Couple denied mortgage because of gas drilling

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa. - 

Brian and Amy Smith seem to be the first example in western Pennsylvania of a homeowner being denied a mortgage because of gas drilling on a next-door neighbor's property.

The drilling goes on day and night at a new Marcellus Shale well in Daisytown, Washington County, and Brian Smith told Channel 4 Action News investigator Jim Parsons that he has no complaints -- except one.

"As far as drilling and the noise and the lights in the window? No," he said. "But when it affected the value of my home? Absolutely."

The Smiths live across the street from the new gas well. They applied for a new mortgage on their $230,000 home and hobby farm, and Quicken Loans congratulated them on their conditional approval.

"They said all the paperwork will be done by the end of the week and we'll be able to close," Brian Smith said. "Somewhere in there, they called us and said, 'Your loan got denied.' "

In an email, Quicken Loans told the Smiths, "Unfortunately, we are unable to move forward with this loan. It is located across the street from a gas drilling site." Two other national lenders also turned down Brian Smith's application.

Quicken Loans emailed the following statement to Channel 4 Action News: "While Quicken Loans makes every effort to help its clients reach their homeownership goals, like every lender, we are ultimately bound by very specific underwriting guidelines. In some cases conditions exist, such as gas wells and other structures in nearby lots, that can significantly degrade a property's value. In these cases, we are unable to extend financing due to the unknown future marketability of the property."

Clean Water Action said that in other parts of the country, when shale gas drilling has arrived, mortgages at nearby properties sometimes get denied. This is the first case they've heard in Pennsylvania.

"The banks aren't stupid," said Myron Arnowitt, director of Clean Water Action in Pennsylvania. "They're going to look at that and be more cautious in terms of what they are willing to mortgage."

"If I can't refinance, could somebody get a loan to purchase my house? And that would be my concern. That's definitely a worry," Brian Smith said.

Homeowners who are denied by national lenders because of gas drilling could try local banks. First Federal in Washington, Pa., said it does not deny mortgage applications based solely on nearby drilling.

http://www.wtae.com/news/local/investigations/Couple-denied-mortgage-because-of-gas-drilling/-/12023024/12865512/-/ohf26fz/-/index.html#.T6mu842bM44.facebook

We're fracking our way to a warmer and less stable world

It's worrisome but not surprising that the push for unconventional fossil fuels has overshadowed in media coverage and public debate the accelerating global warming that is taking place. It's not too hard to understand why. ExxonMobil and other transnational oil and gas corporations want it that way. They reject the best scientific evidence of global warming as "uncertain" or mount major efforts to discredit the very idea of global warming.

Wikipedia has a 13-page chapter on "Scientific opinion on climate change" in which the principal organizations of scientists from around the world (e.g., Academies of Science, Earth Science, Meteorology and Oceanography) concur with the view that "the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming and it is more than 90 percent certain that humans are causing it through activities that increase concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels."

So what's the point? Sure, the odds are not good that the best science will prevail over big oil. There's not much time to build more ecologically compatible energy systems than we have. But you keep learning, talking, acting, and know that there are people just like you in communities across the country and the world. Time will tell whether it coalesces into something big enough to effectively challenge the powerful, institutionalized forces in the society and to build sustainable and just societies.

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Ohio is guinea pig for experiment known as horizontal fracking

I am so tired of hearing the claims from the oil and gas industry that fracking has been going on for years and is thus safe.

Hydraulic fracturing of shale with water to remove gas does indeed date back to the 1940s. However, this new type of slick water, horizontal, multi-pad injection fracking used today is no more than 10 or 15 years in age and is largely still experimental.

We are essentially guinea pigs for the industry. Now, we are talking about tens of thousands of horsepower, millions upon millions of gallons of our water, and a cocktail of hundreds of chemicals, some of them undisclosed, being injected repeatedly, day and night, below our water table.

Comparing modern fracking with the type done decades ago is like
comparing Boeing with the Wright brothers.

Then there is the argument that the chemicals they use are no different from the everyday household chemicals we have in our kitchens and bathrooms that can easily be found in deodorant, shampoo, antifreeze, black olives and even laxatives.

Please do not insult our intelligence. We do not use thousands of gallons of deodorant every single day, our radiators cannot hold thousands of gallons of antifreeze, our black olives do not contain thousands of gallons of concentrated hydrochloric acid injected into the jar at breakneck speed, and God forbid we will ever need thousands of gallons of laxatives!

Ohio is putting the cart in front of the horse with this rapid development of fracking, and I fear we may pay greatly for it as our neighbors in Pennsylvania are.

http://www.cantonrep.com/opinion/letters/x221036587/Ohio-is-guinea-pig-for-experiment-known-as-horizontal-fracking

Exclusive: Investors press U.S. shale oil drillers to control flaring

Reuters) - Investors representing $500 billion in assets are pushing energy companies in the shale oil rush in North Dakota and other states to disclose the amount of natural gas they burn - a practice they see as a wasteful financial risk.

"We want to encourage companies to articulate plans for resolving this issue while shale oil production is still in its relative infancy," said Karina Litvack, the head of governance and sustainable investment at F&C Asset Management.

Litvack is one of 36 investors who sent a letter to 21 oil drillers including Continental Resources Inc (CLR.N), Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), and Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK.N) asking them to disclose the amount of natural gas they are burning off, or flaring, at shale oil operations in North Dakota, Texas, Colorado and Ohio.

While shale oil drilling has helped reverse a decades old decline in U.S. crude output, the lightening pace of new development may also have an environmental dark side. The investors and others say emissions from flaring and venting natural gas cause air problems and increase global warming.

The investors want the companies to disclose by May 1 how much flaring they are doing and to meet with them to plan ways to tackle the problem.

The practice "poses significant risks for the companies involved, and for the industry at large, ultimately threatening the industry's license to operate," they wrote in a letter to the companies.

Energy companies flare natural gas they are unable to capture and sell as they produce shale oil which is much more valuable. The practice, which had been in decline in the traditional oil business, is now soaring at shale oil formations in North Dakota and Texas where the infrastructure is not keeping up with the boom.

Techniques including hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have given drillers in those states access to vast new deposits of shale oil. But some states, many of which are new to drilling, do not have strong regulatory systems in place.

One third of the gas North Dakota produces is flared. The amount flared per day by last July had increased 1,200 percent since 2004, when development of the Bakken shale formation began, according to the state's government.

The investors estimate flared gas in North Dakota produced 2 million tons of carbon dioxide last year, equal to 384,000 extra cars on the road. And even with low natural gas prices, the state lost about $110 million in revenue last year from the flaring, they say.

Continental, whose CEO Harold Hamm is Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's top energy advisor, Exxon, and Chesapeake would not comment on the letter.

As the shale gas fracking boom in Pennsylvania and Texas helps sink natural gas prices to 10-year lows, drillers are hesitant to invest in pipelines that would capture the gas.

"Such a short sited approach raises significant concerns," said Steven Heim, a managing director at Boston Common Asset Management and one of the investors who sent the letter.

Persuading companies to build natural gas pipelines at the Bakken formation in North Dakota is no easy task as oil output there outpaces the building of even crude pipelines and much of the petroleum has to be shipped in trucks.

But some companies have been responsible, he said. EOG Resources Inc, (EOG.N), for example, put in some pipelines before they started fracking for shale oil.

(Reporting By Timothy Gardner; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-usa-fracking-investors-idUSBRE82S03120120329

OU must protect its most valuable resources from fracking effects

By Professor Jim Montgomery

I am a faculty member in the College of Health Sciences and Professions at Ohio University. I am compelled to write to remind the leadership of OU, including the Board of Trustees, of one of the primary missions of the university as it prepares its response to the state regarding fracking on lands owned by the university.

OU, along with the College of Health Sciences and Professions (CHSP) and the Heritage College of Medicine (HCOM), have the express obligation to serve the underrepresented and underserved not just in Athens County but all of southeast Ohio. While Athens County has the highest poverty rate in the state (32.8 percent) much of southeast Ohio is impoverished. And with poverty comes many problems, among them poor health and lack of access and opportunity to resources necessary to develop and sustain healthy living.

Long-term exposure to fracking pollutants has the potential of worsening these individuals’ health problems. Others are also very susceptible to environmental toxins, regardless of poverty status – pregnant women, young children and adolescents.

Ohio University has the responsibility to do all it can to protect the most vulnerable among us. First, to the extent possible, the university must oppose fracking until tighter federal regulations are put in place. To do so would be consistent with the university’s commitment to serve all southeast Ohioans. Second, it must demand that the oil industry implement all of the precautions recommended in the Resolution on Hydraulic Fracturing at Ohio University developed by the Environmental Studies Advisory Board and passed by the Faculty Senate (March 12, 2012). These recommendations would require the industry to implement various measures to minimize the negative effects of fracking on the environment and human health within the university community.

The overwhelming majority of the local opposition to fracking has centered on its potential ill effects on the environment (i.e. contamination of water, air, soil) and local economy. This is for good reason. The emerging science and experiences of numerous communities around the country attest to these negative effects.

By contrast, little has been detailed about the risks to human health. There is good reason for this, too. Few studies have been conducted on the short- and long-term effects of fracking on human health. Big oil has taken full advantage of this circumstance when they claim there are no established links between fracking and human health problems. However, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. There are emerging data showing that fracking is indeed associated with numerous human health problems, including dermatological, endocrine, respiratory, kidney, liver, gastrointestinal, vascular, and neurological (Bamberger & Oswald, 2012; Colburn et al., 2011).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will publish findings later this year and in 2014 detailing both the health and environmental effects of fracking.

Meantime, the epidemiological literature (i.e. the study of disease patterns and the conditions that give rise to disease) provides us ample evidence of the sorts of long-term ill effects on human health we might expect from fracking, especially in children and adolescents who are particularly susceptible to environmental toxins. The science is clear. Well-established links exist between low-level but chronic exposure to environmental toxins and a wide range of childhood physical, neurological, cognitive and behavioral problems.

The National Academy of Sciences (2002) estimated that one in every 200 children suffers from physical, neurological, developmental, learning and/or behavioral disorders caused by exposure to known environmental toxins. A recent study (Trasande & Liu, 2011) reported that environmental childhood diseases cost $76.6 billion or 3.5 percent of U.S. health-care costs in 2008. The authors stated that “the environment has become a major part of childhood disease.”

The developing science focusing on the effects of fracking on human health and the epidemiological literature must not be ignored by OU and the Board of Trustees as they prepare their position statement on fracking. These literatures tell us what to expect in the wake of chronic exposure to toxins from an unregulated hydraulic fracturing technology: an increase in childhood physical, neurological, developmental, learning and/or behavioral disorders.

Also expect staggering financial stress on the health care, social service and educational systems across southeast Ohio as more families seek resources and support systems that already are in short supply. OU, the CHSP and HCOM have an institutional and social responsibility to protect the health of southeast Ohioans, particularly the most vulnerable: those living in poverty, pregnant women, young children and adolescents.

Jim Montgomery is a professor in the College of Health Sciences and Professions at Ohio University

http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-36470-ou-must-protect-its-most-valuable-resources-from-fracking-effects.html

From fracking-heavy region, women bring warnings

On Saturday, two dairy farmers from Pennsylvania shared some real-life horror stories from their experience with natural gas “fracking,” during a presentation in Athens.

Some of the roughly 50 people who came to hear Carol French and Carolyn Knapp, however, said they’re hopeful that a recent state geologist’s report, indicating that Athens County may lie outside the part of the Utica shale that’s expected to most oil and gas development, means this county won’t have to undergo a lot of fracking.

“It’s a tremendous relief; I think it’s a reprieve,” said Nancy Pierce of Guysville.

Natalie Kruse, an Ohio University environmental studies professor, said she was not surprised by the report’s findings.

“It’s nothing new,” Kruse suggested. “We’ve always known that we were less mature.” (The “maturity” of organic carbon intermixed with shale – basically its age, organic composition and how much pressure it’s undergone – largely determines its prospective value.)

Travis Milliken of Athens said he was “pleased” to read about the report, and added that he’s been leery from the beginning about the glowing claims of what a “fracking” boom will do for Athens County and the United States.

“I think this quest for ‘energy independence’ is driven by a lust for money, at the expense of many, many things,” he said. “

Knapp and French, who spoke at OU’s Morton Hall, both signed leases with energy companies to have their land in Bradford County, Pa., drilled for gas using the horizontal hydraulic fracturing method to extract the resource from underground shale beds. Both suggested that signing was a bad decision for them, and warned locals of things they need to think about before leasing.

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South Africa debates whether to allow fracking

South Africa's Karoo region is a pristine wilderness of red hills and wildflowers. It is beautiful, desperately poor and is now the new frontline in the global battle over a hugely controversial drilling practice called "fracking".

The semi-desert area of about 400,000 sq km in the west of the country is home to what could be one of the largest deposits of shale gas in the world, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) - possibly enough to supply the country with gas for the next 400 years.

But the country is not sure whether to allow the gas to be extracted by fracking.

Fracking supporters say it is the future of energy; detractors that it is an environmental disaster - and the resource-rich country does not have laws in place to properly regulate what is literally an "earth-shattering" type of exploration, which can pollute water sources.

Both sides are furiously lobbying the government - and two major reports have just been published to back up their arguments.

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