The Downside of the Boom
North Dakota took on the oversight of a multibillion-dollar oil industry with a regulatory system built on trust, warnings and second chances. NOV. 22, 2014
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New Report Highlights Fracking’s Global Hazards | DeSmogBlog
New Report Highlights Fracking’s Global Hazards | DeSmogBlog.
A new report, issued the same day the latest round of global climate negotiations opened in Peru, highlights the fracking industry’s slow expansion into nearly every continent, drawing attention not only to the potential harm from toxic pollution, dried-up water supplies and earthquakes, but also to the threat the shale industry poses to the world’s climate.
The report, issued by Friends of the Earth Europe, focuses on the prospects for fracking in 11 countries in Africa, Asia, North and South America and Europe, warning of unique hazards in each location along with the climate change risk posed in countries where the rule of law is relatively weak.
“Around the world people and communities are already paying the price of the climate crisis with their livelihoods and lives,” said Susann Scherbarth, climate justice and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. “Fracking will only make things worse and has no place in a clean energy future.”
The 80-page document describes plans for fracking in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest (and the deforestation that would go along with that drilling), highlights the hazards the water-intensive process poses to already-disappearing aquifers in arid regions of northern Africa, and notes that licenses for shale gas drilling have been issued in the earthquake-prone zone at the foot of the Himalaya mountains in India.
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US Shale Under Pressure From More Than Just Low Prices
US Shale Under Pressure From More Than Just Low Prices.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has come full circle in Denton, Texas after a controversial ban on the practice entered into effect on Tuesday. Denton is one of several cities located on top of the massive Barnett shale formation, regarded as the birthplace of modern fracking. The ban, while incomplete, gives strength to what is a growing anti-fracking movement in the United States.
The Barnett shale covers an area of more than 5,000 square miles with depths between 5,000 and 8,000 feet. With more than 40 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of technically recoverable gas, the Barnett holds approximately 12% of the nation’s proved reserves. Over the past decade, activity on the shale skyrocketed and over 15,000 wells have been drilled to date. For the state, the benefits are clear – in 2011 alone, Barnett production added nearly $13.7 billion to the Texas economy. However, productionpeaked in 2012 at 2 Tcf and will plummet by more than half toward 2030 – recent ban notwithstanding.
Source: EIA
Despite the success, fracking is not a victimless pursuit and its spread has been met with an unequal, but growing amount of public criticism; local bans and national moratoriums prove not everyone is on board. Earlier this year, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson became party to a suit, which sought to remove fracking-related infrastructure from his Dallas suburb.
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Fracking Risks Compared to Asbestos and Other Environmental and Health Dangers
Fracking Risks Compared to Asbestos and Other Environmental and Health Dangers.
While the title of the new British government report Innovation: Managing Risk, Not Avoiding It sounds cheery, the news it contained about fracking, among other environmentally dubious technologies, was anything but.
The annual report of the government chief scientific advisor featured a lot of “better living through science”-type happy talk about scientific and technological advances, but warned, “Competition is becoming ever more fierce, vital global resources are dwindling and environmental problems are mounting, making innovation an ever-present challenge.”
It’s a case that University of Sussex professor Andy Stirling makes strongly in a chapter entitled “Making Choices in the Face of Uncertainty: Strengthening Innovation Democracy,” using fracking and the fossil fuel industry in general as an example.
“History presents plenty of examples of innovation trajectories that later proved to be problematic—for instance, involving asbestos, benzene, thalidomide, dioxins, lead in petrol, tobacco, many pesticides, mercury, chlorine and endocrine-disrupting compounds, as well as CFCs, high-sulphur fuels and fossil fuels in general,” he writes. “In all these and many other cases, delayed recognition of adverse effects incurred not only serious environmental or health impacts, but massive expense and reductions in competitiveness for firms and economies persisting in the wrong path. Innovations reinforcing fossil fuel energy strategies—such as hydraulic fracturing—arguably offer a contemporary prospective example.”
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Oil Enters New Era as OPEC Faces Off Against Shale; Who Blinks as Price Slides Toward $70? – Bloomberg
OPEC’s decision to cede no ground to rival producers underscored the price war in the crude market and the challenge to U.S. shale drillers.
The 12-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kept its output target unchanged even after the steepest slump in oil prices since the global recession, prompting speculation it has abandoned its role as a swing producer. Yesterday’s decision in Vienna propelled futures to the lowest since 2010, a level that means some shale projects may lose money.
“We are entering a new era for oil prices, where the market itself will manage supply, no longer Saudi Arabia and OPEC,” said Mike Wittner, the head of oil research at Societe Generale SA in New York. “It’s huge. This is a signal that they’re throwing in the towel. The markets have changed for many years to come.”
The fracking boom has driven U.S. output to the highest in three decades, contributing to a global surplus that Venezuela yesterday estimated at 2 million barrels a day, more than the production of five OPEC members. Demand for the group’s crude will fall every year until 2017 as U.S. supply expands, eroding its share of the global market to the lowest in more than a quarter century, according to the group’s own estimates.
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Unsafe Levels of Formaldehyde in Air Around Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale | DeSmogBlog
Unsafe Levels of Formaldehyde in Air Around Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale | DeSmogBlog.
Results from air samples taken in the Fayetteville Shale show notably elevated levels of formaldehyde, a suspected human carcinogen that can cause respiratory and reproductive problems as well as birth defects — but citizens still have little faith U.S. regulators will step in to prevent further threats to human health.
The tests were conducted by an Arkansas community group trained byGlobal Community Monitor to use equipment and methods certified by federal agencies to collect the air samples. Citizen groups in Colorado, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wyoming were also trained for the community-based participatory research.
Over a period of two years, samples were taken at sites locals were concerned about. Laboratory analysis of the samples collected often revealed contaminants such as benzene, formaldehyde and other toxic substances above levels the federal government considers safe for brief or longer-term human exposure.
“The implications for health effects are just enormous,” David O. Carpenter, director of the University at Albany’s Institute for Health and the Environment, told National Geographic.
Carpenter was lead author on a peer-reviewed article published on Oct. 30 in tandem with Coming Clean and Global Community Monitor’s study, “Warning Signs: Toxic Air Pollution Identified at Oil and Gas Sites.”
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Follow The Sand To The Real Fracking Boom
Follow The Sand To The Real Fracking Boom.
When it takes up to four million pounds of sand to frack a single well, it’s no wonder that demand is outpacing supply and frack sand producers are becoming the biggest behind-the-scenes beneficiaries of the American oil and gas boom.
Demand is exploding for “frac sand”–a durable, high-purity quartz sand used to help produce petroleum fluids and prop up man-made fractures in shale rock formations through which oil and gas flows—turning this segment into the top driver of value in the shale revolution.
“One of the major players in Eagle Ford is saying they’re short 6 million tons of 100 mesh alone in 2014 and they don’t know where to get it. And that’s just one player,” Rasool Mohammad, President and CEO of Select Sands Corporation told Oilprice.com.
Frack sand exponentially increases the return on investment for a well, and oil and gas companies are expected to use some 95 billion pounds of frack sand this year, up nearly 30% from 2013 and up 50% from forecasts made just last year.
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Challenging (Crude) Convention | Daniel Davis
Challenging (Crude) Convention | Daniel Davis.
Media reports regarding the American crude oil industry have been uniformly positive in the past few months. Oil prices have dropped to their lowest level since 2010 and along with it prices at the pump. According to some reports, the US now produces as much or more oil than either Saudi Arabia or Russia. As the US closes in on energy independence, our reliance on foreign suppliers dwindles. Some suggest we are nearing a time of oil and economic security not seen in decades. If only that were true.
The above rendering of events is taken, almost without examination, as gospel truth in the United States. The only subject of debate seems to be ascertaining whetherhydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is safe for the environment of if burning the additional hydrocarbons is adding to risks of climate change. We find this near-religious belief in looming US oil “independence” to be troubling, as a considerable body of publicly available information leads to a very different conclusion.
Instead of being on the dawn of a new age of plenty, a careful analysis of all available data indicates the probability of near to mid-term trouble even maintaining current levels of production, let alone eliminating the chasm between US production and consumption.
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The Real Cost of Fracking: How America’s Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food
The Real Cost of Fracking: How America’s Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food.
The first researchers to systematically document ill health in livestock, pets, and people living near fracking drill sites were Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald. Bamberger, a veterinarian, and Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell University, used a case study approach–looking at individual households–to search for possible effects (Bamberger and Oswald 2012).
Many fracking chemicals are known carcinogens, endocrine disruptors or other classes of toxins (Colborn et al. 2011). Bamberger and Oswald’s studies, carried out during the ongoing fracking boom, uncovered serious adverse effects including respiratory, reproductive, and growth-related problems in animals and a spectrum of symptoms in humans that they termed “shale gas syndrome”. Ultimately, their research led them to consider fracking’s broader implications for farming and the food system (Bamberger and Oswald 2012 and 2014).
Their new book, The Real Cost of Fracking: How America’s Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food describes the results of this research. However, it is by showing the pervasiveness of fracking’s harmful effects on the lives of the householders that Bamberger and Oswald best convey its true costs.
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The Unwelcome Reality For U.S. Coal Exports
The Unwelcome Reality For U.S. Coal Exports.
While the oil and gas industry likes to claim that fracking is not an especially water intensive process, a new report has found that there are more than 250 wells across the country that each require anywhere from 10 to 25 million gallons of water.
The American Petroleum Institutesuggests that the typical fracked well uses “the equivalent of the volume of three to six Olympic sized swimming pools,” which works out to 2-4 million gallons of water.
But using data reported by the industry itself and available on the FracFocus.org website,Environmental Working Group has determined that there are at least 261 wells in eight states that used an average of 12.7 million gallons of water, adding up to a total of 3.3 billion gallons, between 2010 and 2013. Fourteen wells used over 20 million gallons each in that time period (see chart below).
According to EWG, some two-thirds of these water-hogging wells are in drought-stricken areas. Many parts of Texas, for instance, are suffering through a severe and prolonged drought, yet the Lone Star State has by far the most of what EWGcalls “monster wells” with 149. And 137 of those were found to be in abnormally dry to exceptional drought areas.
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Monster Wells: Hundreds Of Fracking Wells Using 10-25 Million Gallons of Water Each | DeSmogBlog
Monster Wells: Hundreds Of Fracking Wells Using 10-25 Million Gallons of Water Each | DeSmogBlog.
While the oil and gas industry likes to claim that fracking is not an especially water intensive process, a new report has found that there are more than 250 wells across the country that each require anywhere from 10 to 25 million gallons of water.
The American Petroleum Institutesuggests that the typical fracked well uses “the equivalent of the volume of three to six Olympic sized swimming pools,” which works out to 2-4 million gallons of water.
But using data reported by the industry itself and available on the FracFocus.org website,Environmental Working Group has determined that there are at least 261 wells in eight states that used an average of 12.7 million gallons of water, adding up to a total of 3.3 billion gallons, between 2010 and 2013. Fourteen wells used over 20 million gallons each in that time period (see chart below).
According to EWG, some two-thirds of these water-hogging wells are in drought-stricken areas. Many parts of Texas, for instance, are suffering through a severe and prolonged drought, yet the Lone Star State has by far the most of what EWGcalls “monster wells” with 149. And 137 of those were found to be in abnormally dry to exceptional drought areas.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Where Oil and Politics Mix – NYTimes.com
Where Oil and Politics Mix – NYTimes.com.
TIOGA, N.D. — In late June, as black and gold balloons bobbed above black and gold tables with oil-rig centerpieces, the theme song from “Dallas” warmed up the crowd for the “One Million Barrels, One Million Thanks” celebration.
The mood was giddy. Halliburton served barbecued crawfish from Louisiana. A commemorative firearms dealer hawked a “one-million barrel” shotgun emblazoned with the slogan “Oil Can!” Mrs. North Dakota, in banner and crown, posed for pictures. The Texas Flying Legends performed an airshow backlit by a leaping flare of burning gas. And Gov. Jack Dalrymple was the featured guest.
Traveling through the “economically struggling” nation, Mr. Dalrymple told the crowd, he encountered many people who asked, “Jack, what the heck are you doing out there in North Dakota?” to create the fastest-growing economy, lowest unemployment rate and (according to one survey) happiest population.
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Taxpayers to fund hundreds of fracking boreholes across the country | Environment | The Guardian
Taxpayers to fund hundreds of fracking boreholes across the country | Environment | The Guardian.
Hundreds of government-funded boreholes are set to be drilled across Britain to try to persuade the public that a looming shale gas boom can be developed safely, the Observer has learned. Sensors in the boreholes would detect possible water pollution or earthquakes caused by fracking and the information would be made public.
“We will be taking the pulse of the sub-surface environment and will reveal if things are going wrong, but also if they are going right,” said Professor Mike Stephenson, director of science and technology at the British Geological Survey, which would drill the boreholes. “The aim is to reassure people that we can manage the sub-surface safely.”
The plan, called the energy security and innovation observing system, will cost taxpayers £60m-£80m. It is awaiting final approval from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, where energy minister Matthew Hancock, afracking enthusiast, holds another ministerial post.
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You Have to See It to Believe It: What It’s Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard | Alternet
You Have to See It to Believe It: What It’s Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard | Alternet.
Ed Wade’s property straddles the Wetzel and Marsh county lines in rural West Virginia and it has a conventional gas well on it. “You could cover the whole [well] pad with three pickups,” said Wade. And West Virginia has lots of conventional wells — more than 50,000 at last count. West Virginians are so well acquainted with gas drilling that when companies began using high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing in 2006 to access areas of the Marcellus Shale that underlie the state, most residents and regulators were unprepared for the massive footprint of the operations and the impact on their communities.
When it comes to a conventional well and a Marcellus well, “There is no comparison, none whatsoever,” said Wade, who works with the Wetzel County Action Group. “You live in the country for a reason and it just takes that and turns it upside down. You know how they preach all the time that natural gas burns cleaner than coal; well, it may burn cleaner than coal, but it’s a hell of a lot dirtier to extract.”
To understand what’s at stake, you have to understand the vocabulary. Take the word “fracking” for example. When people say it’s been around since the 1950s, they are referring to vertical fracturing, but what’s causing all the contention lately is a much more destructive process known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. Or they’re using “fracking” in a very limited way. “The industry uses [fracking] to refer just to the moment when the shale is fractured using water as the sledgehammer to shatter the shale,” scientist Sandra Steingrabertold AlterNet. “With that as the definition they can say truthfully that there are no cases of water contamination associated with fracking. But you don’t get fracking without bringing with it all these other things — mining for the frack sand, depleting water, you have to add the chemicals, you have to drill, you have to dispose of the waste, you have drill cuttings. I refer to them all as fracking, as do most activists.”
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3 Billion Gallons Of Fracking Wastewater Pumped Into Clean California Aquifiers: “Errors Were Made” State Admits | Zero Hedge
Dear California readers: if you drank tapwater this morning (or at any point in the past few weeks/months), you may be in luck as you no longer need to buy oil to lubricate your engine: just use your blood, and think of the cost-savings. That’s the good news.
Also, the bad news, because as the California’s Department of Conservation’s Chief Deputy Director, Jason Marshall, told NBC Bay Area, California state officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump up to 3 billion gallons (call it 70 million barrels) of oil fracking-contaminated waste water into formerly clean aquifiers, aquifiers which at least on paper are supposed to be off-limits to that kind of activity, and are protected by the government’s EPA – an agency which, it appears, was richly compensated by the same oil and gas companies to look elsewhere.
And the scariest words of admission one can ever hear from a government apparatchik: “In multiple different places of the permitting process an error could have been made.”
Because nothing short of a full-blown disaster prompts the use of the dreaded passive voice. And what was unsaid is that the “biggest error that was made” is that someone caught California regulators screwing over the taxpayers just so a few oil majors could save their shareholders a few billion dollars in overhead fees.
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Frackquake: 4.8 Magnitude Earthquake Felt Throughout Kansas | Zero Hedge
Frackquake: 4.8 Magnitude Earthquake Felt Throughout Kansas | Zero Hedge.
While it is unclear if moments ago the Mississippian Lime Play under south Kansas was the first major shale quake to hit Kansas, or this was simply the first yet to be named shale company going Chapter 11, but moments ago the USGS reported that a 4.8 quake located 30 miles SSW of Wichita as well as a various other smaller quakes in north Oklahoma,shook the two states.
From KWCH:
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