Fracking

[boutons_deux]

Here’s What Oil and Gas’s Ugly 2015 Did to Business Investment



http://ritholtz.com/2016/02/heres-wh...ss-investment/

so, we should DESIRE oil to be at $200 so all the above numbers would improve?

[boutons_deux]

Oil services firms face $110B in debt — and the bill is coming due

HOUSTON – Oil equipment companies have a lot riding on the sputtering market recovery.

During the next five years, they’ll have to pay off about $110 billion in maturing debt. So unless energy prices and drilling rebound in time, many of them will probably fail, Moody’s Investors Service said in a new report released Tuesday.

The credit ratings agency says one-third of the 67 companies on its list could see debt levels climb to 10 times more than raw earnings, putting them at risk of debt defaults. About $33 billion of the bond and term loans come due by 2018.

The U.S. shale energy bonanza spurred drillers and service companies to run up a half-trillion dollars in debt from 2010 to 2015, but the collapse of oil prices has bankrupted 173 companies across North America since the beginning of last year, according to the law firm Haynes & Boone.

“We don’t expect the (oil field services) sector to recover until mid-2017,” Moody’s analysts said in the report. Many, the firm said, don’t have the cash to wait for a full recovery in drilling activity.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/08/09/o...is-coming-due/

[boutons_deux]

BigOil corrupts, pollutes TX as much as it corrupts, pollutes LA

Texas Promised 34 Years Ago to Track Oilfield Waste in Aquifers. It Didn't.

Have oil and gas companies injected toxic materials into Texas groundwater sources?

State regulators don't know, even though they agreed in 1982 to track injections into zones that could hold underground sources of drinking water, according to records obtained by The Texas Tribune.

Only now are Texas officials combing through thousands of permits issued since then in an effort to account for these injections — a revelation that has stirred concerns among environmentalists and groundwater managers.

The Railroad Commission, the state's oil and gas regulator, acknowledges in a letter that it permitted injections into at least a "handful" of zonesfitting the broad legal definition of drinking water sources, but it does not know how many times that has happened over the past decades.

Federal regulators have no record of approving exemptions for these injections, and in a report issued this month they instructed the Railroad Commission to prioritize gathering the data.

Both the EPA and Railroad Commission call the injections they know of low-risk, and they say they have no evidence pointing to fouled water supplies.

But environmental watchdogs say revelations — found in agency emails, letters, reports and other do ents — show disorganization at the Railroad Commission, raising questions about its ability to protect groundwater from pollution inside thousands of disposal and injection wells dotting Texas oilfields.

“The Railroad Commission has no information,” said David Foster, Texas director of Clean Water Action, an environmental advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C. “It’s a black hole."

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08...field-waste-a/

That's oilman head Cheney exempted fracking from the Clean Water Act.

TX RRC were corrupted NOT to do their jobs.

[Winehole23]

Observations that unequivocally link seismicity and wastewater injection are scarce. Here we show that wastewater injection in eastern Texas causes uplift, detectable in radar interferometric data up to >8 kilometers from the wells. Using measurements of uplift, reported injection data, and a poroelastic model, we computed the crustal strain and pore pressure. We infer that an increase of >1 megapascal in pore pressure in rocks with low compressibility triggers earthquakes, including the 4.8–moment magnitude event that occurred on 17 May 2012, the largest earthquake recorded in eastern Texas

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6306/1416

[boutons_deux]

Of course they didn't.

ALL of TX govt is tainted, polluted, corrupted with Repug/BigCorp pro-business hack functionaries

Texas Parks department admits it never studied impact of oil drilling on Balmorhea springs

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/10/10/t...orhea-springs/

[boutons_deux]

Enviros to Texas Lawmakers: What About the Fracking Kids?

A new report detailing the proximity of schools and daycare centers to fracking wells in Texas should serve as a wakeup call to state lawmakers, environmental groups say.

Unveiled at a news conference in Austin on Thursday, the report found that nearly 437,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade attend one of 850 Texas schools that are within one mile of a fracking site. In addition, 1,240 daycare centers — or 9 percent of the total number — are within one mile of a fracking well.

Health hazards associated with fracking include air pollution, groundwater contamination, truck traffic and explosions or other accidents, according to the report.

Children are more susceptible to harm because their immune, respiratory and nervous systems are still developing.

“This report lays out a pretty clear choice for Texas and the Legislature,” said Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter.

“Choose to protect children or the oil and gas industry.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/enviro...fracking-kids/

TX legislature doesn't give a about anything health or environmental problems from BigCarbon.

TX Repugs will always "choose" BigCarbon over kids.

[boutons_deux]

Private Gain, Public Destruction

Abandoned Texas oil wells seen as "ticking time bombs" of contamination

Texas is among several states grappling with a surge of abandoned drilling sites and dwindling funds to clean them up.

IMPERIAL — Peculiar things can happen after folks drill deep into the earth — looking for oil, water or whatever — and leave a bunch of holes in the ground. Fluids can gurgle and leak, migrating where they don’t belong. In rare instances, land could even sink or collapse.

The oddest unintended consequences tend to bubble up in this pockmarked slice of West Texas, where wildcatters started poking holes in the ground nearly a century ago.

“If this stuff was even close to Austin, , it’d be national news,”

Texas, the nation’s petroleum king, is home to nearly 300,000 wells currently pumping oil, gas and dollars into the economy.

But those are hardly the only holes that petroleum companies have bored into the Texas landscape. As far back as 1990, Texas touted more than 1.5 million oil and gas-related holes, including hundreds of thousands of test wells, service wells and those that came up dry.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12...g-time-bombs-/

[boutons_deux]

Fracking benefits local economies, but drives up crime rates, study finds

Hydraulic fracturing and the shale boom have provided many benefits for communities around the country, but the boom has also driven up local crime rates and decreased residents’ quality of life,

according to a University of Chicago study released Thursday.

In the study, researchers with the Energy Policy Ins ute at the university tried to quantify the benefits of the successful yet controversial fracking boom around the country. Overall, as fracking unlocked previously inaccessible reservoirs of oil and gas, Americans have benefited: their incomes and wages went up, their homes increased in value and their communities have more jobs. On average, housing prices rose by 6 percent and employment rose by 10 percent generally and by 40 percent for oil and gas jobs.

“This study makes it clear that on net there are benefits to local economies–which we believe is useful information for leaders in the United States and abroad who are deciding whether to allow fracking in their communities,” said Chris Knittel, one the study’s authors and the director of the Massachusetts Ins ute for Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

But the 10-year-old fracking boom also had a downside.

The report found that oil and gas communities also reported higher crime rates, more traffic, pollution and general anxiety over the environmental dangers of fracking, which injects a mixture of chemicals, sand and water deep underground to release oil and gas.

Students, elderly residents and those without mineral rights were also less likely to benefit from increased fracking, the study found.

Tthe study’s researchers concluded that the benefits of fracking outweigh the costs, but that scale could tip if more research concludes that fracking is an environmental hazard, affected water quality and human health.

In 2015, fracking accounted for about half of all U.S. crude oil production, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Fifteen years ago, oil from fracked wells accounted for only 2 percent of all U.S. production,.

Fracking has had the biggest impact in Texas’ Eagle Ford and Permian basins and in the Bakken in North Dakota and eastern Montana. North Dakota residents have benefited the most from the boom, as home prices increased by 23 percent.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/12/22/f...s-study-finds/

[dbestpro]

Should change the name of this thread to fake news.

[boutons_deux]

Sky People relentless, nothing is sacred, nobody is safe




Protect Sherwood Forest

Sherwood forest, home to ancient trees, rare wildlife and Robin Hood is in danger. A huge energy company, Ineos, is trying to get permission to explore underneath it for gas. Britain’s most famous woodland could soon be filled with lorries, heavy machinery and explosions.

https://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/1787?utm_source&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blas t2017-01-06&bucket=email-blast-5_1_2017_sherwood_forest_pe ion50kflt

[spurraider21]

Sky People

[boutons_deux]

Childhood Leukemia And Oil & Gas Development Strongly Associated



children living near areas with high levels of oil and gas wells are much more likely to develop leukemia than those that aren’t — 4.3 times more likely, that is (as compared to those with different types of cancers).

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/02/20...eanTechnica%29

no worries, Pruitt will MAXIMIZE oil/gas pollution.

[Winehole23]

Beginning of the end of the Bakken play:

Investors should be worried. As analysts cheered the resilience of shale plays after the 2014 price collapse, nearly a billion barrels of Bakken oil were produced at a loss--about 40% of total production since the 1960s. Vast volumes of oil were squandered at low prices for the sake of cash flow to support unmanageable debt loads and to satisfy investors about production growth. The clear message is that investors do not understand the uncertainties of tight oil and shale gas plays.


And all major Bakken producers continue to lose money at current wellhead prices. If observations presented here hold up, there may be nowhere for the Bakken to go but down. Higher oil prices may not help much because the best days for the play are behind us. Future profits were sacrificed for short-term objectives that lost the companies and their shareholders money.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurb.../#62bc411e1487

[boutons_deux]

Fracking harms the health of babies, study shows

A new study from the journal Science Advances found that infants born to women living near fracking sites in Pennsylvania were especially vulnerable to adverse health outcomes.

“As local and state policymakers decide whether to allow hydraulic fracturing in their communities, it is crucial that they carefully examine the costs and benefits,” said Michael Greenstone, a coauthor of the study and the director of the Energy Policy Ins ute at the University of Chicago, in a press release.

“This study provides the strongest large-scale evidence of a link between the pollution that stems from hydraulic fracturing activities and … the health of babies.”

The researchers analyzed vital statistics of more than 1.1 million births in Pennsylvania between 2004 and 2013.

They studied infants born to women living 1 kilometer (or slightly over half a mile) away from fracking sites, as well as women living within 3 kilometers (or less than 2 miles), and women living between 3 to 15 kilometers (or less than 2 miles to 9 miles) away.

They found that fracking reduces the health of infants born to mothers living within 3 kilometers from a fracking site. But for mothers living within 1 kilometer, the affects were acute.

The probability of low infant birth weight, meaning the infant weighs less than 5.5 pounds, increased to 25 percent.

Studies show that low birth weight can lead to infant mortality, asthma, lower test scores while school-age, and lower earnings as adults.

The study also found that mothers whose babies may have been exposed to nearby fracking sites tend to be younger, less educated, and less likely to be married — factors that can also lead to poor infant health.

But there are significant differences between the mothers who give birth close to fracking sites and those who don’t. Black mothers included in the study were more likely to live nearest to fracking sites, exposing their infants to higher risks of pollution.

“This difference arises because over time, more wells were drilled near urban areas such as Pittsburgh, where higher numbers of African Americans live,” the authors wrote.

Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, has 63 active fracking wells.

Many other fracking sites are located in lower-income communities.

http://grist.org/article/fracking-ha...s-study-shows/

So you BigOil assholes want fracking in your town, next to your propert or school?

off, TX Repug preempt control and always yield to BigOil, who pays for external costs like ed babies, nor is forced to stop poisoning people

[boutons_deux]

BigOil, like BigCoal, won't pay, never have, the "external costs" paid by taxpayers, and there ain't no "could pay", it's as always will pay such corporate welfare.

U.S. energy drilling boom could mean $6 billion in federal well cleanups

Cleaning up the tens of thousands oil and gas wells on U.S. federal land after they stop producing could cost over $6 billion, and taxpayers may need to pitch in

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-reclamation/u-s-energy-drilling-boom-could-mean-6-billion-in-federal-well-cleanups-idUSKCN1GA1EG?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

[boutons_deux]

Dire Warnings for Other States (and the Planet) as Big Oil Pushes Sneaky "Nuclear Option" to Protect Profits via Colorado Ballot

"Colorado Amendment 74, pushed by the fossil fuel industry, seems to be one of the most dangerous propositions in the country,"

it could provide a playbook for Big Oil to skirt health regulations on a country-wide scale, potentially dooming the kinds of ambitious climate policies

"It is a model that could block all future state efforts to reduce fossil fuel extraction, carbon pollution, vehicle emissions, and climate change."

David Sirota
✔@davidsirota

THE MOST DANGEROUS STATE CONS UTIONAL AMENDMENT IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY:

A landmark measure backed by oil/gas CEOs

would block any and all state/local efforts to reduce emissions, protect residents' health/safety and combat climate change

https://www.westword.com/news/amendment-74-big-oils-doomsday-device-could-destroy-climate-change-movement-colorado-economy-10953810 … #copolitics
3:19 PM - Oct 30, 2018

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

David Roberts
✔@drvox

The nastiest ballot initiative in the nation is Colorado's Amendment 74, which

would give the oil & gas industry a headlock on democracy.

Please, if you live there or know someone who does, read this. https://www.westword.com/news/amendment-74-big-oils-doomsday-device-could-destroy-climate-change-movement-colorado-economy-10953810 …
12:38 PM - Oct 31, 2018

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/31/dire-warnings-other-states-and-planet-big-oil-pushes-sneaky-nuclear-option-protect?cd-origin=rss

[SnakeBoy]

Beginning of the end of the Bakken play:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurb.../#62bc411e1487

https://www.investors.com/news/conti...l-completions/

Continental Resources (CLR) estimates that the Bakken Shale formation could hold up to double its previous estimate, prompting a surge in planned activity there.

Citing improvements in technology, the company now estimates that the Bakken play holds 30 billion to 40 billion barrels of recoverable oil, up from its 2011 estimate of 20 billion. Continental Resources is ramping up in the Bakken this quarter and expects up to 70 wells to be completed by year's end, vs. 42 completed in Q3.

[boutons_deux]

Earth People can't win against Sky People who are in cahoots with the govt s

CO Supreme Court Hands Another Victory to Oil and Gas Industry

found, contrary to the arguments of the Commission and the youth, that


the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission cannot condition oil and gas development on protecting public health, safety, and welfare and the environment.

held that the Commission did

not have authority to promulgate a rule protecting public health if it precluded new oil and gas development.

we do not believe that the pertinent provisions of the Act allow the Commission to condition one legislative priority (here, oil and gas development) on another (here, the protection of public health and the environment).

Accordingly, in our view, the Commission properly exercised its discretion in declining to engage in rulemaking to consider Respondents’ proposed rule.”

the Commission is required

(1) to foster the development of oil and gas resources, protecting and enforcing the rights of owners and producers, and

(2) in doing so, to prevent and mitigate significant adverse environmental impacts to the extent necessary to protect public health, safety, and welfare,

but only after taking into consideration cost-effectiveness and technical feasibility.”

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2019/01/14/co-supreme-court-hands-another-victory-oil-and-gas-industry?cd-origin=rss

Guess who financed the creation of the C

olorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission?

Sky People have and will continue to destroy the Home Planet

So People's and the planet's health are secondary to BigCarbon's profits and "technical feasibility

[boutons_deux]

Could Kinder Morgan’s ‘Permian Highway’ Scar the Hill Country?

On its 430-mile path to the Gulf, the natural gas pipeline would gash the iconic Hill Country, a region relatively free from oil and gas development.



One place the warbler can still find sanctuary is on the

6F Ranch, part of a 3,800-acre property along the Blanco River

where environmentally sensitive land has been retired from development.

Enter: Kinder Morgan.

In October,

the multibillion-dollar energy company informed Lucy Johnson, whose family owns the ranch, that it

plans to run a natural gas pipeline straight through the property.

The ranch is one of thousands of private properties in the path of the so-called “Permian Highway” pipeline,

which would trace a southeasterly path from the West Texas oil patch to the Gulf Coast, where

the gas will be exported around the globe.

On its 430-mile Gulfward journey, the pipeline would gash the Texas Hill Country, a quickly growing and environmentally sensitive region that’s been relatively untouched by oil and gas development.

https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-con..._o-759x456.jpg

This is "eminent domain" that the Repug s, esp hole TX Repug govt loves to crush citizens with.

[Winehole23]

the oil patch struggles to show a profit, ten years into a historic boom:

Chevron’s Michael Wirth was unfazed. “Our confidence in the Permian is higher today than it was the last time that I spoke to you,” he said. “When you’re talking about returns, these — we put out a data before on the returns that we’re seeing and they’re well up in the 35%-plus range as we’ve moved to longer laterals, a better basis of design and even in a modest price environment, we’re seeing very, very strong returns. It’s as good as — good or better than anything else we could be doing.”

Chevron maintains that it will be cash flow positive in the Permian by 2020 and that the company would allocate much of additional cash flow to shareholder distributions. The company appears confident about the path that it is on in West Texas.

But the health of the industry is in the eye of the beholder, in many ways. In response to Chevron’s financial results, some market analysts were not as impressed. “THE REAL STORY IS THAT THE FRACKING SECTOR HAS BEEN, AND CONTINUES TO BE, A FINANCIAL BUST,” Kathy Hipple, Tom Sanzillo and Clark Williams-Derry wrote in a joint commentaryfor the Ins ute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and the Sightline Ins ute. Related: Oil Prices Could Soar On Trade War Truce

The analysts said that the industry continues to utter the same refrain that it has been for a long time: “Wait ‘til next year.” They are referring to Chevron’s promise to be cash flow positive in the Permian by 2020. “The oil and gas giant is now admitting that its enormous bets on the Permian Basin will continue to bleed red ink for the rest of 2019. Investors will have to wait for yet another year — at least — until Chevron’s Permian assets start to pay off,” they wrote.

In a previous study, the trio of analysts found that a selection of 32 mid-sized U.S. E&Ps spent nearly $1 billion more on drilling and related capital expenditures during the third quarter of 2018 than they generated in sales, which was notable because market conditions were much more au ious than at any point in previous years. “These results may come as a surprise to investors who incorrectly equate rising output with financial success,” they wrote. At the time, U.S. oil production was breaking records, oil prices were at their highest point in years and “[e]ven with those advantages, our sample of mid-size oil and gas producers continued to hemorrhage cash due to the high cost of drilling and the industry’s seemingly insatiable thirst for capital.”

Chevron is a late-comer to the Permian, so presumably they are in the early growth stages, spending on drilling so that they can scale up and eventually turn a profit. But, as the IEEFA and Sightline Ins ute analysts note, that has been the mantra from most shale companies for more than a decade. If Chevron manages to become cash flow positive, investors will likely forgive and forget. But that remains to be seen. In the meantime, Wall Street is beginning to lose some patience with shale drillers.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...il-Majors.html

[Winehole23]

Paul Sankey, an analyst at Mizuho Securities, pressed Chevron’s chief executive on an earnings call. “I guess you’re strongly outperforming your volume targets, can you also talk about your returns there, because those concerns that you’re perhaps not as leading edge as we might want you to be in terms of your Permian performance on a returns basis,” Sankey said. Related: BP CEO Dudley: U.S. Shale Is ‘A Market Without A Brain’

[boutons_deux]

Sky People are unstoppable, SCOTX oil s rule against land owners

https://www.bizjournals.com/sananton...-refusing.html

[boutons_deux]

U.S. safety board urges new rules after fatal Oklahoma well blast

An investigation into an explosion at an Oklahoma natural gas drilling rig that killed five workers last year faulted inadequate training and equipment

“The lack of effective safety management at this well resulted in a needless catastrophe,”

The accident was the deadliest oil and gas drilling incident since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11.

Workers were not properly trained to monitor for natural gas leaks and had turned off an alarm that could have warned them

Equipment designed to shut gas or oil flow during an emergency also failed, likely because control hoses burned,

Drilling began “without needed planning, equipment, skills, or procedures,”

The CSB has no regulatory or enforcement authority. of course not, no accountability, no punishment

The American Petroleum Ins ute (API), which develops safety standards for the oil industry, needs to make design changes to better protect workers in driller’s cabins and create guidelines on alarm systems,
The API plans to review the CSB’s report and consider its recommendations,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-o...e=domesticNews

Profits over people, it's the Capitalists' way

API gives the tiniest about oil/gas field workers?

[boutons_deux]

2. The shale oil boom and wasted gas

Oil producers around the world wasted as much natural gas in 2018 as South and Central America tend to use in an entire year,


https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-generate-393003ca-b03c-4d5d-9327-49f3b1a0a15f.html?chunk=1&utm_term=emshare#story1

[boutons_deux]

'We Need to Ban Fracking': New Analysis of 1,500 Scientific Studies Details Threat to Health and Climate

"The data show that fracking impairs the health of people who live nearby, especially pregnant women, and swings a wrecking ball at the climate."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/19/we-need-ban-fracking-new-analysis-1500-scientific-studies-details-threat-health-and?cd-origin=rss


TB and the Sky People laugh their corrupt asses off.