Gas Drilling Emergency in Bradford County – WNEP
April 20, 2011
Gas Drilling Emergency in Bradford County – WNEP. Apr. 20, 2011
SUNY Cortland:Sustainability Week
April 20, 2011
SUNY Cortland: Bulletin News Detail.
04/14/2011
SUNY Cortland will celebrate Sustainability Week 2011 with presentations on climate change, renewable energy and other topics; two film screenings; Earth Day activities and much more.
The week, which began on Saturday, April 16, runs through Friday, April 22. It will culminate with student and staff events commemorating the 41st anniversary of Earth Day.
Sponsored by the Auxiliary Services Corporation, the Campus Recycling Committee and the President’s Office, the week’s events are free and open to the public.
David Goodrich, the former director of climate observations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will deliver the week’s keynote address. Goodrich will talk about his upcoming bike trek from Delaware to Oregon, during which he plans to raise awareness of climate change.
Goodrich, who is also former director of the Global Climate Observing System Secretariat in Switzerland, will speak on Monday, April 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 205.
His address, “Pedaling Climate Change: A Bike Trip From Delaware to Oregon, Talking About Climate Change,” will discuss the two-and-a-half month journey he plans to start in May from coast to coast across the U.S.
”A friend of mine, his first reaction was that I’m certifiable,” Goodrich said.
Goodrich will discuss the reasons for his cross-country ride, the trip’s biggest obstacles and the places he is most looking forward to visit. They include the Sand Hills State Park in Kansas, the Snowy Range in Wyoming and the Cascade Range in Oregon.
“I’d like to have some case studies of places of climate change impact,” said Goodrich, who expects to bike between 60 and 80 miles per day. “And I want to see what people’s reactions are to it.”
The College’s sixth annual Community Cleanup Day kicked off the week’s activities on Saturday. It was organized by the City of Cortland, the Cortland Chamber of Commerce, the Cortland Downtown Partnership, the SUNY Cortland Institute for Civic Engagement and SUNY Cortland AmeriCorps.
SUNY Cortland’s other Sustainability Week events include:
• The annual Wilkins Bird Lecture of the Lime Hollow Center for Environment and Culture (LHCEC). John Marzluff, a specialist in wildlife relationships and avian social ecology, will discuss the curious behavior of crows and ravens in a talk titled, “The Surprising Behavior of Crows,”, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, in Sperry Center, Room 205. “Do crows really talk, give gifts and use surfboards?” Marzluff said. “Of course they do, and so much more.” The talk is co-sponsored by SUNY Cortland’s Biology Club.
• “The Environmental Impact of Tobacco: Working Toward a Tobacco-Free Campus.” The SUNY Cortland Tobacco Advisory Committee will present information from 1:40 to 2:40 p.m., on Tuesday, April 19, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “A Not-So Temperate Environment and How It Affects Forests (And People, Too).” Neil Pederson, an associate research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, will discuss the impact of climate change from 3 to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• Walking tour of the Hoxie Gorge Nature Preserve. Faculty members from the biology and geology departments will guide a tour and a discussion regarding carbon sequestration, biomimicry and nutrient cycling from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19. Participants interested in the tour must sign up in advance by contacting the Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education at (607) 753-5488 or by email.
• Sustainable lunch. The free, environmentally friendly lunch will be served from noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in the Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge. Bill McNamara, the director of ASC Dining Services, will deliver a talk during the lunch. Lunch is limited to the first 65 attendees on a first come, first serve basis.
• “Doubt Mongering in Environmental Issues.” A SUNY Cortland environmental science seminar class will offer this presentation trom 1:40 to 2:40 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “Local Food Movement.” Beth Klein, from the Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department, Christine Applegate, manager of the Farmers Market, and Heather Birdsall, from Cornell Cooperative Extension, will discuss how students can get involved from 3 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in Bowers Hall, Room 155..
• The Greenhorns. A screening of this documentary film, which explores young people in America’s sustainable food movement, caps Wednesday’s activities. The film begins at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 105. A discussion with local, young farmers will follow at 9 p.m.
• “Sustainable Heating at SUNY Cortland Using Biomass and Geothermal Energy.” This Earth Week Sandwich Seminar features a talk from SUNY Cortland senior Matthew Rankin about the use of alternative energy sources at the College. He will speak from noon to 1 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge.
• “Student Actions for Sustainability.” This presentation by the Environmental Science Club, the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and the SUNY Cortland Recreation Association (SCRA), begins at 1:40 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “The Technical and Economic Success of Renewable Energy in Central New York.” Melissa Kemp, director of Halco Renewable Energy, will deliver this talk at 3 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Lessons for U.S. Energy Policy in the Era of Extreme Energy.” Brice Smith, associate professor and Physics Department chair, will deliver this lecture, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Sperry Center, Room 105.
Earth Day
A series of commemorative events are on tap for the 41st anniversary of Earth Day on Friday, April 22. The Sustainability Week tent between Bowers Hall and Sperry Center will house most of the day’s activities. They include:
• The Physics and Engineering Club will offer a “Build Your Own Wind Turbine” session under the tent From 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
• College faculty, staff and community members will present “Local Food Resources and Composting Made Easy” from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. under the tent.
• The Environmental Science Club will offer “Earth Café 2050” from noon to 3 p.m.
• NYPRIG will present “The Facts About Fracking” under the tent from noon to 3 p.m.
• The third annual Outdoor Gear Sale and Fender Blender will allow participants to create their own smoothies while peddling a bike. Presented by the SUNY Cortland Recreation Association, the event is scheduled from noon to 5 p.m. at the Community Bike Shop Building next to Lusk Field House.
• An Earth Day open house at the Main Street SUNY Cortland building, 9 Main St., will round out the day’s events. The Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, Environmental Justice Committee, and Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County will be present for the program, which runs from 4:30 to 7 p.m.
The open house includes a screening of My Name is Allegheny County, a film that chronicles a community’s organized resistance to a radioactive waste dump in Allegheny County. Two local activists, Jim Weiss and Paul Yaman, will monitor a discussion after the film.
For more information on Sustainability Week 2011 events, contact Brice Smith at (607) 753-2822 or by email.
Maura Stephens: Meet the Gas Geezers
April 19, 2011 1 Comment
Maura Stephens: Meet the Gas Geezers.
Frack Pushers
Meet the Gas Geezers
By MAURA STEPHENS
This weekend, as 10,000 energetic, bright young people are converging on Washington, DC, for PowerShift 2011, a geezer* is waging an all-out assault on their future.
Eighty-two-year-old Texas fossil-fuel-pushing megabillionaire T. Boone Pickens has, incredibly, essentially written a bill called the NAT GAS Act (“New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions,” H.R. 1380), to switch fleet vehicles such as buses and interstate trucks to “natural” gas.
Pickens has been working the Hill, White House, airwaves, and editorial boardrooms for some time. He’s got buddies like MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan gushing over him and Joe Nocera writing oily op-ed odes to nat gas in the New York Times. And Pickens has somehow managed to sell President Obama and an astonishing number of Congress members on the myth that nat-gas is a homegrown wonder fuel “bridge” from dirty foreign oil to a clean energy future.
Pickens wrote in the Huffington Post on April 16 about his “Pickens Plan”: “We have to create American jobs, not OPEC jobs, and not jobs which can be ‘off-shored’ . . . . The Pickens Plan will enhance the economy, improve the environment and resolve the national security threat caused by our dependence on foreign oil, much of it from OPEC and many other nations who don’t have our best interests at heart. I’m for any fuel, as long as it’s American . . . including wind and solar, nuclear, natural gas, and coal.”
Pickens is not the only billionaire pushing this crude on the unsuspecting public. Advertising, sports, media, and bison-burger mogul Ted Turner, 72, who like Pickens is often called an environmentalist by incurious journalists, is driving the nat-gas bulldozer as well.
Picking apart the hype
But “natural” gas is not clean, it’s actually quite filthy when extracted via high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a relatively new Halliburton-developed process now ravaging many states, most recently the Marcellus shale states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and threatening New York.
A new non-industry-funded, peer-reviewed study released last week by Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth, coauthored by Anthony Ingraffea and Renee Santoro, shows that the entire process of Marcellus fracking from exploration to delivery is as bad as or worse than coal in its greenhouse gas emissions. (It’s no surprise the industry is attacking the study with all its might.)
And fracking is not going to supply us with domestic fuel to replace that scary OPEC (read: Mideast) oil. First of all, much of our oil now comes from our neighbors Canada and Mexico; Saudi Arabia is the third biggest supplier, followed by Venezuela and Nigeria.
Second, you can bet that much of the frack-gas will be shipped overseas, where industry can get a higher price. Corporations’ mission is to make money, not to help their country or do the right thing — despite their multimillion-dollar PR and lobbying campaigns’ often successful efforts to hoodwink us. So that’s just their honchos’ idea of good business practice.
Third, there’s already a glut of gas here now. By pushing vehicle conversion, Pickens creates a “need” for more drilling.
Which brings us to what I think is the real goal of oil baron and former wildcatter Pickens. He’s bought up huge tracts of land that sit on aquifers; in fact he owns more water than just about anyone. He isn’t hiding this; it’s part of his business plan.
When fracking pollutes your water supply, he’ll sell you bottled water.
And his buddy Turner, the second-biggest landowner in the United States and biggest landholder in Patagonia, gains big-time from fracking, too. He has huge ranches in New Mexico. The biggest, nearly 600,000 acres, is being mined for nat-gas, which contributes to his bank vaults. And a 2007 land purchase in Nebraska gives Turner access to the one of the gretat aquifers of the world, the Ogalalla, which underlies eight states. Its primarily fossil water, left from the last glaciation, is being rapidly depleted, but that might not stop a water privatization company from receiving permission to draw from it.
Neither man needs the money, but accumulating wealth appears to be addictive. Pickens and Turner claim their motives to be concern for the environment and patriotism.
That’s a joke. Fracking has turned vast swaths of Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Louisiana, and other states into industrial wastelands. Arkansas had to suspend fracking last month when it was suspected of setting off a series of small earthquakes.
Now the drillers are falling over themselves to poison the fresh water, air, and food supply of Michigan and the Marcellus shale states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia . . . and they’re desperate to get at New York, which so far has been holding them off. (A fragile moratorium is soon to expire, and it is not clear where new governor Andrew Cuomo stands.)
The beautiful hills, farms, streams, and woods of those states are being replaced by drill pads, rigs, truck depots, compressor stations, and pipelines.
And once the gas runs out — and it will, because it’s finite — the frackers will vanish, leaving wasteland behind. Tourism, agriculture, wineries, orchards, hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation will have bit the dust in favor of fossil-fuel extraction, noise pollution, light pollution, ruined roads and infrastructures, failed farms, and collapsed communities. Economists Jannette Barth in New York State and Deborah Rogers in Texas have both concluded that after a possible initial boom, fracked communities generally fare worse than communities without fracking.
Although some big players will do incredibly well in this speculative industry, most domestic and foreign (of whom there are many) investors will be losing billions as large and small companies go belly up. The Oil Drum conducted a detailed evaluation of investment in shale-gas fracking last autumn and concluded, “Shale gas plays in the United States are commercial failures and shareholders in public exploration and production (E&P) companies are the losers. . . . U.S. shale plays have been over-sold and are unlikely to deliver the results that investors now expect. In fact, shareholders have already lost most of their investment.”
Another claim the gas geezers make is that they’ll be creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for U.S. workers. Anyone who believes this has not been paying attention as U.S. corporations spent the past few decades shipping manufacturing jobs overseas. There are few factory jobs left.
Yet the energetic, environmentally conscious young people at PowerShift will have nothing BUT hazardous industry jobs available if the gas geezers get their way. And those jobs will last only as long as the finite gas does.
On the other hand, jobs in energy conservation, infrastructure rebuilding, and solar, wind, hydro, biogas (methane recycling), and other renewable energy production methods will last as long as the sun shines, breezes blow, waters flow, and animals and people keep making waste and passing gas (methane).
Maybe the gasbag geezers would serve a more patriotic and environmentally responsible duty if they would just recycle their own wind. Germany can do it, why can’t we?
Congress is buying into this . . . why?
It’s not just the NAT GAS bill. Many other energy plants and facilities and related industries are jumping on the nat-gas bandwagon.
It’s an all-out corporate campaign, and the multimillion-dollar PR juggernaut is swaying minds and votes faster than alarmed scientists, medical professionals, and activists can alert legislators and the public.
“I think the House can pass it in 30 days,” Nocera quotes Pickens as saying about his bill.
How has Pickens managed to get 178 (at last count; up from 129 a few days ago) cosponsors, including many members of the Progressive Caucus and Sustainable Energy and Environmental Committee? (Don’t they remember who funded the anti-Kerry “swiftboat” campaign in the 2004 presidential race?)
What’s especially puzzling is that there is a vast body of information readily available about the perils of fracking to fresh water and other things necessary for healthy people, communities, and countries. Congress members should see Pickens’s pitch for what it is: pure spin.
By now they should have watched the Academy Award-nominated documentary film Gasland by Josh Fox and heard testimony from Sandra Steingraber, Conrad “Dan” Volz, and other scientists calling for a slowdown if not an outright ban on fracking. And they must have read Ian Urbina’s three-part series in the New York Times that shares never-reported studies by the Environmental Protection Agency revealing lax regulations and numerous cases of water contamination, as well as a confidential study by the drilling industry that concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in waterways. Or Urbina’s latest piece in the Times, “Millions of Gallons of Hazardous Chemicals Injected into Wells.”
Perhaps the legislators just don’t have time to watch a 107-minute film about a subject that affects the whole country? Or read front-page New York Times coverage. Perhaps they don’t have environmental or health advisers on their staff to debunk the lousy science being foisted on them by the gasbags and explain the unacceptable tradeoffs of fracking? Perhaps they just believe the propaganda. Perhaps, uh . . . ?
Surely Pickens isn’t handing out campaign contribution checks or promising them lifetime water supplies. Surely not that.
So, then, what’s going on in Congress?
Those Congress members have to answer to the next generation of voters. Because it’s certain that if Pickens and his corporate cronies get their way, the young people at PowerShift don’t stand a chance. They’ll be fracked. And they will remember who fracked their future.
Let’s hope the PowerShift youth, unlike their elders, have the smarts and vision to shift the balance of power from the megacorporations to the people. And to shift the power supply from the fossil fuels of greedy geezers to the environmentally sound fuels of the future.
*Note: I am using the word “geezer” here as a pejorative, although I have nothing against elders, have loved and still love quite a few of them, and am well on the way to becoming one myself. I hope to get there, and to remain such for a long time.
Maura Stephens is an independent journalist and cofounder of the Coalition to Protect New York.
More info
Steve Horn, PR Watch: Fracking Insiders Score Big; Americans Not Told True Costs of Massive Drilling
Ian Urbina, New York Times: three-part series on lax regulations on water used in fracking, March 2011
Spectra Energy Watch: Shale Gas or Shell Game Part I, Part II, on Deborah Rogers’s research
Barth report: Unanswered Questions About The Economic Impact of Gas Drilling In the Marcellus Shale: Don’t Jump to Conclusions
Marcellus Shale gas may head overseas: Alaska Business Wire | Alaska news at adn.com
April 16, 2011
Marcellus Shale gas may head overseas: Alaska Business Wire | Alaska news at adn.com.
Marcellus Shale gas may head overseas
ANDREW CONTE
The Associated Press
Published: April 10th, 2011 06:28 AM
Last Modified: April 10th, 2011 06:30 AM
PITTSBURGH (AP) – Drilling companies rapidly expanding their U.S. operations in places such as Pennsylvania’s vast Marcellus Shale formation repeatedly tout they are providing American jobs and securing the nation’s energy future.
Yet, a Tribune-Review examination found foreign companies are buying significant shares of these drilling projects and making plans for facilities to liquify and ship more of that natural gas overseas.
A leading player in the natural gas grab is China, whose thirst for energy to fuel its industrial explosion is growing rapidly. Others include the governments of South Korea and India, and companies in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan and Australia.
“They’re going to come in, extract all this stuff for next-to-nothing, and make global profits off it,” said Pittsburgh Councilman Doug Shields. “This is beads for Manhattan, in a global sense.”
Much of the salesmanship to promote gas exploration nationwide, and especially in Pennsylvania, pressed the point that the country must become less dependent upon foreign energy sources.
It avoided discussion about exporting that gas overseas.
“The implications are great,” said Paul Cicio, president of Industrial Energy Consumers of America, which represents large U.S. manufacturers. He believes exporting newfound natural gas is a strategic blunder that will cost American manufacturing jobs by hiking the price of gas here.
“This is not good for our country,” he said.
Bill Newman, a New York lawyer who often represents foreign clients, sees things differently. “We have a shortage of capital in this country,” he said. “In the 19th century, the railroads almost broke us.” He said he believes foreign investment in the United States can work like it did in supporting the railroads.
Patrick Henderson, senior adviser on energy matters to Gov. Tom Corbett, said the possible export of Marcellus gas overseas “doesn’t hurt the argument that we need to develop the resource.” He said it underscores that the United States needs to develop technology that uses natural gas.
“Exporting is generally a good thing, though our first choice would be to use it here,” he said. Corbett doesn’t believe Pennsylvania should tax Marcellus Shale gas aimed for overseas because it would be difficult “to craft a tax” based on where the gas is used, he said.
The relatively new technology called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to free gas from deep shale formations is helping America move from importing natural gas to potentially supplying it to the world.
Foreign companies generally are investing in Marcellus Shale because they want a good return, rather than assets, said Kathryn Klaber, president of Marcellus Shale Coalition.
“We should be celebrating the foreign investment that is helping to finance domestic energy production and that is benefiting Pennsylvanians in the prices they’re paying for energy,” Klaber said.
Pennsylvania sits above the sweet spot for one of the world’s largest natural gas deposits, trapped in a rock layer a mile below the surface known as Marcellus Shale. The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group, issued a report last week saying the United States could take advantage of that gas by converting more vehicles to use it. Many vehicles in South Korea, for example, are powered by natural gas instead of gasoline.
The United States could become an exporter of liquified natural gas because supply and demand determines gas sales here, whereas sales in Asian markets and Europe are formulated on the price of oil. Sometimes, Cicio said, that works in the United States’ favor when oil is cheap, but it can hurt when oil rises in price.
Foreign countries will do what it takes to get natural resources they need, said Mel Packer, an organizer with Marcellus Protest, a citizens group based in Washington, Pa., that opposes drilling because of environmental concerns.
“They’re going to buy them where they can get them,” Packer said. “If that means buying whole Corp.s to get the assets, that’s what they’re going to do.”
Two companies – Cheniere Energy Partners and Freeport LNG Development – are seeking government permits to export liquified gas, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
A Chinese firm, ENN Energy Trading Co., signed a memorandum of understanding to send 1.5 million tons of natural gas from Cheniere, a Houston-based company operating the Sabine Pass port in Louisiana.
“We are excited to participate in supplying natural gas to China,” Cheniere CEO Charif Souki said in a news release.
Two other port companies are expected to seek permission soon, said Biliana Pehlivanova, a natural gas analyst with Barclay’s Capital investment bank in New York.
One is Virginia-based Dominion Resources, which has Pittsburgh offices and owns a liquified natural gas terminal and port in Cove Point, Md. The facility could be converted into an export facility for Marcellus Shale gas by 2015, but spokesman Dan Donovan said the company has not decided whether to do so and has not sought export permits.
“We are talking to our producers,” he said.
Dominion’s Cove Point facility takes in imported liquified natural gas from BP in Great Britain, Shell in the Netherlands and Statoil in Norway. Statoil and Shell are investing heavily in the Marcellus formation.
Last year, Warrendale-based East Resources sold its Marcellus interests to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion. Last month, Statoil, which has a $3.375 billion partnership agreement with the largest Marcellus leaseholder, Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, said it might drill as many as 17,000 Marcellus wells over two decades.
Other foreign companies with Marcellus Shale interests are Mitsui and Sumitomo from Japan, the BP group from Great Britain, Atinum from South Korea and Reliance Industries from India.
The Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. tried to break into the American energy market in 2005, when it bid $18.5 billion to take over Unocal. It withdrew the offer after a political firestorm on Capitol Hill.
In 2009, CNOOC succeeded in entering the American market, if not exactly on land. It partnered with Statoil on four oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico. This time, no one protested.
In November, Chesapeake announced it would sell a third of its holdings in a Texas shale oil field called Eagle Ford to CNOOC for $2.2 billion. Statoil and Korea National Oil Corp. recently invested in Eagle Ford.
This year, CNOOC took a one-third share of Chesapeake’s leases in two oil and gas fields in Colorado and Wyoming for $1.27 billion in direct costs and drilling expenses.
The Chinese have more connections to Chesapeake, but the extent isn’t known. Chesapeake spokesman Jim Gipson said the company generally limits disclosures to those required by regulators.
Last year, Chesapeake said it sold $600 million in convertible preferred shares to “investors in Asia,” without specifying countries. The company disclosed a separate sale of preferred stock to investors including affiliates of the China Investment Corp., the sovereign fund of the People’s Republic of China.
Even though China has interest in American gas, it has untapped shale gas reserves that are 12 times higher than its traditional gas reserves, the U.S. Energy Department said last week.
Pittsburgh geologist Greg Wrightstone said China falls behind when it comes to technology to recover the gas and could learn by partnering with an experienced firm such as Chesapeake.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao addressed that problem in a formal statement announcing the “U.S.-China Shale Gas Resource Initiative” in 2009.
“The United States is a leader in shale gas technology and developing shale gas resources in a way that mitigates environmental risks,” they said. “Bringing this expertise to China will provide economic opportunities for both the U.S. and China.”
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