Committee OKs county fracking resolution - SSNL

DOWNTOWN AKRON — A Summit County Council committee recommended Council adopt a resolution asking state officials to enact “reasonable regulations” for high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

During the April 23 Public Works Committee meeting, chair Sandra Kurt (D-at large) and members Frank Comunale (D-District 4), Jerry Feeman (D-District 6) and Nick Kostandaras (D-District 1) voted in favor of the resolution, while member Tim Crawford (D-District 7) abstained. Committee members Gloria Rodgers (R-District 3) and Bill Roemer (R-at large) voted against the measure.

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Local fracking control often lacking

Limited control

Local governments' ability to stop oil and gas development is murky at best, but they can make a driller's margins smaller, said Nathan Johnson, staff attorney for the Buckeye Forest Council, an environmental advocate.

Cities can levy their own fees and taxes on drillers operating within their boundaries, he said. They can refuse to accept brine, which is different from fracking fluid and sometimes used to treat dusty or icy roads, thereby forcing the company to store it or inject at their expense.

"Cities can pass their own severance taxes if they wanted," Johnson said, referring to the levy paid for removing a natural resource, such as oil or timber. "Another thing they can do, municipalities can take fines (for violating a regulation) and increase them."

Steve Strauss, a county commissioner in Muskingum County, said local government wants to be involved in the process and wants to be heard by the multi-billion dollar energy companies operating down the street.

Muskingum County has a notification system that keeps every official from the township level up abreast of activity.

As for control, Strauss said it may not be codified, but they have influence. He points to a stop sign on at the intersection of an access road for the well and Paisley Road near The Wilds.

Strauss said the county felt it was a safety issue to have these big trucks merging onto the main road without stopping first. Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the well's owner, agreed and a stop sign was put in.

"They want to be good neighbors," Strauss said.

Water impact

Devon Energy, an Oklahoma City firm, plans to pull 3 million gallons from the Licking River over the course of a week.

The water will be mixed with sand and chemicals and blasted underground at high pressure to break open the shale and allow natural gas, liquids and oil to escape.

Devon spokesman Chip Minty said they had considered buying water from landowners with ponds or drilling a well for water, but decided on the Licking River as the best option. They are following the state's protocol on water withdrawals, he said.

For every inch of rain over a square mile area, abo

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Sand County, the Sequel

Crystalline silica causes cancer. More specifically, crystalline silica dust is listed by both the World Health Organization and the U.S. National Toxicology Program as a known human lung carcinogen. Unlike tobacco smoke, silica dust does not provoke tumors via genetic mutations. Instead, its method of injury is to trigger inflammation and suppress immune functioning. It also causes silicosis, a disabling and sometimes fatal condition in which fibrous nodules fill the spongy pulmonary chambers, prompting infections and heart failure. For both reasons, crystalline silica is regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. There are legal limits to how much silica dust a person operating a sandblaster can inhale.

Before midwestern sand counties were turned inside out—and towering, windblown dunes of powdery silica began appearing within view of people’s kitchen windows—the general public was not thought to suffer appreciable exposures. There are thus no standards for us. No research program has ever addressed the possible impact of silica dust on, say, pregnancy outcome or the lung development of children. Lack of study on public health effects means that the occupational carcinogen crystalline silica is not regulated as a hazardous air pollutant. At least not in Wisconsin and not at this writing.

A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC was published in 1949. In the same year, an oil-field service company called Halliburton fracked its first commercial well and so ushered in a new method for extracting oil and gas by using pressure, water, chemicals, and sand to blow up shale. The function of the sand is to hold the stone doors ajar so that the hydrocarbons can flow out and up.

But the shale boom didn’t really take off until 2005, the year that fracking received exemptions from most major federal environmental regulations (the now-famous “Halliburton loophole”). By 2008, Wisconsin sand had become a highly prized quarry. The Samson of silica, its grains were the ideal size, shape, and strength for propping open cracks a mile or more below the earth’s surface. And that’s how the nation’s Devonian bedrock became the new destination spot for Sand County. That’s how Aldo Leopold’s farm in central Wisconsin could end up fracking Rachel Carson’s childhood home on the Marcellus shale of western Pennsylvania.

In 2009, the last year for which data are available, 6.5 million tons of U.S. sand were mined, washed, processed, loaded onto trucks and trains, carried to wellheads, and shot into the center of the earth. Six and a half million tons is the approximate weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza. According to commodities analysts, that figure probably doubled in 2010 and likely doubled again last year.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6811

Trustee board wonders: Will law allow OU to say no to fracking?

OU legal and financial officials told members of the Board of Trustees Thursday that while the university is trying to stake out a position that it can veto any attempt to drill for oil and gas on its land, they don't know for sure whether state regulators will read a new law that way.

Ohio Substitute House Bill 133, which changed the rules on drilling for oil and gas on state-owned lands, is "very vague," Nicolette Dioguardi, OU associate director of legal affairs, told the board.

She said that based on the wording of the law, university officials believe they will have the last word on whether to allow drilling on OU-owned land, and they plan to assert that position. Whether the state will agree with that stance or not, however, remains to be seen, she suggested.

State regulators have interpreted a similar law, H.B. 278, as barring local governments from regulating oil and gas drilling operations in municipal or county limits in any way.

Stephen Golding, OU's vice president for finance and administration, however, echoed Dioguardi's assessment, saying the university will act on the assumption that it can say no to drilling if it so chooses.

"I would say that we are taking that position," Golding said, though he, like Dioguardi, said it's still unclear how the state will interpret the dictates of the new law.

"We're trying to do a delicate balancing act, if you will," he explained. "There are no rules… We are staking out a position. The question is, will that position be upheld?"

Dioguardi added that the board has a "window of opportunity" prior to June 30, to enter into leases under the terms it wants with any drilling companies. After that, the new commission process will kick in.

The state of Ohio is currently being eyed by the oil-and-gas industry for possible widespread drilling for oil and/or natural gas in deep underground shale beds, using the controversial "horizontal hydraulic fracturing" technique. It's popularly known as "fracking."

However, recent maps released by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources showing the prime Utica shale prospects in Ohio exclude Athens County from that area. Experts, though, seem to agree that nobody will know the local oil and gas resources until someone drills one or more exploratory wells. No permit applications for any such wells have been filed for Athens County.

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Rules on drilling in parks got more lenient

A year ago, state officials considered creating rules for oil and gas drilling rigs in state parks that were much more stringent than the rules they now have proposed.

The rigs would have had to have been placed at least 1,500 feet from campgrounds; 1,200 feet from lakes, streams and drinking-water wells; and 900 feet from trails, picnic areas and sites of historic value, under rules discussed in May, according to documents released yesterday.

Two weeks ago, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources released proposed rules that would keep the rigs at least 300 feet from most of those areas.

Information about the previous discussions comes from emails and documents that were shared among agency officials drafting mineral-rights leases and drilling guidelines for parks and other state lands.

Other emails contained a list of state parks, forests and wildlife areas in eastern Ohio that could have been offered to drilling companies as early as January. That never happened.

Officials also shared copies of draft leases and drilling guidelines with an Ohio-based oil and gas company — Chagrin Falls-based Reserve Energy Exploration Co. — in November.

“We look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions,” wrote Gene Wells, the agency’s real-estate administrator, in a Nov. 4, 2011, email to Joseph W. Haas of Reserve Energy. The Sierra Club’s Ohio chapter had asked to see the same leases in October. The environmental advocacy group then filed a lawsuit on April 9 demanding to see the public records.The Dispatch asked to see them this spring. “These emails confirm my earlier suspicion that ODNR has been consulting with the oil and gas industry on their rules all along,” said Jed Thorp, manager of the Sierra Club’s Ohio chapter.

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Energy company seeks water from eastern Ohio reservoir for fracking

By Bob Downing 
Beacon Journal staff writer

Published: April 17, 2012 - 10:25 PM | Updated: April 18, 2012 - 07:39 AM

The Muskingum Conservancy Watershed District is expected to vote Friday on allowing an energy company to tap into a lake in eastern Ohio for fracking water.

Oklahoma-based Gulfport Energy Corp. wants to take up to 11 million gallons of water from Clendening Reservoir in Harrison County to hydraulically fracture, or frack, a natural gas well it is developing.

The watershed district’s governing board will be asked to approve a temporary water agreement with Gulfport. The price has not been finalized, officials said.

Clendening Reservoir typically holds about 8.6 billion gallons of water.

A temporary pipeline would be built to move the water from the lake to the drilling site, district spokesman Darrin Lautenschleger said.

He said that would eliminate between 900 and 1,200 one-way trips by tanker trucks.

The district, based in New Philadelphia, signed a lease with Gulfport last year on 6,400 acres at Clendening Reservoir.

It was paid a signing bonus of $2,800 per acre plus a 16 percent royalty on any gas or oil produced.

From the signing bonus, the district is using $15.6 million to defray debts and make infrastructure improvements to recreational facilities, Lautenschleger said.

The water agreement with Gulfport marks the first contract approved by the district to provide water to a company drilling into Ohio’s Utica shale formation thousands of feet underground.

The pact would allow the district to cut off water delivery if recreational or environmental problems surface, Lautenschleger said, but officials do not anticipate any problems.

In the past, the district has provided water on a temporary basis for farmers suffering from major droughts, he said.

The watershed district has had inquiries from a dozen drilling companies about selling water from six of its reservoirs in eastern Ohio.

The district’s 18-judge panel, known as the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy Court, is expected to deal on June 2 with a selling price for water that could allow additional deals to advance.

Last month, the district signed an agreement with the U.S. Geological Survey to assess the effect of withdrawing water from three lakes: Atwood Lake in Carroll and Tuscarawas counties, Leesville in Carroll County and Clendening, Lautenschleger said.

That study would give the district a better idea what could happen if large volumes of water were sold to drillers, he said.

The district owns 54,000 acres of land and water in 13 counties, from the Akron area south to the Ohio River. Included are 14 reservoirs.

The other reservoirs where drillers have inquired about water are Leesville, Seneca­ville Lake in Noble and Guernsey counties and Tappan Lake in Harrison County.

Chesapeake Energy Corp., the No. 1 oil-gas player in eastern Ohio, is buying water from the city of Steubenville. It has also purchased water from other communities and from landowners with wells being drilled.

Some drilling companies have legally tapped water from small streams in eastern Ohio.

http://www.ohio.com/news/local-news/energy-company-seeks-water-from-eastern-ohio-reservoir-for-fracking-1.300894

EPA's Fracking Rules Are Limited And Delayed, Critics Charge

The Environmental Protection Agency issued the first-ever national air pollution regulations for fracking on Wednesday. First proposed in July 2011, the final ruleshave been welcomed by environmental groups as a much-needed initial move in reducing pollution and protecting public health from the toxic chemicals involved in the oil and natural gas drilling process. But many cautioned it was just a first step.

"It sets a floor for what the industry needs to do," said attorney Erik Schlenker-Goodrich of the Western Environmental Law Center. "The reality is we can do far better."

Over the past few years, more information has come out about fracking's potential harms to the environment and human health, particularly relating to the risk ofgroundwater contamination. In addition to the many potentially toxic components of the highly pressurized fluid injected into the ground during the natural gas drilling process, fracking can also release cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and greenhouse gases like methane into the air. The federal government has made moves to tighten regulations, and we've chronicled the history of those regulations.

The EPA's new rules don't cover most of those issues. Instead, they address a single problem with natural gas: air pollution.

"These rules do not resolve chronic water, public health and other problems associated with fracking and natural gas," Schlenker-Goodrich said.

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