EPA Submits Draft Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan to Independent Scientists for Review
February 8, 2011
EPA Submits Draft Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan to Independent Scientists for Review
Ingraffea vs Siegel, SUNY Cortland, Feb. 20, 2011
February 8, 2011 3 Comments
Two Scientists Debate the Pros and Cons of Gas Drilling
Professor Anthony R. Ingraffea
(Cornell University)
and
Professor Donald Siegel
(Syracuse University)
Sunday, February 20, 2011, 2-4pm
Brown Auditorium, Old Main, SUNY Cortland
http://www2.cortland.edu/about/maps-and-directions/#Old%20Main
Organized by GDACC (Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County)
Shell to explore for gas in the Karoo, why Johan Rupert has some concerns.
February 6, 2011
Shell to explore for gas in the Karoo, why Johan Rupert has some concerns.
ALEC HOGG: It’s Wednesday February 2 2011 and in this special podcast we speak with the chairman of Richemont, Johan Rupert, not about Richemont’s issues but more about what is going on in the Karoo. Johan, your family, in fact, has deep roots into the Karoo, looking through your father’s biography by Ebbe Dommisse, your great, great grandfather came to South Africa in 1858 to a town called Graaff-Reinet and on Friday, Graaff-Reinet was the scene of a discussion or a public meeting that you said some stuff that has been shaking up the oil industry.
JOHANN RUPERT: Good afternoon Alec, good afternoon, listeners. It’s really the whole question of drilling for gas through the Greater Karoo, over 90 000 square kilometers and the method in which the oil companies wish to operate. We’re not against looking for gas, we are not against the methodology if used in the right area, with the right safeguards. So, for instance, if you go into the desert and it’s shallow, there can be containment. What worries us is the unseemly haste with which this whole process is going forward. We don’t think the legal framework was designed for this fracking method and we are very, very scared about the irreversibility of the ecological damage, should it occur.
Gas Leaks on the Path to a Post-Fossil Future
February 4, 2011
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Cornell Energy Conference March 31-April 2 – mary.beilby@gmail.com
February 2, 2011
Cornell Energy Conference March 31-April 2 .
Cornell Environmental Law Society 2011 Energy Conference
Gas Drilling, Sustainability & Energy Policy: Searching for Common Ground
Enbridge denies responsibility for oil spill | Michigan Messenger
February 1, 2011
Enbridge denies responsibility for oil spill | Michigan Messenger.
Enbridge denies responsibility for oil spill
Despite public promises to compensate residents for losses associated with the summer oil spill, in Calhoun county court Enbridge is arguing that it is not legally liable for damages from the spill.
Last July a pipeline rupture on Enbridge’s 6B pipeline spilled an estimated million gallons of Canadian tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River system. The oil traveled 30 miles down the rain-swollen river, coating the floodplain.
Officials declared a state of emergency, recommended evacuation because of unsafe levels of benzene in the air, and closed the Kalamazoo River to all activity by the public.
In numerous public statements Enbridge CEO Pat Daniels apologized for the spill and promised to take responsibility for the cleanup and address the needs of the affected people and businesses.
But six months after the spill, the river remains closed and some residents have not been able to get compensation through the claims process set up by the company.
Attorney Bill Mayhall represents 10 households in Marshall and Battle Creek that were not able to find satisfactory arrangements with the pipeline company for property damages and health issues such as headaches, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory issues.
These clients are accusing Enbridge of nuisance and negligence for failing to adequately maintain its pipeline and are seeking damages in Calhoun Circuit Court.
Enbridge is fighting the claims. The company has retained Dickinson Wright attorneys Kathleen Lang and Edward Pappas — the same team that is defending Dow Chemical against a class action suit over dioxin contamination in the Saginaw River watershed — and its answer to the legal claims sounds very different from the friendly promises offered by Daniels at community forums.
In the days after the spill Enbridge representatives went door to door promising that they would pay for spill damages, Mayhall said.
“Now they want us to prove that they are responsible for the spill.”
Enbridge argues that it cannot be held liable for the oil spill because it has followed all relevant laws, regulations and industry standards and the damage was not foreseeable.
The company also argues that the charges against it are improper “because federal, state and/or local authorities and agencies have mandated, directed, approved and/or ratified the alleged actions or omissions.”
And though Enbridge repeatedly told residents it would pay all legitimate expenses, in filings with the Calhoun court the company says:
“The statements at issue, that were made in Defendants’ press releases and brochure, were mere expressions of intention, not offers.”
The owners of the Play Care Learning Center in Marshall are suing Enbridge for interfering with their daycare business, which was located a half mile from the spill site.
Play Care, represented attorney Donnelly Hadden, says that they were forced to close their business when parents pulled their kids out of care because of the air pollution from the spill.
Play Care argues that Enbridge failed to maintain its pipeline and failed to adequately protect them against a long list of chemicals related to the contamination.
In an answer to this lawsuit Enbridge argues that the day care center can’t know what chemicals it was exposed to because no one knows what chemicals were released during the oil spill.
“Defendants state that different types of oil contain different constituents and substances in varying quantities and that the investigation of the nature and extent of the crude oil discharged is ongoing,” the response said.
“It is time for Enbridge to state in court if they really meant what they said to those injured by the spill,” said Mayhall, “or whether their statements to pay legitimate damages were simply a public relations ploy to calm community anger.”
Enbridge Spokeswoman Terri Larson said that the company “remains committed to paying all non-fraudulent claims that are directly related to the incident.”
A schedule for the cases is expected to be set at a conference on March 7.
Diesel Use in Gas Drilling Cited as Violation of Safe-Water Law – NYTimes.com
February 1, 2011
Diesel Use in Gas Drilling Cited as Violation of Safe-Water Law – NYTimes.com.
Gas Drilling Technique Is Labeled Violation
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: January 31, 2011
Oil and gas service companies injected tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel into onshore wells in more than a dozen states from 2005 to 2009, Congressional investigators have charged. Those injections appear to have violated the Safe Water Drinking Act, the investigators said in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday.
Ralph Wilson/Associated Press
Workers at a natural-gas well site near Burlington, Pa.
The diesel fuel was used by drillers as part of a contentious process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of a mixture of water, sand and chemical additives — including diesel fuel — into rock formations deep underground. The process, which has opened up vast new deposits of natural gas to drilling, creates and props open fissures in the rock to ease the release of oil and gas.
But concerns have been growing over the potential for fracking chemicals — particularly those found in diesel fuel — to contaminate underground sources of drinking water.
“We learned that no oil and gas service companies have sought — and no state and federal regulators have issued — permits for diesel fuel use in hydraulic fracturing,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California and two other Democratic members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, in the letter. “This appears to be a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
Oil and gas companies acknowledged using diesel fuel in their fracking fluids, but they rejected the House Democrats’ assertion that it was illegal. They said that the E.P.A. had never properly developed rules and procedures to regulate the use of diesel in fracking, despite a clear grant of authority from Congress over the issue.
“Everyone understands that E.P.A. is at least interested in regulating fracking,” said Matt Armstrong, a lawyer with the Washington firm Bracewell & Giuliani, which represents several oil and gas companies. “Whether the E.P.A. has the chutzpah to try to impose retroactive liability for use of diesel in fracking, well, everyone is in a wait-and-see mode. I suspect it will have a significant fight on its hands if it tried it do that.”
Regardless of the legal outcome, the Waxman findings are certain to intensify an already contentious debate among legislators, natural gas companies and environmentalists over the safety of oil and gas development in general, and fracking in particular.
Oil services companies had traditionally used diesel fuel as part of their fracturing cocktails because it helped to dissolve and disperse other chemicals suspended in the fluid. But some of the chemical components of diesel fuel, including toluene, xylene and benzene, a carcinogen, have alarmed both regulators and environmental groups. They argue that some of those chemicals could find their way out of a well bore — either because of migration through layers of rock or spills and sloppy handling — and into nearby sources of drinking water.
An E.P.A. investigation in 2004 failed to find any threat to drinking water from fracking — a conclusion that was widely dismissed by critics as politically motivated. The agency has taken up the issue again in a new investigation started last year, although the results are not expected until 2012 at the earliest.
The House committee began its own investigation in February last year, when Democrats were in the majority. In Monday’s letter, Mr. Waxman, along with Representatives Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Diana DeGette of Colorado, said that they were so far “unable to draw definitive conclusions about the potential impact of these injections on public health or the environment.”
Still, the investigators said that three of the largest oil and gas services companies — Halliburton, Schlumberger and BJ Services — signed an agreement with the E.P.A. in 2003 intended to curtail the use of diesel in fracking in certain shallow formations.
Two years later, when Congress amended the Safe Water Drinking Act to exclude regulation of hydraulic fracturing, it made an express exception that allowed regulation of diesel fuel used in fracking.
The Congressional investigators sent letters to 14 companies requesting details on the type and volume of fracking chemicals they used. Although many companies said they had eliminated or were cutting back on use of diesel, 12 companies reported having used 32.2 million gallons of diesel fuel, or fluids containing diesel fuel, in their fracking processes from 2005 to 2009.
The diesel-laced fluids were used in a total of 19 states. Approximately half the total volume was deployed in Texas, but at least a million gallons of diesel-containing fluids were also used in Oklahoma (3.3 million gallons); North Dakota (3.1 million); Louisiana (2.9 million); Wyoming (2.9 million); and Colorado (1.3 million).
Where this leaves the companies in relation to federal law is unclear.
Mr. Waxman and his colleagues say that the Safe Drinking Water Act left diesel-based hydraulic fracturing under the auspices of E.P.A.’s “underground injection control program,” which requires companies to obtain permits, either from state or federal regulators, for a variety of activities that involve putting fluids underground.
No permits for diesel-based fracking have been sought or granted since the Safe Drinking Water Act was amended in 2005.
Lee Fuller, a vice president for government relations with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said that was because the E.P.A. had never followed up by creating rules and procedures for obtaining such permits and submitting them for public comment.
The agency did quietly update its Web site last summer with language suggesting that fracking with diesel was, indeed, covered as part of the underground injection program, which would suggest that permits should have been obtained. But Mr. Fuller’s organization, along with the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, has gone to court to challenge the Web posting, arguing that it amounted to new rule-making that circumvented administrative requirements for notice and public commentary.
The E.P.A. said Monday that it was reviewing the accusations from the three House Democrats that the companies named were in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
“Our goal is to put in place a clear framework for permitting so that fracturing operations using diesel receive the review required by law,” Betsaida Alcantara, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message. “We will provide further information about our plans as they develop.”
Gas Drilling Technique Is Labeled Violation
January 31, 2011
Gas Drilling Technique Is Labeled Violation
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: January 31, 2011
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Oil and gas service companies injected tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel into onshore wells in more than a dozen states from 2005 to 2009, Congressional investigators have charged. Those injections appear to have violated the Safe Water Drinking Act, the investigators said in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday.
A blog about energy and the environment.
The diesel fuel was used by drillers as part of a contentious process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of a mixture of water, sand and chemical additives — including diesel fuel — into rock formations deep underground. The process, which has opened up vast new deposits of natural gas to drilling, creates and props open fissures in the rock to ease the release of oil and gas.
But concerns have been growing over the potential for fracking chemicals — particularly those found in diesel fuel — to contaminate underground sources of drinking water.
GDACC 
