Category Archives: tar sands

energy policy, fracking, offshore oil, tar sands

Southern Studies: The growing fight against oil and gas exploration off the NC coast

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http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/03/the-growing-fight-against-oil-and-gas-exploration-.html

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) recently took time away from dealing with a water contamination disaster caused by dirty coal power to make the case for opening his state up to yet another player in the dirty energy industry.

Last Monday, while his administration continued to grapple with Duke Energy’s massive coal ash spill into the Dan River, McCrory joined fellow governors Terry McAuliffe (D) of Virginia, Phil Bryant (R) of Mississippi and Robert Bentley (R) of Alabama at a meeting in Washington with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to make the case for opening up their coasts to offshore drilling for oil and gas.

Those state leaders are members of the Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition (OCSGC), a group promoting expanded offshore drilling that’s chaired by McCrory. Its other members are Republican Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Rick Perry of Texas, and Sean Parnell of Alaska.

McCrory and his OCSGC colleagues asked Jewell to support seismic testing for oil and gas reserves off the Atlantic Coast, which is currently protected by a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling. They got their answer three days later, when the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) published an environmental analysis that endorsed a plan for seismic exploration in Atlantic waters.

Jewell — the former CEO of outdoor goods company REI who started her career as an engineer for what was then the Mobil oil company — is expected to formally approve the testing plan next month, McClatchyDC reports. BOEM is accepting comments on the plan here until April 7.

McCrory cheered BOEM’s announcement. “This decision is the right step toward more jobs for North Carolina, particularly in our rural areas near the coast,” he said in a statement.

The first step toward offshore drilling, seismic testing involves using air guns to shoot compacted air to the ocean floor, creating sound waves used to map undersea oil and gas reserves. But there are serious environmental and economic concerns about the air gun blasts, which are thousands of times more intense than the roar of a jet engine and are expected to cause injuries to marine life. Fisherfolk in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago reported a dramatic drop in catches following seismic testing in their waters.

But while seismic testing in the Atlantic appears to be winning support from federal officials, who say the current plan would “minimize impacts to marine life,” McCrory is meeting opposition in North Carolina coastal communities — including from members of his own party.

The town of Carolina Beach, N.C. held a special meeting on Friday, Feb. 28 — the day after BOEM approved seismic testing — where council members unanimously passed a resolution opposing seismic testing off the state’s coast. Of the council’s five members, four are Republicans and one is a Democrat.

“The town of Carolina Beach does not support the current proposals,” council member Steve Shuttleworth, a Republican, told The Star-News newspaper. “Particularly the frequency, the volume and the areas for seismic testing, as well as the potential threat to marine life.”

The resolution addresses potential harm to recreational and commercial fishing as well as tourism. Located about 15 miles south of the historic port city of Wilmington, N.C., Carolina Beach is a tourist attraction, with one of the East Coast’s last remaining beachside boardwalks, numerous charter fishing boat businesses, and a state park for fishing, camping and hiking.

Just three miles down the coast from Carolina Beach is the town of Kure Beach, N.C., where Mayor Dean Lambeth’s (R) recent decision to sign onto a letter endorsing seismic testing triggered a backlash from his constituents. Hundreds of them packed a January council meeting to protest the mayor’s action, pounding on the walls and booing Lambeth. The controversial letter had been written by America’s Energy Forum, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s largest trade association.
“…[W]e really weren’t represented by our mayor in this decision,” Kure Beach resident Joanne Durham said at the meeting. The council has not taken a formal position on seismic testing.

Carolina Beach and Kure Beach residents are not alone in their opposition to seismic testing: The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and about 50 members of the U.S. House and Senate have also taken stances against it, according to a tally by the environmental advocacy group Oceana, which also opposes the practice.

And last month, 102 marine scientists and conservation biologists wrote a letter to President Obama opposing finalizing the environmental impact statement on seismic testing until the National Marine Fisheries completes its new Marine Mammal Acoustic Guidelines lest the statement be “scientifically deficient and quickly outdated.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, tar sands

E&E: Enviros petition EPA to ban chemical discharges off Calif. coast

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Scott Streater, E&E reporter
Published: Wednesday, February 26, 2014

An environmental group wants U.S. EPA to ban the discharge of chemicals
off the California coastline that are used by some offshore oil and gas
drilling operators as part of the hydraulic fracturing process.

The Center for Biological Diversity today submitted the 44-page
petition to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Jared Blumenfeld, the
agency’s regional administrator in San Francisco, requesting that the
agency amend a general permit covering offshore oil and gas exploration
off the South California coast to prohibit discharges of “dangerous
fracking chemicals into the ocean just off the coast of California
directly into sensitive habitat for blue whales, leatherback sea
turtles and many other endangered species.”

EPA last month approved an updated version of the general permit that
allows oil companies to discharge more than 9 billion gallons of
wastewater into the ocean each year, according to the environmental
group’s petition.

“EPA must revoke or modify” the permit, which authorizes 23 offshore
oil and gas platforms to discharge into federal waters off California,
“because offshore fracking and its associated discharges endanger human
health and the environment,” the petition said.

The Center for Biological Diversity says oil companies have used
fracturing on more than a dozen offshore wells in California and that a
CBD analysis of 12 offshore sites in the state found that a third of
the fracking chemicals used are suspected of ecological hazards.

“It’s disgusting that oil companies dump wastewater into California’s
ocean,” said Miyoko Sakashita, CBD’s oceans program director in San
Francisco. “You can see the rigs from shore, but the contaminated
waters are hidden from view. Our goal is to make sure toxic fracking
chemicals don’t poison wildlife or end up in the food chain.”

The general permit that EPA updated last month and that is at the
center of the CBD petition was revised to include better oversight of
offshore drilling in the state in response to concerns from state
legislators and others over “the risks to the marine environment from
potential releases of hydraulic fracturing fluids and the adequacy of
the existing information and requirements,” according to the agency
(E&ENews PM, Jan. 9).

The updated general permit, among other things, requires oil and gas
drillers operating offshore in California to maintain an inventory of
the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing and other drilling
operations and to report those results if the fluids are released into
the surrounding water.

But the updated permit also allows it to “be reopened and modified if
new information indicates that the discharges (including chemicals used
and discharged in hydraulic fracturing operations offshore) could cause
unreasonable degradation of the marine environment,” according to EPA.

While the updated EPA rules “were a step in the right direction,”
Sakashita said, chemicals used in the fracking process have no business
being discharged into federal waters.

The CBD petition said that the “hazards posed to the environment from
fracking operations are too great to allow the continued dumping of
wastewater with unlimited fracking chemicals into the ocean,” and that
“reporting alone is insufficient” to protect waterways and the marine
life in them.

“The toxic chemicals used for offshore fracking don’t belong in the
ocean,” Sakashita said, “and the best way to protect our coast is to
ban fracking altogether.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fracking, natural resource management, oil pollution, tar sands

Common Dreams: Historic Rally Challenges Fracking Export Industry in Maryland; Protesters march against LNG export terminal and ‘planet-wrecking vision of new fracking wells, pipelines, and compressors’

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Published on Friday, February 21, 2014
– Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer

(Photo: Chesapeake Climate Action Network) A natural gas export terminal being proposed near a small coastal town in Maryland would increase toxic gas fracking operations around the region, hurt the environment, speed up climate change, and do little for “energy independence” in the United States, campaigners warned at the “the largest environmental protest in Baltimore history” on Thursday.

At issue is the proposal to convert the Dominion Cove Point Liquid Natural Gas import terminal into an export terminal, a plan which is up for approval with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. However, Maryland’s Public Service Commission in Baltimore has the power to veto the proposed 130-megawatt power plant that energy company Dominion needs to build for the export operation, the Baltimore Sun reports.

On Thursday, the commission held a hearing on Dominion’s proposal, which drew over 700 protesters from around Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic region to its doorstep.

“The controversial $3.8 billion Cove Point project, proposed by Virginia-based Dominion Resources, would take gas from fracking wells across the Appalachian region, liquefy it along the Chesapeake Bay in southern Maryland, and export it to Asia,” writes the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, who has helped lead the charge against the project.

Among a long list of grievances with the proposed facility, campaigners a CCAN argue it would:

“Trigger more greenhouse gas emissions than any other single source of climate pollution in Maryland.”
Initiate a “web of new pipelines and processing plants across Maryland and Virginia in order to export fracked natural gas to overseas markets,”
And “Drive demand for a surge of new hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for gas in our region and require an expanding network of new fossil fuel infrastructure.”

“While the gas industry would profit, we would pay the price of scarred landscapes, polluted air and waterways, livelihoods at risk, and worsened climate change,” they write.

On Thursday protesters carried a 100-foot-long faux gas pipeline reading the words “Stop Cove Point” through Baltimore, stopping at the large rally held outside of the hearing.

“We know it will take a movement to go up against the deep pockets of Dominion, and that movement is here today, representing people from across Maryland and the region who know the major impacts of this project in their local communities,” said Josh Tulkin, director of Maryland Sierra Club, at the rally. “From the streets to the courts, we’ll continue challenging Dominion every step of the way. The stakes for our bay, our communities, and our climate are simply too high to do anything less.”

Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr., CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus stated:

The climate crisis is our lunch-counter moment of the 21st century. If we don’t win this one, we all lose. Yet now Dominion is standing at Maryland’s door, trying to block its path to a fossil-free future. Today, we send this message to Dominion: We will organize, we will mobilize, we will fight in every peaceful way possible to ensure clean solar panels and wind turbines crisscross our region – not your planet-wrecking vision of new fracking wells, pipelines, and compressors.”

Inside the hearing Sierra Club attorney Joshua Berman, argued that Dominion’s reasons for building the site were misleading and, infact, the export terminal would cause an increase in domestic natural gas prices and, in turn, increase the domestic use of coal.

U.S. Department of Energy has already given Dominion its approval to go ahead with the terminal. It was unclear after Thursday’s hearing whether or not it will be approved by the Baltimore Commission.

fracking, natural resource management, oil pollution, tar sands

Business Insider–REUTERS: California’s fracking opponents introduce new moratorium bill

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http://www.businessinsider.com/r-californias-fracking-opponents-introduce-new-moratorium-bill-2014-21

RORY CARROLL, REUTERS
FEB. 21, 2014, 6:01 PM 8

By Rory Carroll
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California lawmakers have unveiled a new bill that would halt fracking and other controversial oil extraction practices in the state until a comprehensive review of their impact is complete, reigniting a legislative debate that fracking opponents lost last year.

The bill, introduced Thursday by state senators Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles and Mark Leno of San Francisco, would put the brakes on fracking until the completion of a multi-agency review of the economic, environmental and public health impacts.
The bill, whose submission was first reported by Reuters last week, would also halt the use of acids to dissolve shale rock to increase the flow of oil into wells until the report is finished.

It would also broaden the scope of a study called for as part of a bill introduced separately last year, since passed into law, that required oil companies to disclose more data about their activities.

The proposed, expanded study would include health risks posed by fracking to low-income residents like those living near Los Angeles’ Inglewood Oil Field, the nation’s largest urban oil field where both fracking and acid is being used, according to Mitchell, who represents the predominately minority community.

Last year’s bill did not seek to place a moratorium on fracking while a study was conducted, an outcome that infuriated many environmentalists in the state who see fracking as a threat to drinking water supplies and a potentially large source of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Fracking, where large amounts of water and some chemicals are pumped underground at high pressure to break apart shale rock and release oil, is considered a key tool in cracking California’s Monterey Shale, a massive deposit that is estimated to hold up to 15 billion barrels of hard-to-reach oil.

The bill faces long odds in the California state legislature, where a similar bill that called for a moratorium failed by a wide margin last year.

California Governor Jerry Brown, who has the power to put a halt to the practice via an executive order, has said he does not support a moratorium. It is better for California to produce its own crude oil than to import it from other states and countries, he has said in the past.

Lawmakers and environmentalists hope that the state’s severe drought might help change minds in Sacramento about the need to continue with the water-intensive practice. Fracking in the state used about 300 acre-feet of water last year, or as much as 300 households, according to state records.

“A moratorium on fracking is especially critical as California faces a severe drought with water resources at an all-time low,” said Leno.

“We are currently allowing fracking operations to expand despite the potential consequences on our water supply, including availability and price of water, the potential for drinking water contamination and the generation of billions of barrels of polluted water.”

(Reporting by Rory Carroll; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
This post originally appeared at Reuters. Copyright 2014. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, oil pollution, tar sands

Common Dreams: Promises of Prosperity, Fracking Delivers Devastating Toxic Emissions New investigative report highlights the impact of the drilling boom on Texas residents

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/02/18-3

Published on Tuesday, February 18, 2014 by
– Lauren McCauley, staff writer

fracking_banner_texas
Fracking flares around the Eagle Ford Shale sit just meters from area residences. (Photo: Earthworks/ Creative Commons/ Flickr)Residents living near the Eagle Ford Shale were promised riches and jobs when the fracking boom exploded in their region of southern Texas. However, according to a new investigation published Tuesday, with the wells came unchecked toxic emissions that would devastate both their health and the quality of their ‘easy country life.’

While much of the reporting on the negative impact of fracking has focused on the danger it poses to drinking and groundwater resources, this eight-month, joint study by the Center for Public Integrity, Inside Climate News, and the Weather Channel reveals the lesser-known impact on air quality and the unchecked and potentially lethal amounts of toxic chemicals emitted from the wells.

“What’s happening in the Eagle Ford is important not only for Texas, but also for Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota and other states,” where fracking has been sold as an “absolute-game changer” for often depressed rural regions.

Since 2008, over 7,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled in the Eagle Ford Shale and, with another 5,500 approved wells on the way, it has become “one of the most active drilling sites in America.” And though the shale covers 20,000 square miles, the state has installed only five permanent air monitors, which reportedly sit on the “fringes of the shale play, far from the heavy drilling areas where emissions are highest.”

According to the report, chemicals most commonly released during oil and gas extraction include: hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas found in abundance in Eagle Ford wells; volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like benzene, a known carcinogen; sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, which irritate the lungs; and other harmful substances such as carbon monoxide and carbon disulfide. VOCs also mix with nitrogen oxides emitted from field equipment to create ozone, a major respiratory hazard.

While there are some federal safety standards for workers who encounter these chemicals, there are no protections for people living near the drilling sites. Further, guidelines are typically set for one compound at a time without taking into account the impact of simultaneous exposure to multiple chemicals.

Through a series of interviews with area residents, the report describes a host of negative health impacts which include migraine headaches, nosebleeds and respiratory problems.

According to Robert Forbis Jr., an assistant professor of political science at Texas Tech University, the health issues faced by those living near drilling wells—not just in Texas but throughout country—”simply don’t carry enough weight to counterbalance the financial benefits derived from oil and gas development.”

“Energy wins practically every time,” Forbis said. “It seems cynical to say that, but that’s how states see it—promote economic development and minimize risk factors.”

“This crap is killing me and my family,” said Mike Cerny, a former oil company truck driver who lives a mile within 17 oil wells. The fumes from the nearby wells make Cerny and his wife “dizzy, irritable and nauseous,” while their teenage son suffers from frequent nosebleeds.

“We went from nice, easy country living to living in a Petri dish,” Myra said.

map tx fracking
An image from an earlier report on the Eagle Ford Shale, “Reckless Endangerment While Fracking the Eagle Ford: Government fails, public health suffers and industry profits from the shale oil boom.” (Image: Earthworks Action/ Creative Commons/ Flickr)