Opposition to Fracking in Virginia

Many Virginians support a ban on the controversial practice of hydrofracking in the George Washington National Forest.

Hydrofracking, more commonly known as just fracking, is a process of horizontally drilling for natural gas by pumping chemicals, sand and water to separate the gas from the rock.

The National Forest Service has been weighing whether or not to allow the practice in the George Washington National Forest as it weighs a new management plan for the land.

The Forest Service had a public comment period to solicit input and received 6,700 comments from Virginians.

The Shenandoah Valley Network and the Land, Air Water Stewardship Action Group analyzed the comments and say 70% of the comments support a ban on the drilling.

The Community Alliance for Preservation in Rockingham County also supports a ban on hydrofracking pointing to use of the national forest land for drinking water and recreation.

Executive Director Kim Sandum says "It's an inappropriate location. It's the source of our drinking water. It's the area where lots of recreation opportunities happen. Hunting, fishing, hiking. And those uses are incompatible with hydrofracking."

Sandum says she's not surprised by the number of Virginian's in opposition to fracking.

"It just shows how many people enjoy the National Forest and I'm not surprised that that many - I would think maybe even more - would be interested in having the ban because of the other uses that would be prohibited," Sandum said.

Of the nearly million acres that are in the George Washington National Forest, nearly half of them are on the Marcellus shale formation, which is a very large deposit of natural gas.

http://www.whsv.com/news/headlines/Opposition_to_Fracking_in_Virginia__148675355.html

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

Fracking-Linked Quakes Spurring Regulations

With scientific evidence emerging that wastewater from oil and gas drilling is the possible cause of earthquakes, states are adding new requirements for disposal wells.

Researchers think an increase in wastewater injected into the ground by drilling operators may be the cause of a sixfold increase in the number of earthquakes that have shaken the central part of the U.S. from 2000 to 2011, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study. The demand for underground disposal wells has increased with the proliferation of shale-gas drilling, a technique that produces millions of gallons of wastewater a well.

Links between disposal wells and earthquakes in Arkansas, Ohio and other states has raised public concern, according to Scott Anderson, senior policy adviser for the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin, Texas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which sets standards for wells under the Safe Drinking Water Act, said it is working with states to develop guidelines to manage seismic risk.

“Basically, people need to be told not to locate their disposal wells in active seismic areas,” Anderson said in an interview. “But the total percentage of wells that would be impacted by those restrictions almost certainly would be small.”

U.S. Geological Survey researchers found that, for three decades prior to 2000, seismic events in the nation’s midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011, according to the study, which was presented April 18 at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America.

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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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Rally at Ohio Statehouse Disputes Proposed Shale Drilling Regulations

An anti-fracking rally on the West lawn of the Ohio Statehouse drew a diverse crowd of participants today. All were in support of exposing the inadequate proposed regulations in Gov. John Kasich’s S.B. 315, which had a hearing today in the Senate Energy and Utilities Committee.

Rally organizers released a new report,Ohio Oil and Gas Rules: A State Comparison of Selected Health and Safety Measures, which demonstrates that Ohio’s regulations are not at the forefront of state oil and gas rules.

Kari Matsko, director of the People’s Oil & Gas Collaborative – Ohio, said, “In the report, we see that Pennsylvania requires baseline water sampling from 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet from the drill site. Ohio requires such testing only in urban areas and only up to 300 feet from the drill site. SB 315 proposes to increase that only to 1,500 feet for unconventional shale drilling. In addition, Texas communities can establish local health and safety measures whereas in 2004 the Ohio legislature removed our ability to do so.”

Matsko, was appointed as a review team member for the State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) Ohio Hydraulic Fracturing State Review in January 2011.

Those at the rally also announced that Rep. Bob Hagan (D-Youngstown) will be introducing a new bill to removing the “sole and exclusive” authority of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) over oil and gas issues, resulting in the return of local control to communities as it was prior to 2004 (H.B. 278).

Speakers came from all over Ohio to speak out against the destruction that unconventional fracking has caused in their communities. Speakers included Rep. Bob Hagan, retired police officer Ed Harsburger, Bill Baker—a resident of Mansfield, Alison Auciello of Food and Water Watch and Teresa Mills of Center for Health, Environment & Justice.

“Kasich’s S.B. 315 chemical disclosure regulations are ineffective,” said Teresa Mill, Ohio organizer for Center for Health and Environmental Justice. “It would only mandate negligible chemical disclosure 60 days after completion of all well operations and there are no requirements that hazardous waste be tested before being landfilled or buried on site.”

“We want to take the wool off the public’s eyes and show how the proposed changes in Kasich’s energy plan to state shale gas drilling regulations would not protect our health and safety,” said Alison Auciello, Ohio organizer for Food & Water Watch. “Instead, we should be stopping fracking with the pieces of legislation that have been introduced, like the moratoria on fracking and fracking wastewater injection wells.”

“There are a number of pieces of legislation in the Ohio House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, like H.B. 351, that would provide real protections for public health and safety for Ohio citizens,” said Ellie Rauh, program coordinator at Buckeye Forest Council. “We need to ensure that the people have a chance to speak at the people’s house on these bills also, not just on the legislation that is being supported by the administration.”

The rally was organized by No Frack Ohio, a collaboration of more than 50 grassroots and conservation groups calling for a moratorium on horizontal hydraulic fracturing until further safeguards are put in place to protect human health and the environment. No Frack Ohio believes that public health and job security is more important than big industry’s immediate drilling demands.

The No Frack Ohio Campaign will continue to call on Ohio lawmakers to listen to Ohio citizens and scientific experts about the human and environmental damage caused by shale gas development.

http://ecowatch.org/2012/rally-at-ohio-statehouse-disputes-proposed-shale-drilling-regulations/

Waterless Fracking Method Could Sidestep NY Gas Drilling Ban

A plan to extract shale gas and oil from 135,000 acres in Tioga County, N.Y., could break through the state's hydraulic fracturing moratorium, because the wells would be fracked not with water but with liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, a mixture of mostly propane.

A relatively new technology, LPG fracking doesn't fall under New York's current hydraulic fracturing moratorium. Instead it could be permitted under the New York Department of Environmental Conservation's 1992 Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, according to Emily DeSantis, the DEC's director of public information.

DeSantis said LPG fracking would also require an additional assessment under the state'sEnvironmental Quality Review Act, or even a separate environmental impact statement "if the proposed activity may result in significant adverse environmental impacts not previously or adequately addressed."

New York placed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in 2010, after environmentalists and some residents began worrying that hydraulic fracturing might contaminate the watershed that supplies water to New York City and other parts of the East Coast.

The moratorium won't be lifted until a new Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement is complete. The DEC expects to finish the work on that document by the end of the year.

The Tioga County Landowners Association announced in March that the 2,000 families it represents will lease 135,000 acres to Houston-based eCorp International. The fracking will be done by Calgary-based GasFrac Energy Services, which pioneered the LPG process.

InsideClimate News and the Albany Times Union reported in November that while LPG fracking still faces skepticism and comes with its own risks, it has several environmental benefits. By forgoing the use of water, it eliminates an entire waste stream—the toxic "flowback" water. GasFrac also claims that LPG requires 75 percent fewer truck trips and a smaller well-pad than hydraulic fracturing.

Details of the Tioga County contract are still being worked out, but under the tentative plan the landowners will form a Limited Liability Company and will essentially be given stock in the venture, in addition to royalty payments of 12.5 percent of the value of the oil or gas that is retrieved. eCorp will provide financing and GasFrac will frack the wells, which could extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale and also oil from the less-explored Utica Shale. eCorp estimates that each well will be about three to five acres large and will drill under roughly 3,200 acres of surrounding land.

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300-foot buffer proposed for Ohio park drilling

An Ohio natural resource agency's proposed guidelines for drilling in state parks would require natural gas and oil companies to stay at least 300 feet -- the length of a football field -- from campgrounds, certain waterways and sites deemed historically or archaeologically valuable.

Documents on proposed guidelines were released by the state Department of Natural Resources this week after the Ohio chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit claiming the agency ignored repeated requests by the group to review them.

The 89-page report lists the "best management practices" on site restoration and other topics, and guidelines for emergency and pollution incidents. Other proposals include state approval before companies could store drilling waste in pits and an agreement on the locations of all drilling equipment.

The agency also released proposals for drilling leases. They show possible arrangements for companies interested in drilling directly below or drilling horizontally from land adjacent to property with oil and gas deposits.

Agency spokesman Carlo LoParo, who said the 300-foot buffer proposal would be applied above ground, said there are no specific policy decisions yet on what state land will be put up for competitive bids for drilling. But he emphasized that hundreds of other state properties besides state parks would be considered. He said a five-member commission that will be appointed later this summer will select the properties and lease the mineral rights, though the state can move forward with plans before the commission is appointed.

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