Fracking

[boutons_deux]

Just a little external cost BigCorp dumps on citizens

Babies Born Near Oil and Gas Wells Are Up to 70% More Likely to Have Congenital Heart Defects, New Study Shows

Researchers at the University of Colorado studied pregnant women who are among the 17 million Americans living within a mile from an active oil or gas well

the chemicals released from oil and gas wells can have serious and potentially fatal effects on babies born to mothers who live within a mile of an active well site

more than 3,000 newborns who were born in Colorado between 2005 and 2011.

The state is home to about 60,000 fracking sites, according to the grassroots group Colorado Rising.

In areas with the highest intensity of oil and gas extraction activity,

mothers were 40 to 70 percent more likely to give birth to babies with congenital heart defects (CHDs).

If fracking is literally wrecking the hearts of unborn babies

it has to do so in early pregnancy

Babies born with CHDs are

more likely to show a "failure to thrive,"

experience brain injury, and

exhibit developmental challenges.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...-heart-defects

And the Sky People don't give a .

Exxon intends to extract all 250B barrels in its reserves.

[boutons_deux]

Shale oil companies have lost $280 billion in the last decade.

Steve Schlotterbeck, who led drilling company EQT as it expanded to become the nation’s largest producer of natural gas in 2017,

arrived at a petrochemical industry conference in Pittsburgh Friday morning

with a blunt message about shale gas drilling and fracking.

“The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster

for any buy-and-hold investor in the shale gas industry with very few limited exceptions,”

Schlotterbeck, who left the helm of EQT last year, continued.

“In fact, I’m not aware of another case of a disruptive technological change

that has done so much harm to the industry that created the change.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/24/russiagate-the-cherry-on-top/

[boutons_deux]

North Dakota may be hiding an oil spill larger than the Exxon Valdez

Workers cleaning up an oil spill in North Dakota that is officially listed as 10 gallons recovered 240,000 gallons,

how inadequate North Dakota’s policy is for reporting spills.

The state doesn’t update initial public reports on spills.

“I have seen many instances where it appears spills are being covered up, and

there appears to be a pattern of downplaying spills,

which makes the narrative surrounding oil and gas development look rosy and

makes the industry look better politically,”

farmer Daryl Peterson told the committee more than a dozen brine spills over the past 25 years have ruined parts of his farm.

“Regulators were made aware of all spills, but did not hold the companies accountable,”

a wheat farmer in northwestern North Dakota discovered a massive spill that has been called one of the biggest onshore spills in U.S. history.

could take another decade to clean up,

according to available reports, if the 11-million-gallon figure is accurate, the Garden Creek spill appears to be among the largest recorded oil and gas industry spills in the history of the United States.”

Gov. Doug Burgum signed a law in 2017 that excuses oil companies from reporting spills of up to 10 barrels, or 420 gallons, of oil and produced water if the spill is contained onsite.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/north-dakota-may-be-hiding-an-oil-spill-larger-than-the-exxon-valdez/

[Winehole23]

Unlike several years ago, when shale production fell due to a global price collapse, the slowdown this year is driven partly by core operational issues, including wells producing less than expected after being drilled too close to one another, and sweet spots running out sooner than anticipated.”

Will the fracking boom be over before it ever turns a profit?


https://www.wsj.com/articles/shale-b...st-11569795047

ttps://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-streets-fracking-frenzy-runs-dry-as-profits-fail-to-materialize-1512577420

[RandomGuy]

Will the fracking boom be over before it ever turns a profit?


https://www.wsj.com/articles/shale-b...st-11569795047

ttps://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-streets-fracking-frenzy-runs-dry-as-profits-fail-to-materialize-1512577420

Depends on how many oil tankers are hit with missiles in the Persian Gulf...

They might get lucky yet...

[CosmicCowboy]

Interesting conversation I had last week. A customer of mine has always had hard water / scaling issues with his mechanical equipment. He is in falls city with a lot of fracking activity. His well is at 3500 feet and since they started fracking his scaling problem has reversed and his equipment is actually clearing out years of buildup. Logically one would assume the deep 10000 foot disposal wells are migrating up to the water table and changing the water chemistry.

[boutons_deux]

We’re Just Starting to Learn How Fracking Harms Wildlife

the consequences for wildlife have so far been left out of the national conversation.

But those consequences are very real for a vast suite of animals including mussels, birds, fish, caribou and even fleas, and they’re as varied as the species themselves.

In some places wildlife pays the price when habitat is destroyed.

Elsewhere the damage occurs when water is sucked away or polluted.

Still other species can’t take the traffic, noise and dust that accompany extraction operations.

All this damage makes sense when you think about fracking’s outsized footprint.

It starts with the land cleared for the well pad, followed by sucking large volumes of water (between 1.5 and 16 million gallons per well) out of rivers, streams or groundwater.

The ulative footprint of a single new well can be as large as 30 acres. In places where hundreds or thousands of wells spring up across a landscape, it’s easy to imagine the toll on wildlife — and even cases with ecosystem-wide implications.

“Studies show that there are multiple pathways to wildlife being harmed,”

The most obvious threats fracking poses to wildlife comes in the form of habitat loss.

The land or water just outside of the operation, known as “edge habitat,” also degrades with an increase in the spread of invasive plant species, among other concerns.

A single fracked well can be responsible for 3,300 one-way truck trips during its operational lifespan, and each journey can injure or kill wildlife large and small.

After all, it’s hard to get out of the way of a tanker truck carrying 80,000 pounds of sand.

https://truthout.org/articles/were-just-starting-to-learn-how-fracking-harms-wildlife/

[boutons_deux]

Oil and gas emissions are reversing progress from coal’s decline

thanks in large part to the booming oil and gas industry, that slight decline in emissions is likely just a blip on the radar.

Emissions from a single proposed petrochemical complex in Louisiana’s St. James Parish, for example, would replace the lion’s share of the greenhouse gas pollution prevented through closing the Navajo Generating Station.

Once built, the $9.4 billion Formosa plastics plant is expected to release more than 13.6 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.

The St. James facility is just one of dozens of new polluting plants expected to contribute to ballooning emissions from the U.S. oil and gas industry in the coming years.

the industry is slated to pump an additional 227 million tons of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere in 2025

— a 30 percent increase over 2018 emissions —

bringing its total emissions close to one billion tons per year.

That’s equivalent to the full-time greenhouse gas pollution of well over 200 major coal-fired power plants.

https://grist.org/energy/oil-and-gas-emissions-are-reversing-progress-from-coals-decline/

[boutons_deux]

any of you BigOil s wanna comment?

America’s Radioactive Secret

Oil-and-gas wells produce nearly a trillion gallons of toxic waste a year.

An investigation shows how it could be making workers sick and contaminating communities across America

Peter was able to transfer 11 samples of brine to the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University, which had them tested in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh.

The results were striking.
Radium, typically the most abundant radionuclide in brine, is often measured in picocuries per liter of substance and is so dangerous it’s subject to tight restrictions even at hazardous-waste sites.

The most common isotopes are radium-226 and radium-228, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires industrial discharges to remain below 60 for each.

Four of Peter’s samples registered combined radium levels above 3,500, and

one was more than 8,500.

drivers are not being told what’s in their trucks,” “And this stuff is on every corner — it is in neighborhoods. Truckers don’t know they’re being exposed to radioactive waste, nor are they being provided with protective clothing.

Oil fields across the country — from the Bakken in North Dakota to the Permian in Texas — have been found to produce brine that is highly radioactive.

“All oil-field workers,” says Fairlie, “are radiation workers.”

Tanks, filters, pumps, pipes, hoses, and trucks that brine touches can all become contaminated,

with the radium building up into hardened “scale,”

concentrating to as high as 400,000 picocuries per gram.

Marcellus shale, underlying Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York, has tested the highest.

Radium in its brine can average around 9,300 picocuries per liter, but has been recorded as high as 28,500.

“If I had a beaker of that on my desk and accidentally dropped it on the floor, they would shut the place down,”

In an investigation involving hundreds of interviews with scientists, environmentalists, regulators, and workers,

Rolling Stone found a sweeping arc of contamination —

oil-and-gas waste spilled, spread, and dumped across America,

posing under-studied risks to the environment, the public, and especially the industry’s own employees.

There is little public awareness of this enormous waste stream,

“Us bringing this stuff to the surface is like letting out the devil,” says Fairlie.

“It is just madness.”

in Pennsylvania, doctors were even banned from discussing some toxic fracking exposures with patients — the controversial “medical gag rule” was struck down by the state’s Supreme Court in 2016.

the oil-and-gas industry is a master of saying, ‘You did this to yourself.’”

pipe cleaners, welders, roughnecks, roustabouts, derrickmen, and truck drivers hauling dirty pipes and sludge

all were exposed to radioactivity without their knowledge and suffered a litany of lethal cancers.

An analysis program developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined with

up to 99 percent certainty that the cancers came from exposure to radioactivity on the job,

including inhaling dust and radioactivity ac ulated on the workplace floor, known as “groundshine.”

Their own clothes, and even licking their lips or eating lunch, added exposure.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...gation-937389/

[boutons_deux]

Big Oil wants to dump more wastewater into rivers. What could go wrong?

Oil and gas producers are looking for new ways to get rid of the fluid left behind after fracking and drilling.

Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico producers alone generated about 270 billion gallons of it in 2017.

those three states are now exploring expanding avenues for produced water disposal — including discarding the wastewater in streams and rivers.

East of the 98th meridian — an imaginary line that runs down the middle of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas —

oil and gas operators are allowed to release treated wastewater into rivers,

but only if it's first routed through treatment facilities capable of removing the chemicals contained in the waste.

West of the meridian, which includes half of Texas and Oklahoma as well as all of New Mexico, oil and gas companies can discard produced water into rivers without that hurdle, so long as they secure government permits.

last year Texas and Oklahoma took steps to take over permitting from the EPA. Environmental DESTRUCTION Agency

New Mexico is considering following suit.

The EPA has also been considering easing regulations — including the 98th meridian rule — which could further expand the industry's wastewater disposal options.

In a letter to the EPA, a coalition of industry groups including the American Petroleum Ins ute said that the agency was using "arbitrary geographic distinctions" and that it should move quickly to develop regulations that would allow the industry to more efficiently treat and discharge its own wastewater into rivers and streams east of the 98th meridian.

The quality of produced water is also highly dependent on the geology and history of the formation from which it comes.

"To be talking about produced water as a singular thing is an oversimplification,"

Companies inject a number of corrosion inhibitors, biocides, and friction reducers during fracking and drilling, and many of these chemicals react with one another and break down into "daughter products,"

https://www.salon.com/2020/01/26/big-oil-wants-to-dump-more-wastewater-into-rivers-what-could-go-wrong_partner/

I expect the EDA kakisctocratic s to BigCarbon to rule against water, humans, then be sued by sane people.

[boutons_deux]

Pipeline spill of oil wastewater bigger than first reported

A pipeline spill of oilfield wastewater in northwestern North Dakota has affected more cropland than originally reported.

State environmental scientist Bill Suess said regulators were notified earlier this month of the

8,400 gallon (31,797 liter) pipeline leak in Renville County. The pipeline is operated by Texas-based Cobra Oil and Gas.

Regulators initially said about 1,000 square feet (92.9 square meters) of cropland was affected.

The landowner, Sherwood resident Allan Engh, said people involved in the cleanup of the site told him the

brine could have contaminated as much as 400,000 square feet (37,161 square meters) of soil.
Suess told the Bismarck Tribune that estimate could be accurate but the official number is not yet known.

“We know it’s bigger, we know it’s impacting a very large area,”

https://apnews.com/218fe95f0a52183fb5d89c64675181bb

[boutons_deux]

Repugs have a very idea about Capitalism and "free markets"

Republicans urge Trump to bar banks from shunning fossil fuel loans

A group of Republican lawmakers from energy-producing states on Friday called on President Donald Trump

to prevent banks from halting loans and investments with companies that produce oil and other fossil fuels

while they have access to federal assistance programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Wall Street’s big banks ... should not be able to reap the benefits of participating in federally guaranteed loan programs laid out in the CARES Act,

such as the Paycheck Protection Program or the trillion dollar Federal Reserve facility lending programs,

while simultaneously targeting American energy companies and workers,” holy , what that is

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN22K2PU

[boutons_deux]

New Analysis of Fracking Science (nearly 2,000 studies) Finds Grave Health, Environmental Justice, and Climate Impacts

Major report from health experts and scientists who have closely assessed a decade of science on fracking reveals alarming trends for people and the environment.

drilling, fracking, and the entire fracked oil and gas cycle impose grave harms to human health and well-being and that

those problems cannot be mitigated.

key trends in the rapidly growing body of evidence about health, climate, and environmental justice consequences of drilling, fracking, and associated infrastructure.

Overwhelmingly, evidence demonstrates that

these activities are dangerous to public health, the environment, and the climate,

and that there are fundamental problems with the entire life cycle of operations associated with fracking.

“Our knowledge about the dangers of fracking is now both broad and deep.

All together, thousands of scientific studies, reports, and investigations show us that extracting oil and gas by shattering the nation’s bedrock with water and chemicals creates fundamental, intrinsic, unfixable problems.

Toxic pollution,

water contamination,

earthquakes,

radioactive releases, and

methane emissions

follow fracking wherever it goes.

Some of these problems get worse after depleted wells are abandoned,

and no set of regulations is capable of preventing harm.”

https://www.spurstalk.com/forums/new...reply&t=200096

[boutons_deux]

“This Is Why We Don’t Drink the Water”

Fracking threatens drinking water on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Meet the locals who are fighting back.

The horses looked dehydrated and brittle, just skin and bones.

They’re eating, but it’s like they’re not eating, her friend told her.

It was down the hill, at the pond the horses drank from, where the answer lurked.

She believes waste water from nearby oil and gas production leaked there,

where the horses drank it up, poisoned. ​“I’m always worried,” Finley-Deville says.

​“This is why we don’t drink the water.”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/fra...ld-reservation

[Winehole23]

Whistleblower alleges accounting control fraud at Exxon.

In the latest supplement filed on January 31 and shared with DeSmog, Bennett and his advisors say that Exxon has overvalued its assets by as much as $56 billion, as of 2019. ExxonMobil’s write-down of $19.3 billion is “too little, too late,” Bennett and his team say.

In the filing, Bennett and his team claim that Exxon inappropriately grouped good assets with bad ones to obscure the damage, “hiding problem assets behind historical winners.” The filing also alleges that Exxon’s accounting policies “don’t recognize current and relevant economic trends,” allowing it to “gloss over problems.”

Exxon ignored the multiple slumps in natural gas prices over the past decade by not taking a write-down years ago, the filing argues. By the same token, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) futures marketsuggests that natural gas prices won’t reliably stay above $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) at any point over the next decade, a price too low for the XTO assets to economically make sense. Again, as Bennett argues, this has been clear for quite some time.

“This is just a continuation of at least six years of fraudulent and defiant behavior by Exxon, which has slanted its accounting policies and skewed its impairment calculations to avoid necessary write downs of its oil & gas properties since at least 2014,” the filing says.

ExxonMobil did not return a request for comment.

Why now?

Exxon’s massive write-down is overdue by several years, according to Bennett. For example, the assets related to the disastrous XTO acquisition “have been sitting stagnant on Exxon’s balance sheet since at least 2014,” the complaint says, referring to a more pronounced market slump that began that year.

The whistleblower complaint cites the fact that Exxon only spent an average of $180 million per year between 2015 and 2019 on its U.S.exploration budget, or less than 1 percent of the cost of its “unproved” properties, which Bennett and his team say is evidence that Exxon already knew that these reserves were not worth developing, even as they were nonetheless counted as valuable assets on the books.

“At that miniscule rate of exploration spending, Exxon would nevercomplete the vast majority of its U.S. unproved properties,” the complaint states (emphasis in original). “From a return-on-investment standpoint, the company shouldn’t complete those projects — they’re economic losers!”

Bennett and his advisors argue that Exxon’s exploration unit “apparently can react logically” in the face of poor economics, but its accounting department “seems incapable of such logic when considering write downs of hopelessly over-valued oil & gas

The particular timing of the write-down also raises questions about the company’s motives. The problematic economics of U.S. shale drilling is not new and there was nothing notable that happened in the fourth quarter of 2020 to trigger a write-down. For instance, average natural gas prices in late 2019 were actually lower than in late 2020. By contrast, many of Exxon’s peers took huge write-downs in late 2019 and in the first and second quarters of 2020, during the depths of the most recent downturn.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2021/02/0...racking-assets

[Winehole23]

Even at the peak of production, fracking never delivered promised jobs, prosperity and population growth to "Frackalachia"

“This detailed report is another indictment of fracking. The business case for fracking has never been proven. The Appalachian shale gas producers have been spectacularly unsuccessful financially, despite impressive production gains. Many have filed for bankruptcy. Others have taken massive write-offs. This financial failure of the natural gas sector extends to local communities.” Hipple concluded, “Simply put, the natural gas industry has not delivered the promised benefits for producers, investors — or local communities.”


Sean O’Leary, the report’s principal author, said, “What’s really disturbing is that these disappointing results came about at a time when the region’s natural gas industry was operating at full capacity. So it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the results would be better. If nothing else does, that fact alone should persuade the region’s policymakers that they need to explore other, more sustainable economic development opportunities.”

https://ohiorivervalleyins ute.org...uction-boomed/

The report: https://ohiorivervalleyins ute.org...te-2_12_01.pdf

[boutons_deux]

Tens of Thousands of Premature Deaths Linked to So-Called "Cleaner" Energy Like Fracked Gas

natural gas and wood as energy sources—

billed by proponents as "cleaner" alternatives to coal and oil—

are a major threat to public health and

are responsible for pollution which causes tens of thousands of premature deaths each year.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, linked

29,000 to 46,000 premature deaths each year to fumes from natural gas, wood, and biomass

which are used to electrify and heat buildings and power generators.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/05/tens-thousands-premature-deaths-linked-so-called-cleaner-energy-fracked-gas-study

[boutons_deux]

Leaked Slides Show the Gas Industry Is Freaking Out

a natural gas consortium that included Eversource as a co-leader as recently as last month is scrambling to regroup and go on the attack against challenges to its product.

“Natural gas (fossil fuel) in for fight of it’s [sic] life,” reads one bolded bullet point in the slides E&E News obtained that are authored by Energy Solutions Center, a nonprofit gas advocacy group. “How can we take advantage of power outage fear?”

the list of 15 other consortium members named in the ESC presentation includes utilities from all over the country, including regional giants like Exelon, SoCalGas, and Washington Gas.

The group also includes the gas distribution arm of Enbridge Inc, the Canada-based company that operates the controversial Line 3 pipeline that has become a hotspot of protest in recent months.

These companies have reason to fear for the future of their product.

After Berkeley, California became the first city in the world to ban natural gas hookups in new buildings in 2019,

dozens of cities across the country have followed suit in rapid succession.

Despite the fact that natural gas availability was a large part of the grid’s failure during the storms earlier this year,

Texas lawmakers have leaped to the industry’s defense,

claiming that natural gas is the only “reliable” form of power.

(TX) lawmakers passed a bill banning any local action banning hookups like the ones that have played out elsewhere in the U.S.

it’s clear that the natural gas industry is on its heels.

The trick will be distinguishing fact from spin as they amp up their campaigns against electrification.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/leaked-s...out-1846822881

[Winehole23]

Exxon overstated Permian Basin shale oil reserves to goose market cap/executive compensation.

If Exxon can't make money fracking in West Texas without lying, who can?

ExxonMobil is currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for overvaluing assets despite reports that employees disagreed with the valuations. There are also two separate whistleblower filings with the SEC that accuse Exxon of intentionally overstating the value of its oil and gas–producing properties by tens of billions of dollars.


In January, the Wall Street Journal reported on the case that spurred the SEC investigation and reportedly resulted in the firing of at least one ExxonMobil employee, who later filed one of the whistleblower complaints. According to that complaint, an employee who was pressured to redo oil well production forecasts numbers to make management happy reportedly named a file with the inflated numbers, “This is a lie.”


According to the Wall Street Journal, this whistleblower noted the widespread internal pressure to support the CEO’s unrealistic claims for potential oil production from its acreage in the Permian region, a top U.S. oil field.


“No one I knew in the organization thought this was possible; the pressure to deliver on Woods’s promise to the market permeated the organization,” the whistleblower said, referring to ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods’ goal at the time to produce one million barrels a day from the Permian by 2024.


In March, Exxon decreased its forecasts for Permian production and now expects to average 400,000 barrels per day in 2021 and potentially reach 700,000 barrels per day by 2025. A new report from the Ins ute for Energy Economics and Finance (IEEFA) notes that Exxon has not made money on its Permian operations and that according to IEEFA analyst Clark Williams-Derry, “Investors should place the company’s Permian plans under a microscope and demand better disclosure of both its financial and operational results in the region.”

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/11/sh...estor-lawsuit/

[boutons_deux]

'Unacceptable': 66 Million Gallons of Toxic Fracking Waste Dumped in Gulf of Mexico Since 2010

"Offshore fracking threatens Gulf communities and wildlife far more than our government has acknowledged," said one researcher.

"To protect life and our climate, we should ban these extreme extraction techniques."

As "extreme" fossil fuel extraction methods such as

fracking and acidizing have become increasingly common in offshore oil and gas production over the past decade,

the U.S. government is allowing corporations to discharge millions of gallons of hazardous waste into the Gulf of Mexico "without limit."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...lf-mexico-2010

Capitalists are ecocidal TAKERS, not makers

[RandomGuy]

Interesting conversation I had last week. A customer of mine has always had hard water / scaling issues with his mechanical equipment. He is in falls city with a lot of fracking activity. His well is at 3500 feet and since they started fracking his scaling problem has reversed and his equipment is actually clearing out years of buildup. Logically one would assume the deep 10000 foot disposal wells are migrating up to the water table and changing the water chemistry.

Soo, the water is measurably more acidic?

[RandomGuy]

Exxon overstated Permian Basin shale oil reserves to goose market cap/executive compensation.

If Exxon can't make money fracking in West Texas without lying, who can?

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/11/sh...estor-lawsuit/

An oil company over-stating its reserves?

I am shocked, shocked I say.

[boutons_deux]

Soo, the water is measurably more acidic?

... at least.

Here's the other toxic in his water

E.P.A. Approved Toxic Chemicals for Fracking a Decade Ago, New Files Show

The compounds can form PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to cancer and birth defects.

The E.P.A. approvals came despite the agency’s own concerns about toxicity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/12/c...?smid=tw-share

[Winehole23]

The peak of the fracking boom has passed without fracking ever turning a profit.

In July 2020, accounting firm DeLoitte released a report stating that, “The U.S. shale industry registered net negative free cash flows of $300 billion, impaired more than $450 billion of invested capital, and saw more than 190 bankruptcies since 2010” — supporting the claim that the industry has peaked without ever making money.

https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/16/us...ng-investment/

[Winehole23]

This was possible because despite the losses, investors kept giving the industry money. But now investors appear to have grown tired of losing money on U.S. shale companies and new lending to the industry has dropped dramatically.


As reported this month by The Wall Street Journal, “capital markets showed little interest in funding expansive new drilling campaigns” for the U.S. shale industry. Shaia Hosseinzadeh, a partner at investment firm OnyxPoint Global Management LP, told The Journal that the problem facing fracking companies is that “they can’t access cheap capital any longer.”