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As Oil Prices Collapse, North Dakota Considers Weakening Standards on Radioactive Drilling Waste
As Oil Prices Collapse, North Dakota Considers Weakening Standards on Radioactive Drilling Waste
As the collapse of oil prices threatens North Dakota’s shale drilling rush, state regulators are considering a move they say could save the oil industry millions of dollars: weakening the state’s laws on disposing of radioactive waste.
The move has been the subject of an intensive lobbying effort by drillers, who produce up to 75 tons per day of waste currently considered too hazardous to dispose of in the state.
For every truckload of that waste, drillers could save at least $10,000 in hauling costs, they argue. State regulators calculate that by raising the radioactive waste threshold ten-fold, the industry would shave off roughly $120 million in costs per year.
But many who live in the area say they fear the long-term consequences of loosened disposal rules combined with the state’s poor track record on preventing illegal dumping.
“We don’t want to have when this oil and coal is gone, to be nothing left here, a wasteland, and I’m afraid that’s what might happen,” farmer Gene Wirtz of Underwood, ND told KNX News, a local TV station. “Any amount of radiation beyond what you’re already getting is not a good thing.”
Environmental groups have also objected that the rule change would put private companies’ profits before public health.
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Quakes in Gas Fields Ignored for Years, Dutch Agency Finds
Quakes in Gas Fields Ignored for Years, Dutch Agency Finds
Safety board’s report a relevant read for any fracking zone.
A report from the Dutch Safety Board has accused the oil and gas industry and Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs of willfully downplaying the risk of earthquakes caused by the rapid depletion of Europe’s largest gas field.
The board’s conclusions offer lessons for other regions coping with earthquakes caused by fluid injection and hydraulic fracturing.
Ever since the shale gas industry changed the seismic record of states and provinces like Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and British Columbia, many industry lobbyists and regulators have been quick to deny and dismiss citizen’s concerns about the seismic hazards.
The Groningen field, which lies under a 900 square-kilometre area in the northern part of the Netherlands, has been drained by a consortium — Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, or NAM — jointly owned by Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell since the 1960s.
The Dutch government, a minor petrostate, is highly dependent on revenues from gas extraction, pulling in an average of 12 billion Euros or US$16.3 billion a year.
According to anti-drilling group De Groniger Doem Beweging (The Groningen Ground Movement), approximately 60 per cent of the 60,000 homeowners in the Groningen region have recorded earthquake damage to their homes over the last decade. Many homes now remain unsellable in the industry-made earthquake zone.
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The High Cost of Capitalism
The High Cost of Capitalism
In my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I explain the concept of external or social costs. These are the costs associated with production that are not incurred by the producer but are inflicted on outside third parties, most often the environment, such as land, air, and water resources on which humanity is dependent. In models demonstrating the efficiency of capitalism in allocating resources, economists include assumptions that move external costs out of the picture.
Finian Cunningham describes external costs associated with fracking.
If the cost of earthquakes to homeowners and owners of commercial buildings and damaged and ruined water resources had to be covered by the fracking companies, the total cost of production would exceed the value of the oil and gas recovered. As long as the oil price was high, the frackers made money by imposing what could well be the largest production costs on people who do not participate in the profits of the enterprise.
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