013, the shale oil industry in North Dakota received national attention when a train carrying explosive "Bakken" oil derailed and exploded near the city of Cassleton on December 30. Eighteen rail cars attached to the train also spilled 400,000 gallons of crude oil--one of the biggest spills ever recorded in the United States.

"What goes up must come down. There's going to be chemicals rising up from these wells," said Scott Skokos, a field organizer for the Dakota Resource Council, and environmentally-minded landowner collective, said (http://www.popularresistance.org/unmitigated-disaster-a-report-from-the-oil-wastes/) to Unedited Media.

Radiation testing has confirmed that the sludge secreting up from fracking wells is a mix of corrosive chemicals used in hydaulic fracking and a substance dubbed TENORM (Technologically enhanced normally occuring radioactive material).

Skekos explained that TENORM is produced when NORM (normally occuring radioactive material) is brought to the surface through fracking. Legally, TENORM must be disposed of in properly designated areas because of the health hazard it poses to humans, but in order to avoid the costs of properly dumping the material (the nearest TENORM waste site is in Colorado), oil companies in North Dakota are spewing the toxic waste wherever is most convenient from them.

The Guardian noted (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/25/north-dakota-oil-pipeline-spills-secrecy) that state regulators, like those in many oil-producing states, are not required to tell the public about oil spills under state law.

http://www.alternet.org/radioactive-waste-dumped-oil-companies-seeping-out-ground-north-dakota?akid=11438.187590.nf_SAR&rd=1&src=newsletter951142&t=3

[boutons_deux]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rxqUXqPzog#t=17

[boutons_deux]

Report: Fracking is depleting water in America’s driest areas

From Texas to California, drilling for oil and gas is using billions of gallons of water in the country’s most drought-prone areas.

America’s oil and gas rush is depleting water supplies in the driest and most drought-prone areas of the country, from Texas to California, new research has found.

Of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2011, three-quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55% were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found (http://www.ceres.org/).

Fracking those wells used 97bn gallons of water, raising new concerns about unforeseen costs of America’s energy rush.

“Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of the country’s most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions,” said Mindy Lubber, president of the Ceres green investors’ network.

Without new tougher regulations on water use, she warned industry could be on a “collision course” with other water users.

“It’s a wake-up call,” said Prof James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine. “We understand as a country that we need more energy but it is time to have a conversation about what impacts there are, and do our best to try to minimise any damage.”

It can take millions of gallons of fresh water to frack a single well, and much of the drilling is tightly concentrated in areas where water is in chronically short supply, or where there have been multi-year droughts.

Half of the 97bn gallons of water was used to frack wells in Texas, which has experienced severe drought for years – and where production is expected to double over the next five years.

Farming and cities are still the biggest users of water, the report found. But it warned the added demand for fracking in the Eagle Ford, at the heart of the Texas oil and gas rush, was hitting small, rural communities hard.

“Shale producers are having significant impacts at the county level, especially in smaller rural counties with limited water infrastructure capacity,” the report said. “With water use requirements for shale producers in the Eagle Ford already high and expected to double in the coming 10 years, these rural counties can expect severe water stress challenges in the years ahead.”

Local aquifer levels in the Eagle Ford formation have dropped by up to 300ft over the last few years.

A number of small communities in Texas oil and gas country have already run out of water (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/11/texas-tragedy-ample-oil-no-water) or are in danger of running out of water in days, pushed to the brink by a combination of drought and high demand for water for fracking.

Twenty-nine communities across Texas could run out of water in 90 days, according to the Texas commission on environmental quality. Many reservoirs in west Texas are at only 25% capacity.

Nearly all of the wells in Colorado (97%) were located in areas where most of the ground and surface water is already stretched between farming and cities, the report said. It said water demand for fracking in the state was expected to double to 6bn gallons by 2015 – or about twice as much as the entire city of Boulder uses in a year.

In California, where a drought emergency was declared last month (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/17/california-drought-governor-jerry-brown-emergency), 96% of new oil and gas wells were located in areas where there was already fierce competition for water.
The pattern holds for other regions caught up in the oil and gas rush. Most of the wells in New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming were also located in areas of high water stress, the report said.

Some oil and gas producers were beginning to recycle water, especially in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania, the report said. But it said those savings were too little to offset the huge demand for water for fracking in the coming years.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/05/report-fracking-is-depleting-water-in-americas-driest-areas/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

[Nbadan]

Evidence Is Mounting that Fracking Causes Birth Defects


In his recent State of the Union address, President Barack Obama praised natural gas as “the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change” and vowed to “cut red tape” to help business invest in it. But two studies released this winter bolster long-held fears that the extraction process, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, presents serious dangers for human health—and in particular, the health of the unborn.

One of the studies was conducted in Colorado, where some cities have sought a moratorium on fracking and industry has pushed back, by public health scientists from the Colorado School of Public Health and BrownUniversity. The central finding is a strong correlation between proximity to fracking wells and congenital heart defects. As the number and nearness of wells to a pregnant woman’s home went up, so did the likelihood that her baby would develop a heart problem. Strikingly, “Births to mothers in the most exposed tertile had a 30% greater prevalence of CHDs …than births to mothers with no wells within a 10-mile radius of their residence.”

The authors also saw some evidence that fracking wells upped the incidence of neurological defects, though only at high levels of exposure. They looked for a correlation with oral clefts, low birth weight, and premature birth, but did not find that fracking made them more likely.

A study in Pennsylvania, another state rich in natural gas, had different but worrisome findings. (Authored by researchers from Princeton, Columbia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it is not yet peer-reviewed or publicly available but was presented in January.) As Mark Whitehouse of Bloomberg View wrote last month, “They found that proximity to fracking increased the likelihood of low birth weight by more than half, from about 5.6 percent to more than 9 percent. The chances of a low Apgar score, a summary measure of the health of newborn children, roughly doubled, to more than 5 percent.”

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116490/colorado-fracking-study-evidence-it-causes-birth-defects-mounting

[boutons_deux]

so BigCarbon has been lying to us all along about "clean" natgas. yawn

Study Finds Underestimated Methane Emissions Negate Industry Claims of Fracked Gas’ Benefits

http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/14/underestimated-methane-emissions-negate-fracked-gas-benefits/

[ChumpDumper]

http://www.wdtv.com/content/images/gaswell(2).jpg

http://www.nofrackingway.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Screen-Shot-2014-02-17-at-11.17.49-AM.png

http://replygif.net/i/159.gif

[RandomGuy]

Water pollution in four states linked to oil and gas drilling

In at least four states that have nurtured the nation's energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil (http://america.aljazeera.com/topics/topic/issue/oil.html) or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.

The Associated Press requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas and found major differences in how the states report such problems.

Among the findings in the AP's review:

- Pennsylvania has confirmed at least 106 water-well contamination cases since 2005, out of more than 5,000 new wells. There were five confirmed cases of water-well contamination in the first nine months of 2012, 18 in all of 2011 and 29 in 2010. The Environmental Department said more complete data may be available in several months.

- Ohio had 37 complaints in 2010 and no confirmed contamination of water supplies; 54 complaints in 2011 and two confirmed cases of contamination; 59 complaints in 2012 and two confirmed contaminations; and 40 complaints for the first 11 months of 2013, with two confirmed contaminations and 14 still under investigation, Department of Natural Resources spokesman Mark Bruce said in an email.
None of the six confirmed cases of contamination was related to fracking, Bruce said.

- West Virginia has had about 122 complaints that drilling contaminated water wells over the past four years, and in four cases the evidence was strong enough that the driller agreed to take corrective action, officials said.

- A Texas spreadsheet contains more than 2,000 complaints, and 62 of those allege possible well-water contamination from oil and gas activity, said Ramona Nye, a spokeswoman for the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees drilling. Texas regulators haven't confirmed a single case of drilling-related water-well contamination in the past 10 years, :lol she said.

( aka total "regulatory capture" at (red-)state and Fed levels by BigCarbon )

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/5/some-states-confirmwaterpollutionfromdrilling.html




TNRCC doesn't have the budget to look for violators.

Texas government is in a huge push to get money in, and damn the cost to the environment and private landholders.

I would not fault most competent drillers, but there is a huge rush of semi-competent and unscrupulous fuckers rushing to cash in, take the money and run.

No oversight basically means that the Texas state government is, essentially, giving a green light to criminals to take advantage of private citizens.

[boutons_deux]

"not fault most competent drillers"

oh really? what bullshit?

it's only the fly-by-night cowboy drillers polluting air, land, water? and what would regulations would they be violating? :lol

what is the incentive for your competent drillers to spend the inevitable profits complying with TX/EPA/CWA non-enforced non-regulations?

[Winehole23]

http://stories.weather.com/fracking

[Winehole23]

The Denton Drilling Awareness Group (Denton DAG) today announced they are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative (http://bit.ly/FFD-initiative) to ban hydraulic fracturing within city limits. If approved by voters, Denton would become the first major Texas city to ban fracking, and the first city in the country to ban fracking after permits had been previously granted.

“The city and the state have repeatedly failed us,” said Maile Bush, whose family is impacted by fracking-enabled oil and gas development. She continued, “My family is breathing horrible fumes, we can’t enjoy our property and we’re trapped because no one else wants to live here. To protect our homes and our health, we’ve got no choice but to ban fracking.”

Denton DAG is comprised of members of the former Denton Drilling Advisory Group – which was formed at the request of a city government official to provide expert and public input while the city council developed drilling ordinances.

“We are out of options. The city is allowing fracking to happen right in our backyards,” said Denton Drilling Awareness Group member Cathy McMullen. She continued, “When fracking-impacted residents call with problems, the city passes the buck.”
- See more at: http://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/citizens_of_denton_texas_call_for_fracking_ban#.Uw SjEYWfC7R

[boutons_deux]

- See more at: http://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/citizens_of_denton_texas_call_for_fracking_ban#.Uw SjEYWfC7R

In this TX movie, the Na'vi gonna lose

[Winehole23]

your certainty about that is creepy. you seem to delight in seeing the little guy squashed.

[Winehole23]

the fox sees many things; the hedgehog, one big thing.

[boutons_deux]

your certainty about that is creepy. you seem to delight in seeing the little guy squashed.

creepy? :lol

a simple statement of fact:

The little guy ALWAYS gets crushed, it's how the Big Guys roll.

[Winehole23]

there's a crucial difference between "most of the time" and ""always" you seem to be unalive to, but perhaps your ideological rigidity requires it.

[boutons_deux]

there's a crucial difference between "most of the time" and ""always" you seem to be unalive to, but perhaps your ideological rigidity requires it.

give example(s) of The Little Guy not getting crushed by The Big Guy. They would only be insignificant exceptions that prove the rule

[Winehole23]

exceptions test the rule. lol Latin fail.

[boutons_deux]

exceptions test the rule. lol Latin fail.

... still waiting for your exceptions

[Winehole23]

Goliath doesn't win every time. The hoi polloi occasionally get a remedy in court. The availability (and occasional success) of that remedy isn't anything to be scoffed at, IMHO.

[Winehole23]

political institutions change over time. we don't design them just as we please, but we do have input.

[Winehole23]

if development is heedless of the social impacts, there can be political and economic costs; bans, regulation, etc..

[boutons_deux]

Perfect example of how Corporate-Americans dictate the (state) laws and regulations that govern (favor, immunize, exempt) Corporate-Americans.

ALEC's Fracking Chemical Disclosure Bill Moving Through Florida Legislature

ALEC's model bill was proposed by ExxonMobil at its December 2011 meeting and is modeled after a bill that passed in Texas' legislature in spring 2011 (http://www.desmogblog.com/alec-wasn-t-first-industry-trojan-horse-behind-fracking-disclosure-bill-enter-council-state-governments), as revealed in an April 2012 New York Times investigative piece (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-group-mixes-legislators-and-lobbyists.html?pagewanted=all). ALEC critics refer to the pro-business organization as a "corporate bill mill (http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/03/12024/alec-corporate-bill-mill-posts-some-model-bills-online-first-time-watchdogs-say-m)" lending corporate lobbyists a "voice and a vote (http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10883/about-alec-exposed)" on model legislation (http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed) often becoming state law.

Taken together, the two bills are clones of ALEC's ExxonMobil (http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/657)-endorsed Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act (http://www.eenews.net/assets/2012/05/01/document_ew_01.pdf). That model — like HB 71 — creates a centralized database for fracking chemical fluid disclosure. There's a kicker, though. Actually, two.

First kicker: the industry-created and industry-owned disclosure database itself —FracFocus (http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/11275) — has been deemed a failure by multiple legislators (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-30/frack-secrets-by-thousands-keep-u-s-clueless-on-wells.html) and by an April 2013 Harvard University Law School study (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/environmentallawprogram/files/2013/04/4-23-2013-LEGAL-FRACTURES.pdf).

Second kicker: ALEC's model bill, like HB 157, has a trade secrets exemption for chemicals deemed proprietary.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22011-alecs-fracking-chemical-disclosure-bill-moving-through-florida-legislature

[boutons_deux]

More than 1,000 medical professionals say that fracking must be stopped.

On Thursday, the Environment America Research & Policy Center delivered letters from nurses, doctors, and other health professionals to President Obama and various state officials.

The medical experts say that two immediate steps should be taken to protect our families and our communities.

They want President Obama to close the regulatory loopholes that exempt fracking from public health and environmental laws, and they say that our nation must declare some areas – like the sources of our public drinking water – off limits to the natural gas industry.

Dr. Catherine Thomasson of Physicians for Social Responsibility said, “Generating electricity shouldn't be a source of illness; power shouldn't be poisonous.”

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22029-on-the-news-with-thom-hartmann-over-1000-medical-professionals-say-that-fracking-must-be-stopped-and-more

[boutons_deux]

NIMBYism by CFO (chief fracking officer)

Exxon CEO Joins Lawsuit to Stop Fracking Near His Home (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/21/1279443/-Exxon-CEO-Joins-Lawsuit-to-Stop-Fracking-Near-His-Home)


http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/70175/large/Smiling_rex_tillerson.jpg?1393020334

Tillerson has joined a lawsuit that cites fracking’s consequences in order to block the construction of a 160-foot water tower next to his and his wife’s Texas home.

The Wall Street Journal reports the tower would supply water to a nearby fracking site, and the plaintiffs argue the project would cause too much noise and traffic from hauling the water from the tower to the drilling site.

The water tower, owned by Cross Timbers Water Supply Corporation, “will sell water to oil and gas explorers for fracing [sic] shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks on FM 407, creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” the suit says.

Though Tillerson’s name is on the lawsuit, a lawyer representing him said his concern is about the devaluation of his property, not fracking specifically. (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/21/3316881/exxon-ceo-protests-fracking/)

When he is acting as Exxon CEO, not a homeowner, Tillerson has lashed out at fracking critics and proponents of regulation. “This type of dysfunctional regulation is holding back the American economic recovery, growth, and global competitiveness,” he said in 2012.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/21/1279443/-Exxon-CEO-Joins-Lawsuit-to-Stop-Fracking-Near-His-Home?detail=email#

:lol

[boutons_deux]

Fracking Boom Leaves Texans Under a Toxic Cloud
http://www.bloomberg.com/image/i_HHzXcxD1CA.jpg

Since 2008, more than 7,000 oil and gas wells (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1017851-rrc-map-of-eagle-ford-shale-jan-6-2014.html) have been sunk into the brittle, sedimentary rock. Another 5,500 have been approved by state regulators, making the Eagle Ford one of the most active drilling sites in America.



Texas' air monitoring system is so flawed that the state knows almost nothing about the extent of the pollution in the Eagle Ford. Only five permanent air monitors are installed in the 20,000-square-mile region, and all are at the fringes of the shale play, far from the heavy drilling areas where emissions are highest.



Thousands of oil and gas facilities, including six of the nine production sites near the Buehrings' house, are allowed to self-audit their emissions without reporting them to the state. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which regulates most air emissions, doesn't even know some of these facilities exist. An internal agency document (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1013704-buehrings-covar-memo.html#document/p1/a144698)acknowledges that the rule allowing this practice "[c]annot be proven to be protective."



Companies that break the law are rarely fined. Of the 284 oil and gas industry-related complaints filed with the TCEQ by Eagle Ford residents between Jan. 1, 2010, and Nov. 19, 2013, only two resulted in fines despite 164 documented violations. The largest was just $14,250. (Pending enforcement actions could lead to six more fines).



The Texas legislature has cut the TCEQ's budget by a third since the Eagle Ford boom began, from $555 million in 2008 to $372 million in 2014. At the same time, the amount allocated for air monitoring equipment dropped from $1.2 million to $579,000.



The Eagle Ford boom is feeding an ominous trend: A 100 percent statewide increase in unplanned, toxic air releases associated with oil and gas production since 2009. Known as emission events, these releases are usually caused by human error or faulty equipment.



Residents of the mostly rural Eagle Ford counties are at a disadvantage even in Texas, because they haven't been given air quality protections, such as more permanent monitors, provided to the wealthier, more suburban Barnett Shale region near Dallas-Fort Worth.


http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/49-49/22213-fracking-boom-leaves-texans-under-a-toxic-cloud

Sky People Poisoning The Na'vi

[boutons_deux]

Why Are So Many Workers Dying in Oil Fields?

The Houston Chronicle published an extensive investigation of worker injuries and fatalities in Texas oil and gas fields, highlighting a lack of federal safety standards protecting onshore drill workers.

From 2007 to 2012, 664 US workers were killed in oil and gas fields, with 40 percent of deaths taking place in Texas. Sixty-five Texas oil and gas workers died in 2012 alone. In that same year, seventy-nine lost limbs, eighty-two were crushed, ninety-two suffered burns and 675 broke bones while working in the fields.

Reporter Lise Olsen finds several factors contributing to these numbers, from oil and gas employers recklessly cutting corners to government inspectors glossing over safety hazards. On top are lax federal regulations that don’t do much to spur improvement. Consider this:

At onshore oil and gas drilling sites, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is required to investigate only those accidents that kill workers or that cause three or more to be hospitalized. That translated to only about 150 of 18,000 work-related injuries and illnesses in the last six years in Texas.

Olsen shows how under these standards, the details of accidents “remain locked away in confidential company safety reports, insurance archives or remote courthouse files in lawsuits.” She tells the story of a rig collapse that left a drill worker with a broken jaw, cracks in his spine and permanent brain and memory damage. While the well operator (Apache Corp.) settled with the worker in court, OSHA did not investigate the accident because less than three workers required hospitalization.

There’s a lot more in the investigation, which you can read here. The Chronicle will publish a second part this Sunday.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178523/why-are-so-many-workers-dying-oil-fields#

Sky People don't care. Na'vi are expendable wage slaves.

[boutons_deux]

Texas Officials Turn Blind Eye To Fracking Industry’s Toxic Air Emissions

KARNES CITY, Texas — In January 2011, with air quality worsening in Texas’ booming oil and gas fields, state environmental regulators adopted rules to reduce emissions.

The industry rebelled. So did the state legislature.

A few months later, lawmakers passed SB1134, effectively preventing the new regulations from being applied in the Eagle Ford Shale region of South Texas, one of the nation’s biggest oil and gas booms. Since then, more than 2,400 air emissions permits have been issued in the Eagle Ford without additional safeguards to reduce the amounts of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other dangerous chemicals that drift into the air.

The legislature’s rush to protect the oil and gas industry reflects a culture in which politics and business have become almost inseparable.

State Rep. Tom Craddick, a Republican who championed the House version of SB1134, owns stock in nine oil companies, five of which are active in the Eagle Ford. In 2013, the stock was worth as much as $1.5 million. Craddick, his corporations and partnerships also received royalties of as much as $885,000 for mineral rights. Corporations and unions are banned from giving to Texas candidates, but since 2000, industry employees and related political action committees have given Craddick’s campaigns more than $800,000.

The industry also invested $600,000 to help Craddick’s daughter, Christi, win a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, which issues drilling permits.

Other Texas lawmakers also benefit from the oil and gas industry’s largesse.

Forty-two of the body’s 181 members or their spouses own stock or receive royalties from companies active in the Eagle Ford, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of financial disclosure records. Those holdings could be worth as much as $9.6 million, according to a conservative estimate based on 2012 data.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who signed SB1134, has collected more than $11.5 million in campaign contributions from those in the industry since the 2000 election cycle. Attorney General Greg Abbott, favored to win the Republican nomination for governor, has raked in more than $4 million. Abbott has sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 18 times for interfering in Texas affairs.

Supporters say oil and gas has been good to Texas, and they are right. The industry employed 315,000 people and paid $8.5 billion in taxes in 2010. It has been especially important to counties in the Eagle Ford. The tax base for the industrial sector in Karnes County, in the center of the drilling, exploded from $217 million in 2008 to $6.2 billion last year.

The downside is industrial air pollution in a rural area where people of limited means rarely share in the bounty.

Most of the Eagle Ford’s roughly 1.1 million residents live in small towns or on farms. About 23 percent live below the federal poverty line, compared to 17 percent statewide and 15 percent nationally.

“Let’s be blunt. That is not really a body of voters that the power structure in Austin has any real concern about,” said Larry Soward, a former commissioner of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who is now president of the board of Air Alliance Houston, an organization dedicated to reducing air pollution.
...

http://www.nationalmemo.com/texas-officials-turn-blind-eye-fracking-industrys-toxic-air-emissions-2/ (http://www.nationalmemo.com/texas-officials-turn-blind-eye-fracking-industrys-toxic-air-emissions-2/)

[boutons_deux]

Next fracking controversy: In the Midwest, a storm brews over 'frac sand'


http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2014/0317-weekly/0317-asand-frac-sand/18181804-1-eng-US/0317-ASAND-FRAC-sand_full_380.jpg


Sand is used in the fracking process, and there's plenty of it to be mined in the upper Midwest. As a sand-mining boom has emerged, residents are divided over whether it's lifting or ruining their communities.


Sand has become a valuable – and deeply divisive – commodity in the upper Midwest. Hydraulic fracturing, a method of extraction also known as fracking that has boosted oil and natural gas production across the United States (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States), requires sand, and there's plenty of it here. And so in dozens of small towns and rural townships in Minnesota (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Minnesota), Illinois (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Illinois), Iowa (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Iowa) and especially Wisconsin (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Wisconsin), the demand for frac sand, as it's called, has brought a surge of new mining activity. Scores of companies have poured in, eager to take advantage of the thick sandstone that underlies the bluffs and ridges of the region's picturesque river country.

The sand rush has created jobs and enriched landowners, but it also has divided neighbors, strained local governments, and set off fierce debates over its benefits and its costs to the land, public health, and quality of life.

"I don't think we were surprised that they found ways to extract it," says John Kimmel, the mayor of Arcadia, a town of 3,000 residents in Wisconsin's Trempealeau County (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Trempealeau+County). "I think we were surprised at the effect it's had on the community – and on how many mines have just started to pop up all over."

Indeed, where State Trunk Highway 95 winds among the farms and hills just east of Arcadia, new mines stand out as gashes of raw earth and yellow stone. Pyramids of sand await transport to distant drilling fields. Joe and Cindy Slaby and their son Kyle, who farm just north of the highway, have proposed mining their sand, too. "It's some of the best in Trempealeau County," Ms. Slaby says.

Others are less cheerful. The mining boom has alarmed many residents who worry that it will pollute the air, harm local water supplies, and, in places like Arcadia, mar the rural loveliness that has given the town its name.

"We have a beautiful land here, and they are going to destroy it," says Patricia Kamla, who is in her late 70s and lives near a mine on the outskirts of Arcadia.

In December, concerns like these seemed at least partly vindicated when Wisconsin's attorney general announced a $200,000 fine against a Pennsylvania (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Pennsylvania) company for repeated violations of air and storm-water regulations at a mine in Blair, a town 12 miles east of Arcadia. (The company, Preferred Sands of Radnor, Pa., says it's fixed the problems.) Since 2012, Wisconsin has found nearly two dozen sand-mining operations in violation of air and water pollution rules.

Residents complain that the mining boom has overwhelmed the state agencies responsible for monitoring it. It also has sorely tested local officials, few of whom knew anything about sand mining until it came. And it's become politically contentious. Many communities have tried to use their zoning and police powers to limit where, when, and how mines can operate. But Wisconsin Republicans, who are trying to make the state friendlier to business, want to curb those powers.

A big question about sand mining is the risk to public health from dust. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Occupational+Safety+and+Health+Administration) (OSHA), prolonged exposure to airborne crystalline silica – tiny particles of sand – can cause silicosis and increase the risk of lung cancer. It's not known exactly how much crystalline silica sand mining puts into the local air, in part because of the difficulty and expense of measuring it. But many residents are worried.

Crispin Pierce, director of the Environmental Public Health program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, says his preliminary testing outside 15 mines and processing plants in western Wisconsin revealed levels of fine dust that exceeded standards set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Some of this dust was probably crystalline silica. Testing by the US Mine Safety and Health Administration found that, on average, crystalline silica makes up 14.5 percent of the dust at Wisconsin sand-mining operations.

But concerns about dust extend far beyond the Midwest to where frac sand is used. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health issued a "Hazard Alert" after a study of 11 fracking sites in five states found levels of crystalline silica that consistently exceeded occupational health standards, sometimes by as much as 10 times. In September, OSHA proposed cutting in half the permissible levels of exposure to crystalline silica at work sites.

Minnesota recently began testing for crystalline silica and other fine particles at mines and along a busy haul route. It is also rewriting air-quality standards for sand mining. Wisconsin has declined to undertake similar testing or to develop its own air-quality rules. State officials argue that a combination of existing air monitoring, national air-quality standards, and requirements to contain dust by technological means is adequate to protect public health.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0309/Next-fracking-controversy-In-the-Midwest-a-storm-brews-over-frac-sand

BigCarbon is one nasty, filthy business.

[boutons_deux]

Tougher Regulations on Deadly Silica Dust Trigger Backlash


Senate accusations of prejudice have forced a US government agency to defend its actions over a proposed tightening of regulations concerning industrial workers’ exposure to deadly silica dust.
The row blew up late last year when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began a public consultation on setting new limits for working with the dust, which is a major hazard for construction workers, causing serious lung disease. The agency ruffled feathers in the Senate when it asked that those submitting evidence should declare their funding sources.

Last November, a group of 16 senators wrote an open letter to OSHA criticizing the move for its implication that the agency might prejudge submissions. The consultation period closed on 11 February, and OSHA is now vigorously defending its request.

“What I’m doing here is essentially saying the information that we will base our standard on has to be of the highest integrity, and we have to do it in a transparent manner, and conflict-of interest disclosure is an important component of both of those,” David Michaels, the head of OSHA, told Nature. “It would be surprising right now if a scientific journal didn’t ask for that information.”

Produced by tasks such as grinding concrete and sandblasting, used in the construction and other industries, crystalline silica dust can cause silicosis — an incurable disease involving inflammation of the lungs — and lung cancer. The dust is thought to kill or disable thousands of people in the United States every year, but guidelines on working with it have not been updated for more than 40 years.

“Our current standard is antiquated,” says Michaels. “There are literally millions of workers in the United States who are exposed to dangerous levels of silica.”

The present rules generally advise limiting exposure to roughly 100 micrograms of crystalline silica per cubic meter of air, averaged over 8 hours. OSHA has proposed halving this limit. Workers would also have to be better protected, for example by dust being ‘wetted down’ and with the use of extraction fans. OSHA estimates that the new regulations will cost about $640 million a year, with employers picking up most of the tab, but the agency believes that the rules will save up to 700 lives a year. US standards are also influential in other countries, some note, potentially saving many more workers’ lives.

The proposals were published in the Federal Register last September, at the start of the consultation period. In a first for OSHA, those wishing to submit scientific evidence as part of their comments were requested — although not required — to provide information on the funding sources of the research, as well as any funding received by the commenters that could potentially be considered a conflict of interest.

The Associated General Contractors of America, an industry group based in Arlington, Virginia, called the proposals “significantly flawed” and “rife with errors and inaccurate data”. And shortly after they were published, the group of senators, led by Lamar Alexander (Republican, Tennessee), a senior member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, wrote to OSHA saying that they were “very concerned about OSHA’s attempt to have commenters disclose their financial backers”. They added that the request “raises questions” about whether OSHA would prejudge submissions on the basis of who was sending them.

“The chilling effect the financial disclosure could have seems counter to the idea of robust inclusion of a diverse set of ideas and views to inform the rule-making,” Liz Wolgemuth, a spokeswoman for Alexander, told Nature.

But pharmacologist Lisa Bero of the University of California, San Francisco, says that her own research on similar rule-making processes for tobacco control found that scientists opposing rules were often funded by industry groups. She supports the new disclosure request. “The regulatory agencies have to be in a position to critically appraise the studies that come to them,” she says.

There is also support for the new silica standard. Tee Guidotti, a physician in Washington DC and a member of the American Thoracic Society’s Environmental Health Policy Committee, says that the scientific case for the proposed limit is “close to being bulletproof”. He adds that, if it is successful, it could provide a template for how OSHA deals with similar hazards, such as dust and radon.
But Susan Dudley, director of George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center in Washington DC, which conducts independent research on regulatory proposals, argues that there has already been a drop in exposure to silica dust and its health effects in recent years. She supports a lower exposure limit, but believes evidence is weaker for some of the specific requirements proposed to reach it, such as dust wetting.

The viewpoints contained in the 1,600 or so comments received through the consultation will be discussed in public hearings starting on 18 March. It will probably be several years before a final rule is enacted.

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature (http://www.nature.com/news)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tougher-regulations-on-deadly-silica-dust-trigger-backlash/?&WT.mc_id=SA_SP_20140310

The businesscritters fighting OSHA aren't the ones who will be horribly sickened and painfully killed by silicosis.

[boutons_deux]

Chesapeake Energy’s $5 Billion Shuffle

At the end of 2011, Chesapeake Energy, one of the nation’s biggest oil and gas companies, was teetering on the brink of failure.
Its legendary chief executive officer, Aubrey McClendon, was being pilloried for questionable deals, its stock price was getting hammered and the company needed to raise billions of dollars quickly.

Chesapeake executed an adroit escape, raising nearly $5 billion with a previously undisclosed twist: By gouging many rural landowners out of royalty payments they were supposed to receive in exchange for allowing the company to drill for natural gas on their property.

In lawsuits in state after state, private landowners have won cases accusing the companies like Chesapeake of stiffing them on royalties they were due. Federal investigators have repeatedly identified underpayments of royalties for drilling on federal lands, including a case in which Chesapeake was fined $765,000 for “knowing or willful submission of inaccurate information” last year.

But the impact of the Financial Maneuvers that he made (http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1084767-access-cmo-sale-press-release-february-12-access.html) to save the company will reverberate for years. The winners, aside from Chesapeake, were a competing oil company (http://co.williams.com/) and a New York private equity firm (http://global-infra.com/whatWeDo.php) that fronted much of the money in exchange for promises of double-digit returns for the next two decades.
The losers were landowners in Pennsylvania and elsewhere who leased their land to Chesapeake and saw their hopes of cashing in on the gas-drilling boom vanish without explanation.

People like Joe Drake.

“I got the check out of the mail… I saw what the gross was,” said Drake, a third-generation Pennsylvania farmer whose monthly royalty payments (http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1084761-chk-royalty-statements-to-joe-drake.html) for the same amount of gas plummeted from $5,300 in July 2012 to $541 last February. This sort of precipitous drop can reflect gyrations in the price of gas. But in this case, Drake’s shrinking check resulted from a corporate decision by Chesapeake to radically reinterpret the terms of the deal it had struck to drill on his land. “If you or I did that we’d be in jail,” Drake said.
Chesapeake’s conduct is part of a larger national pattern in which many giant energy companies have maneuvered to pay as little as possible to the owners of the land they drill. Last year, a ProPublica investigation found that Pennsylvania landowners were paying ever-higher fees (http://www.propublica.org/article/unfair-share-how-oil-and-gas-drillers-avoid-paying-royalties) to companies for transporting their gas to market, and that Chesapeake was charging more than other companies in the region.

ProPublica pieced together the story of how Chesapeake shifted borrowing costs to landowners from documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, interviews with landowners, people who worked for the company and employees at other oil and gas concerns.

The deals took advantage of a simple economic principle: Monopoly power.

Boiled down to basics, they worked like this: When energy companies lease land above the shale rock that contains natural gas, they typically agree to pay the owner the market price for any gas they find, minus certain expenses.

Federal rules limit the tolls that can be charged on inter-state pipelines to prevent gouging. But drilling companies like Chesapeake can levy any fees they want for moving gas through local pipelines, known in the industry as gathering lines, that link backwoods wells to the nation’s interstate pipelines. Property owners have no alternative but to pay up. There’s no other practical way to transport natural gas to market.

Chesapeake took full advantage of this. In a series of deals, it sold off the network of local pipelines it had built in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Louisiana, Texas and the Midwest to a newly formed company that had evolved out of Chesapeake itself, raising $4.76 billion in cash.

http://www.propublica.org/article/chesapeake-energys-5-billion-shuffle?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

SkyPeople are some nasty, thieving, cheating sonsofbitches

[boutons_deux]

Contaminated Water Supplies, Health Concerns Accumulate With Fracking Boom in Pennsylvania

As the first official research is published that confirms water contamination by hydraulic fracturing, an alarming amount and array of hazardous chemicals and compounds - including arsenic, chloride, barium and radium - are found in Pennsylvania groundwater.

Shortly after a gas company in Donegal, Pennsylvania, began storing fracking wastewater in an impoundment pit, a water well at a nearby home showed some alarmingly elevated levels of barium and strontium.

The Southwest Pennsylvania home sits within 2,000 feet of the impoundment pit, which began leaking in late 2012, Kathryn Hilton told Truthout. Hilton is a community organizer at the Mountain Watershed Association (http://www.mtwatershed.com/), a nonprofit dedicated to water conservation in the state's Indian Creek Watershed.

In August, 2012, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) test results (http://truthoutdocs.cloudaccess.net/documents/DEPwatertest.pdf) showed levels of barium and strontium above EPA standards. "Those are hazardous chemicals that can cause health problems when exposed to for extended periods of time," Hilton said.


Environmentalists, scientists and residents worry that other homeowners may be facing similar, often unknown, threats from contamination throughout Pennsylvania - where the fracking boom has positioned the state as the third-largest producer of natural gas. Those concerns are growing as shale development continues to expand and transforms Pennsylvania communities that were once quaint rural areas into areas filled with drilling equipment and trucks.
"These drilling sites are really industrial sites," said David Brown, a toxicologist at the Environmental Health Project in Washington County, Pennsylvania. "There is a lot of diesel fuel around, a lot of chemicals brought in to frack the rock, and it is all dumped in water or the air."

Significant Findings

At the well in Donegal, the levels of chemicals such as strontium that were measured in the well could be high enough to cause some skin or gastrointestinal reactions, environmental scientist Vanessa Lamers told Truthout. An elderly person or infant would be even more susceptible.

"That's a lot of strontium and barium," Lamers said after reviewing the sample results. "The chloride is four times over the limit."

This case is not the only example of chemicals and compounds contaminating drinking water in areas with fracking activity. Between 2008 and fall 2012, state environmental regulators determined that oil and gas development damaged the water supplies (xhttp://thetimes-tribune.com/news/sunday-times-review-of-dep-drilling-records-reveals-water-damage-murky-testing-methods-1.1491547) for at least 161 Pennsylvania homes, farms, churches and businesses.


Two Sources
http://www.truth-out.org/images/images_2014_03/2014.3.11.Drouin.2.jpgShale gas development in Washington County, Pa. (Photo: Vanessa Lamers)

Keystone State environmentalists, along with biologists and toxicologists, associate health concerns with two possible streams of contamination.

Leaks of drilling fluids and other contaminants from well casings is the first potential source of pollution. "One in 20 wells leak immediately, and over time the percentage increases," said Anthony Ingraffea, an engineering professor at Cornell University.

"Casing is a very big issue," Lamers told Truthout. Intense pressure - sometimes as high as 18,000 to 20,000 psi - is put on the well during the hydraulic fracturing process.

"You have all this pressure from the fracking and drilling," Lamers said. "Then at the end of the process, which can take three weeks or three months, they are going to pull the wastewater back up. That wastewater will go back up through that casing. And if the casing is not still in great shape, after all that pressure, that's a concern [for possible contamination]."

The second possible stream is the millions of gallons of wastewater produced during fracking. Monika Freyman, a water program scientist with Ceres (http://www.ceres.org/), is one of those experts. Freyman worries about the way wastewater is stored, transported and treated. "And now they are talking about barging it," Freyman said. The scientist spent months studying the effect of the industry on water resources, including the multitude of pathways the fracking fluids can go after a well is fracked.

Hilton points to a Duke University study conducted last year (http://www.businessinsider.com/fracking-leaving-radioactive-pollution-in-pa-2013-10) that shows some of the Marcellus shale wastewater pours directly downstream into water sources for Pittsburgh and other cities, with uncertain health consequences.
And violations issued by the state DEP to companies, ranging from failure to report a spill to inadequately storing wastewater, shows just how dangerous the industry is in Pennsylvania, Hilton told Truthout.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22407-contaminated-water-supplies-health-concerns-accumulate-with-fracking-boom-in-pennsylvania

We know now that Dick Cheney knew fracking would cause this shit, so he exempted fracking from the authority of the Clean Water Act.

[boutons_deux]

Why The Oil & Gas Industry Makes Such A Big Deal Of The Shale (Retirement) Party

How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the US will soon be cornering the global oil market? There’s another side to the story of the relentless US shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. According to energy expert Arthur Berman, a geological consultant with thirty-four years of experience in petroleum exploration and production, the truth of the matter is that the industry has to make a big deal out of shale because it’s all that’s left. “Shale is not a revolution, it’s a retirement party”. Interview by James Stafford of Oilprice.com.

Oilprice.com: Almost on a daily basis we have figures thrown at us to demonstrate how the shale boom is only getting started. Mostly recently, there are statements to the effect that Texas shale formations will produce up to one-third of the global oil supply over the next 10 years. Is there another story behind these figures?

Arthur Berman: First, we have to distinguish between shale gas and liquids plays. On the gas side, all shale gas plays except the Marcellus are in decline or flat. The growth of US supply rests solely on the Marcellus and it is unlikely that its growth can continue at present rates.

On the oil side, the Bakken has a considerable commercial area that is perhaps only one-third developed so we see Bakken production continuing for several years before peaking. The Eagle Ford also has significant commercial area but is showing signs that production may be flattening. Nevertheless, we see 5 or so more years of continuing Eagle Ford production activity before peaking. The EIA has is about right for the liquids plays–slower increases until later in the decade, and then decline.

The idea that Texas shales will produce one-third of global oil supply is preposterous. The Eagle Ford and the Bakken comprise 80% of all the US liquids growth. The Permian basin has notable oil reserves left but mostly from very small accumulations and low-rate wells. EOG CEO Bill Thomas said the same thing about 10 days ago on EOG’s earnings call. There have been some truly outrageous claims made by some executives about the Permian basin in recent months that I suspect have their general counsels looking for a defibrillator.

Recently, the CEO of a major oil company told The Houston Chronicle that the shale revolution is only in the “first inning of a nine-inning game”. I guess he must have lost track of the score while waiting in line for hot dogs because production growth in U.S. shale gas plays excluding the Marcellus is approaching zero; growth in the Bakken and Eagle Ford has fallen from 33% in mid-2011 to 7% in late 2013.

Oil companies have to make a big deal about shale plays because that is all that is left in the world. Let’s face it: these are truly awful reservoir rocks and that is why we waited until all more attractive opportunities were exhausted before developing them.

It is completely unreasonable to expect better performance from bad reservoirs than from better
reservoirs.

The majors have shown that they cannot replace reserves. They talk about return on capital employed (ROCE) these days instead of reserve replacement and production growth because there is nothing to talk about there. Shale plays are part of the ROCE story–shale wells can be drilled and brought on production fairly quickly and this masks or smoothes out the non-productive capital languishing in big projects around the world like Kashagan and Gorgon, which are going sideways whilst eating up billions of dollars.
None of this is meant to be negative. I’m all for shale plays but let’s be honest about things, after all! Production from shale is not a revolution; it’s a retirement party.

That’s my whole point about shale plays–they’re expensive and need high oil and gas prices to work


OP: Is the shale “boom” sustainable?

Arthur Berman: The shale gas boom is not sustainable except at higher gas prices in the US. There is lots of gas–just not that much that is commercial at current prices. Analysts that say there are trillions of cubic feet of commercial gas at $4 need their cost assumptions audited. If they are not counting overhead (G&A) and many operating costs, then of course things look good. If Walmart were evaluated solely on the difference between wholesale and retail prices, they would look fantastic. But they need stores, employees, gas and electricity, advertising and distribution. So do gas producers. I don’t know where these guys get their reserves either, but that needs to be audited as well.

( so the future of US shale and gas depends on BigOil raising its retail prices, simply because they can (like financial sector raises its fees). Who doubts they will? )

There was a report recently that said large areas of the Barnett Shale are commercial at $4 gas prices and that the play will continue to produce lots of gas for decades. Some people get so intrigued with how much gas has been produced and could be in the future, that they don’t seem to understand that this is a business. A business must be commercial to be successful over the long term, although many public companies in the US seem to challenge that concept.

Investors have tolerated a lot of cheerleading about shale gas over the years, but I don’t think this is going to last. Investors are starting to ask questions, such as: Where are the earnings and the free cash flow. Shale companies are spending a lot more than they are earning, and that has not changed. They are claiming all sorts of efficiency gains on the drilling side that has distracted inquiring investors for a while. I was looking through some investor presentations from 2007 and 2008 and the same companies were making the same efficiency claims then as they are now. The problem is that these impressive gains never show up in the balance sheets, so I guess they must not be very important after all.

The reason that the shale gas boom is not sustainable at current prices is that shale gas is not the whole story. Conventional gas accounts for almost 60% of US gas and it is declining at about 20% per year and no one is drilling more wells in these plays. The unconventional gas plays decline at more than 30% each year. Taken together, the US needs to replace 19 billion cubic feet per day each year to maintain production at flat levels. That’s almost four Barnett shale plays at full production each year! So you can see how hard it will be to sustain gas production. Then there are all the efforts to use it up faster–natural gas vehicles, exports to Mexico, LNG exports, closing coal and nuclear plants–so it only gets harder.

This winter, things have begun to unravel. Comparative gas storage inventories are near their 2003 low. Sure, weather is the main factor but that’s always the case. The simple truth is that supply has not been able to adequately meet winter demand this year, period. Say what you will about why but it’s a fact that is inconsistent with the fairy tales we continue to hear about cheap, abundant gas forever.

I sat across the table from industry experts just a year ago or so who were adamant that natural gas prices would never get above $4 again. Prices have been above $4 for almost three months. Maybe “never” has a different meaning for those people that doesn’t include when they are wrong.

Resource estimates can be hugely misleading because they are guesses and have nothing to do with economics


OP: Do you foresee any new technology on the shelf in the next 10-20 years that would shape another boom, whether it be fossil fuels or renewables?

Arthur Berman: I get asked about new technology that could make things different all the time. I’m a technology enthusiast but I see the big breakthroughs in new industries, not old extractive businesses like oil and gas. Technology has made many things possible in my lifetime including shale and deep-water production, but it hasn’t made these things cheaper.

That’s my whole point about shale plays–they’re expensive and need high oil and gas prices to work.

We’ve got the high prices for oil and the oil plays are fine; we don’t have high prices for the gas plays and they aren’t working. There are some areas of the Marcellus that actually work at $4 gas price and that’s great, but it really takes $6 gas prices before things open up even there.
OP: In Europe, where do you see the most potential for shale gas exploitation, with Ukraine engulfed in political chaos, companies withdrawing from Poland, and a flurry of shale activity in the UK?

Arthur Berman: Shale plays will eventually spread to Europe but it will take a longer time than it did in North America. The biggest reason is the lack of private mineral ownership in most of Europe so there is no incentive for local people to get on board. In fact, there are only the negative factors of industrial development for them to look forward to with no pay check. It’s also a lot more expensive to drill and produce gas in Europe.

There are a few promising shale plays on the international horizon: the Bazherov in Russia, the Vaca Muerte in Argentina and the Duvernay in Canada look best to me because they are liquid-prone and in countries where acceptable fiscal terms and necessary infrastructure are feasible. At the same time, we have learned that not all plays work even though they look good on paper, and that the potentially commercial areas are always quite small compared to the total resource. Also, we know that these plays do not last forever and that once the drilling treadmill starts, it never ends. Because of high decline rates, new wells must constantly be drilled to maintain production. Shale plays will last years, not decades.

Recent developments in Poland demonstrate some of the problems with international shale plays. Everyone got excited a few years ago because resource estimates were enormous. Later, these estimates were cut but many companies moved forward and wells have been drilled. Most international companies have abandoned the project including ExxonMobil, ENI, Marathon and Talisman. Some players exited because they don’t think that the geology is right but the government has created many regulatory obstacles that have caused a lack of confidence in the fiscal environment in Poland.

The UK could really use the gas from the Bowland Shale and, while it’s not a huge play, there is enough there to make a difference. I expect there will be plenty of opposition because people in the UK are very sensitive about the environment and there is just no way to hide the fact that shale development has a big footprint despite pad drilling and industry efforts to make it less invasive.

Let me say a few things about resource estimates while we are on the subject. The public and politicians do not understand the difference between resources and reserves. The only think that they have in common is that they both begin with “res.” Reserves are a tiny subset of resources that can be produced commercially. Both are always wrong but resource estimates can be hugely misleading because they are guesses and have nothing to do with economics.

Someone recently sent me a new report by the CSIS that said U.S. shale gas resource estimates are too conservative and are much larger than previously believed. I wrote him back that I think that resource estimates for U.S. shale gas plays are irrelevant because now we have robust production data to work with. Most of those enormous resources are in plays that we already know are not going to be economic.

Resource estimates have become part of the shale gas cheerleading squad’s standard tricks to drum up enthusiasm for plays that clearly don’t work except at higher gas prices. It’s really unfortunate when supposedly objective policy organizations and research groups get in on the hype in order to attract funding for their work.

I fear putting climate change policy in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians more than I fear climate change (which I fear).

[boutons_deux]

OP: The ban on most US crude exports in place since the Arab oil embargo of 1973 is now being challenged by lobbyists, with media opining that this could be the biggest energy debate of the year in the US. How do you foresee this debate shaping up by the end of this year?

Arthur Berman: The debate over oil and gas exports will be silly.

I do not favor regulation of either oil or gas exports from the US. On the other hand, I think that a little discipline by the E&P companies might be in order so they don’t have to beg the American people to bail them out of the over-production mess that they have created knowingly for themselves. Any business that over-produces whatever it makes has to live with lower prices.

Why should oil and gas producers get a pass from the free-market laws of supply and demand? ( because they own Congress? :lol )

I expect that by the time all the construction is completed to allow gas export, the domestic price will be high enough not to bother. It amazes me that the geniuses behind gas export assume that the business conditions that resulted in a price benefit overseas will remain static until they finish building export facilities, and that the competition will simply stand by when the awesome Americans bring gas to their markets. Just last week, Ken Medlock described how some schemes to send gas to Asia may find that there will be a lot of price competition in the future because a lot of gas has been discovered elsewhere in the world.

The US acts like we are some kind of natural gas superstar because of shale gas. Has anyone looked at how the US stacks up next to Russia, Iran and Qatar for natural gas reserves?

Whatever outcome results from the debate over petroleum exports, it will result in higher prices for American consumers. There are experts who argue that it won’t increase prices much and that the economic benefits will outweigh higher costs. That may be but I doubt that anyone knows for sure. Everyone agrees that oil and gas will cost more if we allow exports.

OP: Is the US indeed close to hitting the “crude wall”—the point at which production could slow due to infrastructure and regulatory restraints?

Arthur Berman: No matter how much or little regulation there is, people will always argue that it is still either too much or too little. We have one of the most unfriendly administrations toward oil and gas ever and yet production has boomed. I already said that I oppose most regulation so you know where I stand. That said, once a bureaucracy is started, it seldom gets smaller or weaker. I don’t see any walls out there, just uncomfortable price increases because of unnecessary regulations.

We use and need too much oil and gas to hit a wall. I see most of the focus on health care regulation for now. If there is no success at modifying the most objectionable parts of the Affordable Care Act, I don’t suppose there is much hope for fewer oil and gas regulations. The petroleum business isn’t exactly the darling of the people.

OP: What is the realistic future of methane hydrates, or “fire ice”, particularly with regard to Japanese efforts at extraction?

Arthur Berman: Japan is desperate for energy especially since they cut back their nuclear program so maybe hydrates make some sense at least as a science project for them. Their pilot is in thousands of feet of water about 30 miles offshore so it’s going to be very expensive no matter how successful it is.

OP: Globally, where should we look for the next potential “shale boom” from a geological perspective as well as a commercial viability perspective?

Arthur Berman: Not all shale is equal or appropriate for oil and gas development. Once we remove all the shale that is not at or somewhat above peak oil generation today, most of it goes away. Some shale plays that meet these and other criteria didn’t work so we have a lot to learn. But shale development is both inevitable and necessary. It will take a longer time than many believe outside of North America.

OP: We’ve spoken about Japan’s nuclear energy crossroads before, and now we see that issue climaxing, with the country’s nuclear future taking center-stage in an election period. Do you still believe it is too early for Japan to pull the plug on nuclear energy entirely?


Arthur Berman: Japan and Germany have made certain decisions about nuclear energy that I find remarkable but I don’t live there and, obviously, don’t think like them.

More generally, environmental enthusiasts simply don’t see the obstacles to short-term conversion of a fossil fuel economy to one based on renewable energy. I don’t see that there is a rational basis for dialogue in this arena. I’m all in favor of renewable energy but I don’t see going from a few percent of our primary energy consumption to even 20% in less than a few decades no matter how much we may want to.

OP: What have we learned over the past year about Japan’s alternatives to nuclear energy?

Arthur Berman: We have learned that it takes a lot of coal to replace nuclear energy when countries like Japan and Germany made bold decisions to close nuclear capacity. We also learned that energy got very expensive in a hurry. I say that we learned. I mean that the past year confirmed what many of us anticipated.

OP: Back in the US, we have closely followed the blowback from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed new carbon emissions standards for power plants, which would make it impossible for new coal-fired plants to be built without the implementation of carbon capture and sequestration technology, or “clean-coal” tech. Is this a feasible strategy in your opinion?

Arthur Berman: I’m not an expert on clean coal technology either but I am confident that almost anything is possible if cost doesn’t matter. This is as true about carbon capture from coal as it is about shale gas production. Energy is an incredibly complex topic and decisions are being made by bureaucrats and politicians with little background in energy or the energy business. I don’t see any possibility of a good outcome under these circumstances.

OP: Is CCS far enough along to serve as a sound basis for a national climate change policy?

Arthur Berman: Climate-change activism is a train that has left the station. If you’ve missed it, too bad. If you’re on board, good luck.

The good news is that the US does not have an energy policy and is equally unlikely to get a climate change policy for all of the same reasons. I fear putting climate change policy in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians more than I fear climate change (which I fear).

=================

Who is Arthur Berman?

Arthur Berman is a geological consultant with thirty-four years of experience in petroleum exploration and production. He is currently consulting for several E&P companies and capital groups in the energy sector. He frequently gives keynote addresses for investment conferences and is interviewed about energy topics on television, radio, and national print and web publications including CNBC, CNN, Platt’s Energy Week, BNN, Bloomberg, Platt’s, Financial Times, and New York Times. You can find out more about Arthur by visiting his website: http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com (http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com/)

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/30/interview-energy-expert-arthur-berman/#x2YU9HezCIleLXhX.99

[boutons_deux]

U.S. Shale-Oil Boom May Not Last as Fracking Wells Lack Staying Power

Chesapeake Energy’s (CHK) Serenity 1-3H well near Oklahoma City came in as a gusher in 2009, pumping more than 1,200 barrels of oil a day and kicking off a rush to drill that extended into Kansas. Now the well produces less than 100 barrels a day, state records show. Serenity’s swift decline sheds light on a dirty secret of the oil boom: It may not last.

Shale wells start strong and fade fast, and producers are drilling at a breakneck pace to hold output steady. In the fields, this incessant need to drill is known as the Red Queen, after the character in Through the Looking-Glass who tells Alice, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

The U.S. is producing 7.8 million barrels of oil a day, more than it has in a quarter-century. Crude from shale formations has cut reliance on imports and put the U.S. closer to energy independence than it’s been since 1989. The International Energy Agency predicted last year that the U.S. would overtake Saudi Arabia by 2020 as the world’s largest producer.

Whether current production can hold up is the subject of debate. David Hughes, a geoscientist and president of Global Sustainability Research, has examined the life span of shale wells. “The Red Queen syndrome just gets worse and worse and worse,” he says.

“The higher production goes, the more wells you need to offset the decline.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-dot-shale-oil-boom-may-not-last-as-fracking-wells-lack-staying-power

More fracking, more water used, poisoned, taken out of the water cycle. lovely.

Thanks, Sky People!

[mouse]

NIMBYism by CFO (chief fracking officer)

Exxon CEO Joins Lawsuit to Stop Fracking Near His Home (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/21/1279443/-Exxon-CEO-Joins-Lawsuit-to-Stop-Fracking-Near-His-Home)


http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/70175/large/Smiling_rex_tillerson.jpg?1393020334

Tillerson has joined a lawsuit that cites fracking’s consequences in order to block the construction of a 160-foot water tower next to his and his wife’s Texas home.

The Wall Street Journal reports the tower would supply water to a nearby fracking site, and the plaintiffs argue the project would cause too much noise and traffic from hauling the water from the tower to the drilling site.

The water tower, owned by Cross Timbers Water Supply Corporation, “will sell water to oil and gas explorers for fracing [sic] shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks on FM 407, creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” the suit says.

Though Tillerson’s name is on the lawsuit, a lawyer representing him said his concern is about the devaluation of his property, not fracking specifically. (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/21/3316881/exxon-ceo-protests-fracking/)

When he is acting as Exxon CEO, not a homeowner, Tillerson has lashed out at fracking critics and proponents of regulation. “This type of dysfunctional regulation is holding back the American economic recovery, growth, and global competitiveness,” he said in 2012.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/21/1279443/-Exxon-CEO-Joins-Lawsuit-to-Stop-Fracking-Near-His-Home?detail=email#

:lol

[boutons_deux]

Vast oil trove trapped in Monterey Shale formation

San Joaquin Valley's Monterey Shale formation may hold 15 billion barrels of oil, but no one has found an affordable way to extract it.

Monterey Shale formation, which covers 1,750 square miles, roughly from Bakersfield to Fresno.

But getting at that oil isn't easy. The Monterey Shale is unlike other oil shale formations across the United States. In those booming oil fields, reserves are pooled in orderly strata of rock. Once the rock is cracked open by fracking or other means, operators can sink a single well with multiple horizontal shafts and pull in oil from a wide area.

California's geology is far more complicated. The earth under the Monterey Shale has undergone constant seismic reshaping that has folded, stacked and fractured the substrate, trapping the oil in accordion pleats of hard rock at depths of up to 12,000 feet. To reach the crude using conventional methods requires oil companies to drill far-deeper wells, and more of them — a prohibitively expensive undertaking.

To crack the code, companies are busily drilling test wells here, using various fracking and acidization techniques in search of cheaper solutions. So far, no one seems to have found a method to profitably extract the oil.

"Very smart engineers are spending their waking hours trying to come up with the magic formula," said Rock Zierman, chief executive of the California Independent Petroleum Assn., a trade group that has many Monterey Shale prospectors among its members.

"What we do know is there is a heck of lot of oil down there," Zierman said. "What we don't know is how we can get it out of the ground in an economically viable way to justify the heavy investment."

The shallow, 1,000-foot wells in the established Bakersfield oil patch might cost a hundred thousand dollars to sink. In the Monterey formation, that expense might run to $5 million, and with every chance of yielding a dry hole.

Despite the difficulty getting at the oil, the potential bonanza is too big for many oil companies to ignore.

In Kern County — where the bulk of the Monterey formation lies — available land for drilling has nearly all been snapped up. Speculators are believed to be responsible for driving up the cost of obtaining leases.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-monterey-shale-20140407,0,1931485.story#ixzz2yCtAXZSO

An implicit signal is that why do oil companies go after such difficult, risky oil like Monterey shale, go after low eROI like bitumen, drill 5 miles deep in the Gulf and elsewhere?

Because, as with coal, all the easy oil is going or gone, aka, peak "easy" oil is now past. And Saudi Arabia won't even tell us their situation.

[pgardn]

Arthur Berman predicted in 2009 that the Haynesville Shale would never turn commercial because there would not be enough gas. Well they found much more than his waste of time predictions. Then he admitted he had erred in underestimating, And stated it would be a minor producer in 2010. In 2011 Haynesville became the largest producer in the US.

While I appreciate his watchdog status, all need to understand experts from both sides can be very wrong (and worse know they are wrong) We need guys like Berman. But we need them to be correct as well. Lay it all on the table. I have screwed up before but imo... A little of this goes a long way.

Now the flat out dirty accounting he has exposed is very useful. More of that, less with the future assessments.

[boutons_deux]

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block. Yesterday on the program we heard about the oil boom in South Texas along the Eagle Ford Shale. The drilling and fracking have brought an influx of industry and cash to formerly impoverished communities.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: It's progress. It has provided opportunity beyond belief, beyond what anybody could've imagined.

BLOCK: But there's a serious environmental and health toll as well, according to an investigative team that looked into pollution from the boom. The reporters decided to focus not on water pollution but on what they consider an equally serious problem that gets less attention: air pollution. Jim Morris is senior investigative reporter with the Center for Public Integrity and he led the eight-month investigation along with InsideClimate news and the Weather Channel. Morris describes the emissions as a toxic soup of chemicals being released into the air day in and day out along the Eagle Ford Shale.

JIM MORRIS: It's a combination of what's called volatile organic compounds and that's carcinogens like benzene would be an example. Formaldehyde would be another. There's a long list of these chemicals. On top of that you've got sulphur dioxide, which is a component of smog. It's a respiratory irritant so people who already have or are prone to asthma for example, if they're exposed to sulphur dioxide it gets immeasurably worse.

BLOCK: And when you think about the health effects of these emissions, let's listen to voices of three people who live in the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale. They're from Karnes County. These are people you interviewed for a video report that you produced with the Weather Channel and InsideClimate News.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO INTERVIEW)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: For myself I've experienced a lot of difficulty with my breathing.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: I used to come out here this very park before and run literally about four or five miles a day without any problems. Now I rarely get a mile off before I start choking. It's just something heavier with the air.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I have two-and-a-half acres and I can't bring my grandchild out here to enjoy it because I'm afraid for his health.

BLOCK: Jim Morris, how common were these complaints and is there medical evidence to back up what they're saying?

MORRIS: The complaints we heard were very common. We reviewed about 300 complaints that had been filed by citizens of the Eagle Ford with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and just saw a lot of common threads, headaches, nausea, breathing difficulties, nosebleeds. And when you look at the science on some of the chemicals that are coming out of these operations, you see those are the very symptoms that would be expected to be associated with emissions from the oil and gas industry.

BLOCK: Let's talk about the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, TCEQ, which is in charge of monitoring most air emissions. What's their track record?

MORRIS: The TCEQ's track record is not good either in terms of monitoring for toxics in the air - they've only got five permanent monitors in the entire Eagle Ford Shale, which is 20,000 square miles, twice the size of the State of Massachusetts.

BLOCK: And by monitor you mean an actual physical station (unintelligible)...

MORRIS: Physical station. We saw one in Floresville, Texas, which is on the sort of northern fringe of the shale play. And the other four are down on the border around Laredo. And so they don't have these permanent monitors in places where there's heavy drilling. So the record is not good in that regard. TCEQ's record on enforcement is not good either. We looked at nearly 300 complaints that have been filed by residents of the Eagle Ford. And there were 164 violations that were documented by the TCEQ as a result of those complaints.

So they did find problems, but then we found that out of those 164 violations there were only two fines levied, the biggest of which was about $14,000. So it's not much of a stretch to see why companies don't really take that agency very seriously.

BLOCK: When you confronted folks from the oil industry with your reporting and said, look we're hearing all these complaints about health effects from air pollution emissions, from oil production facilities, what did they say? What's the response from the oil industry to this?

MORRIS: Well, the first problem we had was getting somebody to respond. We had a heck of a time when we were in Texas. And between us and InsideClimate News and the Weather Channel we made, I want to say, eight separate trips down there.

So there were plenty of opportunities to do on-the-ground, face-to-face, in some cases on-camera interviews with representatives of some of the big oil companies in the Eagle Ford, like Marathon Oil for example or Conoco Philips. And they all declined. They didn't want to talk to us. A couple of them answered questions in writing.

We did do an interview with a gentleman here in Washington named Steve Everley who's with a group called Energy in Depth. And his response was, there's no evidence that these emissions are causing any harm. The problem is, a lot of the concern associated with chemicals like benzene, you know, if it's a carcinogen you're not going to see the problem right away. You're going to see it 10, 20, 30 years down the road.

BLOCK: There is one other aspect too that's in your reporting which is no surprise, the oil and gas industry, especially in Texas, is immensely politically powerful.

MORRIS: I think what surprised us is that it's even more powerful than we realized. We did an analysis as part of our reporting and found legislators or their spouses had direct financial interest in the Eagle Ford. In other words, either got royalties from or held stock in companies that were actively drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale.

BLOCK: Why doesn't the federal Environmental Protection Agency step in if there are concerns that the state isn't doing its job in Texas on monitoring air pollution? What about the EPA?

MORRIS: That is a very good question and it's one that we're going to be asking in some of our follow-up stories. I mean, the states are responsible for enforcing the Federal Clean Air Act with the EPA as a supposed backstop. But there's really no evidence that the EPA has stepped in in Texas or will step in. And so that's a question we're going to be asking, I hope of the regional EPA administrator in the very near future.

BLOCK: Jim Morris, Thanks for coming in.

MORRIS: Thank you.

BLOCK: Jim Morris with the Center for Public Integrity. He led an eight-month investigation looking into air pollution from the Eagle Ford Shale.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=301882345

[boutons_deux]

Report offers grim predictions for South Texas air quality amid Eagle Ford oil boom


What might the oil- and gas-rich Eagle Ford Shale region of South Texas look like in 2018?

A newly released but largely unnoticed study commissioned by the state of Texas makes some striking projections:



The number of wells drilled in the 20,000-square-mile region could quadruple, from about 8,000 today to 32,000.
Oil production could leap from 363 million barrels per year to as much as 761 million.
Airborne releases of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) could increase 281 percent during the peak ozone season compared to 2012 emissions. VOCs, commonly found at oil and gas production sites, can cause respiratory and neurological problems. Some, like benzene, can cause cancer.
Nitrogen oxides — which react with VOCs in sunlight to create ground-level ozone, the main component of smog — could increase 69 percent during the peak ozone season.


These projections are included in a study prepared by scientists (http://www.aacog.com/DocumentCenter/View/19069) with the Alamo Area Council of Governments (AACOG) in San Antonio and paid for by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The study was designed to determine the extent to which oil and gas development in the Eagle Ford region is contributing to rising ozone levels in the San Antonio metropolitan area, which lies north of much of the drilling. San Antonio’s ozone readings have violated federal air quality standards since August 2012, making the city vulnerable to sanctions under the Clean Air Act.

The study’s findings also have implications beyond San Antonio.

In February, the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel produced a series of reports (https://www.publicintegrity.org/environment/big-oil-bad-air) about air quality in the Eagle Ford and found that the Texas regulatory system does more to protect the gas and oil industry than the public. The TCEQ has installed only five permanent air monitors in the region, which is nearly twice the size of Massachusetts, and all of them are on the fringes of the shale play, far from the heavy drilling areas where emissions are highest.

...

http://cloudfront-6.publicintegrity.org/files/styles/4col/public/img/EagleFordOilOutput400px.jpg?itok=BjWUR3Vl

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/04/11/14585/report-offers-grim-predictions-south-texas-air-quality-amid-eagle-ford-oil-boom?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=watchdog&utm_medium=publici-email

There's an oil glut on the Gulf Coast, but SA gasoline nearing $3.40, while the summer driving season of peak price hasn't started.

BigOil fucks us, because they can, and nobody can stop them.

Exporting crude, already started by criminal BP, will drive domestic prices higher, as BigOil makes USA compete for US oil with foreign oil buyers, exactly what will happen with US natgas sold to Asia where prices are 4x the US price.

How's that Drill Here, Drill Now working out for ya?

[boutons_deux]

Another BigOil externality, but hey, We Got Jobs!

North Dakota Finds Itself Unprepared To Handle The Radioactive Burden Of Its Fracking Boom

North Dakota recently discovered piles of garbage bags containing radioactive waste dumped by oil drillers in abandoned buildings. Now, the state is trying to catch up to an oil industry that produces an estimated 27 tons of radioactive debris from wells daily.

Existing fines have apparently not been enough to deter contractors from dumping oil socks — coiled filters that strain wastewater and accumulate low levels of radiation.

“Before the Bakken oil boom we didn’t have any of these materials being generated,” the state’s Director of Waste Management Scott Radig told the Wall Street Journal. “So it wasn’t really an issue.”

The state is in the process of drafting rules, out in June, that require oil companies to properly store the waste in leak-proof containers. Eventually, they must move these oil socks to certified dumps. However, North Dakota has no facilities to process this level of radioactive waste. According to the Wall Street Journal, the closest facilities are hundreds of miles away in states like Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Montana.

Even though it is illegal, contractors have taken the occasional shortcut to dump the oil socks in buildings, on the side of the road, or at landfills. And the rate of dumping incidents has been on the rise as drilling activity has increased in the Bakken shale region, according to one North Dakota Department of Health study. Dump operators now even routinely screen garbage for radiation.

If things don’t improve, oil drillers may risk turning parts of the state into EPA Superfund sites, which would mean a long and expensive clean-up.

North Dakota’s oil activity has delivered a string of bad news for the area that disrupts the rosy portrayal of the state’s economic growth. The oil boom has brought along with it more frequent oil and wastewater spills, skyrocketing rent and homelessness, as well as drug addiction and STDs.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/16/3427345/north-dakota-radioactive-waste-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.

So, Why Is This The First Juried Fracking Case?

If you want details about the health and property impacts, you can check out boots-on-the-ground Texas blogger TXsharon (http://www.texassharon.com/2014/04/08/they-are-calling-this-the-first-fracking-case-on-trial/), who has covered the case in depth from the beginning, including site visits, family interviews, and advocacy work with other journalists, government agencies, and other stakeholders.

For those of you whose stomachs unsettle easily, let’s just say that the health impacts were severe, which leads to the following question: if the health impacts of fracking are that obvious and extreme, given the thousands of fracking wells that have been drilled in recent years close by populated areas why is this the first case to go to trial?

There could be any number of reasons for that, including — as Aruba Petroleum argues — the verdict was wrong, or that Aruba was operating far outside the bounds of standard safety practices.
However, one factor at work is the common practice of settling personal injury claims in private, with the plaintiffs forbidden forever from discussing the case.

That’s not unusual as far as personal injury settlements go, but in the case of fracking it leads to a situation in which a public health threat is enabled to continue in multiple states across the country, clearly indicating the need for federal regulation, simply because there is not enough information sharing to establish it as a broad problem.

For more on that angle check out Bloomberg.com, which had a good article on fracking gag orders (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-06/drillers-silence-fracking-claims-with-sealed-settlements.html) last year under the header “Drillers Silence Fracking Claims With Sealed Settlements.”

Here’s the teaser:

The energy industry claims there’s no proof fracking hurts the environment, but it turns out they’ve made sure there’s no proof, by paying complainers in exchange for their silence.


The report highlights a Pennsylvania case but it’s based on a review of hundreds of filings in multiple states, reaching this conclusion:

The strategy keeps data from regulators, policymakers, the news media and health researchers, and makes it difficult to challenge the industry’s claim that fracking has never tainted anyone’s water.


Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/24/3-million-texas-fracking-verdict-shows-true-cost-of-gas/#67pcpLxzeAmAvJHp.99

[Nbadan]

If things don’t improve, oil drillers may risk turning parts of the state into EPA Superfund sites, which would mean a long and expensive clean-up.

TX could see the same thing in the future....with lax state oversight and the RR commission rubber-stamping well leases, we don't know the messes that some of these flight by night exploration and drilling companies are doing in south Texas....and when it's time to pay to clean up the mess these companies will declare bankruptcy and the state, that means you and me will be left footing the bill...

[boutons_deux]

petro state TX

Texas Pulls Funding From Air-Quality Program Over Released Data

San Antonio’s air quality has been deteriorating since 2008, the same year drilling began in the nearby Eagle Ford Shale, site of one of the nation’s biggest energy booms. The air pollution is now so bad that metropolitan San Antonio could soon be declared in nonattainment with federal standards for ozone, the main component of smog. If that happens, it could be subject to sanctions from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, including increased EPA oversight for new development projects.

Local officials hope to avoid that fate by curbing pollution through voluntary measures, but first they need to understand where the emissions are coming from. Because San Antonio is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, much of the ozone-forming chemicals are likely emitted by cars and trucks. But AACOG knew little about the contributions from oil and gas drilling.

AACOG released the first part of the study, an emission inventory of the Eagle Ford, on April 4. It projected a dramatic increase in air emissions by 2018 during peak ozone season, including a possible 281 percent increase in releases of volatile organic compounds, which react with nitrogen oxides to form ozone. More details are expected in the second part, a photochemical model that explains how the emissions affect San Antonio’s ozone levels.

About a week after the emission inventory was released, the Austin American-Statesman reported that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which funded the study, had slashed AACOG’s air-quality planning budget by 25 percent because an AACOG employee had made some of the draft results public. AACOG’s contract with the TCEQ prohibited AACOG from releasing any results without TCEQ approval.

TCEQ spokesman Terry Clawson said the contract was breached when AACOG posted a “summary presentation” on its website. He declined to identify the person responsible for the posting, and said AACOG management was notified of the consequences soon after TCEQ decided to cut the agency’s budget.

InsideClimate News and the Center for Public Integrity have been reporting on air quality problems in the Eagle Ford for the past year. The initial group of stories stemming from the investigation, published in February, showed that state regulators and politicians are more focused on protecting the industry than protecting the public.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/texas-pulls-funding-air-quality-program-released-data/

BigOil profits before people and environment, yawn.

[Winehole23]

Dallas jury awards $2.9 million in fracking lawsuit: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/25/justice/texas-family-wins-fracking-lawsuit/index.html

[boutons_deux]

Dallas jury awards $2.9 million in fracking lawsuit: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/25/justice/texas-family-wins-fracking-lawsuit/index.html

will be appealed endlessly

[vy65]

will be appealed endlessly

So what?

[boutons_deux]

So what?

As with Exxon Valdez, the plaintiffs will be screwed by the army of lawyers' onslaught that will exploit the legal system to reduce or zero the penalty, while aiming to get it overturned completely. Sky People will win.

[vy65]

As with Exxon Valdez, the plaintiffs will be screwed by the army of lawyers' onslaught that will exploit the legal system to reduce or zero the penalty, while aiming to get it overturned completely. Sky People will win.

What's to say that the company didn't get fucked over by the jury? And that the appeal will right a wrong? How may lawyers do you think are in this army you speak of?

Lol Exxon Valdez. Can you explain the plaintiffs claims, i.e., how they were injured?

[boutons_deux]

What's to say that the company didn't get fucked over by the jury? And that the appeal will right a wrong? How may lawyers do you think are in this army you speak of?

Lol Exxon Valdez. Can you explain the plaintiffs claims, i.e., how they were injured?

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/03/20/environmental-damage-of-exxon-valdez-oil-spill-lingers-quarter-century-later/

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/03/exxon-valdez-spill-25-years-alaska-2014324101725585439.html

GFY

[vy65]

Very good. You can post links about the Exxon Valdez, I'm impressed.

This case is not 1) a soil contamination case 2) an oil spill/oil contamination case and 3) a true "fracking" case -- there's no claim of groundwater contamination.

Given your silence on the other questions and your continued comparisons of Aruba to Exxon (lol) I'll just keep on thinking you have no fucking clue what you're talking about

[boutons_deux]

Very good. You can post links about the Exxon Valdez, I'm impressed.

This case is not 1) a soil contamination case 2) an oil spill/oil contamination case and 3) a true "fracking" case -- there's no claim of groundwater contamination.

Given your silence on the other questions and your continued comparisons of Aruba to Exxon (lol) I'll just keep on thinking you have no fucking clue what you're talking about

I used Exxon Valdez and how Exxon's legal army strung out the payment, got it reduced to a few $B, while about 1/4 of the plaintiffs died before they got they trivial payout.

I expect BigOil/frackers will contribute to the costs of Dallas verdict appeal since to let it stand would set a precedent for other plaintiffs whose land/water/air/health was fucked up by fracking.

[vy65]

I used Exxon Valdez and how Exxon's legal army strung out the payment, got it reduced to a few $B, while about 1/4 of the plaintiffs died before they got they trivial payout.

And Aruba has the same litigation budget that Exxon has, right?


I expect BigOil/frackers will contribute to the costs of Dallas verdict appeal since to let it stand would set a precedent for other plaintiffs whose land/water/air/health was fucked up by fracking.

lol you expect. In your legal expertise, right? I'm pretty sure that if what you suggest happened, there'd be numerous conflict of interests issues. Unless you're afraid of amicus curiae briefs :lol

All this is besides the point - why are you so sure the verdict is right? Did you hear all the evidence?

[boutons_deux]

And Aruba has the same litigation budget that Exxon has, right?

lol you expect. In your legal expertise, right? I'm pretty sure that if what you suggest happened, there'd be numerous conflict of interests issues. Unless you're afraid of amicus curiae briefs :lol

All this is besides the point - why are you so sure the verdict is right? Did you hear all the evidence?

This judgement would be a precedent for ALL of the fracking industry, so BigOil/frackers all have huge interest in appealing/reversing this judgement.

I wasn't in the court room so I defer to the jurors and judge, and the plaintiff's experts who prevailed over the defendant's experts:

"After a two-week trial that ended Tuesday -- Earth Day, coincidentally -- a Dallas jury awarded the Parr family $2.9 million for personal injury and property damages in the family's lawsuit against Plano-based Aruba Petroleum Inc."

[vy65]

Can you explain why this is a fracking case?

I'm glad to see you admitting you have no basis for thinking the verdict is right or wrong since you weren't there.

Lol deferring to the jurors. Judges have no say in deliberations.

[Winehole23]

Jury heard all the evidence the judge allowed, and gave a big award to the plaintiffs. You think you know better?

[Winehole23]

was someone injured? was it plausibly related to mineral extraction?

[Winehole23]

you weren't in the courtroom either, mister.

[vy65]

you weren't in the courtroom either, mister.

Why are you so sure of that?

[boutons_deux]

$3 Million Award in Drilling Suit Sparks Legal Worries

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/30/family-near-drilling-activity-awarded-3-million-su/

[vy65]

was someone injured? was it plausibly related to mineral extraction?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the evidentiary standard is a preponderance -- I'm not so sure that's the same thing as plausibility.

[Winehole23]

you're the lawyer, educate me

[Winehole23]

Why are you so sure of that?because you're posting about it here

[cantthinkofanything]

As with Exxon Valdez, the plaintiffs will be screwed by the army of lawyers' onslaught that will exploit the legal system to reduce or zero the penalty, while aiming to get it overturned completely. Sky People will win.

The plaintiffs already settled out of court with other operators involved. And now they are able to make a point in the courts as well.

[vy65]

you're the lawyer, educate me

Don't spout off flippant shit if you're not ready to back it up. Just because something is reasonable (plausible) doesn't mean that it is more likely than not true (preponderance)

[vy65]

because you're posting about it here

Trial concluded a week ago this past Monday. My firm, which represents a lot of energy companies, had myself and a partner there observing, along with lawyers from other firms.

[vy65]

Jury heard all the evidence the judge allowed, and gave a big award to the plaintiffs. You think you know better?

The average juror does not have the attention span to sit through a two week trial, digest complicated causation arguments, properly evaluate evidence, and reach the right result. So yes, I do know better.

[Winehole23]

Trial concluded a week ago this past Monday. My firm, which represents a lot of energy companies, had myself and a partner there observing, along with lawyers from other firms.no appeals then?

[Winehole23]

The average juror does not have the attention span to sit through a two week trial, digest complicated causation arguments, properly evaluate evidence, and reach the right result. So yes, I do know better.they were wrong to rule against your client?

[Winehole23]

Don't spout off flippant shit if you're not ready to back it up. Just because something is reasonable (plausible) doesn't mean that it is more likely than not true (preponderance)jury thought the evidence met the preponderance standard. you lost that one.

[vy65]

no appeals then?

Don't know. Not my case. I was responding to your claim that I wasn't there.

[vy65]

they were wrong to rule against your client?

Again, not my client. And not responsive. From what I saw, they weren't paying attention and got it wrong. Do you have any basis to disagree.

[vy65]

jury thought the evidence met the preponderance standard. you lost that one.

I didn't lose. Not my case. And I wouldn't put much purchase in what the jury thought.

[Winehole23]

indeed, your contempt for the jury is palpable.

[vy65]

indeed, your contempt for the jury is palpable.

And merited as well. You've contributed a lot to this conversation. Thanks.

[Winehole23]

you've shared nothing but your scorn for other posters and adverse legal results for your own firm. thank you.

[vy65]

you've shared nothing but your scorn for other posters and adverse legal results for your own firm. thank you.

And my own personal take on the trial. Which you seem to not get. But I guess that's not important when you have to trot out the same tired cliches while towing the party line, eh comrade?

[Winehole23]

lol red baiting

[Winehole23]

And my own personal take on the trial. Which you seem to not getI do get it. It's a naked appeal to authority. Please pardon me for not genuflecting.

[vy65]

No, it's a naked appeal to someone who actually 1) heard the evidence at trial and 2) observed the jury. Your not getting it is still on display.

[vy65]

WH, I'd be more than happy to discuss any substantive reasons why my take on the evidence at testimony at trial is wrong or misguided. For example, let's discuss the reasons why you thought that the defendants toxicologist and air quality experts were not credible. Shall we?

[CosmicCowboy]

http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20121028/634.MoviePopcornBox.mh.112812.jpg

Enjoying watching vy65 destroy winehole

[MannyIsGod]

WH, I'd be more than happy to discuss any substantive reasons why my take on the evidence at testimony at trial is wrong or misguided. For example, let's discuss the reasons why you thought that the defendants toxicologist and air quality experts were not credible. Shall we?

I'd actually be interested in hearing why that is the case.

[Th'Pusher]

You think vy65 is an objective observer here? While this wasn't his case, he litigates for the players on the losing side. Not really surprised he's butthurt about the outcome. Are you?

[MannyIsGod]

LOL what?

I'm interested in what was actually discussed and decided. I am extremely skeptical that this family was made ill by the wells, quite frankly. I'd like to hear the viewpoint. Why are you so butthurt? Jesus.

[Th'Pusher]

LOL what?

I'm interested in what was actually discussed and decided. I am extremely skeptical that this family was made ill by the wells, quite frankly. I'd like to hear the viewpoint. Why are you so butthurt? Jesus.

My response was directed at CC. I should have quoted him but I didn't want to repost the obnoxious popcorn image.

Like you, I'd also like to hear the defendants toxicologist and air quality experts testimony so that I could determine for myself if they were credible. But I don't think vy65 is an objective source of the information for the reasons stated upstream. And quite frankly, I'm not interested enough to root through the court proceedings. I'm anything but butthurt. More like apathetic.

[vy65]

I'd actually be interested in hearing why that is the case.

1. TCEQ air sampling was conducted at the defendants pad sites -- not at the plaintiffs property.

2. Very little sampling was conducted at the plaintiffs property -- not their house, but their 40 acre tract.

3. Of the sampling done on their property, BTEX was found at levels orders of magnitude less than regulated alert levels (amcv or ESL).

4. The model used by the plaintiffs expert didn't distinguish between the defendant and all other operators in the area (who operate over 100 wells in total compared to defendants 22)

5. Plaintiffs expert -- a soul chemist with no experience in air quality -- has never been to the Barnett shale, never been to a gas well, and has never modeled air.

6. The air model used didn't account for any met data

7. The "expert" claimed things that a first year chemistry student would know was wrong -- ie that heavier air particles don't settle to the ground.

8. There was no evaluation of dose for any of plaintiffs claimed health effects.

Should I continue?

[MannyIsGod]

Some of that is interesting. On a side note, I was advised to make sure I try to visit the sites I research because lawyers will ask you that if you're called in as an expert witness. Seems like thats true!

I don't think #6 is all that important as over the course of time it weather data evens out. Assuming they at least took into account prevailing winds and normal temperature and humidity. No sampling over the limit on the property is more suspect though. In cases like these does the jury have to justify their conclusion?

[Winehole23]

LOL what?

I'm interested in what was actually discussed and decided. I am extremely skeptical that this family was made ill by the wells, quite frankly. I'd like to hear the viewpoint. Why are you so butthurt? Jesus.Because his firm lost. At least he gave color to it. His first response was a pure appeal to authority: "I was there. I know better"

[Winehole23]

and expected me, of all people, to bow down to that.

hard to believe he didn't know the likely reply.

[Winehole23]

btw, Manny, why do you believe the complaints are spurious?

Is mineral extraction totally harmless to those nearby?

[CosmicCowboy]

Because his firm lost. At least he gave color to it. His first response was a pure appeal to authority: "I was there. I know better"

You sure have shitty reading comprehension.

It wasn't his firms case.

[vy65]

Some of that is interesting. On a side note, I was advised to make sure I try to visit the sites I research because lawyers will ask you that if you're called in as an expert witness. Seems like thats true!

I don't think #6 is all that important as over the course of time it weather data evens out. Assuming they at least took into account prevailing winds and normal temperature and humidity. No sampling over the limit on the property is more suspect though. In cases like these does the jury have to justify their conclusion?

The house itself was approximately a thousand feet away from the samples that were used as the basis for the model. There were some horror videos played at trial showing the drilling and completion phases of a well (and the loud sounds, bright lights, etc). Turned out those were taken by another property owner who lived approximately 300 feet away from a well.

No, the jury doesn't have to provide an explanation or reason for their answers to the charge. If they wish, they can be interviewed by the lawyers (although they never want to do so).

[vy65]

Because his firm lost. At least he gave color to it. His first response was a pure appeal to authority: "I was there. I know better"

Again, I'm more than happy to discuss any substantive point. I'd be really greatful if we could discuss why my impression of the testimony and evidence at trial should have resulted in a defense verdict.

[vy65]

LOL what?

I'm interested in what was actually discussed and decided. I am extremely skeptical that this family was made ill by the wells, quite frankly. I'd like to hear the viewpoint. Why are you so butthurt? Jesus.

One other thing I forgot to mention. The father and mother had a long history of health symptoms prefacing any drilling done by the defendants (they had nose bleeds, rashes, etc). They're also heavy smokers. They also didn't bring a medical expert linking their new symptoms of the same things to the defendants drilling.

[vy65]

Because his firm lost. At least he gave color to it. His first response was a pure appeal to authority: "I was there. I know better"

That's not an appeal to authority. That's an appeal to personal knowledge. Why's it invalid here?

[vy65]

btw, Manny, why do you believe the complaints are spurious?

Is mineral extraction totally harmless to those nearby?

Interesting. So is the entire oil and gas industry on trial, or just the defendant? Why is the industry writ large relevant to the specific case here?

[boutons_deux]

"is the entire oil and gas industry on trial"

precedents matter.

With BigCarbon, there is NO presumption of innocence. That presumption applies only to Human-Americans, not Corporate-Americans.

BigCarbon is presumed, based on its long, nasty, diverse history, guilty of human and environmental injury, destruction until proven otherwise.

[pgardn]

"is the entire oil and gas industry on trial"

precedents matter.

With BigCarbon, there is NO presumption of innocence. That presumption applies only to Human-Americans, not Corporate-Americans.

BigCarbon is presumed, based on ts long, nasty, diverse history, guilty of human and environmental injury, destruction until proven otherwise.




Sit DOWN Mr. Darrow !
I will have order in my court!

- excerpt from the highly anticipated legal thriller, Judge Boots Meets Clarence For Coffee

[vy65]

Was big carbon on trial here? Do you know how big the defendant was?

Lol no presumption of innocence.
Lol criminal law presumptions irrelevant in a civil trial
Lol selective justice
Lol answering for the "crimes" of others

[pgardn]

and expected me, of all people, to bow down to that.

hard to believe he didn't know the likely reply.

So you don't bow.
Down anyways...

Good to know when approaching a bridge on top of a speeding train while in mortal combat with a bad guy.

[boutons_deux]

Was big carbon on trial here? Do you know how big the defendant was?

Lol no presumption of innocence.
Lol criminal law presumptions irrelevant in a civil trial
Lol selective justice
Lol answering for the "crimes" of others

If this and other victims of BigCarbon win, then maybe fracking will be finally and correctly put under the Clean Water Act and other EPA regs, instead of the cowboy free-for-all, fly-by-night drilling (I assume Repugs will defund/castrate all such regulatory agencies).

[vy65]

BD, you do realize this was an air -- not water -- case, right? There was literally no claim of groundwater comtination.

[boutons_deux]

BD, you do realize this was an air -- not water -- case, right? There was literally no claim of groundwater comtination.

do you realize that EPA regulates air AND water?

BigOil is raping the earth and dumping the external costs on Human-Americans (and human being anywhere) and is effectively untouchable.

Fuck you and fucking legal fly-fucking

[vy65]

Legal fly fucking aside, this case isn't precedent for groundwater claims

[MannyIsGod]

btw, Manny, why do you believe the complaints are spurious?

Is mineral extraction totally harmless to those nearby?

Is mineral extraction totally harmless to those nearby? It can be. But we can stop calling this mineral extraction as this is fracking and not mining. I'm skeptical because I've never seen any convincing evidence that fracking produces toxic plumes that can cause harm like this. This also seems to be quite the isolated case and I've yet to see a smoking gun. Granted, I haven't looked at the data for the case in particular, but if no air samples at the home were found to be over the safe limits at any point.

There's also the fact that the only other time I've seen such reactionary hate toward a technology like fracking is with GMO crops. There are issues and it should be regulated properly, but fracking - in my opinion - is no where near the boogey man it is made out to be. And I'd like to think that I'm quite environmentally conscious.

[Winehole23]

That's not an appeal to authority. That's an appeal to personal knowledge. Why's it invalid here?which you merely waved at to start with. like I said, you've at least given it color.

[CosmicCowboy]

Is mineral extraction totally harmless to those nearby? It can be. But we can stop calling this mineral extraction as this is fracking and not mining. I'm skeptical because I've never seen any convincing evidence that fracking produces toxic plumes that can cause harm like this. This also seems to be quite the isolated case and I've yet to see a smoking gun. Granted, I haven't looked at the data for the case in particular, but if no air samples at the home were found to be over the safe limits at any point.

There's also the fact that the only other time I've seen such reactionary hate toward a technology like fracking is with GMO crops. There are issues and it should be regulated properly, but fracking - in my opinion - is no where near the boogey man it is made out to be. And I'd like to think that I'm quite environmentally conscious.

well said

[vy65]

Is mineral extraction totally harmless to those nearby? It can be. But we can stop calling this mineral extraction as this is fracking and not mining. I'm skeptical because I've never seen any convincing evidence that fracking produces toxic plumes that can cause harm like this. This also seems to be quite the isolated case and I've yet to see a smoking gun. Granted, I haven't looked at the data for the case in particular, but if no air samples at the home were found to be over the safe limits at any point.

There's also the fact that the only other time I've seen such reactionary hate toward a technology like fracking is with GMO crops. There are issues and it should be regulated properly, but fracking - in my opinion - is no where near the boogey man it is made out to be. And I'd like to think that I'm quite environmentally conscious.

I may have missed this point a little earlier, but are you starting to provide some expert witness services?

[Winehole23]

But we can stop calling this mineral extraction as this is fracking and not mining.fracking isn't an extraction technique?

[vy65]

which you merely waved at to start with. like I said, you've at least given it color.

Sorry, do you have a point?

[vy65]

fracking isn't an extraction technique?

Fracking isn't mining in the conventional sense

[Winehole23]

saying you know better without saying what it is you know is not distinguishable from an appeal to authority but, thanks for finally sharing your opinion about the case. obviously, the jury didn't find it persuasive.

[Winehole23]

fine, I'll just say fracking if that makes you both happy.

[MannyIsGod]

fracking isn't an extraction technique?

Its a specific extraction technique its not all of mineral extraction techniques. Call it what you want though.

[Winehole23]

fracking is fine

[MannyIsGod]

I may have missed this point a little earlier, but are you starting to provide some expert witness services?

No. I was merely given guidance on that issue by an advisor who regularly is called in as an expert witness on climate and hydrology issues. I'm am currently working on data analysis pertaining to litigation but there's no way I'd get called in to testify. I'm far down on that totem pole. It has nothing to do with oil and gas, though. Its water use/rights related.

[vy65]

No. I was merely given guidance on that issue by an advisor who regularly is called in as an expert witness on climate and hydrology issues. I'm am currently working on data analysis pertaining to litigation but there's no way I'd get called in to testify. I'm far down on that totem pole.

I know that feel. What kind of litigation, if you don't mind me asking?

[MannyIsGod]

I know that feel. What kind of litigation, if you don't mind me asking?

Water rights. I'm doing analysis on historical water usage based on remote sensing data.

[boutons_deux]

How Fracking Is Exposing People to Radioactive Waste

In small, dispersed quantities low-level radiation is not life threatening, but what happens when those quantities start increasing in the environment, and getting into the water we drink, the fish we eat, and the soil in which our food grows?

Scientists are trying to figure that out. But it’s a difficult process to track since fracking isn’t regulated under most federal environmental laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act. That means industry is charge of policing itself a lot of the time.

Another problem is that it’s really hard to keep track of all the stuff that may become tainted by radioactive materials in the drilling process. Millions of gallons of soupy wastewater that flow back from wells after drilling and fracking can end up in a number of places. Sometimes the wastewater is simply left in lined or unlined pits to either evaporate or sink back into the ground. Other times it is sent to water treatment plants and eventually released back into rivers and streams. At times it is simply spilled or illegally dumped. It also ends up contaminating drilling mud (a more solid waste from the process), storage tanks, and equipment.

“Radionuclides in these wastes are primarily radium-226, radium-228 (http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/radium.html), and radon gas (http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/radon.html),” reports (http://www.epa.gov/radtown/drilling-waste.html)the Environmental Protection Agency. “The radon is released to the atmosphere, while the produced water and mud containing radium are placed in ponds or pits for evaporation, reuse, or recovery.”

The fact that drilling for oil or gas increases radiation is not news. Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry at Duke University (http://topics.bloomberg.com/duke-university/) told Bloomberg News (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-15/radioactive-waste-booms-with-oil-as-new-rules-mulled.html) that we’ve know that since the 1970s, but the pace and intensity of drilling now, combined with the huge amount of wastewater, is taking the issue to a new level of concern. “We are actually building up a legacy of radioactivity in hundreds of points where people have had leaks or spills around the country,” he said (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-15/radioactive-waste-booms-with-oil-as-new-rules-mulled.html).

Vengosh was part of team of researchers that turned up some troubling findings in Pennsylvania, ground zero for hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale. Their study,published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es402165b), took samples over a two-year period from Blacklick Creek just below the discharge from the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility, which accepted water from drilling operations. They found that radium levels of wastewater from fracking operations had been reduced in treatment by about 90 percent, but what was coming out of the plant still exceeded upstream levels by 200 times.

“Such elevated levels of radioactivity are above regulated levels and would normally be seen at licensed radioactive disposal facilities, according to the scientists at Duke University's Nicholas school of the environment in North Carolina,” reported (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/dangerous-radioactivity-fracking-waste-pennsylvania) Felicity Carus for the Guardian.

The biggest threat is the bioaccumulation of radium. Small quantities can build up in the environment, eventually posing a health hazard (especially if it ends up in food we eat).
It also means that even if you don’t have a drilling rig in your backyard or even your neighborhood, you may still face some risks. As Carus wrote (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/dangerous-radioactivity-fracking-waste-pennsylvania):

From January to June 2013, the 4,197 unconventional gas wells in Pennsylvania reported 3.5m barrels of fluid waste and 10.7m barrels of "produced" fluid. Most of that waste is disposed of within Pennsylvania, but some of it is also went to other states, such as Ohio and New York despite its moratorium on shale gas exploration. In July, a treatment company in New York state pleaded guilty to falsifying more than 3,000 water tests.


The Duke study came just two years after the New York Times did an exhaustive search of thousands of government and industry documents to try and assess how risky radioactive wastewater from fracking may be.

“The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle,” Ian Urbina wrote (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?ref=drillingdown&_r=0) for the Times.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/fracking-can-expose-you-radioactive-waste-even-youre-far-away-drilling-site?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

While BigOil pockets, will pocket $100Bs from fracking, Human-Americans pay for, suffer from fracking's externalities.

[pgardn]

Water rights. I'm doing analysis on historical water usage based on remote sensing data.

Will you tell water not to be so dense it's starting to tear up IH-37 as well.
I need to get my kayak down there in one piece.

I guess eventually there will be no need for water for all the cotton and milo maize I see on the way down to the coast... The growth of South Texas from all this is absolutely astounding. There is a new trucking station going up every week it seems.

[pgardn]

Somebody might eventually make a lot of money if they can figure out how to recycle that water it seems.

[boutons_deux]

Somebody might eventually make a lot of money if they can figure out how to recycle that water it seems.

Frackers should clean the water themselves, water taken out of the water cycle, and eat the costs.

[pgardn]

Frackers should clean the water themselves, water taken out of the water cycle, and eat the costs.

Water issue is huge.

Waiting for the big blow up. I imagine manny will have work for some time to come.

[boutons_deux]

Water issue is huge.

Waiting for the big blow up. I imagine manny will have work for some time to come.

won't happen. TX won't even shut down the rice farmers on the arid TX coast, never mind BigOil.

[boutons_deux]

64 Groups From Across U.S. Demand Federal Limits on Air Pollution From Fracking Wells


http://files.cdn.ecowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Screen-Shot-2014-05-13-at-3.34.34-PM.png

“More than 150 million Americans now live near oil and gas wells or above shale areas where companies are looking to drill or engage in hydraulic fracturing, and EPA needs to set standards that restrict the hazardous air pollutants they put into the air,” said Earthjustice (http://earthjustice.org/) attorney Emma Cheuse, who filed the petition on behalf of the groups (http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2014/64-environmental-and-community-groups-file-petition-demanding-federal-limits-on-toxic-oil-gas-well-air-pollution). “Oil and gas wells release chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, and respiratory disease, and EPA should protect our communities, especially our children, from exposure to these hazards.”

With fracking and other extraction methods encroaching onto urban, suburban and other populated areas, the groups say it is vitally important for the EPA to regulate the energy sector’s hazardous air pollution. The petition states that at least 100,000 tons per year of dangerous air pollution from oil and gas well sites—such as benzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, methanol, naphthalene and more—are currently being released freely into the air. These pollutants have been linked to respiratory and neurological problems, birth defects and cancer.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/13/groups-demand-air-pollution-regulation-fracking-wells/

Kock Blokked by Kock Bros/BigCarbon, ain't gonna happen. If any rules, Repugs will defund EPA and defund enforcement.

[boutons_deux]

How Green Energy Won Out Over Fossil Fuels in a Red State

Texan wind power is set to take off in a major way. From 2013 to 2014, ERCOT estimates that wind capacity will increase by 33 percent. Wind-power potential is projected to jump another 25 percent from 2014 to 2015—a sharp uptick in installation that comes on the heels of a half decade of relatively slow growth. (From 2008 to 2013, installations averaged a 7 percent increase each year).
SHARE THIS STORY (https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?app_id=%3E1420640618178948=joey&u=http://www.nationaljournal.com/new-energy-paradigm/how-green-energy-won-out-over-fossil-fuels-in-a-red-state-20140522&display=popup)
It's also on track to command an outsized share of newly minted power potential in the Lone Star State. And wind is trouncing natural gas in early estimates of capacity set to come online over the course of the next decade.

Wind-power projects are poised to make up nearly 70 percent of new power capacity in the deregulated market, according to ERCOT. The grid operator projects that more than 8,600 megawatts of wind power—enough energy to keep the lights on for hundreds of households across Texas—will be up and running by 2024.

Natural gas won't fare nearly as well. About 3,580 megawatts of gas-fired power potential are slated to come online in the same interval. If that forecast holds true, gas would make up only 28 percent of fresh power potential in the state.

What's causing wind production to soar?

In a word: infrastructure. Texan wind had been plagued by a major problem in the past. The windiest parts of the sprawling state are hundreds of miles away from its largest population centers. And the options for sending electricity from areas with the best wind potential like West Texas and the northernmost part of the state—known as the Panhandle—to cities like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio have historically been limited.

In 2005, the Texas legislature approved a sprawling network of transmission lines designed to solve exactly this problem. After years of construction, the power lines—known as Competitive Renewable Energy Zones—started shipping electrons across the state in December.

Developers say the power lines are key to unlocking the state's wind-power potential. "For the longest time there was nothing there," said Jim Swafford, the CEO of Scandia Wind Southwest. Scandia is one of several companies backing a large-scale wind-power project in the Texas Panhandle. Swafford says the power lines made it all possible. "I had people coming from all over the country who wanted to build. But they'd walk away every time, because before there was no way to get the wind from point A to point B," he said.

Statistics tell the same story. Eighty percent of the total wind capacity estimated to come online by the end of 2024 will originate from the spinning blades of wind turbines set to spring up in West Texas and the Panhandle.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/new-energy-paradigm/how-green-energy-won-out-over-fossil-fuels-in-a-red-state-20140522

[boutons_deux]

"well" of course they would screw a community to protect frackers

Railroad Commission Sides With Driller on Well Protest

The Railroad Commission on Thursday sided with Marathon Oil Company’s bid to dismiss a groundwater conservation district’s protest of its application to inject waste into part of South Texas’ Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. But the three-person commission did not address the driller’s broader argument that no groundwater district has standing to protest a disposal well application.

The Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation District, concerned about potential impacts on its water resources, had challenged Marathon’s plans to convert a well — that had been drawing brackish water for oil and gas production — into a resting place for drilling waste. Marathon asked the commission to dismiss the protest, citing the well’s location — it sits four miles outside the district’s boundaries — and arguing that no groundwater district should have standing to protest a disposal well, because such moves created regulatory uncertainty.

The commissioners voted unanimously to dismiss the protest, but only because the well sits outside of the district. :lol

http://www.texastribune.org/plus/water/vol-2/no-12/drilling-water-interests-clash-on-disposal/

because the well sits outside of the district :lol

because putting the well somewhere else woudl INCONVENIENCE BigCarbon

[Winehole23]

http://www.texastribune.org/plus/water/vol-2/no-12/drilling-water-interests-clash-on-disposal/

[boutons_deux]

Energy Department Bombshell: LNG Has No Climate Benefit For Decades, IF EVER* (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/04/3443211/energy-department-lng-no-climate-benefits/)

An explosive new report (http://energy.gov/fe/downloads/life-cycle-greenhouse-gas-perspective-exporting-liquefied-natural-gas-united-states) from the U.S. Department of Energy makes clear that Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is likely a climate-destroying misallocation of resources.

That is, if one uses estimates for methane leakage based on actual observations.

This is the same conclusion I reached back in 2012 (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/16/699601/exporting-liquefied-natural-gas-lng-bad-for-climate-poor-long-term-investment/), based on



Emerging analyses of how even a relatively low leakage rate in the natural gas production and delivery system negate its climate benefit, and
A 2009 EU report on how the energy-intensive liquefaction process and transportation further increase LNG emissions.


Again, natural gas is mostly methane (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/04/13/207884/natural-gas-is-mostly-methane/), and some 86 times (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/02/2708911/fracking-ipcc-methane/) (to as much as 105 times (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.35/full)) better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

One of the country’s leading experts on natural gas leaks told me, “a close reading of the DOE report in the context of the recent literature indicates that exporting natural gas from the U.S. as LNG is a very poor idea.”

So you may wonder why the Financial Times had this headline (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9aaf2a3a-e801-11e3-9af8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz33fytQ1bF) on its story: “US LNG exports could help countries curb emissions.”

To make LNG a climate winner, you’d have to assume levels of methane leakage that are a factor of 2 to 3 lower than what recent observations reveal. That is exactly what DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) does in its analysis (http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/05/f16/Life%20Cycle%20GHG%20Perspective%20Report.pdf), “Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Perspective on Exporting Liquefied Natural Gas from the United States.”

Here is the stunning (if confusing) chart from the DOE report:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/LNG1-638x388.jpg
FIGURE 6-9 depicts the life cycle GHG emissions for the U.S. LNG and Russian natural gas scenarios as a function of the methane leakage that occurs during extraction, processing, and transport on a 20-year basis. It also includes a reference line for the coal power scenario. The diamond-shaped data points represent the modeled leakage for each scenario and the circular data points represent the breakeven leakage at which the life cycle GHG emissions for natural gas power would equal those for the coal reference case.

Yes, despite multiple studies to the contrary, the DOE is asserting that the leakage rate is very low in the U.S. (but not in Russia, of course) — so low that U.S. LNG just happens to be better for Europe than its own coal:

“The high modeled leakage rate for the U.S. LNG scenarios (1.6 percent) is still less than the breakeven percentage for the European scenario (1.9 percent), but slightly higher than the breakeven for the Asian scenario (1.4 percent)…. As previously noted, the calculated breakeven points are the most conservative, so these results do not indicate that natural gas has a higher GHG than coal on a 20-year basis in all cases.”


The DOE is actually asserting that the absurdly low leakage rate of 1.6 percent is conservative! How conservative? Look at this table:

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/LNG2-638x114.jpg

For DOE, 1.6 percent leakage is the highest leakage rate they considered!! And 1.4% is what they expect for shale gas.

In fact, leakage rates are almost certainly at least double that! Yes, the EPA has lowered its estimate to about 1.5 percent (http://www.climatecentral.org/news/limiting-methane-leaks-critical-to-gas-climate-benefits-16020) — based solely on industry-provided numbers. But multiple studies in the last two years based on actual observations have made clear the EPA was simply wrong.

Back in November (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/25/2988801/study-methane-emissions-natural-gas-production/), fifteen scientists from some of the leading institutions in the world — including Harvard, NOAA and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — published a seminal observation-based study, “Anthropogenic emissions of methane in the United States (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1314392110.abstract).” The authors took the unusual step of explicitly criticizing the EPA: “The US EPA recently decreased its CH4 emission factors for fossil fuel extraction and processing by 25–30% (for 1990–2011), but we find that CH4 data from across North America instead indicate the need for a larger adjustment of the opposite sign.”

How much larger? The study found greenhouse gas emissions from “fossil fuel extraction and processing (i.e., oil and/or natural gas) are likely a factor of two or greater than cited in existing studies.” In particular, they concluded, “regional methane emissions due to fossil fuel extraction and processing could be 4.9 ± 2.6 times larger than in EDGAR, the most comprehensive global methane inventory.”

This suggests the methane leakage rate from natural gas production is in fact 3 percent or higher.

A comprehensive Stanford study from February suggested things might even be worse (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/methane-leaky-gas-021314.html): “A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates. Leaks from the nation’s natural gas system are an important part of the problem.” Their analysis finds:


“… an excess percentage leakage of 1.8% to 5.4% of end use gas. Coupled with the current estimate of 1.8% leakage of end use gas consumed, this generates a high-end estimate of 7.1% gas leakage.”


Ouch.

After discussing the matter with the lead author, Stanford’s Adam Brandt, I wrote that given the risks to humanity from climate change, it seems conservative to take the middle of the range, 5.4%. That’s particularly conservative given that 3 separate studies by NOAA found leakage rates just from NG production of 4% (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421588/high-methane-emissions-measured-over-gas-field-offset-climate-benefits-of-natural-gasquot/), 17% (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/news/2013/140_0514.html), and 6-12% (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/09/19/2646881/study-fracked-wells-methane-emissions-super-emitters/)!



If one were to use 3 percent as the leakage rate, LNG-fueled power plants would be worse than coal from a climate perspective for decades. If you use 5.4 percent, then Figure 6.8 makes clear [I]LNG-fueled power plants are worse than coal for a century!

Finally, the recent observation-based calculations of methane leakage are quite similar to that estimated in the much-maligned (but apparently correct) 2012 Cornell study (http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/04/12/207875/shal-gas-bridge-fuel/) led by Cornell’s Bob
Howarth. So I asked Howarth for comment on NETL’s report. He replied:

The NETL report seems determined to prove that LNG export from the US is desirable from a climate perspective, and the authors have torqued their analysis in several ways to reach this conclusion. A big omission is their failure to consider methane emissions from the LNG tankers and storage tanks: “boil off,” or the purposeful release of LNG that provides evaporative cooling to maintain the liquid status of the LNG. LNG tankers try to capture most of this boil off, but even small losses are highly significant and can make LNG a disastrous fuel from the standpoint of global warming. I find it remarkable that the NETL report does not even mention methane emissions from boil off.

Despite these shortcomings, a close reading of the NETL report in the context of the recent literature indicates that exporting natural gas from the US as LNG is a very poor idea.

For instance, their figure 6.9 shows that coal has a lower greenhouse gas footprint than exported LNG if the upstream methane emission rates are greater than 1.6% to 1.9%, when considered over an integrated 20-year time period following the methane emission, even when though they are ignoring the boil-off emissions. Because of risk of hitting tipping points in the climate system due to climatic warming from methane emissions over the cover few decades, this shorter time frame of analysis is critical. And current upstream methane emissions from shale and other unconventional natural gas are almost certainly greater than these break-even values of 1.6% to 1.9%, as shown by much recent literature summarized in my paper published last month (online here (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.35/full)).


Precisely.

One final point: Contrary to the implication of NETL’s analysis, natural gas doesn’t just displace coal — it also displaces carbon-free sources of power such as renewable energy, nuclear power, and energy efficiency. A recent analysis (http://co2scorecard.org/home/researchitem/28) finds that effect has been large enough recently to wipe out almost the entire climate benefit from increasing natural gas use in the U.S. utility sector if the leakage rate is only 1.2 percent.

BOTTOM LINE: Investing billions of dollars in new shale gas infrastructure for domestic use is, as we’ve seen, a bridge to nowhere (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/19/3296831/natural-gas-climate-benefit/) — especially until we put in place both a CO2 price and regulations to minimize methane leakage. The extra emissions from LNG completely eliminate whatever benefit there might be of building billion-dollar export terminals and other LNG infrastructure, which in any case will last many decades, long after we need a nearly carbon-free electric grid.

At best, investing billions in LNG infrastructure is a waste of enormous resources better utilized for deploying truly low-carbon energy. At worst, it helps accelerate the world past the 2°C (3.6°F) warming threshold into Terra incognita — a planet of amplifying feedbacks and multiple simultaneous catastrophic impacts (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/14/1009121/science-of-global-warming-impacts-guide/).

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/04/3443211/energy-department-lng-no-climate-benefits/

so, what to you BigCarbon deep breathers have to expel about the DoE report?

I expect Barry will bring the EPA hammer down on fracking/gas leakage anyway. Could be part of the EPA authority over greenhouse gases, of which methane certainly is.

[boutons_deux]

Up To A Million Abandoned Wells In Pennsylvania Spew Heat-Trapping Methane (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/20/3451380/abandoned-pennsylvania-wells-spew-methane/)

Another week, another bombshell study supporting the conclusion that natural gas has no net climate benefit (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/19/3296831/natural-gas-climate-benefit/) in any timescale that matters to humanity.

This time it’s a Princeton thesis (http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/bitstream/88435/dsp019s1616326/1/Kang_princeton_0181D_10969.pdf), which finds “Methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas [AOG] wells appear to be a significant source of methane emissions to the atmosphere.”

Natural gas is mostly methane (http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/04/13/207884/natural-gas-is-mostly-methane/), (CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/02/2708911/fracking-ipcc-methane/#)as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period. So even small leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system can have a large climate impact — enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas. Study after study, however, finds that the leaks are anything but small (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/19/3296831/natural-gas-climate-benefit/).

The research involved “first-of-a-kind direct measurements of methane fluxes” from 19 AOG wells in Pennsylvania. Doctoral candidate Mary Kang found methane leaks in every single one of the wells — even the ones that were supposedly plugged — and 3 of them were “super-emitters (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/09/19/2646881/study-fracked-wells-methane-emissions-super-emitters/).”

Why do leaky abandoned wells matter? Because there are so damn many of them:

“With currently available data, we estimate that there are between 280,000 and 970,000 AOG wells in Pennsylvania, which translates to 4 to 13% of total estimated state-wide anthropogenic methane emissions in Pennsylvania.”


And there are hundreds of thousands if not millions more around the country. No doubt this is one more reason a major 2014 Stanford study concluded (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/methane-leaky-gas-021314.html), “A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates.” Emissions are so high that natural gas power plants are unlikely to be better than coal plants from a climate perspective for many decades (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/19/3296831/natural-gas-climate-benefit/).

Cornell fracking expert Prof. Anthony Ingraffea — who coauthored a key study (https://motherjones.com/files/04-11shale_gas_footprint_fulltextpdf.pdf) warning natural gas leakage was higher than official estimates — told Climate Central (http://www.climatecentral.org/news/abandoned-oil-wells-methane-emissions-17575) that Kang’s study “supports what I and many others have been saying for many years, and that’s this: There is methane leaking from oil and gas wells. Period.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/20/3451380/abandoned-pennsylvania-wells-spew-methane/

[boutons_deux]

Pennsylvania Instructed Its Employees To Ignore Residents Sickened By Drilling (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/20/3451311/pennsylvania-frack-gag-health/)

The Pennsylvania Department of Health instructed its employees never to talk to residents who complained of negative health effects from fracking, StateImpact Pennsylvania reported (http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/06/19/former-state-health-employees-say-they-were-silenced-on-drilling/)Thursday. Two retired employees of the department detailed restrictions on attending meetings, lists of topics they could not discuss, and a general departmental hostility to the idea of health problems linked to shale gas drilling. The state’s governor, Tom Corbett, declined to comment for StateImpact Pennsylvania’s story.

Pennsylvania has had more than 6,000 hydraulic fracturing wells drilled within the last six years, and zero state studies on their health impacts. In Pennsylvania, and near fracking operations across the country, people have won settlements (http://www.fayobserver.com/news/local/article_d20c4475-3189-5849-94b7-5f60d499abd9.html) from fossil fuel companies after being sickened. In many cases the drilling company imposes a gag order to prevent sickened people from spreading the word about what caused their illness and building the case that fracking has negative health effects.

In 2011 Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission recommended a registry to collect health data from people living near fracking operations. Three years later, it still doesn’t exist. Across the country in Colorado, legislators tried to commission a study (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/04/3432812/fracking-safe-study/) on the health effects of living near drilling, but fossil fuel advocates ensured its demise. Doctorswant more data on health effects of fracking (http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/04/27/doctors-in-shale-country-search-for-answers-but-come-up-short/), but the interests of the drillers usually win out.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health’s hostility to examining the health effects of fracking is just the latest development in a series of policies and laws that make it easier to make money from fracking — at the expense of public health. For instance, a Pennsylvania law makes it illegal for doctors to tell their patients which fracking chemicals are poisoning them, to protect the secret blends they inject into the earth. Drillers like it because they assert it helps them compete against one another. But it also makes it very difficult for residents to build the case for the health effects of a particular chemical, or even the health effects of fracking generally.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/20/3451311/pennsylvania-frack-gag-health/

[Fabbs]

[B][SIZE=3][FONT=arial][B]For instance, a Pennsylvania law makes it illegal for doctors to tell their patients which fracking chemicals are poisoning them....
Demonic!
Can you picture the bought-off politicos crafting this scam?

[boutons_deux]

Four Of 10 Fracked Wells In Pennsylvania Are Projected To Fail, Spewing Methane Into Air And Water (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/02/3453533/fracked-wells-methane/)

A major new study finds that, as suspected, it is new, unconventional gas wells that are far more likely to leak heat-trapping — and tap-water igniting — methane than older, conventional wells.
After examining the publicly available compliance records of more than 41,000 wells in northeastern Pennsylvania, the Cornell-led researchers have dropped this bombshell (http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/06/four-10-wells-forecast-fail-northeastern-pa):


About 40 percent of the oil and gas wells in parts of the Marcellus shale region will probably be leaking methane into the groundwater or into the atmosphere…. This study shows up to a 2.7-fold higher risk for unconventional wells — relative to conventional wells — drilled since 2009.


Study (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/19/3296831/natural-gas-climate-benefit/) after study (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/25/2988801/study-methane-emissions-natural-gas-production/) has found consistently higher methane leakage rates from natural gas production and distribution than reported by either the industry or EPA (which uses industry self-reported data).
The key point is that natural gas is mostly methane (http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/04/13/207884/natural-gas-is-mostly-methane/), (CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/02/2708911/fracking-ipcc-methane/#) as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period. So the leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system that have now been observed are enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas for many, many decades (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/19/3296831/natural-gas-climate-benefit/).

Writing this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/25/1323422111), the researchers explain:

“These results, particularly in light of numerous contamination complaints and explosions nationally in areas with high concentrations of unconventional oil and gas development and the increased awareness of the role of methane in … climate change, should be cause for concern.”


This study comes just two weeks after Princeton research (http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/bitstream/88435/dsp019s1616326/1/Kang_princeton_0181D_10969.pdf) found “Methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas [AOG] wells appear to be a significant source of methane emissions to the atmosphere.” That research found up to 970,000 AOG wells in Pennsylvania!

There seems little doubt that fracked wells — those that are still producing and those that are abandoned — leak methane into the water and air creating serious health and climate problems. It is time for the industry to move from denial to action.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/02/3453533/fracked-wells-methane/

Thanks, BigOil!

[cantthinkofanything]

Four Of 10 Fracked Wells In Pennsylvania Are Projected To Fail, Spewing Methane Into Air And Water (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/02/3453533/fracked-wells-methane/)



So chances are that a newly fracked well will not fail. Thanks!

[boutons_deux]

So chances are that a newly fracked well will not fail. Thanks!

Red Queen

drillers drill, walk away, disappear, fracking wells deplete rapidly (compared to traditinal wells), aka Red Queen (running faster just to stay in one place), abandoned, fails, leaks.

Thanks, BigOil!

[cantthinkofanything]

Red Queen

drillers drill, walk away, disappear, fracking wells deplete rapidly (compared to traditinal wells), aka Red Queen (running faster just to stay in one place), abandoned, fails, leaks.

Thanks, BigOil!

Don't you agree that 40% failure rate is way better than 60%? Seems like things are headed the right way.

[boutons_deux]

Chevron Admits The Truth: Oil Shale Will Use Huge Amounts Of Western Water (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/08/3457738/chevron-oil-shale-water/)


Rob Harris, who led the Western Resource Advocates case against Chevron, said in a prepared statement:


Chevron is the first company in recent memory to admit what Western Resource Advocates, the BLM, the GAO and others have been saying – oil shale development would be a water game-changer in our water strained region.

Time-and-again, companies have downplayed their water demands, yet this new evidence shows that large-scale development would compromise the Colorado River Basin, an overtaxed river system.

The cat is out of the bag, and it is time for other companies to follow Chevron’s lead and disclose their full water demands.

Communities, state agencies, and concerned citizens in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming need to have the facts in hand as they plan for the future in our water-scarce region.


http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/08/3457738/chevron-oil-shale-water/

[boutons_deux]

disaster capitalism: (help) create the disaster then profit from it

Right-Wingers Advised to Invest in Water as Fracking in Drought Areas Prompts Activism

As a historic drought grips the U.S. southwest, towns in Texas and California are taking action to make sure precious fresh water is not wasted and spoiled through fracking.

At the same time, some investment advisors are urging right-wingers at the annual libertarian "Freedom Fest" to view drought and skyrocketing water prices as a major investment opportunity.

“Hurricanes, Tornados and Earthquakes: Volatility as an Asset Class”

While activists push to protect precious water resources during the extended drought, others are looking to profit from the crisis.

Participants in this month's Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, an annual libertarian conference, were advised to capitalize on water shortages due to fracking by David Norcom of NorCap Advisors, a Dallas-based investment management firm specializing in energy-related stocks.

"Now, let's have fun," Norcom told the audience near the end of his presentation, which was titled (http://freedomfest.com/all-other-speakers/) “Hurricanes, Tornados and Earthquakes: Volatility as an Asset Class.”
"This is the curve ball I wanted to throw at you. How many millions of gallons of water do you think it takes to frack one well?"

Norcom said that the total amount of clean water that could be spent on a single fracking well over its use is 10 million gallons, Norcom told the audience, "Those of you in California know how bad it's getting there, but you need to have a portfolio of water stocks in your account. If you had bought water stocks at the beginning of this year, they're up without dividends between fifteen and thirty percent."

The cost of water to Americans across the Southwest has risen dramatically since 2000, increasing more than sixty percent in cities like Phoenix, El Paso, and Los Angeles, and over one hundred percent in San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Las Vegas, according to a report (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-09-27/water-rates-rising/57849626/1) by USA Today.

Some see this crisis in one of the essential needs for human life as an opportunity for profit.

"I will substantially argue to you that the water resource problem that we have in this country is very, very likely to continue, part of it being sucked up by the drillers over here," Norcom said.

From his perspective, that means water will have "a great place in a portfolio" of investments.

Whatever value fracking may have for speculators, its costs to those living near drill sites are serious. Fracking has been implicated in the record seven earthquakes (http://www.krmg.com/news/news/national/oklahomas-seven-quake-weekend-raises-fracking-conc/ngfQf/?icmp=cmgcontent_internallink_relatedcontent_2014_ partners5) that hit Oklahoma in just two days over the past weekend. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, which is investigating possible links between fracking and the quakes, Oklahoma's rate of earthquakes has increased by fifty percent since October 2013.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/25004-right-wingers-advised-to-invest-in-water-as-fracking-in-drought-areas-prompts-activism

[boutons_deux]

CA Halts Injection of Fracking Waste, Warning it May Be Contaminating Aquifers


California officials have ordered an emergency shut-down of 11 oil and gas waste injection sites and a review more than 100 others in the state's drought-wracked Central Valley out of fear that companies may have been pumping fracking fluids and other toxic waste into drinking water aquifers there.

Now, according to the cease and desist orders issued by the state, it appears that at least seven injection wells are likely pumping waste into fresh water aquifers protected by the law, and not other aquifers sacrificed by the state long ago.

A 2012 ProPublica investigation (http://www.propublica.org/series/injection-wells) of more than 700,000 injection wells across the country found that wells were often poorly regulated and experienced high rates of failure, outcomes that were likely polluting underground water supplies that are supposed to be protected by federal law.
That investigation also disclosed a little-known program (http://www.propublica.org/article/poisoning-the-well-how-the-feds-let-industry-pollute-the-nations-undergroun) overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that exempted more than 1,000 other drinking water aquifers from any sort of pollution protection at all, many of them in California.

http://www.propublica.org/article/ca-halts-injection-fracking-waste-warning-may-be-contaminating-aquifers?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

stupid, left coast hippies. What's wrong with drinking fracking waste water anyway?

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

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/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CAPgraph.jpg


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 bullshit about fracking being much deeper than water wells, and therefore no risk to ground water pollution? :lol

"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-fi-drought-drilling-20140726-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! :lol

[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-oil-drilling-radioactive-20140727-story.html#page=1

Wonderful FUCKING INDUSTRY! :lol

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 (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/fracking-blowing-up-balance-sheets-old-companies.html)


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:

http://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/US-oil-gas-drillers-cashflows_2010-2014.png


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:

http://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/US-oil-gas-drillers-sources-of-cash.png
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 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-24/wells-that-fizzle-are-a-potential-show-stopper-for-the-shale-boom.html) 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 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-26/shakeout-threatens-shale-patch-as-frackers-go-for-broke.html) 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://wolfstreet.com/2014/07/29/heres-the-chart-that-shows-why-the-housing-market-is-sick/

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/fracking-blowing-up-balance-sheets-old-companies.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%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 (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Arctic+Ocean) (so far unsuccessful (http://www.ktuu.com/news/news/shell-suspends-2014-arctic-drilling-in-alaska/24197086)) 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 (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/06/3468445/lupo-fracking-prison-sentence/)

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 (http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/index.ssf/2014/08/youngstown_contractor_sentence.html).

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 (http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/index.ssf/2014/03/fracking_company_owner_pleads.html), the wastewaster consisted of “saltwater 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 document. “The creek was essentially dead.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/06/3468445/lupo-fracking-prison-sentence/

$25K? :lol

no employees fined or jailed? :lol

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 (http://grist.org/basics/fracking-faq-the-science-and-technology-behind-the-natural-gas-boom/) 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 (http://grist.org/news/marcellus-shale-fracking-wells-use-5-million-gallons-of-water-apiece/) for a fracking operation (which can result in poisoned groundwater (http://grist.org/news/study-links-fracking-to-drinking-water-pollution/)). But dig the numbers on sand: It can take 4 million pounds of sand to frack a single well (http://online.wsj.com/articles/demand-for-sand-takes-off-thanks-to-fracking-1407193760?mod=djem_EnergyJournal), 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 (http://quotes.wsj.com/PXD) 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-strip-mining-the-midwest-for-sand/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_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/hazardalerts/hydraulic_frac_hazard_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 despicable acts:

Act 1. Fracking (http://ecowatch.com/news/energy-news/fracking-2/) boom goes bust (http://ecowatch.com/2013/05/23/fracking-economics-revealed-as-shale-gas-bubble-not-silver-bullet/) 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.

http://files.cdn.ecowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/eia-energy-companies-cash.jpg


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 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/11006723/fracking-for-Shale-gas-the-dotcom-bubble-of-our-times.html), 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_49c7d43dc9-3963588ebc-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 (http://ecowatch.com/news/energy-news/fracking-2/)—and many consequences of this from of gas drilling in the state have come to light, from social (http://ecowatch.com/2013/09/24/social-costs-of-fracking-rural-america/) to health (http://ecowatch.com/2013/08/27/finds-fracking-makes-people-sick/) to environmental costs (http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/03/report-calculates-damage-by-fracking/), as well as controversies, including contaminated drinking water in the town of Dimock (http://ecowatch.com/2013/07/29/epa-censored-dimocks-fracking-water-study/), gag orders on doctors (http://ecowatch.com/2012/03/20/fracking-pennsylvania-gags-physicians) and victims (http://ecowatch.com/2013/08/05/fracking-gag-orders-buy-victims-silence/), and the state health department’s enforced silence (http://ecowatch.com/2014/06/19/pennsylvania-health-employees-silence-shale-drilling/)on the practice.
While that sounds ominous enough, a new report released by Earthworks (http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/07/pa-prioritizes-fracking-at-expense-of-health-environment-law/%20http://www.earthworksaction.org), 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 (http://earthworksaction.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8f98b851e94f659be52c775d5&id=d1528353ce&e=8ab09080f4)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 (http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/16/north-texas-fracking-ban/). 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-prioritizes-fracking-at-expense-of-health-environment-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, institutional 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 Shell 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 Shell’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 Shell 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/top_20_oil_projects_put_investors_billions_at_risk _20140816

[boutons_deux]

Quiet Trading Markets as Banks Depart, Norwegian Oil & Gas and Bearish US Nat Gas Signals (http://breakingenergy.com/2014/07/14/energy-news-roundup-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 (http://quotes.wsj.com/MS) 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 fucked.

[boutons_deux]

Repugs just takin' care of (BigOil) business

(http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/20/3473769/pennsylvania-health-professionals-fracking-health/)Doctors Outraged By Claims That Health Officials Ignored Residents Sickened By Drilling (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/20/3473769/pennsylvania-health-professionals-fracking-health/)

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 (http://www.pennenvironmentcenter.org/resources/pac/pennsylvania-health-professionals-call-investigation-pa-department-healths-response) 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 (http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/06/19/former-state-health-employees-say-they-were-silenced-on-drilling/) 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 (http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/08/18/pa-health-department-updates-policies-for-drilling-related-complaints/) 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 begin (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/01/3466782/pennsylvania-fracking-health-complaints-ignored/)contacting and interviewing residents who say they reached out to state health officials about symptoms with no response.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/20/3473769/pennsylvania-health-professionals-fracking-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 jackshit 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 retarded.....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 (http://www.nccommerce.com/tourism), 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 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/29184238@N06/14181265160/) where well casing failures led to water contamination (http://publicfiles.org/complaints/water-complaints/bradford-county/).

http://www.truth-out.org/images/images_2014_08/2014_822_frac_1.jpgImage: 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 (http://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 (http://www.publicherald.org/archives/19008/fracking-2/), 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/25745-north-carolina-newspapers-keep-fracking-data-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 (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/29/3477184/pennsylvania-fracking-water-contamination/)

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 (http://online.wsj.com/article/AP16a162b66b5946d0837c7395cab7a5f4.html), 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 (http://www.post-gazette.com/local/marcellusshale/2014/04/03/Weak-records-cited-on-Pa-shale-pollution/stories/201404030183) for its poor record of providing information on fracking-related contamination to state residents. In April, a Pennsylvania Superior Court caseclaimed (http://www.post-gazette.com/local/marcellusshale/2014/04/03/Weak-records-cited-on-Pa-shale-pollution/stories/201404030183#ixzz3BmgiywPH) 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 (http://www.post-gazette.com/local/marcellusshale/2014/04/03/Weak-records-cited-on-Pa-shale-pollution/stories/201404030183#ixzz3Bmh3Jdli) 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 (http://online.wsj.com/article/AP16a162b66b5946d0837c7395cab7a5f4.html) 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 (http://www.auditorgen.state.pa.us/press-releases/auditor-general-depasquale-says-rapid-shale-gas-development-outpaced-dep%E2%80%99s-ability-to-oversee-industry-protect-water-quality). “There is no question that DEP needs help and soon to protect clean water.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/29/3477184/pennsylvania-fracking-water-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! :lol

[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 (http://www.farcountry.org/about.cfm), a western Utah environmental group. “They’ve just kind of resisted regulatory control.” :lol

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/articles/2014/8/31/fracking-wastewaterutah.html

In case any of you motherfrackers forget, or never knew, Mr dickhead 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!

[boutons_deux]

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

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

http://www.crwr.utexas.edu/gis/gishydro99/class/niazi/project_files/Image15.gif

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 (http://www.saws.org/Your_Water/WaterResources/projects/asr.cfm) site, and draw brackish water from 13 production wells more than 1,500 feet deep
http://www.saws.org/desal/images/DesalDiagram.png

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

[boutons_deux]

somehow, fracking well are not "fracking" :lol

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

( :lol 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

[boutons_deux]

Scientists Find ‘Direct Link’ Between Earthquakes And Drilling Wastewater Injection (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/16/3568090/direct-link-between-earthquakes-and-fracking-process/)

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 (http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Rubinstein_article_final.pdf) 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 (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-09/ssoa-wii090814.php). 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 (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/13.summary/) of (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/15/3438322/groundwater-depletion-earthquakes/) studies (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/02/3433793/stronger-frackquakes-on-the-way/) 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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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/2014/09/16/3568090/direct-link-between-earthquakes-and-fracking-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 (http://www.search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=12-0920) 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 (http://www.search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=44ee2d4f-537a-4e7e-abf5-4cf6c5739033&coa=coa01&DT=Opinion&MediaID=bdf89449-94b3-4399-a57c-8cad28ccabb3#_ftn9), 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 (http://www.search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=01305b15-6c73-4f19-ab62-d1122695fae1&coa=cossup&DT=BRIEFS&MediaID=761211a4-5e8d-4651-91eb-247c49ae006b) Texas’ biggest energy groups (http://www.search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=6e7c1294-9800-4eee-aa3c-68c5608ec987&coa=cossup&DT=BRIEFS&MediaID=8efb72d4-5d99-44d8-a8d8-fde6926cd6dc), 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. :lol no shit? in Texas, can't happen! :lol

John McFarland, an oil and gas attorney who filed a brief in support of Hooks (http://www.search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=c1822cd5-af09-485f-b046-867da5d3260b&coa=cossup&DT=BRIEFS&MediaID=0b2ff8ca-2a7a-4a8b-924d-b2212571d2c3), said he knows of no similar case in which the mineral owner prevailed. :lol

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/09/18/texas-supreme-court-weighs-oilfield-fraud-case/

[boutons_deux]

Pennsylvania Natural Resources Agency Ordered To Delete Climate Change Info From Website (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/19/3569889/pennsylvania-deletes-climate-info/)

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 (http://www.alleghenyfront.org/story/corbett-officials-ordered-dcnr-drop-climate-references-website) 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/2014/09/19/3569889/pennsylvania-deletes-climate-info/

Kock suckers

[boutons_deux]

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 competitive 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/for-oil-and-gas-companies-rigging-seems-to-involve-wages-too?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

Nice fucking industry, huh?

[boutons_deux]

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 (http://216.30.191.148/fracsandmining/Victoria%20Trinko%20Statement%20FINAL1.pdf).

Silica sand (http://www.ibtimes.com/wall-street-sets-eyes-booming-frac-sand-business-oil-gas-firms-drill-deeper-1604866) 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 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/19/us-ussilica-demand-idUSKBN0HE12P20140919) last week.

In a report released Thursday (http://www.bit.ly/fracsandmining), 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.
http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2014/09/25/frac_sand_mining_us_map.jpg?itok=ahjaCm7e

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 Institute'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 Institute (http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/) 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 (http://www.ewg.org/research/danger-in-the-air) published Thursday (see below) examined the impacts of existing mining operations. Researchers at the Environmental Working Group (http://www.ewg.org/research/danger-in-the-air), 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-frac-sand-boom-is-sweeping-the-midwest/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+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