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energy policy, fracking, offshore oil, tar sands, Uncategorized

Irish Independent: UK’s Nebula gets licence to explore Irish Sea fracking

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http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/uks-nebula-gets-licence-to-explore-irish-sea-fracking-30012998.html

EPA to investigate whether State should also permit practice

Nick Webb – 16 February 2014

While ‘fracking’ may not be permitted in Ireland, UK-based Nebula Resources is planning a venture to look for shale gas in the Irish Sea.

A company run by one of the founders of controversial British fracking company Cuadrilla has been granted three licences to explore the possibility of carrying out hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in the Irish Sea, according to the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change. The licences cover areas directly across the Irish Sea, less than 100 miles from Dundalk.

Nebula Resources boss Dr Chris Cornelius believes there are huge volumes of offshore shale gas that could be drilled. If successful, it would be the first such project in the world. The company hopes to begin exploration shortly.

“Certainly offshore shale gas is a new concept, and there’s no reason with the UK’s history of offshore development that we can’t develop these resources offshore,” he said last week.

Shale gas is extracted using the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves forcing water, sand and chemicals under extremely high pressure into rocks, to break them up and release the natural gas trapped inside. Fracking has completely transformed the US energy market by producing huge amounts of gas and oil, which has improved the country’s energy security and reduced its dependence on Gulf oil.

Some environmentalists believe that fracking may damage water supplies, and seek to block the extraction of new fossil fuel resources. However, drilling offshore removes the need to deal with local communities.

Natural Resources Minister Pat Rabbitte has charged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with investigating whether fracking should be permitted in Ireland.

The EPA has launched tenders for a two-year study into the impact of hydraulic fracturing.

The study is more comprehensive than first planned because of the level of opposition to fracking. Some 1,356 submissions were received following a public consultation period, the majority of which were against fracking. The EPA has now included a health expert on the committee drawing up the terms of reference for the study.

Most of the onshore fracking prospects focus on a small area bordering north Leitrim and south Fermanagh, which have been identified as potentially containing billions of cubic feet of natural gas. It is likely that this gas prospect may be extracted only by fracking.

The research programme is expected to start this summer. The Government has promised fracking will not go ahead while the research programme is under way. It is likely to be late 2016 or early 2017 before any fracking takes place in Ireland – assuming that the process gets a green light.

Cuadrilla Resources is the most high-profile gas fracking company operating in the UK. It is run by Irish exploration veteran Francis Egan and chaired by former BP boss Lord Browne.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, oil pollution, tar sands

State Impact–Energy and Environment Reporting for Texas: Fracking with Acid: Unknown Quantities Injected in Texas

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Fracking with Acid: Unknown Quantities Injected in Texas

FEBRUARY 12, 2014 | 6:30 AM
BY DAVE FEHLING

OSHA-image-frac-worker-300x225
COURTESY OSHA
Acid solutions are trucked to drill sites and injected deep underground

Read about the history of oil drilling in Texas and you’ll find references to how wildcatters would pour barrels of hydrochloric acid into their wells. The acid would eat through underground rock formations and allow more oil to flow up the well.

That was decades ago. While a lot has changed in the drilling industry since then, using acid has not. It’s only gotten bigger. And in Texas, no one seems to have any idea of just how much hydrochloric, acetic, or hydrofluoric acid is being pumped into the ground.

“During my years with Shell, we did not have to go to the Railroad Commission [the state oil and gas regulator] to get approval for an acid job,” said Joe Dunn Clegg, a retired engineer who now teaches at the University of Houston. In his well drilling class, you’ll learn all about what the oil and gas industry calls acidizing.

Acidizing involves pumping hundreds of gallons of an acid solution down a well to dissolve rock formations blocking the flow of oil. After a number of hours, the solution is then brought back up to the surface and handled as a waste product.

In what’s called matrix acidizing, the solution is injected at a lower pressure so that it dissolves rather than fractures the rock formations, explained Clegg. But he said acidizing is also used in conjunction with high-pressure hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
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“I consider it a relatively safe operation. But it does involve handling acid, which you don’t want to spill on yourself,” said Clegg.

In fact, in 2011, a drilling industry group issued a “safety alert” warning of the dangers of pumping acid solutions at drilling sites.

No Statewide Data
Acidizing remains largely unregulated in Texas. According to the Railroad Commission of Texas, drilling operators are required to report the use of acid, but spokesperson Ramona Nye told StateImpact Texas in an email that the commission doesn’t track the data. Therefore, the commission said it couldn’t provide statewide data for how much or what types of acids are injected into wells annually, nor can the commission determine what counties have the highest amounts of acidizing.

Texas lawmakers passed a bill in 2011 that now requires drilling operators to report some chemicals used in the fracking process. But the bill doesn’t mention acidizing, and one of its authors said the technique wasn’t even on their radar.

“Acidizing is not nearly as widely discussed as fracking. It could in fact be as problematic as the fracking,” says Rep. Lon Burnam, a Democrat from Fort Worth. He’s a frequent critic of the drilling operations that have taken off dramatically in his district over the last decade.

New Acidizing Law in California
One place where acidizing has attracted more discussion is California. Though the state ranks fourth for oil production, far behind Texas (which leads the country), it’s got reason to be cautious: California has bigger earthquakes than Texas.

“What happens if there’s another earthquake and you’re injecting acid down into the shale? I just think those are questions no one has answered,” said Kate Gordon, Director of the Energy and Climate Program for Next Generation, a climate change and family advocacy group based in San Francisco.

“It’s hard to hear about acid going into the ground under the state’s major aquifers and not be a little freaked out by it,” Gordon told StateImpact Texas.

Next Generation commissioned a report on acidizing and supported a California law that took effect last month. It regulates fracking and acidizing, requiring drillers to alert adjacent landowners and monitor groundwater.

“Oil is very important to both Texas and California. I get that. It’s a big part of our state GDP. But we should have an honest and fact-based conversation about what it means to be getting at this stuff,” said Gordon.

Gordon couldn’t point to any drilling sites where groundwater has been contaminated by acidizing in California. And in Texas, a statewide inventory of groundwater contamination does not list any instances of acid contamination linked to drilling. Both the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Railroad Commission of Texas said they know of no such cases.

Drilling Industry: It Only Sounds Bad
Halliburton and Baker Hughes are among the big drilling services companies that provide “well stimulation” that includes acidizing. An industry group, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said that the term acidizing is a “harsh” sounding word that makes an easy target for critics. But Steve Everly, a spokesperson for Energy In Depth, an industry-funded research and publicity arm of the association, said environmental groups “don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“This is a technology that has been used in the oil fields since before we had a federal income tax. According to countless energy professionals across the country, who have been stimulating wells their entire careers, it’s a safe and well-understood process,” Everly wrote in an email to StateImpact Texas

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, oil pollution, tar sands

Monterey County Weekly: Judge allows oil test well near Pinnacles; lawyer says fracking is already happening, just not here.

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http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2014/0130/article_897746d8-8953-11e3-b185-001a4bcf6878.html

Robert Parry
The first test well at Project Indian was drilled on Jan. 24. Steam injection can’t start under permitting for a propane-fired steam generator is completed.

Posted: Thursday, January 30, 2014 12:00 am
Sara Rubin

Oil executive Armen Nahabedian isn’t inclined to take environmental groups seriously. “If they want to go live in a cave and take their life back to a third-world means and be righteous, then I’ll salute them,” he says.

As it happened, David Hobstetter, a lawyer for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, which is battling Nahabedian’s latest project just south of Pinnacles National Park, drove his car from San Francisco to Monterey and back on Jan. 27. He burned that gas to get to Monterey County Superior Court, where he was asking Judge Lydia Villarreal to block the first of 15 test wells approved by the San Benito County Board of Supervisors last year.

Hobstetter lost.

“One well has been drilled,” Villarreal said. “It doesn’t quite seem to rise to the level of public interest to stop the work on that one well.”

Nahabedian’s company, Citadel Exploration Inc., is in the early phase of a pilot project, Project Indian, on arid yellow ranchland in the Bitterwater region. The project could ultimately recover as much as 40 million barrels of oil, according to Citadel’s website.

First, they’ve got to prove to investors that it’s worth the trouble and expense to employ cyclic steam injection, also called huff-and-puff, to heat and thin heavy crude oil and bring it to the surface. That costs about $25-$30 a barrel, Nahabedian says, but it’s too early to know the steam-to-oil ratio at Project Indian, and whether it’s economically viable. (The company spent $500,000 to get its first test well up and running, attorneys said at the Jan. 27 hearing.)

To do that, Citadel got a permit for 15 test wells. It would take a separate application to state oil and gas regulators and the county for permits to scale up to commercial production. But the Center for Biological Diversity appealed the test well approval, then sued San Benito County last July.

“To me [a test well] is largely indistinguishable from a production well,” Hobstetter argued. “You don’t need multiple wells to have environmental impact.”

Villarreal also required Citadel to provide Hobstetter with a detailed agenda of its plans for future phases of the project, allowing him to challenge the project at future points.

The Center for Biological Diversity had asked Villarreal to halt Citadel’s first test well, drilled on Jan. 24, until the court rules on the lawsuit this spring. The nonprofit argues the county should have conducted a more rigorous environmental analysis of the test project, considering potential impacts to condor habitat, water consumption and potential spills.

Attorneys for Citadel told Villarreal there are even more controversial techniques happening in South Monterey County oilfields. “They’re even doing fracking, under or around the Salinas River,” said Debra Tipton of Anthony Lombardo & Associates.
Lombardo says he’s not sure if fracking is happening, but that huff-and-puff is no big deal: “There’s nothing new or unusual or dangerous.”

As to concerns about condors, he says there won’t be puddles of oil on the site: “It’s not like the old days of John Wayne movies. The site looks far cleaner and neater than when they’re drilling a water well.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

energy policy, fossil fuels, fracking, tar sands

Capitol News Service: Cecil Whig: Cardin calls for water regulation in wake of West Virginia chemical spill

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http://www.cecildaily.com/news/state_news/article_0c346b69-2171-5514-8742-6b3f467ede91.html

At last! A ray of hope! DV

Posted: Saturday, February 8, 2014 7:15 pm | Updated: 7:43 pm, Sun Feb 9, 2014.

By Justine McDaniel Capital News Service
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin called Tuesday for federal regulation and oversight of drinking water in the wake of the West Virginia chemical spill, which left residents exposed to chemicals and without water for days.

Chairing a hearing of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife, Cardin said safe drinking water is an interstate issue that must be addressed by the federal government. Current federal laws do not require regular updates on risks, or plans for protecting citizens, in areas where chemicals are stored.

It is difficult to know how many chemical storage tanks are located near water supplies in the United States, said witness Erik Olson, a strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and it is likely that hundreds of other water utilities would not be able to handle a spill like the one in West Virginia.

Cardin said the government’s first priority should be preventing these types of disasters.
“Our laws are just not strong enough to deal with the current situation,” said Cardin, a Maryland Democrat.

About 300,000 West Virginians were left without water when a storage tank leaked chemicals into the Elk River on Jan. 9.

The spill, which involved two chemicals, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) and PPH, came from storage tanks owned by Freedom Industries, a company whose plant is just a mile and a half upriver from a water source for a major utility.

Residents in Charleston and surrounding areas could not drink, cook with or bathe using the water for days, and many remain concerned about the long-term effect of chemical exposure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said the water is safe to drink but recommended that pregnant women continue to drink bottled water until the levels of chemical in the water are “non-detectable.”

In Maryland, drinking water for major population centers, including Baltimore and Prince George’s County, comes from out of state, either traveling down the Potomac River from a reservoir in West Virginia or coming from the Susquehanna River from sources in Pennsylvania.

“Our biggest concern is the Maryland laws can’t impact what goes on in Pennsylvania or D.C. or Virginia,” said Sue Walitsky, communications director for Cardin. “Not having control of those water sources (makes) it important for Maryland especially that we have a national standard.”

Committee Chair U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and senators Joe Manchin and Jay Rockefeller, both West Virginia Democrats, introduced legislation last week aimed at protecting drinking water.

The Chemical Safety and Drinking Water Protection Act would require every state to make risk assessments at chemical facilities, plan for state inspections and prepare for emergencies, Boxer said.

Cardin said the current regulatory system, which hadn’t required a risk assessment of the area by the state since 2002, failed in the West Virginia crisis. That assessment did not list the risks of MCHM.

“In West VirginiaŠ a lot of different things could’ve been done if that information was available and we’d acted on that information,” he said.

West Virginia congress members, state politicians and environment and chemical experts testified about the protection of drinking water and the impact of the spill in the state.

“We need answers now,” West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said. She added that the spill is still causing problems for businesses and tourism and anxiety among residents.

Above-ground chemical storage tanks like the one that leaked into the Elk River sit all over the U.S., but both Olson and R. Peter Weaver, vice president of government affairs for the International Liquid Terminals Association, whose members include chemical-owning companies, said they don’t know how many of them there are.

“It’s basically impossible to know that right now, but we’ve reviewed literally scores these sourcewater assessments and virtually every one of them has some storage tanks that are near… the surface water supplies, often done because it’s convenient,” said Olson, of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Boxer said more than 80,000 chemicals are out there that could become potential pollutants.

“We’ve got a massive problem, and we don’t know how massive it is,” Boxer said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, national ocean politics, tar sands

The Guardian: Fracking is depleting water supplies in America’s driest areas, report shows From Texas to California, drilling for oil and gas is using billions of gallons of water in the country’s most drought-prone areas

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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/05/fracking-water-america-drought-oil-gas

The harmful use of precious water, along with the great potential to pollute other sources of water, are my greatest concerns with fracking. DV

Wednesday 5 February 2014 11.01 EST
Aerial of Fracking Drill Shale Sites in Colorado
An aerial photograph shows a large field of fracking sites in a north-western Colorado valley. It can take millions of gallons of fresh water to frack a single well. Photograph: Susan Heller/Getty images

America’s oil and gas rush is depleting water supplies in the driest and most drought-prone areas of the country, from Texas to California, new research has found.

Of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2011, three-quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55% were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found.

Fracking those wells used 97bn gallons of water, raising new concerns about unforeseen costs of America’s energy rush.

“Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of the country’s most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions,” said Mindy Lubber, president of the Ceres green investors’ network.

Without new tougher regulations on water use, she warned industry could be on a “collision course” with other water users.

“It’s a wake-up call,” said Prof James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine. “We understand as a country that we need more energy but it is time to have a conversation about what impacts there are, and do our best to try to minimise any damage.”

It can take millions of gallons of fresh water to frack a single well, and much of the drilling is tightly concentrated in areas where water is in chronically short supply, or where there have been multi-year droughts. Half of the 97bn gallons of water was used to frack wells in Texas, which has experienced severe drought for years – and where production is expected to double over the next five years. Farming and cities are still the biggest users of water, the report found. But it warned the added demand for fracking in the Eagle Ford, at the heart of the Texas oil and gas rush, was hitting small, rural communities hard.

“Shale producers are having significant impacts at the county level, especially in smaller rural counties with limited water infrastructure capacity,” the report said. “With water use requirements for shale producers in the Eagle Ford already high and expected to double in the coming 10 years, these rural counties can expect severe water stress challenges in the years ahead.”

Local aquifer levels in the Eagle Ford formation have dropped by up to 300ft over the last few years.

A number of small communities in Texas oil and gas country have already run out of water or are in danger of running out of water in days, pushed to the brink by a combination of drought and high demand for water for fracking.

Twenty-nine communities across Texas could run out of water in 90 days, according to the Texas commission on environmental quality. Many reservoirs in west Texas are at only 25% capacity.

Nearly all of the wells in Colorado (97%) were located in areas where most of the ground and surface water is already stretched between farming and cities, the report said. It said water demand for fracking in the state was expected to double to 6bn gallons by 2015 – or about twice as much as the entire city of Boulder uses in a year.

In California, where a drought emergency was declared last month, 96% of new oil and gas wells were located in areas where there was already fierce competition for water.
The pattern holds for other regions caught up in the oil and gas rush. Most of the wells in New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming were also located in areas of high water stress, the report said.

Some oil and gas producers were beginning to recycle water, especially in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania, the report said. But it said those savings were too little to offset the huge demand for water for fracking in the coming years.

Shortage of water and fracking in Texas
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Large hoses run from hydraulic fracturing drill sites in Midland, Texas. Fracking uses huge amounts water to free oil and natural gas trapped deep in underground rocks. With fresh water not as plentiful, companies have been looking for ways to recycle their waste. Photograph: Pat Sullivan/AP

Special thanks to Richard Charter