Politics in the Zeros

Hydraulic fracturing: How it works (Source: Times Reporting, LA Times)

It’s happening in California right now and has been for years, although apparently the state’s own regulatory agency doesn’t know about it.

In the past, the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) has said that it “does not believe that fracking is widely used” in the state. More recently, the division allowed that the practice is “used for a brief period to stimulate production of oil and gas wells,” but added that “the division doesn’t believe the practice is nearly as widespread as it is in the Eastern U.S. for shale gas production.”

Did they not think to ask?

Hydraulic fracturing has been used on thousands of wells in California, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based organization critical of the energy industry. Environmentalists are suing the federal government to prevent oil companies from fracking on public lands in Monterey and Fresno counties. Lawmakers have revived the disclosure bill that stalled last year after objections by Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil field service companies and a pioneer of hydraulic fracturing. They also have introduced legislation that would require oil companies to notify landowners before fracking near their properties.

Our governor has been trying to make things easier for energy companies in California and his administration hasn’t drawn up any new rules covering fracking.

State regulators say existing environmental laws protect the state’s drinking water but acknowledge they have little information about the scale or practice of fracking in California, the fourth-largest oil producing state in the nation. That has created mounting anxiety in communities from Culver City to Monterey, where residents are slowly discovering the practice has gone on for years, sometimes in densely populated areas.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club are suing the Bureau of Land Management to stop fracking on federal land, including 2,500 acres in Monterey and Fresno counties, leased to oil companies last year.

“They didn’t do any real analysis of what fracking would mean out there,” such as the potential effect on endangered species or the local water supply, despite the likelihood that fracking would be used, said Kassie Siegel, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity and director of its Climate Law Institute. ”They cite some misleading, older information which says, well, fracking’s no problem,” she said.

And there’s been no significant progress actually getting any laws passed. (Quelle surprise !)

The EPA just reneged on delivering water to rural Dimock Township so they now have no potable water. This after the drilling company was allowed to stop delivering water by state regulators.

We’re on our own, folks. It’s clear that state and federal agencies charged with protecting the population are worse than useless.

Fracking protest, Occupy Youngstown (WYTV news photo)

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources placed a moratorium on further pumping of waste liquids in an area five miles around a disposal well located near Youngstown after the 10th earthquake hit the region on December 24th. In response, the owner of the well, D&L Energy Group of Youngstown, stopped injection at 5 p.m. last Friday. There was a another quake the next day.

The latest quake, the 11th since mid-March, occurred Saturday afternoon and with a magnitude of 4.0 was the strongest yet. Like the others, it was centered near a well that has been used for the disposal of millions of gallons of brine and other waste liquids produced at natural-gas wells, mostly in Pennsylvania.

Scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (at Columbia University) are analyzing the recent seismographic data to try to pinpoint the fault that slipped.

There are no other disposal wells operating in the area, but four more were in the planning stages and have now been put on hold because of the moratorium.

Occupy Youngstown staged a protest at one of the proposed sites in Hubbard Township earlier this month.

After a Wyoming community complained to the E.P.A. a while back that their well water “reeked of chemicals” the agency analyzed the water and found hydrocarbons. So the residents have been advised not to drink the water. And today a draft report was published that I’m sure made neither the residents nor the oil and gas industry happy.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that fracking — a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells — may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.

The agency was careful to emphasize that these draft findings are applicable only to the Wyoming site, but opposition to fracking is growing all over.

If you’re unfamiliar with the topic, this is how the E.P.A. describes the process of hydraulic fracturing (commonly known as fracking or HF) which is being used to extract oil and gas around the world.

Fluids, commonly made up of water and chemical additives, are pumped into a geologic formation at high pressure during hydraulic fracturing. When the pressure exceeds the rock strength, the fluids open or enlarge fractures that can extend several hundred feet away from the well. After the fractures are created, a propping agent is pumped into the fractures to keep them from closing when the pumping pressure is released. After fracturing is completed, the internal pressure of the geologic formation cause the injected fracturing fluids to rise to the surface where it may be stored in tanks or pits prior to disposal or recycling. Recovered fracturing fluids are referred to as flowback. Disposal options for flowback include discharge into surface water or underground injection.

The oil and gas industry considers the composition of the fluids used to be trade secrets but maintains that fracking is completely safe. To date, only two states have even considered requiring full disclosure of what “chemical additives” are being used.

The latest weird, in not entirely unexpected, twist in the hugely contentious debate about expanding fracking in Pennsylvania and New York: According to tapes obtained by CNBC, recorded by a member of Earthworks, one natural gas industry insider promoting fracking in the Marcellus and Utica Shale suggested that anti-fracking activists constitute an “insurgency”, with another one proposing hiring former military psy ops personnel to combat it.

Topics last night included:

Triumphalist liberals proclaim mission accomplished in Libya even as battles still continue in Tripoli and the National Transitional Council draws up a constitution for a strict Islamist state under sharia law. And then there’s the problem of 1000x more loose weapons than under Saddam. Libya is nowhere near being stable much less having a functioning government.

Bank of America teeters badly as Warren Buffett loans them $5 billion at steep rates when they could have borrowed elsewhere much cheaper. They choose his loan because it implies his support. But BofA has $100-200 billion of toxic slop on their books, so $5 billion is just chump change. The Obama Administration changed the accounting rules for big banks so they don’t have to mark-to-market. Until this deception is stopped, the pretend-and-extend charade will continue – until it no longer can.

Fracking has been decisively linked to earthquakes in many areas. When it was banned, earthquakes decreased. Imagine that. There’s been quite a lot of fracking in Virginia. The earthquake was no coincidence.

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Libya: Assuming the rebels take Tripoli, what comes next? Let’s not forget Dubya’s “mission accomplished” statement on the aircraft carrier when in fact, not much had been accomplished at all.

Financial crisis: BofA is in dire shape as are some countries. Bailing out the big banks has made things worse, not better.

Hurricane Irene: She could be a monster. And was fracking at least partly responsible for the Virginia earthquake?

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With Steve Hynd , Keith Boyea, and myself.

Pumping toxic chemicals deep underground can result in polluted ground water.

Marcellus Shale Protest

Natural gas may be a marginally cleaner fossil fuel than coal, but obtaining it through the processing of fracking turns out to be more damaging to the climate than coal ever was. Fracking is a process that splits deposits of natural gas deep underground, using high pressure chemicals. A new study at Cornell has revealed that the process releases large quantities of methane, and other harmful gases, yielding 20% more global warming per unit than coal.

Who could have ever thought that injecting toxic chemicals deep underground at high pressure could have undesirable consequences? I’m sure the natural gas industry is just gobsmacked at this unexpected turn of events.

The report doesn’t mention the most hideous side effect of fracking, that of toxic and sometimes flammable water.

This is the same old story, repeated in a thousand different ways, of irresponsible and greedy corporations with no regard for the consequences of their actions, backstopped and coddled by a captured governmental regulatory process.

Shale gas drilling, which involves injection toxic and flammable liquids at high pressure underground to fracture rock formations can make tap water flammable. Crazed environmentalists (and those who wish to drink water from their taps without fear of exploding) oppose this dangerous practice, while the UK government harrumps about how the drilling is subject to a “series of checks.” Hmmm, would that be checks from the drillers or do they mean they will pretend to be concerned but allow it anyway?

The video is from the US, so let’s not get smug about how this happens elsewhere. That such a deranged and obviously dangerous practice is even allowed demonstrates how out of control and insane our global economic system is.