Fracking Hell--The True Cost of America's Naural Gas Rush

The next time you hear the kittens and popsicles niceties from the Natural Gas Industry about how clean NG is, think again.

NY Times investigative reporting on what the real deal is, complete with explosive, confidential until now EPA documents and never released material that the gas industry does not want in the public eye.

The industry whines about increased regulations; "we're going to have to lay off workers if the regulations are tightened." Meanwhile, the companies are top heavy with fat cat executives and the profit margins for these mega companies are through the roof.

Laying off workers so the company big wigs can maintain their lavish lifestyles is almost like asking you to play a perverted game of Russian roulette-- Do you want your health or a pay check?

Why can't you have both?

Posted by Winger

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"Poison Fire" Trailer--Shell Oil Gas Drilling in Nigeria

Shell Oil has been notorious in the region for decades and Nigeria remains on the ever growing list of who does not profit from the "promises of community prosperity" from Big Oil and Gas. 

In 2004, the Nigerian senate ordered Shell to pay 1.5 billion dollars in compensation to communities. Shell refused. In 2006 the high court upheld the ruling. Shell appealed and, like in several hundred smaller cases against the oil companies, no money is ever paid. The appeals process drags on for years. Many Nigerian lawyers argue that the oil companies are above the law in Nigeria.

What lessons can we learn from this here in America? That big gas and oil will lie and shirk responsibility when something goes wrong? And that our legal system will help them avoid paying full compensatory damages? 
You think?

Read more here

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Gas Industry Secrets And A Nurse's Story--High Country News Erin Frankowski

With the debate on hydraulic fracking heating up (HuffPost Mark Ruffalo's Crusade Against Fracking article) this previous published story from High Country News, Writers On The Range Eric Frankowski deserves a second time around:

This July, an emergency room nurse named Cathy Behr wanted to tell Colorado's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission the story of how she nearly died after being exposed to a mystery chemical from a gas-patch accident.

Regulators said she wasn't scheduled to testify and they didn't want to hear it. But anyone concerned about natural gas development should listen.

Behr, who works in southern Colorado, at Durango's Mercy Regional Medical Center, fell ill last April after being exposed for 10 minutes to a gas-field worker who had come into the ER, his clothes damp and reeking. He'd come into contact with one of the "secret formulas" drillers use to hydraulically fracture oil- and gas-bearing formations.

Within minutes of inhaling the nauseating fumes coming off the worker, Behr lost her sense of smell. (She later told her story to the Durango Herald, a daily paper that has done excellent reporting on the incident: durangoherald.com.) The ER was locked down and the room ventilated by firefighters. But when Behr went home after her 12-hour shift, she still couldn't smell anything. Then the headache she'd developed got worse. A week later, her liver, heart and lungs began to shut down. She spent 30 hours in intensive care.

Read more here

The Huff Post story is well above 550 comments at last check, but this story from the High Country News' Erin Frankowski is compelling and thought provoking about the dangers of even passive exposure from fracking. 

Nothing about this process is safe, in fact it's all fracked up anyway you look at it.

What else should we expect from Halliburton?

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EPA Confirms Groundwater Contamination From Hydrofracking in Parker County, Texas

After years of "no findings of groundwater contamination" from natural gas drilling, for the first time the EPA now confirms that Ranger Resources hydrofracking has contaminated wells with methane, benzene and toulene in Texas Barnett Shale formations.

Additional links within the WFAA article on the emergency order from the EPA, and much more here on the story of Ranger Resources from one of our favorite Texas warriors Sharon Wilson of Blue Daze Drilling Reform for Texas.

Intro of Sharon's article:

Range Resources lives in an alternate universe where saying something makes it true no matter the facts. Range wrote a letter where they claim the EPA met with them and agreed that they were not responsible for the garden hose turned flamethrower in Parker County. Okay, I’ll play: if saying something makes it true, then I’m a ballerina.

She's a feisty one and Texas is lucky to have her fighting for the truth about the big myth that hyrdrofracking is "safe." As usual, Texas state agencies are in denial along with Ranger Resources and the fight is on to have the EPA decide who they are going to believe: their scientific testing or the BS of the usual suspects-- the Texas Railroad Commission, TCEQ and Ranger Resources.

This case has the potential to set precedent on hydrofracking and will be very important to track to its conclusion. We are not holding our breath that the EPA and Texas politicians who write legislation for TCEQ to follow will stand tough on it though because it is political suicide to go up against big gas.

Texas big mule Governor Perry is at war with the EPA over environmental regulations and never met a big polluter he didn't like. He has done more wrong for the Lone Star state during his reign of destruction than even the "I love Halliburton" G.W. Bush did, but he follows in the same pattern of corporate enabler to great faults.

Another fracked up big business republican governor who gets rich off of federal subsidies and big polluters while his citizens suffer. Good job jackalope.

Additional stories:
Second family has to leave their home in Texas from hydrofracking.
Birmingham based Energen on the move to Texas.

Posted by Winger

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Pennsylvania's Drilling Wastewater Released to Streams, Some Unaccounted For--ProPublica Reports

Nicholas Kusnetz ProPublica, Jan. 5, 2011, 9:20 a.m.

As gas-drilling operations proliferated in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale over the past couple of years, most of the hundreds of millions of gallons of briny wastewater they produced was eventually dumped into the state's rivers. Much of the rest is unaccounted for. That news, from a detailed look  at the state's management of drilling wastewater by the Associated Press, should come as no surprise to readers of this site.

As we reported in October 2009, Pennsylvania was largely unprepared for the vast quantities of salty, chemically tainted wastewater produced by drilling operations in the Marcellus, the gas-bearing shale formation that stretches under that state and into West Virginia, New York and Ohio. While the state Department of Environmental Protection called for the fluids to be sent through municipal treatment plants, those facilities are largely unable to remove the salts and minerals, also known as Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), from the waste.

As our story noted, abnormally high salt levels in the Monongahela River in 2008 corroded machinery at a steel mill and a power plant that were drawing water from the river. The DEP suspected that drilling wastewater was the cause and ordered upstream treatment plants to reduce their output. But months later levels spiked again. 

AP examined the DEP's first annual report of waste produced by drilling operations in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale area from July 2009 through June 2010. Among the AP findings:

• More than 150 million gallons were discharged into rivers after passing through treatment plants in the 12-month period. Enough, as the AP put it, “to cover a square mile with more than 8 1/2 inches of brine.”
• More than 50 million gallons, or about one-fifth of the total waste fluid, was unaccounted for because of “weakness” in the state's reporting system or incomplete filings from drilling companies.

The AP report says researchers still don't know whether high TDS levels are harmful to humans or wildlife. But the analysis found that some public water utilities had exceeded the federal limit for levels of cancer-causing trihalomethanes, which can form when chlorine in drinking-water treatment systems combines with bromide, which can be present in drilling waste.

As we reported back in 2009, the federal EPA recommends against discharging drilling wastewater into rivers, but it allowed Pennsylvania to continue the practice because more stringent regulations were in the works. The DEP announced new limits on TDS discharges in August, but they apply only to new and expanding facilities. The department has not yet responded to ProPublica's questions about the number or nature of any new treatment plant applications, so it's unclear to what extent these new standards are actually being practiced.

Another solution, which DEP secretary John Hanger and drilling companies say is already in the works, is to encourage companies to reduce waste by reusing wastewater in new wells. Hanger told the AP he thinks about 70 percent of fluids are now being reused.

But as we reported in December 2009, part of the reason drillers are able to achieve such high rates of reuse is that much of the fluid they pump into gas wells never comes back to the surface. When as much as 85 percent of the water and chemical mixture remains in the ground, drillers can dilute what little comes back with fresh water and reuse it. While that solves the issue of discharging briny water into rivers, it raises a separate set of questions about the implications of leaving fracking chemicals underground.

As the AP notes, industry claims of higher levels of waste-recycling can't be verified until the next DEP report is released, in mid-winter. Until then, Hanger called for “daily vigilance” of rivers and streams to ensure standards are being met.

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AP Article Disputes Gas Drilling Industry Claims That Hydrofracking Wastewater is Safe

Pennsylvania Allows Dumping of Tainted Waters From Gas Boom

Oopsy. 

Looks like someone has some explaining to do.

Of course we already knew about this but it has been brushed off as "all cases have been unproven" and they (the industry and their enablers including the EPA) have assured us (the public) that the groundwater is not being polluted and our drinking water is "safe."

Fine. Let them drink it and bathe in it instead of our children.

CBS video Pa. "Fracking Fuels Environmental Concerns"

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$haleionaires--We're "Fracking" Rich!

Excerpts of commentary on the recently aired CBS 60 Minutes Marcellus/Barnett Shale Natural Gas Drilling (hydraulic fracturing) segment from the James Howard Kunstler site. Go visit, he has more.

*(video follows below)

"So, last night CBS hauled Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, on board their flagship Sunday infotainment vehicle, CBS 60 Minutes, to blow a mighty wind up America’s ass (as they say in professional PR circles). America is lately addicted to lying to itself, and 60 Minutes has become the “go-to” patsy for funneling disinformation into an already hopelessly confused, wishful, delusional, US public". 

    

"McClendon told the credulous Leslie Stahl and the huge viewing audience that America “has two Saudi Arabia’s of gas.” Now, you know immediately that at least half the viewers misconstrued this statement to mean that we have two Saudi Arabia’s of gasoline."

Translation: don’t worry none about driving anywhere you like, or having to get some tiny little pansy-ass hybrid whatchamacallit car to do it in, and especially don’t pay no attention to them “green” sumbitches on the sidelines trying to sell you some kind of peak oil story…. 

"It also prepared the public to support whatever Mr. McClendon’s company wants to do, because he says his company will free America from its slavery to OPEC."

"By the way, CBS never clarified these parts of the story by the end of the show."

Good job Mr. Kunstler!
If you're offended by salty language, he may not be for you, but the tricks of Big Gas should offend you a whole helluva lot more.

The real story of what happened to the family in Texas that Ms. Stahl did not go into nearly enough. Fracking also reduced their land value from $257,330 on the 2010 tax rolls to its current value of $75,340.

Another valuable tidbit "left out" of the 60 minutes piece is that mineral rights and landownership are separate from each other in some of these shale areas, so theoretically the gas companies can just come in and take your land:
September 16, 2009, Christine Ruggiero received a call from her neighbor informing her that her fence had been cut, her horses were loose and there were bulldozers on her property. That's how she learned that Aruba Petroleum was taking almost half of their 10 acres.

They did not need to inform the Ruggiero's of their intentions and dealt only with the mineral lease owners. All they need from the landowner's is surface right's and that's where the campaign of lies begins.  

When the industry spins and says they don't exercise Eminent Domain, they're right, they don't in its legally defined use. But they don't tell you why.

 

Some observations and questions for T. Boone Pickens and his fracked up Pickens Plan:

T. Boone Pickens was on MSNBC'S Morning Joe last week hawking the Pickens Plan with his usual folksy, disarming charm and had them all on his team during the entire 9:00 segment. Not one word was said about the *environmental impacts, but plenty was said about how great and wonderful the Picken's Plan is.

"How can anybody be against this..." the MSNBC cheerleaders rah rah-ed.

...Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens says the United States ought to be producing vehicles to take advantage of domestic shale gas and break its foreign oil dependence. "This is our chance," Pickens told The Philadelphia Inquirer in an interview on the Marcellus shale. "I think it's almost divine intervention that we had all this gas show up at this time in the deal."

Here we go with that God loves pollution talk again...

What happened to the wind farm idea Mr. Pickens? Couldn't seem to get that federal support money huh? Bet you'll get a huge tax write-off from it though. Isn't your wife, Madeline Pickens, a big wild Mustang advocate? That is the Ruby Pipeline she's railing against that's cutting straight through the Mustang herds isn't it?

Don't you two even talk?

One other thing you forgot to mention, you rich old oil dinosaur, is that you are the Clean Fuels Energy Corporation (formerly the Pickens Fuel Corp.) which owns and operates natural gas fueling stations from British Columbia to the Mexican border.

But you're not in it for the money? It's a national security issue right? You're in it mostly for the good of America?

Sure you are...

NOT.

Tim Ruggiero speaks for himself and explains the lies of Big Gas:
(related video with visuals of the drilling on his property)

See our previous posting on Big Gas in Texas: "The Canary of Wise County, Texas"
November 16, 2010--Pittsburg City Council votes to ban gas drilling.

Energy experts have long touted natural gas as a cleaner fuel than oil. But while natural gas, as an end product, may be cleaner in many ways, its extraction still creates a great deal of environmental damage.

Though the industry had fought the measure by touting the jobs and wealth it can create for the area, the Pittsburgh council was unswayed. "They're bringing jobs all right," City Council President Darlene Harris told CBS. "There's going to be a lot of jobs for funeral homes and hospitals. That's where the jobs are. Is it worth it?"

*ProPublica's investigative series on gas drilling "Buried Secrets"

 

EPA News Release on Hydraulic Fracturing Chemicals--Halliburton Refuses

Eight of Nine U.S. Companies Agree to Work with EPA Regarding Chemicals Used in Natural Gas Extraction 

CONTACT: Jalil Isa  (Media Inquiries only)
isa.jalil@epa.gov
202-564-3226
202-564-4355

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 9, 2010

Eight of Nine U.S. Companies Agree to Work with EPA Regarding Chemicals Used in Natural Gas Extraction EPA conducting congressionally mandated study to examine the impact of the hydraulic fracturing process on drinking water quality; Halliburton subpoenaed after failing to meet EPA’s voluntary requests for information
 
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced that eight out of the nine hydraulic fracturing companies that received voluntary information requests in September have agreed to submit timely and complete information to help the agency conduct its study on hydraulic fracturing. However, the ninth company, Halliburton, has failed to provide EPA the information necessary to move forward with this important study. As a result, and as part of the agency’s effort to move forward as quickly as possible, today EPA issued a subpoena to the company requiring submission of the requested information that has yet to be provided.

EPA’s congressionally mandated hydraulic fracturing study will look at the potential adverse impact of the practice on drinking water and public health. The agency is under a tight deadline to provide initial results by the end of 2012 and the thoroughness of the study depends on timely access to detailed information about the methods used for fracturing. 

EPA announced in March that it would conduct this study and solicit input from the public through a series of public meetings in major oil and gas production regions. The agency has completed the public meetings and thousands of Americans from across the country shared their views on the study and expressed full support for this effort.

On September 9,  EPA reached out to nine leading national and regional hydraulic fracturing service providers – BJ Services, Complete Production Services, Halliburton, Key Energy Services, Patterson-UTI, RPC, Inc., Schlumberger, Superior Well Services, and Weatherford – seeking information on the chemical composition of fluids used in the hydraulic fracturing process, data on the impacts of the chemicals on human health and the environment, standard operating procedures at their hydraulic fracturing sites and the locations of sites where fracturing has been conducted.

Except for Halliburton, the companies have either fully complied with the September 9 request or made unconditional commitments to provide all the information on an expeditious schedule. 

More information on the subpoena and mandatory request for information on Halliburton’s hydraulic fracturing operations: http://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing

 

The Canary of Wise County, Texas--Natural Gas Fracking Well Effects Cause One Family to Fly Away

The Wise County Messenger published a story in their Sunday Edition paper on September 26, 2010 that disputes Big Gas claims of the process being "clean and safe"--for this particular family it's hell on earth and their mounting health ailments have forced them to flee their home in order to save their own lives.

They're not alone in their plight because Big Gas' invasive and controversial methods affects communities all across America that are unlucky enough to be victims of Mother Nature's geography that draws the energy giants to destructively assail her and wrest the rich deposits of gas she holds deep in her arms. They aren't kind in their methods and more often than not they cause collateral damage that has grave consequences from their desire to have their way with the earth.

But they'll tell you "everything we do is regulated and completely harmless--the country needs this product and it brings good paying jobs to the local economy." That makes a few casualties and whole range of suffering a fair trade-off in these soulless bastards minds and we are convinced that is precisely what they are the more we listen to their propaganda and see the real effects of what they do.

From the story:

"I started to get a little sick," she said. "I thought I was getting the flu. I was just tired and achy and started going through some little problems. "

"Then I started breaking out in a rash. It literally covered my entire body - my scalp all the way down to the bottoms of my feet," Parr recalled. "I made multiple trips to the emergency room. I had six doctors working on me, and they couldn't figure out what it was."

Today, her arms and legs bear pock-like scars from rashes.

Lisa first felt sick in fall 2008. As the immense trees across her 40-acre homestead dropped pecans, Lisa accumulated a host of unexplained ailments. The typical remedies didn't work.

Lisa was treated by eight different doctors over the course of a year. A source of the sickness was never determined. In June 2009, after exhausting everything he knew medically, her internal specialist suggested that something in the environment might be causing her various ailments.

In early fall 2009, she visited an environmental doctor who confirmed the presence of neurotoxins in her blood that matched chemicals used in natural gas production.

Toxic plume

Medical tests confirmed the toxins in Lisa's system matched toxins found in the atmosphere in an air-quality investigation conducted by the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) at a nearby gas well site.

On the evening of July 25, 2010, the Parrs smelled a strong odor emanating from a frac tank at a site operated by Aruba Petroleum of Plano. They reported it to TCEQ. Investigators arrived within hours to capture air samples.

Odors were detected up to a quarter-mile from the well site. The investigator, Damon Armstrong, reported that a "plume" wafting from the tank was "visible with the naked eye." The petroleum-like odor was so intense the investigator himself felt sick in the short time he was there, noting dizziness and sore throat.

The analysis found five compounds that exceeded safe values for short-term health effects, and another 20 exceeded safe levels for long-term effects.

The investigation found elevated levels of ethane, pentane, hexane, octane, xylene and nonane, all potentially toxic chemicals.

Four days later, a medical test discovered the same chemicals inside Lisa. 

Her husband and her 7-year-old daughter, Emma, felt sick as well.

"My daughter began having severe nosebleeds," she said. "She'd wake me up at 6 a.m., crying, covered in blood."

Emma was just diagnosed with asthma. She'd never had any respiratory problems. Emma also started breaking out in rashes and having stomach problems.

Bob also suffered from nosebleeds.

"I'm 50 years old and probably haven't had more than three or four nosebleeds in my entire lifetime," Bob said. "All of a sudden I'm getting them three times a week. It was odd."

"I hired someone to do water and air sampling at the home," she said. "The methane level in my daughter's room was at asphyxiation levels. And it was barely lower than what it was outside our home."

She showed the results to her doctor, who told her to leave her home within 48 hours.

"The doctor told me right then," she said, pausing as her voice cracked and a tear streamed across her left cheek, "I had to move immediately. Because if I did not, we would have to spend more time and money on hospitalization, on chemotherapy and morticians for my whole family."

On Saturday, Aug. 28, the Parrs said goodbye to their formerly idyllic home and moved into Bob's office in Denton. They don't know how long they'll have to stay.

"What we are going through is one of the worst things a family could have to go through," she said. "Having to leave this house and explain to my 7-year-old daughter that we've been run out of our house."

Bob and Lisa Parr aren't the sickly type. Bob built his home in 2001. He's enjoyed a long career in stone masonry and raising cattle. His home reflects the rugged, outdoor lifestyle he enjoys. Walls bear the trophies of big-game hunting in the wilds of Alaska. Black bear, mountain lions and elk are mounted on high wooden walls.

"We love it here," Lisa said while sitting in a wooden rocking chair on the back porch and gripping her husband's hand. "We're secluded, private. We just wanted to be left alone, and we've been run out of our house. It's not right. What's even more not right is we thought *TCEQ would come out and help us - they would clean up this mess."
*(The state regulatory and enforcement agency that compares notes on inefficiency with ADEM)

"We've had no help. We have someone who is contaminating our air. It has affected our cattle. We've lost pets. We've lost chickens. We're all sick, and we've gotten no help," she said. "I want them to fix it so we can come home. I just want to come home."

Several doctors had told Lisa for some time she needed to leave her home, but she couldn't convince herself to do it until the symptoms began affecting her husband and daughter.

"It had only been affecting me, so we stayed," Lisa said. "They thought I was super-sensitive. They called me the canary."

"I told them, 'That wasn't funny because eventually the canary died."

It's enough to make one wax nostalgic for the days of the Old West when disputes were settled in much more direct ways and men who caused harm to women and children realized swift justice from a society that gave a damn in more ways than we do today in the Lone Star State.

Commentary from Winger and the Texas team

 

EPA’s Letters to Fracking Companies Request Information, With a Legal Threat

 From ProPublica's great blogger Marian Wang, reprinted following PPs criteria.

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued letters to nine natural gas drilling companies requesting “cooperation in a scientific study” of hydraulic fracturing and how it affects drinking water and public health, the agency announced on Thursday. Buried further down in the document, however, is a veiled threat to take legal action if the information isn’t provided (Read a copy of the letter )

EPA is requesting that you provide this information voluntarily; however, to the extent that EPA does not receive sufficient data in response to this letter, EPA will be exploring legal alternatives to compel submission of the needed information.

The agency seems to be taking names with this latest request . The letter calls for a corporate officer to certify that the information provided is, to the best of his or her knowledge, “true, accurate and complete,” and it requires the company to specify the source of each piece of information by name, position and title. These two requirements could be important, should the information provided prove to be insufficient or inaccurate.


Chemicals used in the hydrofracking process, as we’ve noted, have generally been treated as trade secrets . The EPA said it would honor companies’ claims to confidentiality as long as it is explicitly requested at the time the information is submitted.

It’s also worth noting that in the letter, the agency requested that companies turn over not only the formulation of the companies’ fracking fluids, but also “all data and studies in the Company’s possession relating to the human health and environmental impacts and effects of all products and constituents” in it. (Information on certain chemicals’ effect on human health, aside from industry data, is likely to be scarce.)

The EPA also called for far more information than is currently known about specific sites at which hydrofracking fluids have been used, and the companies for which these services were performed. From the letter:

Identify all sites where, and all persons to whom, the Company:

i.   provided hydraulic fracturing fluid services that involve the use of hydraulic fracturing fluids for the year prior to the date of this letter, and

ii.   plans to provide hydraulic fracturing fluid services that involve the use of hydraulic fracturing fluids during one year after the date of this letter.

According to the letter, companies have seven days to provide notice as to whether they will submit the requested information, and 30 days for the full response.

Stephanie Meadows, a policy adviser for the American Petroleum Institute — an industry trade group — told The New York Times she was “disappointed with the threats ” from the agency.
“I’m not sure how they would do that, or if they even have the authority to do that,” Meadows said. “I thought we’d made it clear all along that we want to be helpful.”

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, one of nine companies sent a letter, told the Times that the company planned to cooperate fully  with the EPA:
“Halliburton supports and continues to comply with state, local and federal requirements promoting the forthright disclosure of the chemical additives that typically comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of our hydraulic fracturing solutions,” Ms. [Cathy G. Mann] said by e-mail. “We view this both as a means of enhancing public safety, and as a way to engage the public in a straightforward manner.”
 
If this attitude is genuine, it would be quite a shift.

Halliburton hasn’t always acted cooperatively when asked to reveal the chemicals in its fracking fluid.

When state regulators in Colorado demanded that the company hand over its recipe, the company threatened to end its natural-gas operations in the state, before eventually reaching a compromise to disclose some ingredients to regulators, but not to the public.

The EPA had concluded in 2004 that hydrofracking did not pose a threat to drinking water. That report, as we’ve noted, was used to justify legislation exempting the natural gas extraction process from oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act — an exemption that is now being re-examined as awareness  and public concern  have grown over the potential risks that fracking can pose to water supplies.