Whistleblowers: Software Monitoring Keystone XL Pipeline’s Safety Contains Deliberate Errors | Truthout
December 18, 2011
NY state next battleground over fracking
November 29, 2011
Newsday: NY state next battleground over fracking
By TED PHILLIPS:
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011
For Robert and Christine Applegate, the 40-acre farm in upstate Virgil, near Cortland, where they raise chickens and grow vegetables including broccoli and eggplant to sell at the local farmers market, is the property they’ve always dreamed of owning.
They fear that the push to permit hydrofracking — the pumping of millions of gallons of water underground to force the release of natural gas — in New York could destroy their land, pollute their drinking water and turn the countryside into an industrial landscape.
“We go out and work all day and all you hear is the wind,” said Robert Applegate, 64, a retired teacher whose property borders land he said has been leased to a fracking company. “For each one of those wells they’re talking about 8,000 truck trips. There’s the roar of the compression station if there’s a well anywhere near the house. I’m told that it drives you crazy.”
But Don Niver of nearby Cortlandville, a facilities manager at an asphalt company, says drilling can be done safely, and he hopes to make a modest amount of money by leasing his land to the energy companies.
“I’m kind of wishfully thinking that maybe down the road my children might benefit from it,” said Niver, 47.
The debate over the natural gas extraction process called high-volume horizontal fracturing, or fracking, is pitting neighbor against neighbor across the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions of New York.
Steady revenue eyed
Energy companies are eyeing steady revenue, while some residents of economically depressed communities are hoping to collect royalties from gas revenue and see an influx of jobs. A study for the state Department of Environmental Conservation suggested that fracking could provide 6,200 to 37,000 jobs in the peak 30th year of production, depending on how much gas can be extracted, and generate $31 million to $185 million in state personal income taxes. The estimates were derived from industry projections.
But the prospect of widespread drilling has sparked opposition from environmentalists and other residents who fear air pollution, water contamination and the industrialization of rural areas. Governments also would have to spend money on bridge and road improvements to accommodate truck and equipment traffic needed to support drilling.
As the battle rages on the airwaves and in courts and town halls, the state has embarked on a regulatory path to gain the income that fracking generates while avoiding the mistakes of Pennsylvania and other parts of the country.
Pennsylvania’s problems with well construction and equipment failure have led to methane gas seeping into water supplies. While dissolved methane is not classified as a health hazard, the gas could cause asphyxiation and explosions in enclosed spaces, according to a study published this year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Chemical spills also have occurred. In September 2009, about 8,000 gallons of liquid gel at the site of a Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. gas well in Dimock Township spilled into Stevens Creek, killing fish and polluting a wetland, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The wetland was flushed with water, and the gel mixture was pumped to storage tanks.
Shale formations deep in the earth contain pockets of natural gas that can’t be tapped economically by conventional methods. Hydraulic fracturing pumps millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals, some of them toxic, into the shale to release the gas. The gas, along with some of the water and chemicals, rises to the surface.
The Marcellus shale formation stretches across Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. It holds an estimated 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that can be extracted, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Based on Henry Hubb spot natural gas prices last week, that would be worth $244.14 billion. U.S. households used 4.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2010.
In New York, the Marcellus and Utica shales lie under the state’s western and central regions, the Southern Tier, the Catskills and parts of the Hudson Valley. The USGS has not estimated how much gas can be recovered from the Utica shale.
The gas industry says fracking poses no threat to water supplies because the fracturing occurs deep below them. But reports of water contamination and chemical spills in other states have set off alarms in New York. The state released a draft environmental impact statement in 2009, and last December, then-Gov. David A. Paterson issued a seven-month moratorium on fracking and called for a new environmental study. Energy companies are waiting for the state to complete new regulations and issue drilling permits.
“There are far more questions than answers even at this stage of the game,” said Robert Moore, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York, which lobbies for stronger environmental laws, and a member of a state advisory panel on fracking.
“We’re still struggling with what are the negative consequences associated with hydrofracking . . . Are they really outweighed by the perceived benefits in terms of jobs and revenues for state and local governments?” Moore said.
Concern about wastewater
One concern is what happens to the mix of water and chemicals that will come out of the wells. “We’re talking about billions of gallons of wastewater being generated,” Moore said. “We know most municipal sewage plants are not set up to adequately treat this stuff.”
Mark Boling, executive vice president and general counsel for Houston-based Southwestern Energy, a natural gas producer, said environmentalists and the industry have become engaged in a kind of trench warfare that doesn’t help the public understand the safety issues.
“It is very difficult to actually sit down and have a healthy debate with someone and say, ‘Listen, you need to look at the science,’ when in their hearts the emotion is there saying this is going to ruin my water, this is going to hurt the land that I love,’ ” he said.
Boling conceded that the gas companies have been slow to disclose the chemicals they use and to address concerns about problems such as methane gas migration into water supplies.
In September, the state issued a new environmental impact study and proposed regulations that would ban fracking from the New York City and Syracuse watersheds. The public comment period ends Dec. 12 and final regulations could come next year. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has left it to the advisory panel, the DEC and the public hearing process to recommend how government agencies should monitor hydrofracking and enforce regulations.
“I know that the temperature is high,” Cuomo said last month. “Let’s get the facts. Let the science and the facts make the determination, not emotion and not politics.”
State Sen. Greg Ball (R-Brewster) said regulations can be effective, but New York shouldn’t rush into rules. “I don’t want to see what happened on farms and with private property owners in Pennsylvania happen in New York State,” he said.
Ball is pushing legislation that would increase protections for property owners so drilling companies would have to pay market value for properties that sustain damage.
Other officials also have warned that local governments could see millions of dollars in increased costs for bridge and road repairs. The early stages of developing a single well pad — a site from which multiple wells can be drilled — would involve 1,148 trips by heavy trucks and 831 by light trucks, according to the state revised draft environmental impact statement.
But Sen. Tom Libous (R-Binghamton), Senate deputy majority leader, said a gas drilling boom would bring jobs to an area that has seen companies disappear or downsize. “We’re a struggling region here in upstate New York,” he said. “I just don’t see another emerging industry coming our way.”
The Radio Ecoshock Show: Fracking Gas = Climate Crash
November 24, 2011
The Radio Ecoshock Show: Fracking Gas = Climate Crash.
FM London. Published Wednesdays.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Fracking Gas = Climate Crash
For years, governments, industry, and TV ads told us natural gas is the safe bridge fuel while we move away from dirty coal and oil.
Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth wondered “Is that true?”. When Howarth found no science to back up big claims for the gas industry, he and a team from Cornell went to work.
The results are startling. In the short-term, escaped methane from gas fracking threaten to tip us into catastrophic climate change. The total impact of the shale gas industry may be worse than coal. In the United States, where thousands and thousands of new gas wells are drilled, almost half of all greenhouse gas emissions may come from methane. The “natural” gas industry is the largest single source of methane emissions.
The frackers vent loads of gases for the first two weeks after drilling, before connecting pipes. They could collect (and sell) this “waste” methane (read “climate killer”) but don’t bother. Natural gas storage facilities also vent methane as part of their designed operation. Old leaking gas delivery systems complete the job.
Methane is rising in the atmosphere. New science from Dr. Drew Shindell shows in the first 20 years, methane is 105 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2.
Even at 100 years, Shindell finds methane is combining with other air pollution to generate an impact 33 times more powerful than CO2. Not 21, as determined in the 1990’s by the IPCC. That old figure is still being used by industry and governments. Expect a change as Shindell becomes the new lead author of this section in the upcoming IPCC.
You must hear Dr. Robert Howarth explain the importance of new science on methane. he is the expert, I am not.
The industry insists we only calculate methane over a 100 year period. But the latest report from the International Energy Agency (generally a conservative source) says our climate future will be determined in the next 5 years. More new science suspects the burst of methane helped tip us into a mass extinction 250 million years ago.
The 20 year time frame for methane could be the jolt that tips other systems into positive feedback loops. Like igniting the peat in the Arctic. Or warming shallow seas enough to release frozen methane clathrates from the bottom (which started to happen last year). If either of those go, we are toast.
Robert Howarth has taken a lot of abuse for even daring to assemble a comprehensive look at the total greenhouse gas impact of the gas fracking industry, whether it is coal bed gas or shale gas. And we haven’t even discussed the fact fracking is now known to cause earthquakes, uses incredible amounts of fresh water, and risks polluting whole watersheds with a single leak of the mass toxic chemicals pumped underground.
The United Kingdom may be next. With gas production from the North Sea fields down by 25 percent, there is a public relations push to get lots of gas fracking in the UK. This may be the next big environmental battle there.
Fracking mania has hit Canada and Australia as well. Everyone needs to know what the latest science says.
Program includes 27 minute speech by Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell at ASPO USA 2011, November 2nd in Washington D.C. Recorded by Carl Etnier of Equal Time Radio, Vermont. My thanks to ASOP USA for this fine presentation.
Then a follow-up interview this week with Robert Howarth, to fill in his hurried climax of the speech – that methane emissions, when calculated over 20 years, using the new higher rate discovered by Drew Shindell – could add up to at least 44% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States! We discuss this, and the importance of a 2006 paper by Dr. James Hansen of NASA, on the importance of controlling methane emissions.
I covered that in 2006 here for blog entry, or download the audio here.
In 2006, I also put out a “Methane Primer” which is still helpful. Blog for that primer is here, and the audio for download here.
But now I’ll have to revisit that piece, since like the IPCC, I was told methane was only 21 times more powerful than CO2. The science moves so fast, it is already outdated just 5 years later.
Essentially, if we cannot control methane, we still lose the climate known over millenia, even if we could limit carbon dioxide emissions. Methane alone can tip us.
The natural gas industry, Howarth says, is the single largest source of methane in the U.S. Shale gas fracking makes that much, much worse.
RIPPING OFF THE CARBON MARKETS AND CONSUMERS
We add an interview promised last week, with Samuel Labudde, about the billion dollar scam ripping off carbon credits.
Companies in China are threatening to release powerful greenhouse gases, unless these fake credits are continued. Ratepayers in Europe are being blackmailed.
LaBudde, a noted wildlife biologist, is also covering the climate beat for the Environmental Investigation Agency for the American branch of the organization.
To honor the craziness of gas fracking in Australia, the theme music this week is “My Water’s on Fire Tonight” written and performed by David Holmes, Andrew Bean, Niel Bekker. Australian compilation album: “Whole Lotta Frackin’ Going On”
The lyrics in “My Water’s On Fire Tonight” is a product of Studio 20 NYU (bit.ly/hzGRYP) in collaboration with ProPublica.org (bit.ly/5tJN). The song is based on ProPublica’s investigation on hydraulic fractured gas drilling (read the full investigation here: bit.ly/15sib6).
Recording credit: Robert Howarth speech at ASPO recorded by Carl Etnier of Equal Time Radio, Vermont. Speech courtesy of ASPO USA.
Labels: ASPO, climate, climate change, emissions, energy, environment, gas, global warming, impact, methane, science, shale, speech
posted by Alex Smith at 10:35 PM 
Keystone XL Oil Pipeline – Bill McKibben – The Colbert Report – 2011-14-11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central
November 15, 2011
Monday November 14, 2011
Keystone XL Oil Pipeline – Bill McKibben
Co-founder and director of 350.org Bill McKibben explains why the Keystone XL pipeline will mean “game over” for the climate. Also, inflated jobs numbers. (06:39)
GDACC 
