FOX News : Oil & Coal Are Good For The Environment

This broadcast was four years ago.
WTF?
HARRY REID FOR PRESIDENT.
WTF is wrong with the rest of these
A-Holes?

Wealthier is Healthier !

(vid) History of 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds: Post Carbon Institute

(petition) Stop the Trans Canada Pipeline into the U.S.

PETITION

Tell TransCanada: Stop threatening the property of landowners for your dirty, unapproved pipeline.

The arrogance of TransCanada is shocking, even for an oil company.
Even while the White House has delayed the process for assessing a required permit for the Keystone XL, TransCanada is suing landowners who won't sell their land in its preferred pipeline path.
That path includes the 600 acre working-farm that Julia Trigg Crawford's grandfather bought in 1948, along the southern banks of the Red River on the Texas, Oklahoma border; just East of where Bois d'Arc Creek - which waters the farm - runs into the Red.
Even though TransCanada doesn't have a presidential permit to build the pipeline, the company has been threatening to confiscate properties like this from people like Julia Trigg; using eminent domain if the landowners don't immediately accept the foreign corporation's offer to buy an easement for the path of its pipeline.
It's wrong for TransCanada to expect landowners to accept permanent damage to their land for the Keystone XL pipeline, or possible oil spills in the rivers and creeks they rely on. It's doubly wrong to threaten these landowners and force them to comply for a pipeline that the company doesn't even have permission to build!
Tell TransCanada: Stop using eminent domain to confiscate private property for a pipeline that hasn't even been approved yet.
Under eminent domain, the government can force landowners to accept monetary payment for the use of their land for certain public-good projects like highways and railroads.
Of course, TransCanada's massive fuse to the carbon bomb of the tar sands shouldn't qualify as one of these projects - it does great harm and only helps the profits of a foreign corporation. But regardless, the company doesn't even have the permit to build it -- in fact the White House just put a likely year-long hold on pipeline development after a massive grassroots backlash from environmentalists. But that hasn't stopped TransCanada.
According to an article last month in The New York Times, the company has at least 34 eminent domain actions against landowners in Texas, and 22 in South Dakota.¹ And their threats to landowners in Nebraska² helped spark massive public opposition and a special legislative session that were key in the decision to consider a different route.
Many of these landowners are being sued by the company, and told that if they don't take the small monetary offering -- sometimes less than $10,000 in exchange for the permanent damage to their land, and huge risk of spills -- their land will be condemned and TransCanada will seize the easement.
Many landowners, like Julia Trigg, are fighting back and doing everything they can to oppose TransCanada's land grab.
Let's make sure that TransCanada is being called out for these reprehensible tactics, and that landowners who are taking on this foreign corporation know that we've got their backs.
Tell TransCanada: It's beyond arrogant to confiscate land for a pipeline that hasn't even been approved yet. Stop using eminent domain to sue landowners who don't want a dirty pipeline on their property.

1. "Eminent Domain Fight Has a Canadian Twist," New York Times, October 17th, 2011
2. "TransCanada Keystone XL Eminent Domain Threat Letter ," Dirty Oil Sands

(petition)Jail Wall Street Execs That Broke The Law ~ Progressive Change Campagin Committee CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

Progressive Change Campaign Committee

boldprogressives.org/sign petition

(petition) Fight Corporate Ownership of Elections - CommonCause.org

Common Cause
Holding power accountable

With its ruling in the Citizens United case, the Roberts Supreme Court opened the floodgates for anonymous special interest groups to spend limitless sums on political campaigns. The effects have been devastating. People like Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers are bombarding the airwaves with attack ads, with no accountability whatsoever.

Nothing less than the integrity of our Democracy is at stake.
Corporate money now dominates our political discourse, and it’s undermining the ability of our political leaders to represent their constituents.
Enough! It’s time to take action to ensure that our elected officials are being sent to Washington to represent the interests of the people, not anonymous special interest groups with deep pockets. Use the form at the right to Stand with Common Cause as we fight the influence of Corporate Money in politics and work to restore accountability to our electoral process.

Sign Petition Here

(Petition) : Cease FDA Ties to Monsanto

Please click here to sign the petition

By Frederick Ravid (Contact)

To be delivered to: President Barack Obama

President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor, a former VP and lobbyist for Monsanto, the widely criticized genetically modified (GM) food multinational, as senior advisor to the commissioner at the FDA. Taylor is the same person who as a high-ranking official at the FDA in the 1990s promoted allowing genetically modified organisms into the U.S. food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety or risks. This is a travesty.

Taylor was in charge of policy for Monsanto's now-discredited GM bovine growth hormone (rBGH), which is opposed by many medical and hospital organizations. It was Michael Taylor who pursued a policy that milk from rBGH-treated cows should not be labeled with disclosures. Michael Taylor and Monsanto do not belong in our government.

President Obama, Monsanto has been seen as a foe to family-based agriculture, the backbone of America, by introducing dangerous changes to plants and animals and by using strong-arm legal tactics against farmers for decades. Naturally occurring plant and animal species are permanently threatened by the introduction of DNA and hormonal modification, Monsanto's core businesses.

FDA scientists once regarded genetic modification of the food supply as the single most radical and potentially dangerous threat to public health in history. As early as the 1991, a body of scientific research began to form which now includes articles in over 600 journals. As a whole, these offer scientific evidence that GM foods, hormones, and related pesticides are the root cause for the increase of many serious diseases in the U.S. Since GM foods were introduced, diagnosis of multiple chronic illnesses in the U.S. has skyrocketed. These illnesses include changes in major organs and in hormonal, immune, digestive, and reproductive systems. These modifications to foods and food production may also be contributors to colon, breast, lymphatic, and prostate cancers.

Experts are discouraged that regulators and GM companies systematically overlook potential side effects of GM. Monsanto's objective to use biotechnology to change the world's food supply is the opposite policy direction your administration should pursue. Your legacy of supporting Monsanto to have free rein in U.S. food policy is a nightmare scenario that is against the interest of all Americans and world citizens.

President Obama has appointed former Monsanto VP and lobbyist Michael Taylor to become senior advisor to the FDA's commissioner. This unthinkable linkage between food safety and corporate interests that have little regard for the public health must be stopped. This example of a "fox watching the henhouse" is inexcusable. President Obama must reverse this unimaginably dangerous policy and isolate the FDA from corporate influence.

NEW goal - We need 425,000 signatures
There are currently 419,464 signatures

(vid) Gas Fracking Protests & Spill - Dimock PA - 3/29/10

Support The USO until all of our troops come home.

United Service Organizations, Inc. (USO) is a private, non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization chartered by Congress and organized under the laws of the District of Columbia. (EIN/Tax ID: 13-1610451)

Financial and other information about United Service Organizations, Inc. (the USO) can be obtained by contacting the USO at P.O. Box 96322, Washington, DC 20090-6322 or by e-mail at info@USO.org, or for residents of the following states, as stated below. New Jersey: INFORMATION FILED WITH THE ATTORNEY GENERAL CONCERNING THIS CHARITABLE SOLICITATION AND THE PERCENTAGE OF CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED BY THE CHARITY DURING THE LAST REPORTING PERIOD THAT WERE DEDICATED TO THE CHARITABLE PURPOSE MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY BY CALLING (973) 504-6215 AND IS AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET AT www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/ocp.htm#charity. Pennsylvania: The official registration and financial information of the USO may be obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of State by calling toll-free, within Pennsylvania, 1-800-732-0999. Virginia: State Office of Consumer Affairs, P.O. Box 1163, Richmond, VA 23218. Washington: Charities Division, Office of the Secretary of State, State of Washington, Olympia, WA 98504-0422, 1-800-332-4483. REGISTRATION IN A STATE DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION OF THE USO BY THE STATE.
USO • PO Box 96322 • Washington, DC 20090-6322

(vid) Protest: Politicians in Bed With Big Oil - Money, That's What I Want - The Flying Lizards

Karl Rove - The spin doctor that tied government corruption to media manipulation

Ever wonder why FOX news can so boldly lie
with seemingly impunity? This is why !

Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush until Rove's resignation on August 31, 2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Since leaving the White House, Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal.
Prior to his White House appointments, Rove was a Republican political consultant and strategist. He is credited with the successful 1994 and 1998 Texas gubernatorial victories of George W. Bush, as well as Bush's 2000 and 2004 successful presidential campaigns. In his 2004 victory speech Bush referred to Rove as "the Architect". Rove has also been credited for the successful campaigns of John Ashcroft (1994 U.S. Senate election), Bill Clements (1986 Texas gubernatorial election), Senator John Cornyn (2002 U.S. Senate election), Governor Rick Perry (1990 Texas Agriculture Commission election), and Phil Gramm (1982 U.S. House and 1984 U.S. Senate elections).

Sarah Palin vs. Lady Gaga : Epic Rap Battles Of History

13 year Old Girl Silences The United Nations Assembly

Child speaking for ECO, the Environmental Children's Organization tells adults they, "must change their ways."

Indigenous Environmental Network - Shell’s TAR SANDS Environmental Impact Assessment Fails to Protect the Environment and First Nation Rights

Shell’s Environmental Impact Assessment Fails to Protect the Environment and First Nation Rights:

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation opposes Shell’s proposed project

December 20, 2011

Edmonton – Friday marked the closing date for the Joint Review Panel (JRP) public comments on the adequacy of Shell’s proposed Jackpine mine expansion application and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Many environmental and First Nation groups, including the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), submitted initial comments outlining flaws and potential impacts of the proposed project. Once the JRP is satisfied information is adequate it will announce details of the public hearing, including dates, location, and any pre-hearing process. If the Panel is satisfied with information presented hearings will likely begin in 2012.
ACFN and Mikisew Cree First Nation (MCFN), whose members find it increasingly difficult to hunt, fish, trap and gather as their lands are rapidly industrialized, submitted a joint submission in response to the JRP request for submissions on Shell’s Jackpine Expansion project. The joint submission asserts rights protected by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, including rights pursuant to Treaty 8, to hunt, fish, and trap, which guarantees First Nations have a meaningful livelihood now and for the future. ACFN’s joint submission identifies the following overarching flaws in the application:
1. Shell has not provided sufficient information with respect to the Project’s impacts and infringements of our section 35 rights for the JRP to comply with the Terms of Reference.
2. Shell has not provided sufficient information for the JRP to be able to conduct an assessment of the cumulative effects of the Project, either on environmental components or on our section 35 rights and traditional uses.
3. Shell has not provided sufficient information for the JRP to assess water quantity issues, including the degree to which the Project could diminish water levels below the threshold level where we can still exercise our section 35 rights and fully access our traditional lands.[1]
“We are rightfully concerned about how Shell’s proposed Jackpine Mine Expansion Project will impact and infringe our section 35 rights. It’s clear Shell’s current application does not include enough information for the JRP to appropriately assess potential impacts on our rights,” stated Chief Allan Adam of ACFN.
“We hope the JRP will respect our unique rights and implement our recommendations and not let Shell slide through the approval process without addressing our concerns,” stated Chief Adam. “We will no longer stand on the side lines as Shell permanently destroys our lands, our rivers, our rights and our community.”
Chief Adam’s comments come only weeks after ACFN served Shell Canada with a lawsuit for unfulfilled terms of agreements regarding existing tar sands mines. The agreements were meant to ensure Shell would provide a number of measures to lessen the impact of these mines on ACFN. The community asserts that Shell’s current operations are already threatening the environment and the communities way of life and plan to oppose Shell’s two new tar sands mines until all past and future concerns are addressed.
“It’s not surprising Shell is on the hook for unmet agreements in the tar sands, their track record in other countries is shameful,” stressed Eriel Deranger, spokesperson and Tar Sands communication officer for ACFN. Shell is allegedly responsible for oil spills, gas flaring and deforestation in Nigeria stripping the land of resources, destroying subsistence farming- and fishing-based economies of Ogoni people.[2] A fate people of ACFN want to avoid. “It would be irresponsible for the Panel to approve this application and allowing the expansion of any tar sands projects. We have been calling for a moratorium on new projects and Shell is no exception. Shell has clearly failed to meet base requirements fundamental to adequate environmental, treaty and human rights protection in the area,” continued Deranger, “we can no longer afford run away expansion on our traditional lands.”
ACFN and MCFN’s concerns regarding Shell’s EIA and proposal are echoes by groups like Sierra Club Prairie and the Oil Sands Environmental Coalition (OSEC) who also put forward submissions outlining serious flaws in Shell’s EIA.
Sierra Club Prairie’s submission stated, “Development is occurring at such as fast pace that each new EIS cannot fully consider cumulative effects; projects are being announced and approved faster than the cumulative impacts can be evaluated in impact statements.”[3] A concern shared by community members from ACFN and in Fort Chipewyan.
OSEC submission reports major gaps in the submissions that renders “information before the Panel inadequate to proceed with its assessment.” OSEC’s submission goes on to state the assessment failed to incorporate relevant information about valued species and species at risk. Many of these valued and species at risk are vital to the continuation of protected treaty rights of the people of ACFN.[4]
Chief Adam of ACFN stated, “We’re drawing the line, and taking a strong stand against Shell. ACFN wants no further developments until Shell is brought to justice and our broader concerns about the cumulative impacts in the region are addressed, our treaty rights respected and our rights are fully recognized within the approval process once and for all.”
For more information please contact:
Eriel Deranger, ACFN Tar Sands Communication Officer 780-903-6598
orChief Allan Adam, ACFN 780-713-1220

Indigenous Environmental Network "A network of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions."

Northern Ireland No-Fracking Required Here Petition | GoPetition

Northern Ireland No-Fracking Required Here Petition | GoPetition

Petition to IMPEACH ALL Senators who Voted for "U.S. is a Battlefield" and to detain U.S. Citizens INDEFINETLY

Petition to IMPEACH ALL Senators who Voted for "U.S. is a Battlefield" and to detain U.S. Citizens INDEFINETELY

Target: The Senate of the United States
Sponsored by: I want the American people to Sponsor the Petition!

Stand up for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the American People! IMPEACH every single Senator who voted FOR the McCain/Levin "U.S. is a Battlefield" bill that gives the military the right to go to the houses of U.S. Citizens and take them without charges or rights to a lawyer or trial for the rest of their lives! The Senators COMMITTED TREASON Directly Against the United States Citizens!

Never mind it saying goal of 1000 - I had put in 10,000,000! Please pass this along to everyone!

Do not fear signing it. Because if we live in fear we will have lost! This is a way of peacefully standing up and saying we will NOT allow a handful of people take away the rights and freedoms of 300,000,000+ people!

The Senators did commit Treason with that We the People need to hold them accountable and say "We will not let this happen."

This vote went directly against the U.S. Citizens Bill of Rights written by our Founding Fathers. It is the basis of the country and no group of people ar... more

(vid) Peak Oil Made Easy (To Understand, That Is)

VIDEO: Peak Oil Made Easy (To Understand, That Is)

comments Posted May 25, 2011 by Lou Grinzo with 756 reads

Ah yes, peak oil, and the chore of communicating an urgent but horribly inconvenient truth to consumers and voters who most decidedly do not want to hear it or anything even remotely like it. Sound like any other topic that I have been known to write about until my fingers bleed?

Anyway, check out the video below. In a little over 12 minutes it does a terrific job of explaining the key feeds and speeds of peak oil. A few notes, if I may:

If the IEA, as establishment as groups come, is saying so plainly that conventional crude oil has peaked in 2006, there’s an extremely good chance that either they’re right or any ensuing production above the 2006 level will be only marginally higher and likely very short lived. In other words, leave the champagne corked for the day we finally get around to doing something meaningful about transitioning away from oil.

The issue of how quickly we can produce oil from unconventional sources (most notably ultra deep water reserves and tar sands) is indeed the big question. Having to cook it out of the ground, or drill to oil that’s about 5 miles beneath the ocean’s surface in some offshore sites mean the oil will be more expensive even at an optimal extraction rates, let alone the much higher rates we would prefer. As just about everyone has pointed out a billion or so times with regard to peak oil, it’s a stock vs. flow issue. If you found an oil field with an immense amount of very high quality oil, say a trillion barrels, but for whatever reason you could extract it at no more than a million barrels per day, it would do almost nothing to delay peak oil or lessen the overall decline rate once we start down the post-peak slope. (As the video points out, we currently consume nearly 90 million barrels of oil every day, so your paltry one million barrels every 24 hours isn’t within 3 time zones of being a game changer.)

My reading of the situation agrees with that of the non-IEA experts in the video: The production rates for those unconventional sources are somewhere between wishful thinking and blatant spin. I’ve long said that I found it both fascinating and suggestive that the IEA’s pronouncements over the years are gradually approaching the hardcore peak oil assessment of our situation. (Notice the detail in the video that fairly recently the IEA was projecting that world oil production would rise to roughly 120 million barrels per day, which has now been revised to “only” 96 millions barrels per day.) I strongly suspect that the next place for the IEA to backtrack will be unconventional production.

As I was typing the above paragraph, an ExxonMobil ad ran on The Food network touting their new technology for producing oil from tar sands with no more emissions than conventional oil production. First, I don’t believe this for a second. And second, the emissions from conventional oil production and use are so hideously bad (remember climate change?), it’s hardly an accomplishment worth bragging about.
One big unknown is biofuels. There’s a tremendous amount of R&D looking for economical ways to let you fill up your SUV of Boeing 757 with something made from switchgrass or willow or algae or multi-decade old Twinkies. (We’re quickly maxing out our production capability for things like corn ethanol; the US is now turning something like 35% of its corn crop into ethanol that constitutes about 10% of our motor vehicle fuel. Do the math.) Plus, there’s the nasty interaction of some (but not all) biofuels with food production. Eventually we’ll be hitting international food prices much higher even than what we’re seeing now, which will put a lot of diplomatic and economic pressure on countries like the US to use their farmland for producing food for human beings and not motor fuel. My hunch is that we’re pretty close to that point.

All we need is another year where Russia exports zero grain (like 2010) coupled with one in which harvests are hindered by drought (France and Germany this year) and/or flood (US this year), and we could be off to the races. The bottom line is that unless our friends the genetic engineers pull off a major miracle in the algae fuel department, the most likely future for biofuels is for production to rise a bit more only to be curtailed.
There are always wild cards, like the efforts to suck CO2 out of the air and convert it into motor fuel. But once again, trying to make something like that work in the lab is one thing while making it work at an “affordable” price, on a scale large enough to make a meaningful difference, and soon enough (given that we’re almost certainly on the doorstep of the overall world oil peak), is a very tall order, indeed. And don’t forget that any such deus ex machina wunderfuel has to be backward compatible with the many hundreds of millions of vehicles already on the world’s roads.
So, that’s where we stand, oil-(un)wise. Please spread a link to this video (or this post, if you prefer) to your friends and relatives.
Photo by ilco.

About Lou GrinzoLou Grinzo is a writer and researcher residing in Rochester, NY. He blogs at The Cost of Energy (http://www.grinzo.com/energy/)

You don't have to be a 99% protester
to defend the environment and demand clean energy, but

100% of all life on earth
depends on YOU to

defend the environment and demand clean energy.

NO TAR SANDS/XL PIPELINE

"Challenge Coin" Agent Orange Sprayed and Betrayed.

NO NO MONSANTO GOT TO GO

Petition To Stop Natural Gas Fracking : Care2

This is a sight which puts hundreds of petitions in one place. I have provided a link to one of the Natural Gas Petition pages. You can find coal coal and gas petitions there as well.

Care2 Petitions

Tainted Drinking Water Found Near Gas Wells - News Story - KIRO Seattle

The Dangers Of Fracking For Natural Gas : Obama Is Part Of The Problem Of Corporate Controlled Government

Obama Pushes Natural-Gas Fracking to Create 600,000 Jobs

January 25, 2012, 1:47 PM EST

(Updates with Natural Resources Defense Council comments starting in 14th paragraph.)

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama pushed drilling for gas in shale rock and support for cleaner energy sources to boost the economy in his final State of the Union address before facing U.S. voters in November.

Hydraulic fracturing, the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals underground to free gas trapped in rock, could create more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade, Obama said yesterday. The process, called fracking, is among a list of energy policies Obama said would fuel economic growth.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama said.

Obama reiterated support for conservation and cleaner sources of power and pledged more oil drilling as part of an ‘all-out, all-of-the-above’’ policy “that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.” He said domestic energy production is at an eight-year high and imports of foreign oil were declining, prompting criticism from Republicans.

“It’s just a blind accident, if in fact we are producing more oil or natural gas than in previous years, because it’s not because of any of his efforts,” Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said after the speech.

Republicans also sought to contrast Obama’s pledge to use energy policy to create jobs with his denial of a permit to TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline to connect Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf coast.

Republicans, Keystone

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, delivering the Republican response to a nationwide television audience, called Keystone a “perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands” and said that Obama has sought to stifle energy production in the U.S.

Keystone would “have done more than any other project to increase our energy security and revive our economy,” Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said in a statement after the speech.

Obama announced incentives to make industries more energy efficient, and again urged Congress to require that a larger percentage of the nation’s power come from low-pollution sources.

He directed his administration to open up more than 75 percent of potential offshore oil and gas resources for production.

Eight-Year High

“Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years,” Obama said. “Not only that - last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years.”

U.S. natural-gas production averaged 1.89 trillion cubic feet a month through October, 13 percent higher than the average during President George W. Bush’s two terms, according to Energy Department data. Crude oil production is 2 percent higher, the department said.

While the U.S. has abundant natural-gas resources, it lacks regulations that would ensure safe production, Frances Beinecke, president of the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, told reporters in Washington today. She said the group “will be as aggressive as it can be” to close that gap.

Obama said the drive for new drilling would be accompanied by regulations to ensure safe drilling practices. Those would include a requirement that companies operating on public lands disclose the chemicals used in the fracking fluid.

‘Tip of Iceberg’

“That’s very, very important, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Beinecke said. “There are huge air quality impacts. These huge industrial operations are coming to small towns.”

As Obama backed more domestic oil and gas production, he also pledged support for renewable sources of power, urging Congress to pass clean energy tax credits and a mandate for more electricity to come for cleaner sources of power.

An energy efficiency initiative he’s backing would cut $100 billion from the nation’s energy bills, he said. Obama also pledged that the Defense Department would make the largest renewable energy purchases in history.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat and chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that the priorities Obama laid out were a “very good blueprint for how we can accelerate economic growth in our country.”

‘A Path’

Dave Foster, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a group that represents labor and environmental groups, said in an interview that Obama was “showing us a path” to how clean energy can increase manufacturing jobs.

Obama also repeated his call from last year to repeal tax credits for the oil and gas industry. That effort failed to win broad support in Congress, after producers said the measures would push more production and jobs outside the U.S.

“Advocating greater energy production but penalizing those who provide that energy is not a sound energy policy, but a contradiction,” Jack Gerard, chief executive officer of the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement.

--Editors: Steve Geimann, Jon Morgan

To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net; Katarzyna Klimasinska in Washington at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net

Showing 3 comments

cleanelectric 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand

Fracking is not an option. Fracking is stupid. Fracking is a Corporate Owned Government. Fracking blocks the developement of true green energy. Fracking is a false economy. Fracking pollutes the water. Fracking shatters the earths crust raising the risk frfequency and magnitude of earthquakes. Fracking is a fossil fuel. Fracking pollutes. Fracking is stupid.

0 Like

Oldknees 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand

Isn't it an overseas company that has the mineral rights to perform this 'fracking'
- 0 Like
Andy 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand

Mr. Environment is promoting fracking???

More From Businessweek

DANGEROUS FRACKING

GET THE REAL FRACKING FACTS HERE

EPA finally acknowledges fracking dangers

Wednesday, December 14, 2011 by: Tara Green

(NaturalNews) The Environmental Protection Agency on December 7 released its first report linking fracking to water contamination. The report identified fracking as the source of poisons, including the carcinogen benzene, in the groundwater of a central Wyoming community.

Something in the water

Pavillion, Wyoming is a small community of 174 people located on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The town sits in the middle of the state's huge gas patch which companies such as Encana Oil & Gas, Noble Energy and ConocoPhillips have turned into drilling fields. Since the mid-90s, more than 200 gas wells have been drilled near the small town. Approximately ten years ago, members of the rural community also observed new illnesses in local livestock. Around the same time, they also noticed their well water had a strange smell and taste, "like a cross between something dead and diesel fuel" as one resident describes it.

What the feds found

More than 20 Pavillion well owners contacted the EPA over the course of a decade, requesting a study of their groundwater. The agency began looking into the problem in 2009, beginning its research by taking samples from privately owned wells and municipal wells. They found low levels of methane and hydrocarbons, including diesel, in the groundwater.

Although the chemical levels did not exceed drinking water standards, the EPA felt there was cause for concern and advised Pavillion residents to use alternate water sources. (Currently, natural gas drilling company Encana delivers a water supply for 21 households in the area.) The federal agency moved to the next stage of testing, drilling two monitoring wells and analyzing waste pits for possible contamination. The EPA investigation ultimately yielded evidence of benzene, xylenes and hydrocarbon in the Pavillion's groundwater.

The report resulting from the EPA's Wyoming investigation is the first to analyze multiple, on-the-ground samples to determine the impact of fracking on underground water resources in areas of oil and gas development. The report is a draft of a comprehensive study the EPA study scheduled for release late 2012.

Industrial excuses

The three gas companies most heavily involved in WY drilling are Encana Oil & Gas, Noble Energy and ConocoPhillips. Encana called the EPA report "speculation" and refuted its conclusions. "We didn't put those compounds there, nature did" said a company spokesperson. The natural gas company also proffered the theory that the EPA's own monitoring drills were responsible for the contamination.

The EPA's study found that fracking is the most likely explanation for the presence of chemicals in the water: "Alternative explanations were carefully considered to explain individual sets of data. However, when considered together with other lines of evidence, the data indicates likely impact to ground water that can be explained by hydraulic fracturing." The agency notes that it exercised care in its own drilling procedures to avoid any contamination. The federal agency's report also faulted the natural gas companies for "shoddy drilling practices" noting inconsistent cementing of the steel casing lining the inside of well bores which could cause leakage.

The past and future of fracking

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves high pressure injection of chemical and sand-infused water into shale formations in order to unlock reservoirs of natural gas. Formerly practiced only in very remote areas, the use of this technique has expanded in recent years as the energy industry has stepped up its search for new sources of gas. Environmentalists have long pointed out the dangers fracking poses to both above and below-ground bodies of water. With the increase in fracking into more populated areas, the controversy has grown, with environmentalists demanding greater responsibility from natural gas companies, and industry apologists insisting fracking poses no health dangers.

EPA notes that the underlying geology of the Wyoming gas deposit differs from other natural gas formations across the country. The hydraulic fracturing near Pavillion happened much closer to the surface, and to drinking water sources, when compared with the fracking in other areas. The agency says that the environmental consequences of fracking in other regions of the country still have to be analyzed. The EPA recently launched a nationwide study of effects of fracking on drinking water.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.11/hyd...

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regi...

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/n...

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/08/14338...

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/...

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034401_EPA_fracking_well_water.html#ixzz1kVUWH2IL

New evidence of fracking dangers
Arkansas Times

Posted by Max Brantley on Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 12:59 PM

Another piece of evidence is in that suggests it's best not to take gas industry assurances about environmental risks of fracking with a grain of salt. From ProPublica:

As the country awaits results from a nationwide safety study on the natural gas drilling process of fracking, a separate government investigation into contamination in a place where residents have long complained that drilling fouled their water has turned up alarming levels of underground pollution.
A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, according to new water test results released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Report: Dangers of fracking greater than previously understood

Posted: 03/01/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

By Ian Urbina
The New York Times

Rifle has natural-gas wells. Fracking a relatively new drilling method known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing that carries significant environmental risks is performed in Colorado. (Kevin Moloney, The New York Times )

The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and thousands of drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century's gold rush for natural gas.
Drilling companies in recent years have developed techniques to unlock these enormous reserves, and energy companies are clamoring to drill.
But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens such as benzene and radioactive elements such as radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.
While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.
The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.
The Times also found never-reported studies by the EPA and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways. But the EPA has not intervened. The risks are particularly severe in Pennsylvania, where drilling has increased.
"In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we're trying for cleaner air, but we're producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it's not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste," said John Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
In Colorado, the majority of fracking fluids and produced water is recycled and reused, said Dave Neslin, executive director of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
He said no fluids are sent to wastewater- treatment plants. For the fluid that is disposed, 60 percent goes into regulated deep waste-injection wells, 20 percent evaporates from pits and 20 percent is discharged to surface water under permits from the state Water Quality Control Commission.
Denver Post staff writer Mark Jaffe contributed to this report.

NY Times on natural gas fracking: “The dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.”

By Joe Romm on Feb 27, 2011 at 4:50 pm

American Petroleum Institute apparently fine with dumping cancer-causing radioactive waste off Louisiana coast

The New York Times has a multi-bombshell piece on natural gas fracking, “Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers.” CP has done a great many pieces on the potential benefits of fracking — and the potential dangers (see “Getting to the bottom of natural gas fracking and links below).

But while unconventional natural gas might be an energy and climate game changer (over the near term) if it can be developed in an environmentally responsible fashion, the NYT piece itself may be a game changer.

Over the past nine months, The Times reviewed more than 30,000 pages of documents obtained through open records requests of state and federal agencies and by visiting various regional offices that oversee drilling in Pennsylvania. Some of the documents were leaked by state or federal officials.

You can find “the most significant documents … with annotations from The Times” by clicking here.

Here are some excerpts from the story:

But the relatively new drilling method “” known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking “” carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.
While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.
The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.
Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.
The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.
But the E.P.A. has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008.
In other words, there is no way of guaranteeing that the drinking water taken in by all these plants is safe.

And the citizens of Pennsylvania aren’t the only ones in harms way. There are many others:

There were more than 493,000 active natural-gas wells in the United States in 2009, almost double the number in 1990. Around 90 percent have used hydrofracking to get more gas flowing, according to the drilling industry.
Gas has seeped into underground drinking-water supplies in at least five states, including Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia, and residents blamed natural-gas drilling.
Air pollution caused by natural-gas drilling is a growing threat, too. Wyoming, for example, failed in 2009 to meet federal standards for air quality for the first time in its history partly because of the fumes containing benzene and toluene from roughly 27,000 wells, the vast majority drilled in the past five years.
In a sparsely populated Sublette County in Wyoming, which has some of the highest concentrations of wells, vapors reacting to sunlight have contributed to levels of ozone higher than those recorded in Houston and Los Angeles.

Back to the Keystone State. Here are some more of the NYT’s findings:

More than 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater was produced by Pennsylvania wells over the past three years, far more than has been previously disclosed. Most of this water “” enough to cover Manhattan in three inches “” was sent to treatment plants not equipped to remove many of the toxic materials in drilling waste.¶At least 12 sewage treatment plants in three states accepted gas industry wastewater and discharged waste that was only partly treated into rivers, lakes and streams.
¶Of more than 179 wells producing wastewater with high levels of radiation, at least 116 reported levels of radium or other radioactive materials 100 times as high as the levels set by federal drinking-water standards. At least 15 wells produced wastewater carrying more than 1,000 times the amount of radioactive elements considered acceptable.

So, are these levels of radioactivity dangerous? Here’s where the American Petroleum Institute comes in:

Industry officials say they are not concerned.
“These low levels of radioactivity pose no threat to the public or worker safety and are more a public perception issue than a real health threat,” said James E. Grey, chief operating officer of Triana Energy.
In interviews, industry trade groups like the Marcellus Shale Coalition and Energy in Depth, as well as representatives from energy companies like Shell and Chesapeake Energy, said they were producing far less wastewater because they were recycling much of it rather than disposing of it after each job.
But even with recycling, the amount of wastewater produced in Pennsylvania is expected to increase because, according to industry projections, more than 50,000 new wells are likely to be drilled over the next two decades.
The radioactivity in the wastewater is not necessarily dangerous to people who are near it. It can be blocked by thin barriers, including skin, so exposure is generally harmless.
Rather, E.P.A. and industry researchers say, the bigger danger of radioactive wastewater is its potential to contaminate drinking water or enter the food chain through fish or farming. Once radium enters a person’s body, by eating, drinking or breathing, it can cause cancer and other health problems, many federal studies show.
Little Testing for Radioactivity
Under federal law, testing for radioactivity in drinking water is required only at drinking-water plants. But federal and state regulators have given nearly all drinking-water intake facilities in Pennsylvania permission to test only once every six or nine years.
The Times reviewed data from more than 65 intake plants downstream from some of the busiest drilling regions in the state. Not one has tested for radioactivity since 2008, and most have not tested since at least 2005, before most of the drilling waste was being produced.
And in 2009 and 2010, public sewage treatment plants directly upstream from some of these drinking-water intake facilities accepted wastewater that contained radioactivity levels as high as 2,122 times the drinking-water standard. But most sewage plants are not required to monitor for radioactive elements in the water they discharge. So there is virtually no data on such contaminants as water leaves these plants. Regulators and gas producers have repeatedly said that the waste is not a threat because it is so diluted in rivers or by treatment plants. But industry and federal research cast doubt on those statements.
A confidential industry study from 1990, conducted for the American Petroleum Institute, concluded that “using conservative assumptions,” radium in drilling wastewater dumped off the Louisiana coast posed “potentially significant risks” of cancer for people who eat fish from those waters regularly.
The industry study focused on drilling industry wastewater being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, where it would be far more diluted than in rivers. It also used estimates of radium levels far below those found in Pennsylvania’s drilling waste, according to the study’s lead author, Anne F. Meinhold, an environmental risk expert now at NASA.
Other federal, state and academic studies have also found dilution problems with radioactive drilling waste.

Uh, okay, NYT, you’ve sold me on the notion that I shouldn’t trust industry statements that these levels of radioactivity are harmless.

BUT how about a little follow up on that 1990 API study. Has the petroleum industry kept knowingly dumping wastewater with radium in it off the Louisiana coast that could be causing cancer in people? I’m sure the beleaguered people of the Bayou state would be interested in the answer.

The bottom line this bombshell story is that the natural gas industry should no longer be given any presumption of innocence or safety in regards the health impacts of fracking. Time for the EPA and the wastewater industry to do some testing and inform the public of the dangers.

Read also:

Dangers of fracking go beyond

poisoned water supplies and earthquakes

By Martin Leggett - 22 Mar 2011 13:10:01 GMT

$Dangers of fracking go beyond poisoned water supplies and earthquakes$

It's called hydraulic fracturing or fracking, and some herald it as the future of clean, safe energy from natural gas. But from Pennsylvania to West Virginia to Arkansas, residents are seeing earthquakes, poisoned water courses and contaminated drinking water. So as this massively expanding industry gears up to pump out gas, from deeply buried muds and shales, those local concerns have states, such as New York's, introducing moratoriums. But beyond those immediate problems looms a larger issue - is fracking just a way for us to continue with our fossil-fuel fix, and so dodge the rapid switch to renewables that the planet's climate needs so badly?

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is in fact an old drilling technology, already widely employed to aid recovery of gas and oil from deeply buried reservoirs. It involves the pumping of drilling fluids at pressure into the well, high enough to fracture the rocks containing the gas or oil; it then flows out more readily.

What has changed in the past few years is advances in drilling technology - wells can be drilled horizontally, and the fracking process has become more efficient. The result is that a previously neglected source of fossil fuels, shale gas, can be easily fracked - and widely tapped. That has resulted in a boom in shale gas extraction, with it accounting for 40% of US natural gas production in 2008. But that roll out of thousands of new wells has produced a shed load of new problems.

Fracking involves a massive amount of water-based drill muds that need to be disposed of - yet the US drilling industry was exempted from the Safe Water Drinking Act, by the 2005 Energy Policy Act of 2005. And now there are cases of water wells contaminated in Pennsylvania, and of creek ecosystems wiped out in West Virginia.
And fracking may even be making the earth move, with a rash of earthquakes reported in central Arkansas, resulting in the halt of drilling operations there. This has raised the environmental concerns on fracking to a new pitch, and a previously compliant EPA has been moved to take action, to investigate these problems.
But for proponents of the shale gas rush, these are just teething problems - better monitoring, improved technology and tighter regulations will put them to rest. Then we can all march bravely forward into a low-carbon future - with a shale gas reserve which could easily last the US out for 100 years. After all, natural gas has a much lower carbon emission intensity than dirty coal or fuel oil. Is the squeaky clean cousin of the fossil-fuel family.
The problem with this analysis is that it is typically, and usefully, short-sighted. The total effect on greenhouse gas emissions are more complicated than just comparing combustion efficiencies. You need to look at the full life cycle of all emissions from extracting, transporting and using a fuel. That's what a Cornell University professor did. And shockingly, over a 20 year timescale, shale gas has a higher greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. That's because of the conveniently forgotten role of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, which is released during shale gas fracking.
That makes the continued exploitation of this resource part of the problem, and not the solution. Instead of a clean energy savior, shale gas is another green-tinged diversion from the task in hand. And the only promising future that it holds out is for a profit-lined one for the big gas and drilling companies.