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New York State Ban On Fracking Made Official
“After years of exhaustive research and examination of the science and facts, prohibiting high-volume hydraulic fracturing is the only reasonable alternative.”
Those were the words many activists in New York never expected to hear from Joe Martens, head of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, but they were included in a statement released today as New York made thestate’s ban on fracking official.
This step in the process was expected after the release in May of the massive 1,448 page report on fracking that was seven years in the making which also was preceded by the Cuomo administration announcing they planned to ban fracking back in December.
While there had been some mentions in the media that the recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on fracking and drinking water contamination might cause trouble for the Cuomo administration, it appears that trouble was limited to predictable Republican statements about Cuomo’s decision being based on “controversial scientific studies.”
As explained in detail in this DeSmog piece by Sharon Kelly, if you read the EPA report and didn’t just rely on headlines in the New York Post to get your information, the report actually provides support for New York’s decision for a fracking ban.
New York now is the only state with known large amounts of shale deposits that has enacted a ban on fracking. In the past week, the state has also released a new energy plan with goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% (below 1990 levels) by 2030 and 80% by 2050 and to produce 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
As the oil industry prepares to roll out fracking technology around the globe, New York has taken an important step in showing the world what a “reasonable alternative” looks like.
As DeSmogBlog concluded in our 2011 report Fracking the Future
EPA’s New Fracking Study: A Close Look at the Numbers Buried in the Fine Print
EPA’s New Fracking Study: A Close Look at the Numbers Buried in the Fine Print
When EPA’s long-awaited draft assessment on fracking and drinking water supplies was released, the oil and gas industry triumphantly focused on a headline-making sentence: “We did not find evidence of widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.”
But for fracking’s backers, a sense of victory may prove to be fleeting.
EPA’s draft assessment made one thing clear: fracking has repeatedly contaminated drinking water supplies (a fact that the industry has long aggressively denied).
Indeed, the federal government’s recognition that fracking can contaminate drinking water supplies may prove to have opened the floodgates, especially since EPA called attention to major gaps in the official record, due in part to gag orders for landowners who settle contamination claims and in part because there simply hasn’t been enough testing to know how widespread problems have become.
And although it’s been less than a month since EPA’s draft assessment was released, the evidence on fracking’s impacts has continued to roll in.
A study in Texas’ Barnett shale found high levels of pollutants – volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and known carcinogens – in many people’s drinking water, based on testing from over 500 water wells. The contaminants found were associated with the shale drilling industry, but the researchers cautioned it was too soon to say whether the industry actually caused the contamination.
But the association was strong, the researchers said. “In the counties where there is more unconventional oil and gas development, the chemicals are worse,” lead researcher Zachariah Hildenbrand told Inside Climate News. “They’re in water in higher concentrations and more prevalent among the wells. As you get away from the drilling, water quality gets better. There’s no doubt about it.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Another 4.4 Magnitude Industry Reported Quake in Alberta
Another 4.4 Magnitude Industry Reported Quake in Alberta
Chevron shuts down operations following seismic event near Fox Creek.
Chevron Canada has confirmed that “a magnitude 4.4 seismic event was recorded by seismic monitoring arrays operated by Chevron Canada and Natural Resources Canada” in the Duvernay shale near Fox Creek, Alberta on Saturday.
It’s the second record-breaking industry-reported tremor to hit the region in a year. In January, industry triggered a 4.4 magnitude earthquake in the Duvernay shale.
That event forced the Alberta Energy Regulator to adopt a “traffic light system” to regulate seismic events in the region. The system requires companies to report events greater than a magnitude of 2.0, and to shut down operations once a 4.0 magnitude event is observed nearby.
As a result of the new regulations, Chevron reported the earthquake to the regulator and shut down operations at a natural gas well pad located approximately 27 kilometres south of Fox Creek.
However, the regulator has given the company permission to finish securing the well before it temporarily suspends operations at the site.
A spokesman for Chevron Canada, Lief Sollid, said the company “was installing production tubing in a well on the pad at the time of the event. Multi-stage hydraulic fracturing operations were completed on the eight-well pad on June 5.”
Hydraulic fracturing, the cracking of rock with highly pressurized fluids, can trigger an earthquake days after the event.
Sollid added in an email that “no injuries, property damage or environmental impacts have been reported as a result of the event.”
Since 2013, when companies started to fracture the deep shale with one to two-kilometre-long horizontal wells, the region has experienced a wave of tremors.
The Duvernay shale, or what stock promoters have dubbed the “new millennium gold,” covers a 56,000 square mile region and contains natural gas liquids. An average horizontal well may cost $15 million to drill.
Chevron is part-owner of the Kitimat LNG project, which will operate as an export facility for unconventional natural gas that has been fracked and extracted from British Columbia’s Liard and Horn River basins.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“There Could Be Trouble” As US Fracking Revolution Prepares to Go Global
“There Could Be Trouble” As US Fracking Revolution Prepares to Go Global
A new report showing the U.S. overtaking Russia as the leading producer of oil and gas in the world should put to rest any doubt that the fracking revolution that has occurred in the U.S. is for real, or as BP’s chief economist put it, “profound.”
And now with the recent Environmental Protection Agency report on the impacts of fracking on drinking water being touted by the American Petroleum Institute as proof that fracking is safe, the industry’s insatiable greed got another boost. More recently, the Harvard Business School has also joined in the discussion calling for the end of the ban on exporting U.S. crude oil and warning about the implications of missing the “opportunity” offered by fracking.
So with all of this momentum, what does ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson think should be next? Less regulation. As previously mentioned on DeSmog, at this year’s CERAweek conference Tillerson complained that the industry was overly regulated and held back by “the noise.”
“Regulators must look at facts and they must look at sound science and not just respond to the noise,” Tillerson said.
As Tillerson and the industry get set to roll out the fracking revolution to every possible shale location in North America and the rest of the world, now is a good time to review what the inventor of modern fracking had to say on the subject of regulating his invention.
Fracking Inventor Warned of Trouble
George Mitchell became a billionaire due to fracking but even that amount of money didn’t keep him from speaking the truth about his invention. In an interview with MarketPlace a year before his death in 2013, Mitchell was clear that without strong regulations, fracking was a serious danger to the environment.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
More Industry Linked Earthquakes Recorded in Alberta
More Industry Linked Earthquakes Recorded in Alberta
New seismic reporting system ‘a good start’ but ‘not foolproof,’ says hazard expert.
More industry-linked earthquakes have shaken up Alberta’s oil and gas fields in recent weeks from Fox Creek to Peace River, say experts and regulators.
In Fox Creek, Alberta, where industry triggered a 4.4 magnitude earthquake, a company fracking in the Duvernay Formation has reported more tremors.
“On May 28, an operator in the Fox Creek area reported two seismic events, of a magnitude 2.2 and 2.1 respectively,” confirmed Ryan Bartlett, a spokesperson for the Alberta Energy Regulator.
“The events were associated with hydraulic fracturing operations,” said Bartlett, “and were reported to the [regulator] as required by Subsurface Order #2,” a new set of regulations to monitor seismicity set up last February.
In addition, a shallow 3.5 magnitude earthquake occurred near Rocky Mountain House in central Alberta where a history of quick and high-volume gas extraction from the Strachan gas pool has triggered swarms of tremors since 1976.
Gail Atkinson, one of Canada’s foremost experts on earthquake hazards, said the June 2 event near Rocky Mountain House “appears likely to have been triggered by hydraulic fracture operations nearby, though the details of those operations are not yet available.”
The fracking of tight oil formations along the Rocky Mountains, says a recent industry case study, can divert fracking fluids into faults with the risk of “generating induced seismicity of large enough magnitude to be felt at the surface.”
Just northeast of the town of Peace River, residents recently heard a loud boom as two earthquakes shook an area where industry extracts bitumen by injecting steam into the ground. The regulator’s Alberta Geological Survey branch is investigating the events.
“We can’t take things out of the earth and expect things not to move,” said nearby resident and rancher Carmen Langer.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fracking Firm Encourages Industry to Imitate Taco Bell’s Twitter Strategy
Fracking Firm Encourages Industry to Imitate Taco Bell’s Twitter Strategy
Can fracking firms win public support through social media by replicating the whimsical style of Taco Bell’s Twitter account?
That was one of the goals discussed at an Energy Digital Summit event with Brittany Thomas, an external affairs coordinator for Cabot Oil and Gas, a leading hydraulic fracturing company.
Big corporations, major retail chains and fast food brands have attempted to improve their image and score points with millenials by embracing social media slang. “We thought we were bae,” tweeted AT&T, in a typical message of the style repeated ad nauseam by other corporate accounts attempting to interact with customers. (Definition of bae.)
Thomas explained to a conference room full of industry executives last summer why it matters that Taco Bell once needled White Castle on Twitter over the correct usage of “you’re.”
“It’s a person tweeting this,” Brittany exclaimed. “I geek out about this stuff and I tell my family,” she continued, “and all of the sudden your message has left the social realm and it’s at people’s dining room tables and they’re telling their coworkers. It’s the reason why Twitter tends to drive the news now. It’s funny when things go viral!”
“That’s a dream of mine, that we all talk amongst ourselves and interact like other brands do,” Thomas said.
Oil and gas companies are steadily increasing their footprint on social media, hiring specialized public relations firms and developing “visual shorthand” infographics that can be shared easily on Facebook and Twitter.
For Thomas, social media presents a cost-effective way to win hearts and minds.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report
The EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report
The EIA has released its latest Drilling Productivity Report. There were some interesting data presented in the report.
They say the Bakken peaked at 1,311,703 barrels per day in March and will have declined by 74,763 bpd in July.
The EIA says the Bakken will get 51,000 barrels per day in July from new wells but legacy wells will decline by 80,000 barrels per day leaving a decline of 29,000 bpd.
The EIA says Eagle Ford peaked in 1,711,376 barrels per day in March and will have declined by a total of 117,971 bpd in July.
The EIA says Eagle Ford will get 90,000 bpd from new wells in July but the decline from legacy wells will be 139,000 bpd leaving a decline of 49,000 bpd.
The EIA says Niobrara peaked in March at 459,861 bpd and will have declined by 49,712 bpd by July.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Federal Report Confirms Water Pollution by Fracking
US Federal Report Confirms Water Pollution by Fracking
Based on limited data, EPA study finds no ‘widespread’ impacts.
Despite being limited by data gaps, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that hydraulic fracturing technology has polluted ground and surface water in cases ranging from Alberta to Pennsylvania.
The 500-page draft report reverses the findings of a 2004 EPA study that concluded that the technology, which involves the high-pressure injection of fluids, gases, chemicals, water and sand into rock formations that hold oil and gas, posed no risk to groundwater.
While the report found that fracking has not led to “widespread” water pollution across the U.S., it does debunk claims that the technology has never contaminated groundwater or that industry never fracks directly into drinking water aquifers.
EPA ON FRACKING: THE 2004 REPORT
The EPA’s first study on the technology, “Evaluation of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs,” found that fracking was safe and largely reflected the views of the George W. Bush administration.
The report was a government response to complaints and legal challenges related to the impacts of shallow fracking of coal formations across the U.S. — the precursor to the shale gas revolution.
Despite extensive evidence of methane migration into groundwater in Colorado, West Virginia and Alabama, the agency concluded in its 2004 report that “the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into coalbed methane wells poses little or no threat” to drinking water and “does not justify additional study at this time.”
At the same time the report noted that the coalbed methane industry had not only, in 10 out of 11 coal basins, fracked coal seams containing drinking water, but had done so with toxic fracking fluids, such as diesel fuel.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
EPA Study: Fracking Puts Drinking Water Supplies at Risk of Contamination
The Environmental Protection Agency has released its long awaited draft assessment of the impacts that fracking has on the nation’s drinking water supplies — confirming that the process does indeed contaminate water.
“From our assessment, we conclude there are above and below ground mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources,” the EPA wrote.
The impacts take a variety of forms, the EPA wrote, listing the effects of water consumption especially in arid regions or during droughts, chemical and wastewater spills, “fracturing directly into underground drinking water resources,” the movement of liquids and gasses below ground “and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.”
The agency wrote that it had documented “specific instances” where each of those problems had in fact happened and some cases where multiple problems combined to pollute water supplies.
Environmental groups welcomed the agency’s central conclusion as vindication.
“Today EPA confirmed what communities living with fracking have known for years,” said Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel. “Fracking pollutes drinking water.”
But they also cautioned that the EPA‘s assessment seemed likely to understate the risks associated with fracking, in part because it relied heavily on data that was self-reported by the drilling industry.
So, just how badly has the process contaminated America’s water already, and how big are the risks from more fracking? The EPA can’t say, the draft report concluded.
“We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States,” the EPA wrote.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Breaking: Citizens Arrested While Defending Denton, Texas Fracking Ban
Three members of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group were arrested when they refused to move away from the entrance to a fracking site where work began today.
Before arresting them, however, Sergeant Jenkins, a 30-year veteran of the Denton police department, thanked Adam Briggle, a professor at the University of North Texas, and Denton residents Niki Chochrek and Tara Linn Hunter for the work they had done.
Sergeant Jenkins thanks Adam Briggle for his service to the community. ©2015 Julie Dermansky
The three were charged with criminal trespass and released before noon. The arrests come a week after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation that prohibits cities and towns in Texas from banning fracking.
In a prepared statement before his arrest, Briggle wrote:
“An act of civil disobedience requires you to distinguish just laws from unjust laws. I have read much about this and discussed Antigone, Thoreau, and Martin Luther King, Jr. with my students. But I have never acted until now, because never before has that distinction been so clear in my mind. A just law would give those exposed to the harms of fracking a meaningful voice. An unjust law would subordinate those voices to the dictates of the powerful and wealthy. HB 40 is an unjust law.”
Adam Briggle arrested for trespassing at a Vantage frack site. ©2015 Julie Dermansky
Tara Linn Hunter arrested for trespassing at a Vantage frack site. ©2015 Julie Dermansky
Niki Chochrek arrested for trespassing at a Vantage frack site. ©2015 Julie Dermansky
Yesterday, before fracking within the city limits resumed, a group that supports the fracking ban, including Denton Councilpersons Kevin Roden and Keely Briggs, gathered at City Hall.
Rally in front of City Hall in support of the fracking ban. ©2015 Julie Dermansky
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Energy Gang looks at the shifting peak oil debate
The Energy Gang looks at the shifting peak oil debate
Over the last few years, analysts and academics worried about peak oil have been on the defensive.
The fracking revolution has brought an abundance of oil and gas that no one thought possible a decade ago. So we can declare peak oil dead, right?
Chris Nelder, an energy analyst who’s written extensively on the subject, has a simple answer: no.
In this week’s show, we’ll talk with Nelder about predicting the messy oil market and get his thoughts on the long-term viability of unconventional fossil fuels.
Later in the show, we’ll talk about Bank of America’s decision to phase out its coal investments. And then we’ll finish with a discussion of Hawaii’s plan to get 100 percent of its electricity from renewables.
…click on the above link to listen to the podcast…
We Are Seneca Lake: Josh Fox & Fracking Opponents Fight Natural Gas Storage Site in Upstate NY
We Are Seneca Lake: Josh Fox & Fracking Opponents Fight Natural Gas Storage Site in Upstate NY
On Wednesday, Josh Fox, director of “Gasland,” the documentary which exposed the harms of the fracking industry, was arrested along with 20 other people after forming a human barricade at a natural gas storage facility in upstate New York. The action was part of a long-standing campaign against plans by Crestwood Midstream to expand gas storage in abandoned salt caverns at Seneca Lake, a drinking water source for 100,000 people. We speak to Fox and air his new documentary short, “We Are Seneca Lake.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new short film by Josh Fox, director of Gasland, the Academy Award-nominated documentary that exposed the harms of the fracking industry. Fox himself will join us next in our studio, but first, in this video, he explains why he arrested Wednesday along with 20 others who formed a human barricade at a natural gas storage facility in upstate New York, the action part of a long-standing campaign against plans by Crestwood Midstream to expand gas storage in abandoned salt caverns at Seneca Lake, a drinking water source for 100,000 people.
JOSH FOX: When Governor Andrew Cuomo banned fracking in New York state on December 17th, 2014, a lot of fracktivists in New York thought their problems were over. It was a tremendous victory, a precedent for other states, a landmark decision for public health and for the science on fracking.
But not every decision about fracking in New York was being made at the state level. FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, decides about pipelines, storage facilities and other interstate oil and gas infrastructure. Because FERC is in charge of so many projects, they’ve been heavily criticized for having a lack of public input and for simply being a rubber-stamp commission for the oil and gas industry. One of the decisions that FERC has under its control is the fate of Seneca Lake, New York.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection
Environmentalists Are Taking California To Court Over Illegal Oil Industry Wastewater Injection
Environmentalists filed a motion requesting a preliminary injunction today in a California court to immediately stop the daily illegal injection of millions of gallons of oil field wastewater into protected groundwater aquifers in the state.
Last week, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity in Alameda County Superior Court that challenges California regulators’ emergency rules meant to rein in the state’s disastrous Underground Injection Control (UIC) program.
Officials with the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) have admitted that their agencyimproperly permitted more than 2,500 wells to pump oil industry wastewater and fluids from enhanced oil recovery techniques like acidization and steam flooding into groundwater aquifers that should be protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
Instead of shutting down the offending wells, however, DOGGR issued emergency rules last February that would allow many of them to continue operating until 2017, according to the complaint filed by Earthjustice, which seeks to have the new rules thrown out and the wells operating in protected aquifers shut down while new regulations are being developed.
“Both the emergency regulations and the status quo fail to protect California’s underground drinking water sources from harm,” the complaint states. “Since DOGGR continues to fail in implementing its regulatory duties, this Court must vacate the emergency regulations and ensure that DOGGR complies with the law by ordering DOGGR to take all immediate action necessary and available to it to meet its obligations to prohibit illegal injection of wastewater into protected aquifers.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Saudi Arabia, Russia in No Mood to Cave to US Fracking Boom
Saudi Arabia, Russia in No Mood to Cave to US Fracking Boom
The recently vaunted decline in US crude oil production, supported by granular estimates, has been used in rationalizing the newly sizzling rally in oil prices. Analysts are digging through local details to come up with clues where this might be going. Money is re-pouring into the sector. And folks are already espousing the next stage, that the glut is over and that a shortage will set in soon, or something.
Alas, the decline in US oil production is, let’s say, relative. The EIA estimated that in the week ended May 1, producers pumped 9.369 million barrels per day. So that’s down from the crazy peak set during week ended March 20 of 9.422 MMbpd. Halleluiah, production is back where it was on March 6! And it’s up 12.2% from a year ago!
Note the circled areas in the chart: these weekly estimates are inherently volatile. In 2014, there were several periods of much sharper declines, even before the oil bust began in early July. Compared to those declines, the recent levelling off – and that’s all it is at this point – seems mild.
With US crude oil production on a weekly basis just a smidgen off its crazy peak in March, the other two of the world’s top three producers aren’t cutting back either.
Russia pumped 10.71 MMbpd in April, same as in March. Both months beat last year’s post-Soviet record average of 10.58 MMbpd.
And Saudi Arabia produced a record 10.31 MMbpd in April, after having already set a record in March of 10.29 MMbpd, “a Gulf industry source” told Reuters today. Production in both months beat the prior record going back to the early 1980s of 10.2 MMbpd set in August 2013.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Dimock, PA Lawsuit Trial-Bound as Study Links Fracking to Water Contamination in Neighboring County
Dimock, PA Lawsuit Trial-Bound as Study Links Fracking to Water Contamination in Neighboring County
A recent peer-reviewed study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has confirmed what many fracking critics have argued for years: hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas can contaminate groundwater.
The study’s release comes as a major class action lawsuit filed in the District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2009 winds its way to a jury trial later this year. The lawsuit over fracking groundwater contamination pits plaintiffs based in Dimock, PA against Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation.
For the study, researchers examined groundwater contamination incidents at three homes in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale basin in Bradford County. As The New York Times explained, the water samples showed “traces of a compound commonly found in Marcellus Shale drilling fluids.”
It’s not the first time fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination in northeastern Pennsylvania. And that brings us back to Dimock, , located in neighboring Susquehanna County.
As DeSmogBlog revealed in August 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had in its possession an unpublished PowerPoint presentation summarizing an Agency-contracted study that linked fracking to groundwater contamination in Dimock, a study the Agency later abandoned and censored.
That presentation was subsequently leaked and published here for the first time.
Image Credit: DeSmogBlog
In its official July 2012 Dimock desk statement, EPA said “there are not levels of contaminants present that would require additional action by the Agency.” As Greenpeace USA researcher Jesse Coleman recently pointed out, EPA has done thebidding of the oil and gas industry on multiple instances during high profile fracking studies.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
