Fracking Nonsense: The Job Myth of Gas Drilling

Written by Helene Jorgensen   

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/fracking-nonsense-the-job-myth-of-gas-drilling

Natural gas companies are trying to sell fracking as the solution to all of the economic ills ailing this country.  Supposedly fracking can bring the economy out of its current stagnation by creating uncountable new jobs, without running up government deficits, and even save us from global warming in the process.  So how come local residents and environmentalists oppose fracking? The short answer is that fracking does not create local jobs, it lowers property values, and pollutes the water we drink and the air we breathe.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking for short, is drilling for gas buried more than a mile under ground in hard rock layers. In order to extract the gas, a toxic cocktail of chemicals is pumped deep into the ground to fracture the rock. In recent years, the state of Pennsylvania has embraced the fracking boom and more than 4,500 wells have been drilled there since 2007. The state of New York has taken a more prudent approach by implementing a moratorium until the environmental and economic effects have been evaluated. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation is currently seeking public comments on the issue (deadline January 11).

In an intensive lobbying campaign to influence a skeptical public’s opinions about fracking, the gas industry has commissioned a number of economic studies that find huge job gains from fracking. A recent study by the economic forecasting company IHS Global Insight Inc., paid for by the America’s Natural Gas Alliance, projects that fracking will create 1.1 million jobs in the United States by year 2020. However, a closer read of the study reveals that the analysis also projects that fracking will actually lead to widespread job losses in other sectors of the economy, and would result in slightly lower overall employment levels the following 10 years, compared to what it would be if fracking were restricted. In another study, commissioned by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, researchers with Penn State University estimated that gas drilling would support 216,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone by 2015. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show employment in the oil and gas industry to be 4,144 in Pennsylvania.

Rather than trying to project what will happen in the future, one could look at what the employment impact has been from Pennsylvania’s love affair with fracking since 2007, using actual employment data readily available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.    http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/exposing-the-oil-and-gas-industrys-false-jobs-promise/

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Oil, gas drillers thirsty for Valley's water

DOVER —

Large amounts of water are needed to drill oil and natural gas wells in the Tuscarawas Valley, and the Tuscarawas County Port Authority plans to provide it.

Starting Jan. 16, a stream of 5,500-gallon tanker trucks will begin flowing in and out of Oxford Street to the Reeves Mill Business Park. It also will be a revenue stream for the economic development agency, selling water for $7.50 per 1,000 gallons.

“We’re certainly pleased to cooperate with the oil and gas industry and provide this service located in about the geographic middle of the Utica shale play,” said Harry A. Eadon Jr., president and executive director of the Port Authority. “Being able to provide water for the company also should help attract more companies into Tuscarawas County.”

http://www.timesreporter.com/newsnow/x1707726989/Oil-gas-drillers-thirsty-for-Valleys-water

Fracking's challenges

The Kasich administration seems receptive to at least a modest increase in the tax, although it is reluctant to state how much. But Ohio's oil and gas industry is hot because of the reserves that have become available; a 5 percent severance tax would not dissuade producers. If Ohio fails to increase its severance tax on drillers, taxpayers will bear the burden of drilling's higher costs

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Fracking Well Catches Fire

Fracking has suffered some particularly bad PR over the past few months. First, the EPA linked the hydraulic fracturing drilling process (where a mix of water, sand and chemicals are blasted deep underground through horizontal wells to release oil and gas deposits) tocontamination of water in Wyoming. Then, on New Year’s Eve an intense earthquake struck Youngstown, Ohio. It was the eleventh quake since March, and seismologistslinked it to a deep well used for disposing fracking wastewater. State officials suspended the well, and the Mayor of Youngstown went so far as to buy earthquake insurance for his home.

http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/01/06/fracking-well-catches-fire/

693 of Ohio’s gas and oil wells failed inspections in 2011

We took a look at data from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) obtained through public record requests along with data obtained from ODNR’s RBDMS database and we found that 693 gas and oil wells in Ohio failed inspections performed by ODNR inspectors last year, resulting in 1,625 distinct violations.

The most frequent citations appear to be for older, non-productive wells that have often been abandoned or unused for many years. Violations for Failure to legibly identify well (347 violations) were most frequent, followed by Nonproduction wells that need to be plugged or placed in temporary inactive status (251 violations). But many more serious violations were also identified including:

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Geologist: Site injection wells away from critical infrastructure

"If you took a brick in each hand and tried to slide them past one another, the rough surface along the boundary would represent a fault and the frictional resistance that is present," explained Marshall University geologist Ronald Martino.

 "When you build pore fluids up in faults, you decrease the resistance. The fault will slip at lower thresholds than it would naturally so you're triggering movement along the fault — it's occurring sooner and more frequently than it would if left alone under natural conditions."

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Call For Poems: PUDDING MAGAZINE IS LOOKING FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR A SPECIAL EDITION OF ECOPOETRY.

Editorial Focus

Website: puddingmagazine.com

Pudding Magazine is a print journal that focuses on publishing eclectic, sophisticated, poetry that appeals to our conscience through bold and exacting language conjuring powerful imagery.  Together with our sponsor EPOC (EcoPoetry of Ohio Center), we focus in this special issue on work that has vision, passion, and compels the reader to act rather than to indulge or resign – a call to arms – a joining forces – in defense of our natural world: experiment, provoke, innovate, compel, and lament!

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