.
.
.
http://rancholoslosmalulos.blogspot.com/
.
.
Tags: blogger, Coronado LLC, El Paso Corp, ExxonMobil, gag order, intimidation, judge, lawsuit, Rancho Los Malulos, suppression, Texas
Letter published today in the Cleveland Sun Star Courier:
by James W. Cowden, Guest Columnist
Monday August 31, 2009, 9:24 AM
This is being sent as a result of the several letters on oil and gas drilling that have appeared in your pages over the past month.
The other paper has also published material including a column on the financial benefits to Ohio.
What has not been publicized has been the impact of oil and gas drilling on the natural resources and the public health of Ohio and its citizens.
I have been a consultant on environmental and resource issues for over 30 years. I have worked with Ohio EPA and the Division of Oil and Gas to curb and control the problems associated with the industry for a number of those years.
I have written ordinances for many cities in Northeast Ohio to allow them to control drilling in their communities. I have written a technical guide book for Ohio EPA. I have testified in court cases against drillers and their haphazard waste disposal practices, their drilling proposals, and the lack of adequate regulation.
The development of oil and gas wells is inherently a dangerous activity. Although there are few deaths and injuries reported, they do occur.
For instance, two men were killed in Marion County last October by an explosion of a crude oil storage tank.
The industry has too little concern for public health, for our groundwater resources, and for facts.
Natural gas is a highly compressible, highly expansible mixture of hydrocarbons, with approximate percentages of Methane-80%, Ethane-7%, Propane-6%, Butane-2.5%, Pentane-3% and Isobutane 1.5%.
In addition, natural gas may contain quantities of nitrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and water vapor. In Pennsylvania, methane related to the natural gas industry has contaminated water wells in at least seven counties since 2004.
In one case, methane was detected in water sampled over 15 square miles. In another, a methane leak led to an explosion that killed a couple and their 17 month old grandson. These cases were linked to newly drilled, active natural gas wells.
Essentially, the methane migration was linked to improper construction of gas wells that allowed gas to seep out of the well structures and into water supplies.
An adequate inspection system would have prevented these accidents from happening. Since the passage of HB 278 by our feckless state legislature, neither regulation nor inspection has been carried out adequately by the state.
Groundwater constitutes the most important mineral resource annually extracted from beneath the earth’s surface.
Water is an economic resource for Ohio and preservation is an economic necessity. Groundwater monitoring in the state is inadequate to detect water quality problems.
A product of oil and gas well drilling is brine.
What’s so bad about brines?
Brines are too concentrated, they have too much sodium and there is far too much of it, Clinton brines have 175,000-210,000 parts per million of sodium.
For comparison, ocean brines have only 18,000-35,000 ppm of sodium.
The USPHS standard at one time was a maximum of 250 ppm. One volume of Clinton brine can raise 800 volumes of fresh water above the 250 ppm limit.
There is no adequate program to address lack of disposal capacity. I do not have data beyond the 1980’s but I have no reason to believe the ratios have changed.
At that time, there were 56,000 producing wells with an average brine production of 184,000 barrels with an estimated injection well capacity of 36,000 barrels. The excess was 148,000 barrels.
That is roughly 6.2 million gallons, which if dispersed could make 4.8 billion gallons of fresh water unsuitable for use.
I tried to get legislation passed to prohibit brine in surface or groundwater in such quantity as to cause:
1. Taste and odor problems
2. Exceedance of safe drinking water standards or limit of 100 ppm of sodium
3. Damage or injury to public health or safety to include damage to the environment beyond the immediate site of drilling and storage of oil and gas.
4. This would include exposure to benzene, ethyl benzene, alkyl benzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene, and 2,4 dimethyl-phenol that exceed drinking water standards. Also exposure to concentrations of silver, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead and zinc that exceed drinking water standards.
This came from “Toxicological Analysis of Ohio Brine Constituents and Their Potential Impact on Human Health.” By Dr. Gerald Poje.
Regulation 1501-9-9-02 at one time required all reasonable means to safeguard against hazards to life, limb and property. It should require notification of local fire officials of fire, explosion, major gas leaks, water and air pollution and training on how to cope.
There are a number of recommendations I would make to amend state law and regulations and require compliance.
First would be to abolish the subservience of the legislature to the oil and gas industry and think about the public they supposedly serve.
There is a need to redefine the ground surface water system and restructure the approach from correction to prevention.
But unless the Division of Mineral Resources is mandated to protect human health and drinking water and is given the funds and staff to accomplish this, both public health and the economy will continue to suffer.
__________________________________
James W. Cowden is a resident of Brecksville. He has been a researcher, educator, coordinator and consultant at Kent State University and Hiram College and has written extensively and provided expert testimony on a range of topics including water resources planning, pollution control, public health and public involvement in policy development.
http://www.cleveland.com/sunstarcourier/index.ssf/2009/08/brecksville_resident_weighs_in.html
Tags: brine, contamination, DMR, explosion, gas leak, groundwater, Marcellus, natural gas, OH, regulators
In a story published on 8/27/09, Jon Hurdle of Reuters reports:
U.S. finds water polluted near gas-drilling sites
PHILADELPHIA, Aug 27 (Reuters) – U.S. government scientists have for the first time found chemical contaminants in drinking water wells near natural gas drilling operations, fueling concern that a gas-extraction technique is endangering the health of people who live close to drilling rigs.
The Environmental Protection Agency found chemicals that researchers say may cause illnesses including cancer, kidney failure, anemia and fertility problems in water from 11 of 39 wells tested around the Wyoming town of Pavillion in March and May this year.
. . . . .
Evidence of a link between gas drilling and water contamination would set back development of a clean-burning fuel promoted by the Obama administration as crucial to the future of U.S. energy production.
. . . . .
“There may be an indication of groundwater contamination by oil and gas activities,” said the 44-page report, which received little public attention when released on Aug. 11. “Many activities in gas well drilling (and) hydraulic fracturing … involve injecting water and other fluids into the well and have the potential to create cross-contamination of aquifers.”
Among the contaminants found in some of the wells was 2-butoyethanol, or 2-BE, a solvent used in natural gas extraction, which researchers say causes the breakdown of red blood cells, leading to blood in the urine and feces, and can damage the kidneys, liver, spleen and bone marrow.
Greg Oberley, an EPA scientist who has been testing the water samples, said the agency did not set out to prove that hydraulic fracturing caused groundwater contamination, but was responding to complaints from local residents that their well water had become discolored or foul-smelling or tasted bad.
The investigation was the EPA’s first in response to claims that gas drilling is polluting water supplies, he said. Testing will continue.
LINK TO GAS INDUSTRY?
While the EPA team has not determined how the chemicals got into the water, many are associated with gas drilling, Oberley said in a telephone interview.
“The preponderance of those compounds in the area would be attributable to the oil and gas industry,” he said.
. . . . .
John Fenton, a farmer in Pavillion, a rural community of about 150 people, said residents blame gas drilling for a range of illnesses including rare cancers, miscarriages and nervous system disorders.
Families with contaminated water wells have been advised by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to drink the water, which in some cases was black and oily, with a petroleum-like sheen, and a smell of gas, Fenton said.
“The stress is incredible,” Fenton told Reuters. “People have built their lives and businesses here. What’s it all worth now?”
http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINN2731170120090827?sp=true
For more on this story:
http://www.propublica.org/feature/epa-chemicals-found-in-wyo.-drinking-water-might-be-from-fracking-825
Tags: aquifer, contaminated, contamination, EPA, fracking, gas drilling, groundwater, hydraulic fracturing, illness, Pavillion, property values, toxic, water wells, WY
“As it runs through Orin Edwards’s ranch, the Belle Fourche River bubbles like Champagne. The bubbles can burn. They are methane, also called natural gas, the fuel that heats 59 million American homes. Mr. Edwards noticed the bubbles two years ago, after gas wells were drilled on his land. The company that drilled the wells denies responsibility for the flammable river.
“An hour’s drive west, the artesian well on Roland and Beverly Landrey’s ranch has failed. After producing 50 gallons a minute for 34 years, the well, the ranch’s only source of water, stopped flowing in September. A well digger who examined it blames energy companies drilling for gas nearby, but the companies dispute that. So the couple – he is 83 and ailing; she describes herself as “no spring chicken” – hauls water in gallon jugs and drives 30 miles to town weekly to wash clothes and bathe.
“Dave Bullach, a welder who lives near Gillette, couldn’t take it anymore. For two sleep-deprived years, he endured the incessant yowl of a methane compressor, a giant pump that squeezes methane into an underground pipeline. There are thousands of these screaming machines in Wyoming, where neither state nor federal law regulates their noise. Mr. Bullach stormed out of his house at midnight last year with a rifle and shot at the compressor until a sheriff’s deputy hauled him off to jail.
. . . . .
”’Ways of life are being changed for the purpose of energy extraction,’ said Jim Ventrello, a Republican county commissioner in Delta County, Colo., ‘and it is not the quality of life that we seek here.’
“That overwhelmingly Republican rural county in western Colorado banned coal-bed methane operations this year.”
Complete story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/national/29METH.html?pagewanted=all
Tags: coalbed methane, natural gas, New Mexico
From a homeowner in Missouri:
“We do not like being told that we have the responsibility of keeping these pipelines safe. That we can not do what we want in our own back yards, that we are the eyes and ears of the operators. Yet like it or not we are. And many people have no idea what to do with that responsibility.
“I get calls from people who smell or see something and don’t know what to do about it…The people who call 911 do the right thing but some are afraid to call 911. Some call our local gas utility company, they check their lines but the service guys that come out generally have no idea that these pipelines are out here.”
Tags: homeowner, natural gas, pipelines
Dear Mr Cyr,
As a former farmer, I am appalled by these pictures. Is there any definite evidence that the tumors on these animals was caused by hydrofracking by-products? Is anyone doing any research on these incidents? If so, and there are definite links to the hydrofracking compounds, then they should be presented to the DEC immediately!
Where were these pictures taken? NY? Pennsylvania?
I would appreciate any further information you can provide on these incidents. Thank you.
——————–
Hello Carol,
What the diseased calf and buck had in common was both were grazing on land where gas drilling hydrofracture had taken place. Those who believe it normal for beef and deer to be in such condition might consider that to be an irrelevant coincidence. The photo of the hideously deformed by cancer deer is from Louisiana. The photo of the diseased calf is from Arkansas. The Arkansas rancher who had leased his land for gas drilling reportedly had to dispose of his entire herd; while the herds of his neighbors who didn’t lease weren’t affected.
For those informed of the types of chemicals that are used in hydrofracture, and the immense scale of use that would be required to actually extract the great amounts global corporations wish to extract of these last remnants of gas so tightly bound up within the material of the rock itself, unconventional gas drilling hydrofracture is clearly incompatible with agricultural use of land. If they get this gas, we will lose our clean water and eventually no longer be able to produce safe food.
The DEC is well aware of the environmental unsoundness of this form of gas extraction. Unfortunately, due to corporate ownership of government, the DEC’s prime concern is maximizing energy resource extraction… not protecting the environment that all living things depend upon for health and well being.
With government compromised by corporate campaign contribution ownership, agencies created for the protection of the people are no longer performing that function.
The responsible research is being done by scientists who are independent of corporate/government influence (see TEDX).
TEDX Research – Chemicals in Natural Gas Operations:
Recent incidents raise issues on drilling, environment:
Arkansas Blog - Cow killers:
http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2009/05/cow_killers.aspx
Tags: cattle, chemicals, DEC, farming, hydraulic fracturing, livestock, natural gas drilling, toxic, wildlife
Consider the effect that toxic chemicals used in Halliburton’s unconventional gas drilling hydrofracture process have on animals just one step down in the food chain:
________________________________________________________________________
Ulcers in cattle raised near gas drilling operation.
________________________________________________________________________
Aggressive cancer in deer grazing near gas well.
If you leased your property to corporations that will use hydrofracture to extract the last remnants of gas trapped too tightly in stone, you have allowed them to site toxic waste production facilities on your property.
Chemicals added to the enormous quantities of fresh water to be taken from our rivers and streams will forever remove that water from the natural water cycle. All the water used in hydrofracture becomes toxic waste, which New York State is allowing the polluters to run through municipal sewage treatment plants that have no ability to remove the chemicals from the water. The corrupt state government is deviously permitting the toxics to run straight on through municipal treatment plants, to then be dumped into our lakes, rivers, and streams.
Unconventional gas drilling also produces tremendous amounts of air pollution: Ozone that destroys crops and trees; and fugitive gases that increase global warming. The net effect of unconventional (low permeability stone deposit) gas drilling is more — not less — pollution.
If Albany’s facilitation of this global corporate invasion and occupation is not stopped, then over the next few decades there will be hundreds of thousands of high volume high pressure hydrfracture drilling operations sited throughout the farming country of the Catskill, Central, and Southern Tier regions of New York State. Each of those drilling sites will several times remove millions of gallons of fresh water and convert it into toxic waste. The cumulative environmental impact over time will be devastating. Our water, ground and air will be polluted. Twenty years from now the only people who might remain living, in the then gas extraction industrial zones that were traditionally farming areas, will be those too poor to move.
Got neighbors?
Got children?
Got a conscience?
Tags: cattle, chemicals, DEC, farming, hydraulic fracturing, livestock, natural gas drilling, toxic, wildlife
The Shreveport Times reports:
Recent incidents raise issues on drilling, environment
By Alisa Stingley
astingley@gannett.com
Blanche Jefferson lives in Shreveport, but her worries are all south of here.
Her granddaughter and five great-grandchildren live south of Spring Ridge and close to where 17 cows died after ingesting liquid that spilled from a nearby natural gas drilling rig site into a pasture.
“I’m mostly concerned … stuff might get in the water,” said Jefferson, 79, adding that the family depends on well water.
The environmental impact of drilling has her so concerned that she’s rethinking whether she wants to lease mineral rights from property she owns in that area to an energy company in the future.
“Money is nothing if something happened to them,” she says of the children.
. . . . . Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality is reviewing several area incidents:
April: Seventeen cows died in a south Caddo Parish pasture after ingesting a liquid found pooled in the pasture, a spill from a nearby Chesapeake Energy drilling site. No reports on what killed the cows have been made public.
May: Fifteen Naborton families evacuated when a Chesapeake well east of Mansfield began blowing natural gas into the air. The air quality was monitored, and a Chesapeake spokesman said there was no threat to public safety or the environment. According to DEQ files on the case, 50 million standard cubic feet of methane gas — the main component of natural gas — was discharged after a casing valve failed.
DEQ doesn’t require notification of the release of 1 million standard cubic feet but does require notification of more than 2.5 million in a planned release. The Naborton release, however, was unplanned. Otis Randle, manager of the DEQ regional office here, said 50 million is “a lot of gas.” But he said people would not suffer health problems unless they breathed in a concentrated amount.
The main risk to nearby residents is the potential for explosion, and methane causes an adverse impact on the planet’s ozone layer, since methane is a greenhouse gas. The DEQ report on the Naborton well said the release did not have an off-site environmental impact. (un-naturalgas.org note: guess the atmosphere doesn’t count)
July: A natural gas well blowout occurred in north Sabine Parish, about six miles east of Converse. No residents were evacuated. The well was owned by Chesapeake, whose spokesman said there was no threat to the public or environment, and air quality was being monitored as a precaution. DEQ’s regional office in Shreveport investigated the blowout, finding it “pretty routine,” said Randle. No details on the amount released were available.
There are environmental concerns beyond reported incidents too:
Ground and surface water issues have arisen, particularly in south Caddo and DeSoto parishes, which heavily depend on the fragile Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. On the last day of June, about 1,000 customers of South DeSoto Water System had no water while workers replaced a pump. Officials wondered publicly if a natural gas drilling operation just 500 feet from their water well was making their equipment work harder to pump.
. . . . .
Many of the Web sites of the major competitors in the Haynesville Shale tout their dedication to preserving the environment.
Chesapeake’s page notes that it is a key contributor to The Nature Conservancy, and “our objective is to leave each site in as good, if not better, condition than when we started drilling.”
The U.S. Department of Interior recognized Devon Energy with a national award for its outstanding environmental and safety performance in the Gulf of Mexico.
And EnCana’s page notes: “We are looking at opportunities to recycle water and this option will become more viable as the play is further developed.”
While the proliferation of drilling in the Haynesville Shale is making environmental issues more visible and prominent, such concerns didn’t just arrive with the shale. Two cases from DEQ files:
In June, a Carthage, Texas, man pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of illegally discharging a pollutant into Louisiana waters after ordering a truck driver to discharge well treatment fluid into a Natchitoches Parish creek in April 2006. The man was sentenced to 24 months probation and agreed to pay a $5,000 criminal fine.
“Unfortunately, economic incentives drive environmental crime,” said Jeffrey T. Nolan, DEQ’s criminal investigations division manager.
In August 2006, DEQ responded to a landowner’s complaint that a well site where Winchester Energy was operating near Frierson had released at least four barrels of saltwater from a fracturing tank. According to DEQ files, the company had not contacted DEQ about the spill, which violates regulations. Also, the landowner said he asked Winchester to clean up the site but it refused. A few days later, DEQ noticed a cleanup in progress at the site, where vegetation had been killed in an area about 20 feet by 100 feet. DEQ in April this year deemed the site OK and did not take any action against Winchester.
For complete article, visit:
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090809/NEWS01/908090333/1060
Tags: cattle, cows, DEQ, explosion, family, greenhouse gas, groundwater, hydraulic fracturing, Louisiana, methane, money
About Jim Scott of Eagle, Alaska:
“When he had risen in the world, up out of the fun and into the shuffling paper – when he had become district manager [in federal service], based in Anchorage, and in charge of half Alaska – he dealt regularly with, among others, people of the petroleum industry. They invited him for cocktails. ‘I never darkened their door. I avoided them like the bubonic plague. It made it so much easier to deal with the sons of bitches.’” – from Coming Into the Country by the eminent literary journalist John McPhee
We salute the honest bureaucrat, wherever s/he might be. Were there more like that.
Tags: Alaska, lobbyist, McPhee
0