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Energy CEO Says Fracking Build-out in New York Not Over, Wants Regulators to ‘Lay Down and Approve Every Pipeline’

February 14, 2018

Energy CEO Says Fracking Build-out in New York Not Over, Wants Regulators to ‘Lay Down and Approve Every Pipeline’

Crestwood natural gas compressor sign in Seneca Lake, New York

At a pipeline industry conference in Pittsburgh on January 31, Robert G. Phillips, CEO and President of Crestwood Equity Partners, offered an unusually candid perspective on pipelines, fracking, environmental regulations, and how industry plans to fight back against public opposition and permitting problems.

This past May, Crestwood announced that it was halting plans for a natural gas storage facility in the Finger Lakes region of New York following a three-year civil disobedience campaign by grassroots activists and environmentalists who feared contamination of Seneca Lake, which supplies drinking water to roughly 100,000 New Yorkers. But as Phillips told the conference, the company isn’t backing off for good.

“Now, this is hand-to-hand combat in this region,” Phillips told the crowd of oil and gas company representatives at the pipeline conference, dubbed Marcellus Midstream 2018.

“We have to be ninja-like,” Phillips said, in recommendation to his industry colleagues. “The owners and the contractors have to work together not just to get it done on-budget, on-time, but to get it done quietly, softly, as least-disruptively as possible.”

Crestwood certainly encountered a different type of disruption in New York. There, over 400 people, including Ithaca College scholar Sandra Steingraber, local business owners, and religious leaders, were arrested for trespass or disorderly conduct outside Crestwood’s Gallery 2 Expansion project, where the company still hopes to store up to 2.1 million barrels of liquid fossil fuels in salt caverns under Seneca Lake, according to the grassroots campaign We Are Seneca Lake.

Crestwood Equity Partners, a master limited partnership which merged with Inergy in 2013, currently uses truck and rail to transport propane and other liquid fossil fuels, but, Phillips explained, the company would rather be able to ship by pipeline. Some of the company’s plans in New York state, however, hit strong public opposition.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fracking Fraud

October 15, 2015

Fracking Fraud

fracking_mess

Photo by Jacques del Conte.

Hucksters for high volume hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling, the intensely industrial process by which x percent of natural gas and oil are mined in the United States today, loudly tout multiple benefits of the practice. Fracking reduces dependence on imports of crude oil. It generates jobs, profits and tax revenues. Fracked gas burns cleaner than coal, reducing smog and carbon pollution. Fracking leads to lower prices for gasoline and other petroleum products. It’s a variant of the last claim I examine here.

I live in Upstate New York, a place spared the direct ravages of hydrofracking by an especially vigorous years long opposition campaign that led Governor Andrew Cuomo to “ban” the process in 2014 (the next governor could reverse Cuomo’s decision). The state still suffers myriad indirect insults from fracking, including mile-long oil trains from the Bakken Shale, and a network of proposed pipelines, storage facilities and giant compressors to move fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New York and New England. Setting aside the grievous environmental damage of pipeline construction and the ‘round-the-clock threat of another Lac Megantic, New Yorkers were supposed to benefit from the lower costs of heating fuels promised by fracking supporters.

Northeasterners use a wide variety of fuels to ward off the winter chill: electricity, wood, corn, pellets, propane, kerosene, oil, natural gas, even coal. Natural gas is most common. Despite the promises, fracking has not prevented spikes in fuel costs. In recent years, several severe winters caused heating oil and electricity prices to skyrocket.

Given the flood of fracked gas from shale formations as close as the Marcellus, the price ought to have followed that of gasoline. Yet, while current wholesale natural gas prices are twenty-four percent lower than last year, Capital Region of New York customers of National Grid (the local utility) can expect a two percent drop in their bills.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

How Sustainable Can Cities be When TheyCan’t Even Deal With Their Own Shit?

August 11, 2015

How Sustainable Can Cities be When TheyCan’t Even Deal With Their Own Shit?

A sewage treatment plant in Hamburg, Germany: The shit never looked so pretty (photo by Mark Michaelis)

The Dr. Pooper Papers, Issue #3:

Just this past week the City of Toronto wasinformed by the Ministry of the Environment that it must now notify the public whenever water treatment plants are bypassed and raw sewage is sent into Lake Ontario. These occurrences are said to be due to heavy rains taking their toll on Toronto’s “old sewer system,” something that is said to occur about three times a month, year round.

According to Mark Mattson, director of the charity Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, Toronto’s streets and harbours were inundated with more than a billion litres of sewage in July 2013, when more than 90mm of rain fell on the city in just two hours. This, however, doesn’t seem to be a freak occurrence, as New York State similarly enacted laws this summer requiring public notification within four hours of raw sewage being sent into its watersheds.

“I think there’s a real demand for this information,” said Mattson, a point that’s hard to refute since the “boaters, paddlers and hikers on many of the rivers and trails” that Mattson mentions likely don’t want to come across invasions of floaters on their Saturday afternoon strolls.

But where Mattson gets it wrong, I think, is in his assessment of the problem. As he puts it, “people don’t really realize that in Toronto we’ve got these 70-year-old pipes based on a totally antiquated understanding of how the city works.” And as the Toronto Stararticle further explains, “the current sewers were built with different demands in mind, and… the aging infrastructure is failing to keep pace.” In other words, Mattson (and perhaps even the Toronto Star) don’t really grasp how cities “work,” nor realize what are at the heart of the demands of “current sewers.”

 

New York State Ban On Fracking Made Official

June 30, 2015

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

 

New York State Reverses Decision, Requires Full Environmental Review of Tar Sands-by-Rail Facility

May 25, 2015

New York State Reverses Decision, Requires Full Environmental Review of Tar Sands-by-Rail Facility

In what came as a welcome surprise to activists in Albany, New York, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) reversed an earlier decision and now will require a full environmental review for a proposed tar sands oil heating facility at the Port of Albany.

“It is good for New York State that the DEC came to a proper decision in one of the most important environmental matters facing the state. We look forward to participating with the state on a full public safety and environmental review that is robust and protective of our communities and our waterways,” said Riverkeeper President Paul Gallay.

Riverkeeper is one of many groups fighting the plan by Global Partners to add tar sands oil to the Bakken oil it is already moving down and along the Hudson River in large amounts, efforts highlighted in this recent New York Times Op-Doc.

Riverkeeper also recently filed a lawsuit challenging the Department of Transportation’s recent new oil-by-rail regulations.

Albany has become the largest distribution hub for crude oil on the East Coast due to its rail access and its port on the Hudson River and this transformation happened with so little fanfare that the local community was initially unaware of what the DEC had permitted.

There were no ribbon cutting ceremonies or big public announcements made by local government officials who were aware of what was happening. The mayor of Albany could be found cutting ribbons for the opening of Subway shops orbars, but not a word about the 2.8 billion gallons a year of oil that were permitted to arrive in Albany by train by the DEC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NY Governor Probes Nuclear Plant ‘Incident’ As Oil Spills Into Hudson River

May 13, 2015

NY Governor Probes Nuclear Plant ‘Incident’ As Oil Spills Into Hudson River

Having explained to the general public that there was nothing to be concerned about, when an exploding transformer shut down at least one unit of the Indian River nuclear power plant, noting “no danger to public safety,” it appears the situation is not as ‘contained’ as officials hoped. As Sputnik News reports, thousands of gallons of oil that leaked into the Hudson River after the explosion has formed a gigantic oil sheen on the waterway. NY Governor Andrew Cuomo has demanded a probe into the incident, adding that Entergy and contractors will clean up the spill.

  • *CUOMO: PROBE ON WEEKEND INCIDENT AT INDIAN POINT PLANT ONGOING
  • *CUOMO SAYS OIL DISCHARGE RESULT OF FIRE IN A TRANSFORMER
  • *CUOMO: N.Y. WORKING WITH U.S. COAST GUARD TO MONITOR SITUATION
  • *CUOMO: NY, U.S. EVALUATING ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE TO HUDSON RIVER

As Sputnik News reports,

The oil made its way into the river following an explosion, fire, and leak that occurred Saturday at the Indian Point nuclear facility in Buchanan, about 40 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

According to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), oil leaked into the facility’s discharge drains during the fire, then into the river.

However, “there is no doubt that oil was discharged into the Hudson River,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at Indian Point on Sunday. “We have booms in the water now around the discharged pipe to collect any oil that may be in the river.”

 

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

New York fracking ban reverberates nationally | Al Jazeera America

December 18, 2014

New York fracking ban reverberates nationally | Al Jazeera America.

NEW YORK — The news took even the most seasoned environmental activists by surprise: after years of review, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that New York State would ban hydraulic fracturing.

“I can barely contain myself,” said Nadia Steinzor, the eastern coordinator for national non-profit Earthworks. “Even though Cuomo recently said he was going to make a clear decision, we were not expecting something as exciting and straightforward as this.”

New York State’s decision comes two years after the state’s Department of Health initiated a review of the possible health impacts of hydraulic fracturing, a process in which thousands of gallons of water is mixed with chemicals and sand and pumped deep into the earth to break up gas-rich shale rock formations. The process has been approved in dozens of states across the U.S. and has often been touted by supporters as an economic boon to struggling regions, including next door in Pennsylvania.

New York’s decision is particularly significant because the Marcellus and Utica shale regions, two of the most productive gas plays in the world, lie underneath the state. While there is some debate over the economic benefits of fracking, there’s little doubt that if New York were to legalize the practice it could have reaped billions in revenue and created hundreds or thousands of jobs. By banning the practice, Cuomo has become one of the first state leaders to endorse the idea that the potential health and environmental impacts of fracking outweigh the potential economic benefits. Vermont is the only other state with a ban on fracking, although Vermont doesn’t sit atop shale.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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