Salon.com > fracking

National Intelligence Council: U.S. is a “global security provider”

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:32:00 +0000

Think of it as a simple formula: if you’ve been hired (and paid handsomely) to protect what is, you’re going to be congenitally ill-equipped to imagine what might be. And yet the urge not just to know the contours of the future, but to plant the Stars and Stripes in that future has had the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) in its grip since the mid-1990s. That was the moment when it first occurred to some in Washington that U.S. power might be capable of controlling just about everything worth the bother globally for, if not an eternity, then long enough to make the future American property.

How fracking is corroding small-town America

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 01:00:00 +0000

This isn't an article about the method of extracting natural gas from deep subterranean rock called hydrofracturing, or fracking, because you either already know where you stand on that issue or you're not much interested. And it's not exactly an article about Matt Damon and Gus Van Sant's fracking drama "Promised Land," even though the movie surprised me with the grace and sophistication of its portrayal of small-town America, along with nice supporting performances from Frances McDormand, Rosemarie DeWitt and John Krasinski. (I wish it hadn't been crammed into the most crowded season of the year, amid all kinds of movies with more star power and sizzle.) It might be about why "Promised Land" hit me so hard, and may hit you hard too if you spend time in the parts of America where the fracking debate is defining the future.

Fracking fights back

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Most of the legal news about Colorado these days revolves around whether or not the federal government will try to use the courts to prevent the state from implementing its new marijuana law. That's certainly an important story, but arguably just as important is the impending -- and possibly precedent setting -- legal battle here over the future of oil and gas drilling after the city of Longmont voted to ban hydraulic fracturing (aka "fracking") within its boundaries.

That vote wasn't some fluke. Following Pittsburgh's lead, both Republican and Democratic residents in the city voted overwhelmingly to ban the controversial natural gas extraction process after reports from (among others) the Environmental Protection Agency, Duke University, the University of Colorado and the fossil fuel industry itself documented fracking's potential hazards. Yet, despite all of this, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) just announced that his administration will officially back any lawsuit brought by those same firms against Longmont's new law.

Fracking’s most horrifying health risks

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:54:00 +0000

The good news is that a public health department— New York State’s Department of Health (DOH)— is finally undertaking an assessment of fracking’s likely health risks. The bad news is that it’s questionable whether it will allow adequate time to do a credible and complete job. So says a new scientific watchdog group launched to assure that science, rather than expediency prevails.

Up until now government has relied on the gas industry's blanket assurances of safety. The industry routinely tries to conflate the safety of vertical gas drilling (in use for a over a century) with horizontal fracking (in use for a little over a decade), a method which deploys a potent arsenal of chemicals so hazardous they defy known waste treatment methods.

Natural gas drillers target US truck, bus market

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:30:00 +0000

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — If the trash truck or bus rolling down your street seems a little quieter these days, you're not imagining things. It's probably running on natural gas.

Surging gas production has led the drilling industry to seek out new markets for its products. And energy companies, increasingly, are setting their sights on the transportation sector, trying to boost demand for natural gas buses, taxis, shuttles, delivery trucks and heavy-duty work vehicles of all sorts.

Fleet managers are taking notice, with waste haulers and transit agencies leading the way in converting to natural gas.

But a lack of fueling infrastructure remains a high hurdle to consumer adoption.

America’s secret fracking war

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:01:00 +0000

There’s a war going on that you know nothing about between a coalition of great powers and a small insurgent movement. It’s a secret war being waged in the shadows while you go about your everyday life.

In the end, this conflict may matter more than those in Iraq and Afghanistan ever did. And yet it’s taking place far from newspaper front pages and with hardly a notice on the nightly news. Nor is it being fought in Yemen or Pakistan or Somalia, but in small hamlets in upstate New York. There, a loose network of activists is waging a guerrilla campaign not with improvised explosive devices or rocket-propelled grenades, but with zoning ordinances and petitions.

The weaponry may be humdrum, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. Ultimately, the fate of the planet may hang in the balance.

US to overtake Saudi in oil output by 2020

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:38:00 +0000

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released its annual report Monday, which predicted that U.S. oil output will overtake Saudi Arabia's by the end of the decade. While many supporters of U.S. energy independence will welcome the news, the IEA report also warns that the global energy system is on an unsustainable path.

According to the IEA, the U.S. will become the world's top oil producer by 2017 and is on a path to energy self-sufficiency by 2035: "The United States, which currently imports around 20 percent of its total energy needs, becomes all but self-sufficient in net terms - a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy importing countries," the Western agency wrote.

The U.S. oil boom would accelerate a switch in the direction of international oil trade, the IEA said, predicting that by 2035 almost 90 percent of oil from the Middle East would be drawn to Asia.

The geopolitical implications of an energy independent U.S. could be profound, as Reuters noted Monday, "if Washington feels its strategic interests are no longer as embedded in the Middle East and other volatile oil producing regions."

Five strange, frightening effects of fracking

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:56:00 +0000

What comes to mind when you think of fracking? Perhaps it’s images of tap water being lit on fire or stories of families suffering health problems after nearby wells are fracked. Indeed, the health and environmental impacts of fracking are being documented, but it’s important to know that fracking is a catalyst for widespread negative consequences. This list includes five effects of fracking you may not have heard about.

1. Methane Geysers

This past June, a methane geyser was found in Pennsylvania’s Tioga County. Yes, a geyser — shooting methane-infused water 30 feet up in the air.

Once the geyser was discovered, the county immediately turned to Shell, which was drilling in three nearby locations. Shell and the Department of Environmental Protection began investigating, and it was correctly suspected that an abandoned well from the 1930s contributed to the problem. Last week, a new report confirmed that Butters well, drilled in 1932, was part of the chain reaction that triggered the geyser. But the main problem was Shell’s fracking, as it displaced methane pockets underground, which then moved into Butters well and shot up to the surface.

Colorado’s fracking fight gets ugly

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:00:00 +0000

One of the best-known and most often invoked tropes in our political mythology is the one about the distant big-city bureaucrat conniving with a politician and monied interests to undermine the will of Small Town, USA. It's a parable that you will probably hear in some form in the upcoming presidential debates. But while it is a cartoonish cliche, the caricature nonetheless persists because brouhahas like the battle over oil and gas drilling in Colorado periodically reminded us of the parable's general accuracy.

In that fight, things are getting ugly, fast. As I reported a few months ago, for all the national headlines this conflict has generated, and for all the talk of energy on the presidential campaign, the fight over hydraulic fracturing (whose safety was again called into question last week) will be won or lost at the most local of local levels. Already, the industry has been successful in convincing many states to avoid enforcing basic regulations already on the books. Now there's a push to crush new rules before they are put on the books. Indeed, here in the state hosting the first presidential debate - a state with one of the largest natural gas reserves in the world - the distant bureaucrats, politicians and monied interests are deploying every instrument at their disposal to quash local communities' efforts to create basic quality-of-life safeguards.

New data on Wyo. frack site await interpretation

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:05:00 +0000

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The meaning of reams of new data from groundwater testing in a remote Wyoming gas field where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sparked concern last year will be a matter of interpretation.

Does the new science shore up damnation of hydraulic fracturing — the petroleum industry practice of blasting water, sand and chemicals deep beneath the water table? Or does it refute criticism of the technique as too much anxious hand-wringing?

No one is making either claim yet.

The U.S. Geological Survey on Wednesday released tables showing the amounts of dozens of various chemicals in the groundwater below the Pavillion area of west-central Wyoming. But there was no analysis accompanying the data.

The information, from testing in late April, follows similar tests last year, when the EPA linked contaminants in two water wells to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The new testing shows much lower levels of the carcinogen benzene than what the EPA reported. However, only one of the two wells was tested this time.

The trillion-gallon wastewater loophole

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:00:00 +0000

On a cold, overcast afternoon in January 2003, two tanker trucks backed up to an injection well site in a pasture outside Rosharon, Texas. There, under a steel shed, they began to unload thousands of gallons of wastewater for burial deep beneath the earth.

The waste – the byproduct of oil and gas drilling – was described in regulatory documents as a benign mixture of salt and water. But as the liquid rushed from the trucks, it released a billowing vapor of far more volatile materials, including benzene and other flammable hydrocarbons.

The truck engines, left to idle by their drivers, sucked the fumes from the air, revving into a high-pitched whine. Before anyone could react, one of the trucks backfired, releasing a spark that ignited the invisible cloud.

Fifteen-foot-high flames enveloped the steel shed and tankers. Two workers died, and four were rushed to the hospital with burns over much of their bodies. A third worker died six weeks later.

Gas profiteers’ shocking crimes

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Ken Dufalla sits at a table inside Laverne’s Restaurant on Route 188 in Waynesburg, Pa. The former park ranger, 65, is sporting a camouflaged trucker’s hat and enjoying Laverne’s cream of chicken and biscuits with mashed potatoes. It’s midmorning, between the breakfast crowd and the lunch patrons. Waiters and waitresses are attentive and the coffee is flowing.

Before long, Dufalla is joined by a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, 67-year-old Ken Gayman, who dons a black and gold USMC ball cap. The two former Beth-Center High School wrestling practice combatants sprinkle the conversation with passages from the Constitution and speak about defending land and property. The two men are members of an association, but it’s not the Tea Party.

Confirmed: Fracking can pollute

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:00:00 +0000

One of the key arguments in the case for fracking rests on an appeal to common sense. The hydraulic fracturing process -- pushing gallons upon gallons of chemical-laden water into shale rock in order to bubble up natural gas -- takes place deep in the ground, thousands of feet below the earth’s surface and thousands of feet below the shallow aquifers that provide drinking water. Given the distance between the water and the fracking fluid, there’s just no way fracking could contaminate aquifers, the gas industry and its allies argue. So many layers of rock lie between noxious fracking fluid and water that the risks of chemical-laced drinking water don’t compute.

“Any way you look at it,” one natural gas executive told Fox News, “it is hard to imagine that anything we can do at 6,500 feet would ever approach the surface.”

Did fracking kill Dunkard Creek?

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:30:00 +0000

(A longer version of this story first appeared in Earth Island Journal.)

In late August 2009, dead fish began washing up in Dunkard Creek, a small river that runs through West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. During the next month about 22,000 fish washed ashore (some estimates say as many as 65,000 died). At least 14 species of freshwater mussels – the river’s entire population – were destroyed, wiping out nearly every aquatic species along a 35-mile stretch of the waterway.

“That’s the ultimate tragedy,” says Frank Jernejcic, a fisheries biologist with the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources. “Fish will come back, we can get the fish back. The mussels are a generational thing.”

The scene was horrific: Three-foot long muskies washed up along the riverbanks. Mud puppies, a kind of gilled salamander that lives underwater, had tried to escape by crawling onto nearby rocks. Many of the fish were bleeding from the gills and covered in mucous. The die-off marked one of the worst ecological disasters in the region’s history.