Recent Fracking News
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11:09AM Ohio Governor John Kasich is a big supporter of natural gas drilling, but that doesn’t mean he wants Pennsylvania’s fracking waste. As this Bloomberg News article reports, the Buckeye State took in 369 million gallons of used fracking fluid last year.
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:43AM Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:39AM OHIO VALLEY - Exxon Mobil subsidiary XTO Energy plans to drill its first Ohio Utica Shale well just south of the former Key Ridge Elementary School in Belmont County, state records show.
Public records also confirm oil giant Exxon has at least 52,334 acres leased for drilling in Belmont and Monroe counties, while competitor Chevron has several thousand acres leased in Marshall and Ohio counties.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources records show XTO has the permit to drill the Utica Shale well on a 461-acre plot in Mead Township, just south of Ohio 147.
Though XTO has some Ohio permits to drill in other areas of the state, the Belmont County well will be the company's first in the Utica Shale. Industry leaders in Ohio estimate the state's portion of the Utica Shale may contain as many as 5.6 billion barrels of oil.
Exxon - which has leased about 26,000 acres in Belmont County since October in the name of XTO - has at least 25,000 acres leased in Monroe County. The acreage further breaks down as follows:
Because of a corporate takeover last year, those who signed with Phillips are now also part of the Exxon/XTO acreage.
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:25AM As recently as a week ago one contamination expert went on the record explaining exactly how the hydraulic fracturing process could contaminate water supplies. The expert is Dr. Conrad ‘Dan’ Volz, former director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Healthy Environments and Communities, who has testified on hydraulic fracturing before Congress and appeared as an expert as part of water contamination investigations on ABC news.
Volz spoke with Checks and Balances Project director Andrew Schenkel last week at a public hearing on fracking in Pennsylvania.
“[Wells] are going to leak and they are going to leak when the cement shrinks and when the cement shrinks it pulls away from the geological layer that it is sealed from and then it serves as a conduit as straight into ground water aquifers,” Volz said. When asked if the chemicals could travel miles upward towards aquifers that lie well above the bottom of hydraulically fracked wells, Volz replied, “of course”
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 9:08AM Gasland was intended to be both a chronicle of the way in which oil and gas companies have used vast sums of money to shield fracking from virtually all federal, state, and local regulations and a cautionary tale about the toll the process takes on people and the environment.
Fortunately, the message of the film is getting through. Recent surveys show that 4 out of 5 Americans are concerned about fracking's effect on our drinking water and seven out of ten Ohioans believe the process should be stopped until we know more about its effect on the environment and its relation to a series of earthquakes that have rocked the Northeastern part of the state.
The bottom line: fracking is not safe. It has never been proven safe and it will never be made safe. The industry admits that well casing problems occur in 50 percent of wells over the life of the well. That means that 50 percent of gas wells can be expected to leak chemicals, hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, carcinogens and neurotoxins directly into groundwater. The industry has never been able to solve this problem although they have been trying for decades and they have admitted that there is no solution to the problem. Safe fracking is simply an impossibility. If the state allows further drilling, it is trading water for gas. It is trading the short-term windfall profits of huge gas companies for our public health and the permanent poisoning of our ground water.
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 8:33AM When US government scientists began sampling the air from a tower north of Denver, Colorado, they expected urban smog — but not strong whiffs of what looked like natural gas. They eventually linked the mysterious pollution to a nearby natural-gas field, and their investigation has now produced the first hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change.
Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study estimates that natural-gas producers in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. This is more than double the official inventory, but roughly in line with estimates made in 2011 that have been challenged by industry. And because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels.
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 7:59AM Yesterday in the Senate and today in the House, the Pennsylvania legislature voted in favor of HB1950, a compromise gas development bill that was hammered out behind closed doors under the heavy hand of Governor Tom Corbett. Under the guise of providing “impact fees” to municipalities where gas operations occur, the legislature effectively supported a takeover of municipalities by the State and the gas industry by gutting established and effective local planning and zoning rights.
Through provisions contained in the bill, municipalities will no longer be able to play a central, critical role in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of residents and determining which uses of land are most beneficial.
The bill requires that all types of oil and gas operations (except for natural gas processing plants)—unlike any other commercial or industrial business—be allowed in all zoning districts, even in residential neighborhoods and near schools, parks, hospitals, and sensitive natural and cultural resource protection areas. As a result, people could be forced to live only 300 feet away from a gas well, open frack waste pit, or pipeline, despite growing evidence that such development causes pollution, damages health, and lowers property values.
The bill also mandates a one-size-fits-all ordinance that supersedes all existing ordinances and prevents municipalities from adopting any zoning provisions that are stricter than the weak, mandated standards.
