.
Now, if natural gas is such a “clean” fuel, why d’ya suppose they’d do that?
From the newsletter of the American Petroleum Institute:
API backs resolution to block EPA from regulating carbon emissions
The American Petroleum Institute was among the oil and natural gas groups that signed a letter expressing support of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s, R-Alaska, resolution against the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. Energy prices could increase and many jobs would be affected under the agency’s proposal, according to the letter. Oil & Gas Journal (3/11)Natural gas suppliers oppose EPA’s GHG regulations: The Natural Gas Supply Association announced its support of a resolution sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions. The agency’s proposed rule would “burden many natural gas projects with a time-consuming permitting process that would interfere with bringing more natural gas to market,” said trade group CEO Skip Horvath. The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires (3/11)
For more on Senator Lisa Murkowski, see A Lobbyist Finds His Senator
Last month the American Petroleum Institute announced it was hiring a “grassroots” organizer (actually, it’s a stretch to call anything The Nature Conservancy does “grassroots” – but that’s a slightly different story, which we’ll come back to below).
Grass-Roots Organizer Jumps From Nature Conservancy to API
By ANNE C. MULKERN of Greenwire – February 26, 2010 nytimes.com
The oil industry’s biggest trade group has nabbed one of the environmental community’s top grass-roots organizers as it ramps up efforts to build a network of citizen lobbyists.
Deryck Spooner, who ran Nature Conservancy’s push to spur legislative action on climate change, will now head American Petroleum Institute’s grass-roots activism arm. The hiring move sends a nervous flutter through environmental groups. By recruiting Spooner, green groups said, API adds someone with both credibility and deep knowledge of grass-roots strategy. Spooner previously ran campaigns for labor group AFL-CIO and abortion rights organization NARAL.
“He’s a big dog,” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at watchdog group Public Citizen. “It gives API somebody with enormous grass-roots experience running major campaigns. This indicates that API is taking their grass-roots strategy in a very serious direction.”
The move comes two months after the trade group cut 15 percent of its staff and President Jack Gerard said API had “not been as effective as we could be in educating public officials or the public about the critical role of oil and gas in our economy. … You will see us evolve into a more nimble, more aggressive” organization. “We’re going to be aggressive in our outreach to educate the public,” he said (E&ENews PM, Dec. 11, 2009).
Hiring Spooner is part of Gerard’s strategy to expand grass-roots activism, API spokeswoman Cathy Landry said, adding, “Jack’s vision is to mobilize the 9.2 million people whose jobs rely on the oil and gas industry. We do plan to step that up.”
API’s community activism last year sparked controversy, as environmental critics accused the trade group of steering employees to rallies aimed at killing climate legislation. API said the rallies allowed both employees and other citizens to voice concerns that climate legislation would raise energy prices and affect jobs.
Spooner, 42, doesn’t see the move from Nature Conservancy to API as that big of a jump.
“I have worked for vastly different organizations throughout my career,” Spooner said. “The bottom line is it’s all about advocacy, that’s what I’m passionate about. Mobilizing and organizing people to influence the public process and public policy is what I truly love to do.”
“At the end of the day, I don’t necessarily believe that the views of [the Nature Conservancy] and API are incompatible,” Spooner added. API members use technology “to ensure that the places that they drill are not impacted,” Spooner said, while the Nature Conservancy uses a scientific approach in deciding where to protect land and water. API members, he said, “don’t just want to drill anywhere for drilling’s sake. There’s a lot of science going into where they drill.”
. . . .
“There’s no useful contribution that the American Petroleum Institute is making to forwarding our energy economy,” said Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace. “They’ve been at the center of campaigns to derail climate progress for 20 years.”
Ramping up grass-roots efforts with Spooner shows API believes that’s what’s necessary to achieve its goals, he said.
“They know that ultimately it’s going to come down to a grass-roots toe-to-toe battle on energy policy,” Davies said. And having Spooner at API gives the oil trade group new advantages, he said, including information about environmental group strategies.”
For complete NYTimes article, click here
And now, the other shoe – API’s version of grassroots. How’s about some petrochemical-based synthetic dyes to make that astroturf look like the real thing? – sort of. From API’s “Energy Tomorrow” website:
Tell Congress to Allow for Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources
Domestic oil and gas will provide the jobs, revenues and energy our nation needs. And Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north and top supplier of oil, will continue to play a vital role as we seek greater energy and economic security. Take action and send a letter now.
Tweet Your Support for Domestic Access
Update your Twitter status to show your support for increased access to domestic oil and natural gas, as well as Canadian oil sands. Post to Twitter now.
Post about Energy Access to Facebook
Tell your Facebook friends that you support increased energy access and encourage them to get involved. Post to Facebook now.
Sign-up for Mobile Updates
Sign up to receive updates to your mobile phone on the latest energy legislation. It’s a fast and easy way to stay connected to the issues you care about. Sign up now.
____________________________________
Yup, that’s the industry’s other major asset: shamelessness. Watch for ongoing efforts to rebrand thoughtless over-consumption as “Domestic Access.” Thanks to the ongoing efforts of industry leaders to exploit every possible drop of hydrocarbons during their own lifetimes, while they can hoard the profits, there may be an “Energy Tomorrow” of sorts, but an “Energy Day After That” becomes somewhat more problematic.
Thanks to The Nature Conservancy for being so without ethics that it will apparently hire any amoral crook if s/he’s clever enough. No wonder real climate-protection legislation hasn’t come to pass and isn’t on the horizon either. This is why the bottom is falling out from under the big environmental organizations – they’ve forgotten their [grass]roots.
Tags: API, astroturfing, Energy Access
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“Canadian pipeline companies are considering requests from U.S. producers to reverse the flow of their export lines to bring natural gas from the prolific Marcellus shale into Ontario, displacing some Alberta suppliers who have dominated the Central Canadian market for half a century.” - U.S. Gas Producers Eye Ontario Market
Tags: export, market, natural gas
Leasing Our Lives Away
Wednesday, 21 October 2009 08:20 Jerry Lobdill
So you’ve signed a gas lease. Congratulations: You’ve been taken for a fool. Certain material facts were kept from you that, had you known them, likely would have made you throw the contract in the trash where it belongs. Since you didn’t, let’s take a virtual tour of your new reality.
If a lot of your neighbors also signed, the gas company now has powers you were never told about. The lessee can essentially do whatever he wishes on the surface to produce the gas under your property. He can hold your property hostage for decades by performing inexpensive, nonproductive tasks. He can, and from all historical evidence will, pollute any surface location where he installs mineral extraction equipment. He does not care what you think about it.
Perhaps more ominous is the fact that he is not limited to extraction of minerals from a specific formation (such as the Barnett Shale) but may explore for deeper deposits that are said to exist under the Barnett Shale. In South Texas his brethren are still holding leases executed in the 1930s, leases that have so polluted the surface as to make the land unusable for its earlier purpose of cattle ranching. With the original target minerals now played out, these lessees today are exploring for and producing gas there. Equipment that is no longer functional still leaks carcinogens into the ground. The surface rights owners have been denied access to areas on their property. So, while you’ve been told verbally that there’ll be no effects on your surface usage, that is not an enforceable contract provision, and the lessee, and his landman representative, knew it when he or she asked you to sign.
And probably no one told you that, to produce the gas, there will have to be a drilling pad with multiple wells on it and peripheral equipment that will require large-truck service daily throughout the life of the wells and that the company is allowed to build this pad less than 300 feet from homes. They didn’t tell you that each drilling pad will require a 16-inch gathering line to carry away the gas to a processing facility or that right-of-way for this line can be taken by eminent domain if necessary or that the line will lie as close as 20 feet from home foundations without regard to the possible presence of enclosed spaces under the homes that can cause accumulation of unodorized gas and subsequent explosions in the event of a leak.
They didn’t tell you that what’s in the gathering lines is the most corrosive form of natural gas, which in some cases has eaten through pipeline walls in less than four years, with catastrophic results. They didn’t say that their plan to install these pipelines by horizontal drilling through front yards at a depth of about 20 feet would not protect you from an explosion due to corrosion and leaks. In fact, burying the pipeline makes inspection possible only with instruments too expensive to be affordable by secondary operators who will be buying out the original drillers within five years of installation. And because these instruments do not detect all corrosion, incidents like the Appomattox pipeline explosion of 2008 that leveled two homes and damaged 100 more and created a fireball 1,125 feet in diameter but, mercifully, injured only five people.
Your lessee also didn’t tell you that between 2004 and 2007 there were nine “significant incidents” reported in the Barnett Shale, which by federal criteria means anything that causes fire, explosion, human injury or death, $50,000 or more in damage, or mass evacuation. Statistically, those numbers imply that when industry and the City of Fort Worth have enabled a full build-out of the gas field here, there should be roughly one such incident every six months in Fort Worth.
The city has acted as a co-conspirator by approving the industry’s activities and helping create a bandwagon atmosphere that blinds mineral rights owners with dollar signs. City officials continue to defend the drilling industry’s activities here and have entered into questionable leases of our parkland. They ignored a provision of the existing zoning ordinance that would limit such installations to heavy-industry zones and have passed a new zoning ordinance that permits gas drilling and gas gathering processing and pipelines in every zoning category. They have knowingly denied the dangers both of the pollution and the “significant incidents” that are sure to come.
Elected officials have also ignored public safety and public health concerns, the backbone of the state zoning code, in favor of asserting the primacy of mineral rights over all other rights. Their 600-foot setback provision, touted as a safety measure, is not based on any scientific or engineering data. Last month the council showed the ultimate contempt for that phony provision by permitting Chesapeake Energy to create a multi-well drilling pad within 600 feet of 48 “protected use” properties – even though Chesapeake was able to secure waivers from owners of only nine of those properties.
You can see where this is all leading.
When Fort Worth has its next significant gas well or pipeline accident, there will be hand-wringing at city hall and attempts to manage the public reaction. “Whoops! This is just an act of God, an unfortunate rare occurrence that nobody could have foreseen!”
Next, the fire marshal will be asked why he didn’t tell the council about the dangers of placing these pipelines so close to houses with pier-and-beam foundations. The New London School explosion of 1937 will be mentioned.
After that will come the insurance industry, with eyes bugged out. “This was forecast. Now it has happened, and the math says it is likely to happen here with a regularity that we cannot afford. Therefore, Fort Worth homeowners will have to buy an extra rider on their mortgage insurance, and the cost will be …” you don’t want to know. Many people will no longer be able to afford to live in their homes.
Next, the value of homes will fall, since national publicity of our woes will make homes tough to sell. That will cause taxing authorities to raise tax rates. After that, Wall Street will also get the bug-eye and degrade bonds in Tarrant County.
This is what almost certainly will happen here if the gas drillers have their way.
And what will you get? Maybe the lease offer on your quarter-acre lot included a bonus of $25,000 per acre plus 25 percent royalties. If gas prices stay high that might get you about $208 per year in royalties, or about $12,450 total (including your bonus) over a 30-year payout lifetime.
Oh, and remember, that’s the gross amount. It doesn’t consider income tax and an ad valorem property tax increase due to all that gas you own. Of course, gas prices are in the toilet right now, and they’re selling less gas than they’d expected.
Do you still think the Barnett Shale is a personal bonanza? Do you think your mineral lease omits enough material facts to render it fraudulent? In that case, your lease is probably fraudulent
and unenforceable.
Good luck with that.
Jerry Lobdill is a retired physicist, a longtime environmental activist, a writer, and the owner of a home with mineral rights in Fort Worth. What he’s not is a lawyer, and nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice.
- reprinted in full from Fort Worth Weekly with author’s permission
Jerry Lobdill, Fort Worth, Texas, writes:
“Public Education”, indeed! We know a lot about that here in Texas. We have the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council (BSEEC) here. Its director is a Ph. D. in economics who made a mint working for Enron before coming to the BS. He also thinks he looks good impersonating Yul Brynner. He is the Grover Norquist of gas drilling here. Funded lavishly by industry (who all have similarly non-technical PR types in top management) he creates the talking points of the week for industry and appears everywhere the media shows up. Yesterday he was on a right-wing radio talk show in the DFW area blowing his blue smoke.
Chesapeake has another PR guy who is the front man for their propaganda machine here. He looks awfully sharp in his $1000 suit yukking it up with City Council members and the City Attorney.
To be fair, these folks may not be aware of the fact that what money men at the very top tell them to say is not true and is laced with many lies that are designed to grow the cancer they bring to the people. We know that these “educators” have no degree in petroleum engineering, geology, chemical engineering, physics, pipeline engineering, environmental science, or any other field that was involved in designing and implementing the methods being used in these shale plays.
But, that’s enough fairness–maybe too much. How do these people sleep at night? Sorry. That presumes that they are not sociopaths. Oh, maybe some of them were brought up to ride for the brand. Deal with cognitive dissonance like a man. If you work for a man, work for him. You know–that kind of thinking.
The fact is, we don’t need any more blue smoke. With the mentality we see them demonstrating here, if you let them drill, you’re finished. It’s that simple.
—————–
In response to article in The Times Leader (Scranton, Pennsylvania)
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Gas_drilling_meeting_draws_lots_of_interest _ 02-05-2010.html
February 5
On WVIA show, members of industry admit not telling public about methods.
By Rory Sweeney
PITTSTON TWP. – Members of the gas-drilling industry acknowledged on Thursday evening a failure to inform the public about their procedures, and the audience at the WVIA call-in show reminded them of that often.
The editor of the O&G industry magazine World Oil was fired for defending a petroleum geologist’s columns indicating shale gas yields are overstated (that wells aren’t actually producing as industry advertised… not even close).
Below are 3 links to articles regarding this incident. The 1st reports on the firing; the 2nd is the editor’s explanation for his firing (posted on the columnist’s blog); and the 3rd is the column, which (due to pressure from industry to suppress the publication of a shale gas play production chart) was pulled from the November issue of World Oil.
http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2009/11/umbrage-in-the-gas-patch/
From Perry Fischer, former World Oil Editor:
http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com/2009/11/letter-from-perry-fischer-former-editor.html
Facts are stubborn things: Arthur E. Berman November 2009
http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2009/11/facts-are-stubborn-things-arthur-e-berman-november-2009/
Now, why might large publicly traded drilling companies wish to suppress analysis indicating actual shall gas yields aren’t even close to what the prospective investors and leasors think they are?
Petrohawk has only $526 million in current assets, and $5.88 billion in non-current (not liquid) assets. Shareholder equity is $3.28 billion (6.2 times current assets and equal to 51% of total assets). Petrohawk desperately needs its shareholders to believe its tall tales.
- David J Cyr
See it November 19, 7pm at the Bouck Auditorium, SUNY Cobleskill. The Student Environmental Action Coalition presents: A Snowmobile for George. “A rambunctious road trip reveals the toll that environmental deregulation has had on the lives of ordinary people.”
Tags: film
Unnatural Gas: The Inflated Promise of a Not-So-Clean Fuel
Meanwhile, in competing with Big Coal for the affections of Congress, the newly formed America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) launched an $80 million advertising and lobbying campaign earlier this year to promote its “clean, abundant, American, reliable, and versatile” product. As climate bills work their way through Congress, ANGA’s efforts appear to be paying off.
Risking our water so we can burn more natural gas will not be the planet’s miracle climate cure. For the United States to achieve necessary reductions in greenhouse emissions – estimated at more than 80 percent – will require not more energy production, even if somewhat cleaner, but deep cuts in energy consumption.
Coal must be phased out as quickly as possible, but more gas won’t accomplish that. While electric utilities’ gas consumption doubled from 1996 to 2007, coal use continued its steady climb.
What if, with shale drilling, we could achieve another doubling of gas-fired electricity generation, but this time eliminate an equivalent amount of coal-fired generation? Even that steep escalation of gas drilling would cut the utility industry’s carbon emissions by only 12 percent and the nation’s total carbon emissions by just 5 percent, based on Energy Department figures.
Financier T. Boone Pickens recommends running our vehicles on natural gas. But substituting natural gas for gasoline in all vehicles would reduce the nation’s total carbon emissions by less than 9 percent. Converting all gasoline-powered vehicles would consume more natural gas than electric utilities, homes and businesses combined. Consequences for the nation’s water would be disastrous.
Natural gas is being hailed by some, including Pickens, as a high-energy “bridge” to a renewable future, and by others as sufficiently climate-friendly to be a “destination” fuel. But as gas’ environmental drawbacks become more evident, it’s looking more like a bridge to nowhere.
Read the entire piece at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/04-5
From the desk of T. Boone Pickens
Army:
What a couple of weeks it’s been and I have lots to report and something very important to ask.
There’s a new Natural Gas Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives which is headed by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK). The more than 40 bi-partisan members of the caucus held a major hearing on Capitol Hill. The Natural Gas Caucus talked about how the development of America’s natural gas resources will help set America on a path to energy independence and create millions of new jobs. It was a great event and an important message to get out there.
But here’s the really important part.
We’ve got just under 100 cosponsors of the NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1835) in the House—and that’s great—but I think we can educate more Members of Congress, build on that support and do a lot more.
Click here to email your Member of Congress and ask them to become a cosponsor of the NAT GAS Act.
I think we can get at least another 20+ cosponsors in the coming weeks so I’m calling on every member of the Army to reach out to their Member of Congress right now so that we can get to at least 120 sponsors by November 20th. I’m calling it 120 by 11-20.
I’m going to be working the phones and I need you to as well. Army, we can get this done and show Congress that it’s time to end our dependence on foreign oil.
Click here to email your Member of Congress and ask them to become a cosponsor of the NAT GAS Act.
Stay tuned because we’re going to post regular updates about our progress and highlight those members who are working to get us off foreign oil.
Let’s keep the pressure on!
– Boone
P.S. We recently ran an ad in the news publications which cover Capitol Hill. Click here to view the short video we did about this really unique ad. It’s getting people’s attention.
Oh, T Boone-Doggle:
Ruined lives and ruined land
What do you not understand?
To T Boone-Doggle’s “Army”: Y’know, the thing about an army is that it’s composed of foot soldiers who do what they’re told; they’re generally not told the real reason for what they’re doing, and they’re expendable. Do you know what it is he’s not telling you? What he really has you fighting for? We do: through that legislation he’s shilling, T Boone-Doggle wants to force the US taxpayer to foot the massive bill for a nationwide natural gas delivery infrastructure (think natural gas filling stations on every corner) and the demand for the resource that will result. If you keep listening to his schtick, and he succeeds, and he doesn’t die first of decrepitude, your labors will make him rich, AGAIN – at your expense, mine, and this country’s, in every way.
That’s why he’s called T Boone-Doggle. Don’t fall for it anymore.
Tags: Pickens
CDOG Responds to NPR’s Un-Natural Gas Propaganda Campaign
In September, NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast a 3 day series on the issue of extracting natural gas from stone, the content of which suggested NPR is now just another Naturalgas Propaganda Resource. Below are links to the 3 days of NPR’s un-natural gas promotion, with a CDOG response below each link.
Link to Day 1, of NPR’s petro dollared propaganda campaign:
09/22/2009 Rediscovering Natural Gas by Hitting Rock Bottom
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113043935
CDOG Response to Day 1:
In your 09/22/09 Morning Edition story, Rediscovering Natural Gas by Hitting Rock Bottom, NPR framed the issue as gas drillers being nice small independent entrepreneurs struggling against an energy market dominated by big oil and big coal. That’s false. Those little gas drilling wildcatters are controlled by big oil and gas corporations, which use them to limit liabilities (evade deep pocketed corporation responsibility for purposeful pollution). The not so small “independent” Nornew, positioning itself over the Marcellus shale here in New York, is actually a subsidiary of the international O&G corporation Norse Energy, based in Norway.Your report focused upon increased estimates of possible gas quantities, without providing evidence of the quality deficits, like the water wells now being destroyed in Pennsylvania by this form of drilling.
The only downside to ripping remnants of gas from stone that the NPR reporter reported was that gas prices are too low, making it difficult for the optimistic “energy independence” drillers to make a profit from their [money] expensive operations. The National Propaganda Radio reporter didn’t report on any of the costs to the public that the drillers externalize. To be truly FOXworthy fair and balanced there was a brief reference to “many environmentalists” after which only an institutionalized, industrialized “environmentalist” position was offered.
Unconventional horizontal hydrofracturing drilling, to extract natural gas from low-permeable stone formations, is environmentally unsound. The Halliburton developed process focused upon solving the industry’s extraction problem… with absolutely no concern for the environmental costs to others, from the industry’s use of it.
The scale of the drilling (number of wells and hydrofractures required), that’s necessary to extract those myriad remnants of gas so tightly bound up within the stone, will over time have a catastrophic cumulative negative environmental and human health impact… polluting air, ground, and water in this desperate process of extraction intended to maintain our fossil fuel dependancy.
All of the enormous quantity of clean fresh water used in the hydrofracture process is permanently removed from the natural water cycle, because the chemicals added to it cannot be fully removed to change the toxic waste, which the process creates, back into the safe drinking water it was before the drillers abused it.
The massive amount of toxic waste created by the drillers, which they either do not leave in the hole, or (Love Canal) bury at the site, is taken to municipal sewage waste treatment plants, through which the chemicals then pass on to be dumped into our rivers… and eventually come out of our faucets.
Link to Day 2, of NPR’s petro dollared propaganda campaign:
09/23/2009 Who’s Looking At Natural Gas Now? Big Oil
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113080237
CDOG Response to Day 2:
The nice “small independent company” that developed the new production techniques to rip the last remnants of natural gas from stone, having the small guy innovation which NPR falsely claims beat BIG oil, was… Halliburton!If NPR considers Halliburton to be a “mom-and-pop” operation, then what does it consider to be a beastly overlarge corporation?
Those little guy operators that NPR romantically astroturfed are the private contractor gas driller domestic equivalents, here at home, of what Blackwater is where fossil fuels can be found elsewhere.
National Propaganda Radio’s reporting implies that the remnants of natural gas, which the myriad tentacled energy industry has in recent years been so hazardously ripping from the earth, are ENORMOUS; but then NPR claims they’ve been deposits too small scale to have yet attracted large corporations. If the remnant areas were large corporation considered so profit inconsequential, then why has the Millennium Pipeline been built to and now through those areas? Would the vast matrix of gas drilling rigs and pads, packed close together covering the whole landscape from the Catskills for 350 miles or more all the way across the broad breadth of New York State to Lake Erie, which will be necessary for the industry to successfully unconventionally extract all that natural gas trapped down there too tightly within non-porous stone… be small scale?
NPR cloaks the socially irresponsible decisions of individual landowners in American Dream apparel, romanticizing those who place their communities in long-term nightmare jeopardy to personally short-term profit themselves. Is inviting a dangerous marauding invading occupier into your neighborhood a good neighborly thing to do? Is the energy industry’s economic draft persuading farmers to site chemical toxic waste production facilities on their farms the way a sane society would provide farmers an adequate income? Is embracing toxic waste production the way any sane society would provide farmers their only ability to have the healthcare they’ll need when the extraction chemicals used produce the effects they cause?
Link to Day 3, of NPR’s petro dollared propaganda campaign:
09/24/2009 With Little Clout, Natural Gas Lobby Strikes Out
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113138252
CDOG Response to Day 3:
By Day 3, NPR’s petro dollared propaganda campaign has become more subtle, providing some seemingly innocuous banter at the end, to reluctantly acknowledge the existence of some environmental “concern” regarding the type of drilling required to get the last remnants of gas from rocks that couldn’t be gotten before.That ripping of gas from stone with the Halliburton hydrofracking process is not something that “might cause some contamination.” It has in the past; it does now; and it will whenever and wherever it is used, regardless of how tight, or tighter the un-enforced regulations are typed upon paper. The hydrofracturing process is the underground equivalent of mountaintop removal. Both of those extraction procedures have devastating environmental impacts, with mountaintop removal’s just being more readily apparent, while hydrofracture of low to non-permeable tight-gas bearing rock is insidious… like the cancers that it produces.
Being corporate media, when NPR turned its attention to the “political reality” it too subtly sporting announcer focused upon the gas lobby not having as much game as the coal lobby. The Waxman-Markey Bill is the product of industry bribery, with the biggest bidding bribers being rewarded. Yes, like a losing coach would, former [in the pocket of the gas industry] Colorado Senator Tim Worth “chewed out” the gas industry players… for being too cleaner than coal, when bribing Congress.
The gas industry is not the energy constituency with “the most to gain and the most to offer.” No! Those with the most to gain are we, The People, and those with the most to offer are the other environmentalists, who urge us to focus on serious conservation first, and rapid deployment of pervasive alternative renewable energy solutions, with the relocalization of energy production being necessary to bring our carbon footprints down to a size we can survive in.
National Propaganda Radio is still maintaining the false dichotomy of needing to choose gas or coal, repeating gas industry favorable claims of “some environmentalists” with those “some” being the institutionalized industrialized “environmentalists” who claim these last remnants of gas, which are so environmentally damaging to extract, are needed as a bridge-fuel to transition away from coal.
However, those “environmentalists” have taken the wrong exit, onto a bridge to nowhere. Gas from low to non-permeable stone is not a bridge to “transition” away from fossil fuels, but rather a desperate means to maintain the energy industry’s profits from our fossil fuel addiction dependence.
This nation has often displayed how quick and vigorously it can exert huge human energy devoted to the murder and mayhem of wars purposefully designed to government spend enormous amounts of money earned by working people to provide obscene profits to the most ruthless few. We would not need to choose only between dirty coal that won’t become clean, and the remnants of gas that’s so dirty when extracted, if we as a nation treated climate change as a problem of truly existential graveness, which it is.
What would some other environmentalists have to say?
We should stop spending trillions of dollars to fight wars over oil resources that are being used up by those wars fought over them. We should claw back the trillion dollars stolen by banksters. We should exert the same highly concerted human energy and ample money distribution, normally provided by this society only when engaged in global war, and direct that enormous effort and money into providing solutions for global survival… and make that transition from fossil fuel dependence to renewable energy independence be completed as fast as possible.
This nation, with the capacity to exterminate all life upon the planet with just a 20 minute war, surely has the capacity — if it can find the will — to make our planet sustainable in the years that is needed to be done, rather than waiting decades until it’s too late… and then can’t be done.
David J. Cyr
Delhi, NY
GPNYS SC member – Delaware County
Tags: Natural Gas Alliance, NPR
…of the 17 families [whose water has been affected] I am aware of they are not all seniors-some are younger with children. They are not all within 1000 feet of the Gesford site which was the site where the gas company contaminated the aquifer with methane gas which did not come from the Marcellus but from gas above it- isotopic testing was done. The activities of the gas company have altered the water quality in our valley and above. Today I have bubbles. Others have a film on their dishes and their animals are extremely thirsty all the time. Some families get water from the gas company most buy and haul water in. The gas company has stated that unless DEP orders them to provide water they do not have to. Also DEP does not have an accurate record of who is not drinking their water and why. Water wells are private and not regulated by DEP. So unless the water well owner calls them with a complaint they are unaware of any problems. My question is how can the “on going investigation” be accurate if all the information is not compiled. The missing info could be the key.
The gas migration issue is still being investigated-the headlines were misleading stating no fracking fluids found in Dimock water supply….the violation was that the company contaminated the aquifer-fact-they did.
As far as the “promises” we were all promised great compensation- “you’ll see $90,000 a year on as little as 5 acres! or “you won’t be living in this trailer next year. You’ll have a nice new house.” Nothing was ever disclosed to most of us concerning the nature and scope of the industrialization of our community – ONE well was mentioned with the infamous little Christmas tree pipe to mark its location. Drive around our neighborhood- you will see tall vents on water wells, jugs of water behind homes, and disillusioned folks inside the same homes they had 3 years ago. The dwindling royalty checks will soon equal the amount of money some of us spend on buying water…
Tags: Cabot, contamination, DEP, Dimock, Pennsylvania, water wells
“Pretty much in the middle of nowhere” describes a lot of places in upstate New York. What natural gas has done to DISH, Texas, it will do to us too.
"DISH is located just off FM 156, a few miles west of I-35 and Denton. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, which, from the drillers' point of view, made it the perfect place for gathering, compressing, and transmitting natural gas to and from all directions." - Fort Worth Weekly, 10/14/09
And what has the natural gas industry done to DISH, Texas, that it will also do here? Here’s an excerpt from an October 14 article:
The wind blows through pretty freely now, however, since most of the trees have recently died.
“After the explosion and what happened to my horses, all my boarders took their horses out of there,” said Burgess, now 56. “Who could blame them? This was going to be my retirement, but now it’s valueless.”
The words “valueless” and “worthless” come up a lot in conversation with people from DISH.
Read the entire article:
Sacrificed to Shale
More from DISH’s mayor:
The news that I continually get makes this nightmare worse and worse. I have yet another twenty something young lady who has undiagnosed neurological problems that started when she moved here. She has been shipped out of state for testing on a number of occasions, and they have been unable to diagnose the problems she is having. I am having difficult time in know what the next move should be. I wonder if there is a medical doctor out there who may come to help us here? Maybe there would be someone who could perform toxicology tests on the citizens. Please give me any input you may have, and if you know of anyone who may be willing to help, please let us know. Maybe you could post something on your websites or blogs soliciting help. Together I know you reach thousands of people. Thanks.
Calvin Tillman
Mayor, DISH, TX
(940) 453-3640
Tags: air emissions, air pollution, deaths, DISH, livestock, pipelines, TX
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