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Anti-Fracking Campaigners: We Won’t Be Silenced
[EcoWatch editor's note: Thank you Josh for providing this statement for the Ohio anti-fracking rally at Gov. John Kasich's State of the State on Feb. 7 in Steubenville, Ohio]:
Gasland was intended to be both a chronicle of the way in which oil and gas companies have used vast sums of money to shield fracking from virtually all federal, state, and local regulations and a cautionary tale about the toll the process takes on people and the environment.
Fortunately, the message of the film is getting through. Recent surveys show that 4 out of 5 Americans are concerned about fracking’s effect on our drinking water and seven out of ten Ohioans believe the process should be stopped until we know more about its effect on the environment and its relation to a series of earthquakes that have rocked the Northeastern part of the state.
The bottom line: fracking is not safe. It has never been proven safe and it will never be made safe. The industry admits that well casing problems occur in 50 percent of wells over the life of the well. That means that 50 percent of gas wells can be expected to leak chemicals, hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, carcinogens and neurotoxins directly into groundwater. The industry has never been able to solve this problem although they have been trying for decades and they have admitted that there is no solution to the problem. Safe fracking is simply an impossibility. If the state allows further drilling, it is trading water for gas. It is trading the short-term windfall profits of huge gas companies for our public health and the permanent poisoning of our ground water.
Unfortunately, Governor John Kasich and the Republican majority in the Ohio General Assembly, like so many members of Congress and officials in other states, have decided to listen to the siren song of the industry rather than the concerns of their constituents and the growing body of scientific research that is shining a brighter and brighter spotlight on the dangers of fracking. It’s no accident that the governor is delivering his State of the State address in the hotbed of fracking in Ohio.
He’ll undoubtedly praise the industry and the jobs it promises to create in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that those jobs come at a steep cost to the environment and public health.
He won’t mention that as he is speaking in Steubenville on Tuesday or the five bills designed to address environmental and health concerns related to fracking that are languishing in the Ohio House and Senate in Columbus because the industry does not want them to be heard.
He won’t mention that oil and gas producers now pay state taxes on the “honor system.” As unbelievable as it may seem, the industry tells the state how much gas they’ve extracted and pays taxes based on that figure. There’s no oversight or monitoring. In fact, the state lacks the authority to check meters at the wellhead and compare those readings against the figures turned in by producers. The producers pay what they want to pay—no questions asked.
That’s an especially troubling thought when you consider that this industry is totally devoid of anything that even approaches honor—and that their tax liability could climb to as much as $40 million per year if they do all the fracking they want to do—and then accurately self-report the volume of gas they extract. Given their history, I think we can count on the former and forget about the latter.
The aversion to regulation and the truth about fracking in Ohio is nothing new. This is an industry built on secret deals, influence peddling and media manipulation. It is grounded on the exemptions from the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Superfund Act and, crucially to the Safe Drinking Water Act, from which fracking was exempted by Congress in 2005. It is fueled by the near universal desperation for jobs and economic development that exists in the regions where most fracking occurs.
Thankfully, however, the public is slowly but surely digging itself out from underneath the mounds of industry propaganda that has enabled them to punch tens of thousands of holes in the Earth without adequate oversight. The earthquakes that shook Northeast Ohio did more than scare residents, it raised very real questions about the process and its long term effects that people want answered, NOW.
I applaud the public officials and the environmental, public health, and community groups, and the thousands of concerned residents who are demanding answers from the industry and the elected officials who do their bidding. I urge you to continue the fight, to keep asking the hard questions—even if it means being arrested for seeking the truth as I was last week for merely attempting to record a public hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Send this message to the industry and the politicians they control: we won’t be silenced. We can’t be bought. We will fight to keep our families and our communities safe.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllI think Josh need to also emphasize surface water threats too. In addition to direct-dumping into rivers via wastewater plants, most of the groundwater ends up in streams and rivers too (at least in humid-climate areas). Emphasizing only ground water theats imposes a rural (wells) versus urban (rivers and reservoirs) imposes a divide to the discusison.
A recent article in a local newspaper where I live in Florida stated that OIL fracturing is now being undertaken along with Gas "fracking", and is actually so potentially viable that the old, assumed definition of "Peak oil" is being thrown out and re-thought. That's right: the sudden potential of Oil Fracturing as a means of reaching previously un-reachable areas of oil deposits has the entire industry redefining what the U.S. can potentially produce. The growing domestic fields are causing long-term estimates on imported oil to shrink, while the oil industry hype places like the Backen oil fields in the Dakotas, where drilling evidently is going on like gangbusters. I don't know what this means for people who's water supply is already poisoned, except to believe that there will be many more whose water supply will follow suit, thanks to "fracking".
What you call oil fracking has been a tool for secondary recovery in the oil industry for decades. When enough oil is removed from a reservoir, the pressure remaining is not enough to push the rest to the well. So fracturing to produce large cracks in the rocks, through which oil can flow more easily, is used.
We will see a decline in fracking activities because gas has become too cheap to drill for as this excellent presentation of the USA's NatGas dilemma shows very well, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8914 [Graphics-heavy and page takes time to load.]
First part of problem: "The advent of shale plays provided an important new source of gas. Yet this new supply is characterized by high decline rates which means that wells must be continuously drilled to maintain supply. In 2001, the U.S. natural gas decline rate was about 23% and the annual replacement requirement was 12 Bcf/d when total consumption was 54 Bcf/d. Today, the decline rate is estimated to be 32% and increased consumption of gas means that approximately 22 Bcf/d must be replaced each year (Exhibits 1 and 2)."
Second part:" According to ARC Financial Research, $22 billion per quarter is needed to maintain domestic gas supply based on analysis of the 34 top U.S. publicly traded producers. Cash flow for those companies is $12 billion per quarter so there is a $10 billion quarterly cash flow deficit (Exhibit 3). The important factor here is that on a whole there are no retained earnings, and historically growth stems from retained earnings. Without retained earnings, companies must borrow money or sell assets into joint venture agreements to raise cash in order to drill."
Thus, we are seeing companies shutting-in reserves until prices rise to support renewed drilling. But even then as the presentation shows and commenters confirm, the actual amount of Natgas reserves is no where close to Obama's proclimation of "100 years:"
"If half of this supply becomes a reserve (225 Tcf), the U.S. has approximately 11.5 years of potential future gas supply at present consumption rates. When proved reserves of 273 Tcf are included, there is an additional 11.5 years of supply for a total of almost 23 years. It is worth noting that proved reserves include proved undeveloped reserves which may or may not be produced depending on economics, so even 23 years of supply is tenuous. If consumption increases, this supply will be exhausted in less than 23 years. Revisions to this estimate will be made and there probably is more than 23 years but based on current information, 100 years of gas is not justified."
What really ought to infuriate us is the insideous pollution of almost priceless ground water reservoirs for what essentailly is no gain whatsoever. Plus, it must be pointed out to idiots pushing "energy independence" that such a state of being only occurs when you are DEAD, and no longer dependent on energy. What we must become independent of is Fossil Energy upon which we are almost entirely dependent.
Sitting up here in Alaska, the part about the Honor System for tax payments is especially troubling.
Ohioans need to know about the Alaska v. Amerada Hess lawsuit because it is similar to the situation they are currently in about having to trust the producers on thier production numbers.
The Amerada Hess lawsuit was filed in 1977, and brought by the state of Alaska against the oil corporations who operated on its North Slope. Alaska claimed it was owed a substantial underpayment of the 12.5% royalty paid to it by the corporations. The disputed amount approximated $900 million. Alaska subsequently filed fraud charges, claiming the underpayment was intentional. Specific issues that arose included determining the proper point where the royalty should be calculated, how much of a deduction should be allowed for transportation expenses, how to interpret specific clauses of the lease agreement, and how much interest should be charged. Procedural issues emerged as well: could a fair trial be conducted in Alaska, how did litigants honor the discovery process, and should court records be sealed. After fifteen years, the case finally was settled out-of-court in 1992. The corporations paid the state $600 million, or two-thirds of the disputed amount. All charges, including fraud, were dropped. (h/t to Dr. William R. Johnson)
The trial court judge -Superior Court Judge Walter Carpeneti- stated at one point that the state’s position could only be characterized as “inexcusable trustfulness”.
Perhaps this apt characterization applies to the State of Ohio?
At least Ohio has a wellhead tax on natural gas. But the state surely should be monitoring meters at wellheads. The Idiot Revenue Service (IRS) does no less on income from economic effort that should not be taxed at all. Would it not be better if the IRS was replaced by an Earth Recovery Service (ERS) to recover the rental value of the earth? The ERS would then collect a vastly increased wellhead tax, a literal blowout gusher, to reflect a one time taking from the commons as well as the fracking way the taking was being done.
The wellhead tax would also be a towering natural gas gusher due to it replacing a counterproductive tax on company profits. This gas gusher would then evolve into an renewable energy gusher as the chief executive officer, experiencing an aha moment, would do a lateral into a renewable energy company where non-taxed profits would be maximized and taxed natural gas inputs would be minimized.
When going 8,000 ft in the earth to get oil it's time to forget about that oil. It is simply not worth the hassle. This process will only increase the cost of gasoline and in general the cost of living = no net gain.
Poisoning people's water supply is criminal and unacceptable. Screw that source of oil.
Time to start driving electric golf carts to do our errands in the cities. Yes street ready golf carts are readily available and make sense! Most all errands are within a 3 mile radius of home. Of course there is always walking and biking.
Electricity isn't very green as most of it's generated by burning fossils, although that's slowly changing. I was able to live quite well without a car when I lived in big cities, and even small towns. But here in the rural outback, it's hard to not have a car. And you know we have a future dilemma when the president says we have a 100 year supply and an older and wiser industry analyst easily refutes that claim by showing we have maybe 30 years worth instead. What's going to happen is future demand will not be met by future supply, which is the "gap" Hirsch discusses in his famous report on Peak Oil and Natural Gas, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_report
One solution is not to live in a rural area unless one's occupation requires it. The desire to gratuitously "live out in the country" greatly adds to the US carbon footprint.
Also, electric vehicles have a smaller carbon footprint even if the electricity is fossil fuel generated becasue battery-electric motor syatems are far more efficient than IC engines. Wall-outlet measurements of the electric consumption of my 50cc equivalent (45 mph, 35 mpc) electric scooter show that it gets about 230 mpg carbon-equivalent (350 to 400 mpg energy or economic equivalent). This compares to about 80 mpg for a comparable gasoline scooter.
I'm fortunate that my PUD buys only hydropower, which is plentiful here in Oregon, so my juice is almost as green as it can get. We do have public transit despite our ruralness and lack of massive taxbase. And people continue to vote for the funding of public projects. In the wide-open spaces East of Hood River along the Columbia Gorge on both the Washington and Oregon sides is the largest wind power plant in the country, and it continues to grow. Eventually, sealevel rise will doom the coast and its communities, probably by 2050 or earlier if the water rises faster because key segments of hwy 101 will be cut first. One of the hidden problems of using up NatGas is its use as feedstock for artificial fertilizers--NPK--that created the Green Revolution; thus, feeding cities will become another problem as we go forward and fossil fuel supplies dwindle. Communities that PowerDown and create resiliant systems for energy/food production will be better prepared for the future's challenges.
The profits are private and go to the companies. All the hassle (poisoned water, health problems, earthquakes, carbon in the atmosphere) are public, and go to the people.
As for walking, biking and golf carts, so many people commute a long distance to work and to visit family with kids in tow, etc. They will not totally solve the problems. But if you add better public transportation, you are getting somewhere.
"Time to start driving electric golf carts to do our errands in the cities.... Of course there is always walking and biking.
Ever heard of public transportation? If service was provided every 5 minutes and cost jsut 50 cents (like it once was and stll is in cities outside the US), would you still not get on the bus or streetcar?
Also, 8000 feet is relatively shallow depth for an oil well, most oil wells these days go down 15-to 20,000 feet.
In Michigan we are building the Ban Michigan Fracking movement (http://banmichiganfracking.org).
Josh--come on out to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan this Feb 16 for Ban Michigan Fracking's protest outside the Michigan Oil and Gas Association annual meeting. We already have 19 permitted deep shale frack wells in Michigan and.... over 1,000 injection wells. Yeah, that many.
We are definitely up against the 'safe fracking' mantra of not only industry and government here, but also continually stated by many NGO's --including the recently discredited Sierra Club-- who are publicly saying, "make fracking safe" and are pro-regulation. They are aggressively pushing state legislation calculated to bring us 'safe fracking' via a frack panel run by our Department of Environmental Quality (which also issues drilling permits and gets its budget from the production of gas), a frack study FUNDED by the gas industry, and a moratorium until the frack study concludes its foregone conclusions. The pro-regulation, 'safe-fracking' promoters have been divisive, unreasonable, counterproductive and downright destructive to the Ban Fracking movement and it's got to stop. We agree, fracking is not safe. Let's not regulate and oversee.
Let's ban fracking.
We also have a petition against the "frack reform" bills, available on our website.
I was horrified recently to find gas exploration going on in a pasture in Rutersville, Texas which contains the burial site of my great great grandfather who was one of the original 300 colonists of Texas. Of course, it's all posted with keep out signs.
There is already a pool of standing liquid at the bottom on the slope, which is not far from the Colorado river.
Keep out signs are not enough to secure subsoil mineral rights as you've recently discovered. Indeed, having the deed for your own land isn't enough as you also need to prove you own the subsoil rights to your property; otherwise, any mining/drilling company can and will lay claim to those rights.