Oil & gas execs ‘pressured’ Oklahoma geologists not to reveal fracking-quakes link

Reuters / Jim Urquhart

RT | Mar 5, 2015

Newly-obtained emails reveal that Oklahoma geologists were pressured by oil industry big-shots not to push on with their assessments of possible links between earthquakes in the state and hydraulic fracturing industry, most often referred to as fracking.

More than a year since a sharp spike in earthquakes in the region, which coincided with fracking for oil and gas, the Oklahoma Geological Survey say there might be a possible link. The rise resulted in magnitude 3 earthquakes almost twice daily on average – three times as many as in disaster-prone California.

But after the body issued a joint statement with the USGS in October 2013, saying that "activities such as wastewater disposal" could be a “contributing factor to the increase in earthquakes,” oil execs started to panic, according to newly-obtained emails by EnergyWire.

This allegedly led to the OGS avoiding mentioning that the lion’s share of earthquakes in the region was man-made. The silence has lasted since 2010 and was apparently due to pressure not to disclose the findings.

OGS geologist at the University of Oklahoma, Austin Holland, was one of the scientists aware of the link, but earlier did not wish to discuss it for lack of direct scientific proof.

It now turns out he was later being influenced by oil executives with a vested interest in the continuation of fracking in the area, according to the obtained emails.

“Researchers in Oklahoma, notably Austin Holland… have repeatedly said the increase in seismic activity cannot be fully explained by man-made causes,” Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (OIPA) President Mike Terry said in a 2013 statement, pointing to Holland’s earlier scientific skepticism.

That statement coincided with Holland’s research, which found disturbing data from the southern town of Marietta, but stopped short of wholeheartedly acknowledging the fracking and earthquake link.

But when the OGS cautiously joined the USGS assessment in admitting that there was a relationship between fracking and growing seismic risks, Austin Holland was called into meetings with his boss at the university, President David Boren, and the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC). He spoke with Jack Stark of the OCC, then also vice president of exploration at Continental Resources.

The OCC is the main regulatory body for oil and gas in the state.

Reuters / Gareth Fuller

Continental Resources Chairman Harold Hamm – the University of Oklahoma’s leading financial donor – started getting really interested in the findings around that time. Hamm, who was Mitt Romney’s energy adviser, is not a believer in the relationship between seismic activity and the oil and gas industry.

The joint statement by OGS/USGS aroused fear in the oil execs, as Holland recounted in one of the emails from 2013.

He was trying to explain to Continental and the OCC that his input only benefited the USGS assessment, but that "Continental does not feel induced seismicity is an issue and they are nervous about any dialog about the subject," as he wrote to his superiors at the university.

"They are in the denial phase that this is a possibility,” he wrote of the execs.

One of the people also dissatisfied with the Oklahoma geologists partnering up with the USGS was Patrice Doubles, the OCC commissioner. At the time, she was running for Congress and got more campaign funds from Continental than almost any other senator. That included money from Hamm.

As Holland explained in the email, Douglas said that she wished to “of course, protect the safety of Oklahomans, but also balance that with industry in the state.”

Earlier this year, in the Washington Post, Holland did admit that higher-ups were trying to influence his work – specifically, Hamm. In fact, according to a piece by fellow geologist Bob Jackman, Holland told him at the time: “you don’t understand – Harold Hamm and others will not allow me to say certain things.”

Holland later tried to downplay Jackman’s quote to EnergyWire, but Jackman later said he had written down Holland’s confession word for word immediately after the conversation.

A few other geologists have spoken out about the relationship between Hunton dewatering operations and a rise in earthquakes in the vicinity of Oklahoma City. They have also been warning that a surge in smaller quakes could increase the likelihood of greater ones.

Unlike other states where fracking is also commonplace, Oklahoma did little in the way of caps or regulations or shutdowns. Instead, reports emerged that state authorities limited such powers to information-gathering missions.

According to EnergeyWire, the view on Oklahoma having fracking-related earthquakes is shared by many academic and federal seismologists.

These new revelations come on the heels of fresh data from Oklahoma that has the US Geological Survey pointing to a clear scientific link between quakes and fracking. 

Shock: Fracking Used to Inject Nuclear Waste Underground for Decades

TruthStream Media | Mar 4, 2015 | Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton

Unearthed articles from the 1960s detail how nuclear waste was buried beneath the Earth’s surface by Halliburton & Co. for decades as a means of disposing the by-products of post-World War II atomic energy production.

Fracking is already a controversial practice on its face; allowing U.S. industries to inject slurries of toxic, potentially carcinogenic compounds deep beneath the planet’s surface — as a means of “see no evil” waste disposal — already sounds ridiculous, dangerous, and stupid anyway without even going into further detail.

Alleged fracking links to the contamination of the public water supply and critical aquifers, as well as ties to earthquake upticks near drilling locations that are otherwise not prone to seismic activity have created uproar in the years since the 2005 “Cheney loophole,” which allowed the industry to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act by exempting fracking fluids, thus fast tracking shale fracking as a source of cheap natural gas.

Now, it is apparent that the fracking industry is also privvy to many secrets of the nuclear energy industry, and specifically, where the bodies are buried, err… dangerous nuclear waste is buried, rather — waste that atomic researchers have otherwise found so difficult to eliminate.

Truthstream uncovered several published newspaper accounts from the Spring of 1964 concerning a then-newly disclosed plan to dump nuclear waste produced by the atomic energy industry into hydraulic fracturing (fracking) wells using a cement slurry technique developed by Halliburton & Co. The top two fracking companies in the nation at the time were Halliburton and Dowell, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical.

And here we thought fracking was a relatively new industrial phenomenon growing in popularity over just the last couple of decades. Boy were we wrong. Revealed within these articles is Halliburton’s long-standing relationship with the secret government and deep ties between the oil and nuclear industries.

Teaming up with the U.S. Government and Union Carbide Corp., who operate nuclear materials divisions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee, Halliburton was then credited with “solving” the radioactive waste problem faced by America’s secretive nuclear industry. Dumping waste via fracking had apparently been going on since 1960, according to the reports, but was only made public here in 1964.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Each of the articles Truthstream found carry the same account under different headlines, with four of them using identical copy, and the fifth, published in the San Antonio Express, slightly rewritten based upon the same source information. The photo captions of each story also add some useful tidbits:

These ran in the:

April 19, 1964 edition of the Great Bend Tribune,
the April 22, 1964 edition of the Warren Times-Mirror,
the April 26, 1964 edition of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal,
the May 3, 1964 edition of the San Antonio Express News (original)
and the June 15, 1964 edition of the Denton Record Chronicle.

The story read, in part:

“Two techniques originated by the petroleum industry for its own uses are expected to solve a major problem in the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The problem is the disposal of dangerous, sometimes deadly, radioactive waste by-products.”

“Researchers at Halliburton Co’s. Technical Center here working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists, have combined the oil well cementing technique with the hydraulic fracturing production stimulation technique to entomb radioactive wastes in an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet underground.”

“The method used at Oak Ridge begins by mixing the waste with a cement slurry, pumping the mixture down a hole drilled into the Conasuaga shale and then fracturing the shale to create a horizontal crack. The crack fills with the mixture to form a thin, horizontal sheet several hundred feet across. The mix sets to permanently hold the radioactive waste in the formation.”

“Union Carbide Corp., which operates facilities at Oak Ridge for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and Halliburton, which provides specialized oil field services such as cementing fracturing worldwide, have collaborated on the project since 1960.”

The mix remained liquid for 48 hours before it was supposed to permanently set and remain there, entombed, forever.

The articles make clear that the Atomic Energy Commission was preparing to use fracking as a means of disposing of nuclear wastes at additional facilities, with Oak Ridge being simply one of the largest, and the first to publicly disclose these out-of-sight disposal procedures:

“Oak Ridge has a radioactive waste disposal problem typical of the nation’s nuclear sites. Each year about four million gallons of waste, including such fission products as strontium 90, cesium 137 and ruthenium 103, are generated at Oak Ridge.”

“Among the disposal methods already tried have been dumping concrete-encased barrels of waste in the ocean or burying the waste in lead-lined containers. These are considered either too dangerous or too expensive or both.”

Unfortunately, the ocean has been used as a giant trashcan not only by the nuclear industry, but municipal garbage and landfill companies and many other entities as well, without any real concern about its significant effects on the food supply and larger ecosystem of the planet.

“If this process is successful for disposal of Oak Ridge National Laboratory intermediate-level wastes, it has potential application at other atomic energy sites where suitable geological conditions exist,” the Atomic Energy Commission says.”

The slightly different version in the San Antonio Express News added these details:

“A couple of techniques used by oilmen when they have hopes of production may soon be used by the Atomic Energy Commission for – of all things – radioactive garbage disposal.”

“Final tests are now under way at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, in trying a combination of oil well cementing plus hydraulic fracturing to entomb radioactive wastes in an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet underground.”

Meanwhile, the Great Bend Tribune added information about the Halliburton executives involved in the plan in their caption for a photo which shows businessmen looking at a diagram explaining how nuclear waste like strontium 90 is mixed with cement and injected into shale formations:

“Halliburton engineer Mack Stogner, left, reviews the project with Harry P. Conroy, senior vice president and general manager of the oil field service firm, and W.D. Owsley, senior vice president.”

The process includes remote controlled operation of the hydraulic fracturing drill in order to shield workers from the “medium level” radioactive substances being dumped into the earth’s crust, as the Warren Times Mirror in Pennsylvania notes in the caption:

“Disposing of Waste – Working behind shielding and wearing film badges, Halliburton Company personnel use demounted oil field service units to dispose of radioactive waste generated at the Oak Ridge, Tenn. nuclear site.”

How often this procedure has been used at other facilities since then is not entirely clear, though we know from reports discussed below that the practice continued and there is no indication that it ever stopped.

Five years later, the October 22, 1969 edition of the San Bernardino County Sun carried a report titled, “3 Ways to Manage Radioactive Waste.”

It discussed the ongoing and growing problems with nuclear waste, naming three principle strategies for managing the toxic stuff, summed up as “(1) delay and decay, (2) concentrate and confine and (3) dilute and disperse,” discussing how materials with lower half lives can supposedly be safely sequestered and later dumped, while other materials can be simply diluted and poured into existing groundwater supplies and systems.

The UPI story originating out of Oak Ridge states, in part,

“Since the start of the atomic era in the 1940s, nuclear reactors around the nation have produced 75 million gallons of hazardous high level radioactive waste materials.”

“And scientists here and elsewhere around the nation still are wrestling with the problems of what to do with this material, which promises to become even more plentiful as more and more commercial nuclear reactors go into power production.”

Oak Ridge proclaims that it found a solution to dealing with high level nuclear wastes, which has thus far been to keep it,

“…buried a few feet underground in storage tanks – tanks which must be periodically replaced because of the natural deterioration of the steel and other materials of which they are fabricated.”

“It is in this area of confining the high level wastes, whose radioactive half life ranges up to 30 to 50 years, that the Atomic Energy Commission is pushing dramatic new concepts.”

“One disposal system, involving materials in the medium range of radioactivity, is the hydraulic fracturing procedures. This system is now being used at Oak Ridge and involves mixing the liquid radioactive waste with concrete to form a grout which is pumped into shale formations 500 to 800 feet underground.”

Note, this article cites a shallower depth, at levels as shallow as 500 feet, after the 1964 articles claimed a further removed depth of 1,000 feet to 5,000. The even “higher level wastes” were disposed of in abandoned salt mines, according to Oak Ridge.

Nuclear Waste ‘Safely Flushed Away’ into the Water Supply

The 1969 article states that “low level waste” is “material which can safely be flushed away into rivers and lakes or released into the atmosphere because the level of radioactivity is so low that is presents no hazard when diluted and flushed into man’s natural environment. The more difficult problem is involved in the high level, liquid and solid wastes which are produced in the reprocessing of used fuel elements from nuclear reactor cores.”

The idea that the waste dumped into water supplies was so “low level” as to be completely harmless is likely dubious and hopeful at best. Fluoride, a by-product of the nuclear power industry, was one of those constituents, and was transformed from being known as a rat poison to being known as a dental benefit by the original spin doctor and propagandist, Edward Bernays.

In his book “The Fluoride Deception,” author Christopher Bryson revealed how the nuclear industry also used fluoridation of the public water supply as a means of secretly dumping industrial waste after fluoride was a major by-product in the uranium enrichment process for building the atomic bomb. Bryson told Democracy Now:

The Manhattan Project needed fluoride to enrich uranium. That’s how they did it. The biggest industrial building in the world, for a time, was the fluoride gaseous diffusion plant in Tennessee the Manhattan Project and Dr. Hodge as the senior toxicologist for the Manhattan Project, were scared stiff less that workers would realize that the fluoride they were going to be breathing inside these plants was going to injury them and that the Manhattan Project, the key — the key of U.S. Strategic power in the Cold War Era, would be jeopardized because the Manhattan Project and the industrial contractors making the atomic bomb would be facing all these lawsuits from workers, all these lawsuits from farmers living around these industrial plants and so Harold Hodge assures us that fluoride is safe and good for children.

More recently, an Associated Press investigation found in 2011 that 48 of 65 nuclear sites in the United States were leaking tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, into groundwater supplies via corroded pipes and tunnels. AP found at least 37 locations were in direct violation of federal drinking water standards for tritium, in some cases hundreds of times over.

Fracking Nuclear Waste ‘Safe for Millions of Years’… Unless It Leaks

Some 30 trillion gallons of toxic waste has been kept out of sight, out of mind by U.S. industries that have injected it hundreds and thousands of feet underground into wells since the 1960s.

Scientists who work for these corporations have used computer modeling to assure the Environmental Protection Agency that this waste poses no threat to our aquifers and that layers of rock deep within the Earth would safely store this stuff like Tupperware for millenia.

Already, several incidents have proven that scientific computer models are no match for reality.

It is clear from a December 21, 1973 article that disposal of nuclear waste via fracking continued, along with promises that it would be safe for millions of years to come.

The Dixon Evening Telegraph wrote in “Geologists look at energy crunch”:

“The U.S. Government is disposing of approximately 250,000 gallons of intermediate-level wastes each year using a technique called hydraulic fracturing. Liquids are pumped into impervious shales 1,000 to 5,000 feet below the surface. High pressure is applied causing the rocks to fracture and the liquid moves out laterally. Because the rock and radioactive wastes it contains will not be exposed to the biosphere for millions of years, this method should be safe unless leakage into an overlying aquifer occurs.”

That is, as the article points out, unless there are leaks.

As we found in research, leakage is exactly what has happened time and again throughout the years, including at disposal sites for Oak Ridge National Laboratories, according to reports in the following cases.

Via ProPublica:

In April, 1967 pesticide waste injected by a chemical plant at Denver’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal destabilized a seismic fault, causing a magnitude 5.0 earthquake — strong enough to shatter windows and close schools — and jolting scientists with newfound risks of injection, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A year later, a corroded hazardous waste well for pulping liquor at the Hammermill Paper Co., in Erie, Pa., ruptured. Five miles away, according to an EPA report, “a noxious black liquid seeped from an abandoned gas well” in Presque Isle State Park.

In 1975 in Beaumont, Texas, dioxin and a highly acidic herbicide injected underground by the Velsicol Chemical Corp. burned a hole through its well casing, sending as much as five million gallons of the waste into a nearby drinking water aquifer.

And these are hardly the only examples… in fact, it is just scratching the surface of an issue that is almost as incomprehensible as it is unfathomable.

Then in August 1984 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., radioactive waste was turned up by water monitoring near a deep injection well at a government nuclear facility.

Bingo…

There it is. The infallible, permanent, and “impermeable” deep injection wells that Halliburton and the Atomic Energy Commission considered as a solution to nuclear waste for eons to come were found turning up radioactive nuclear waste at the very Oak Ridge site where these 1960s disposal projects were taking place.

Subterranean Waste Disposal a ‘Cornerstone of the Nation’s Economy’

Those cemented wells, filled with injected disposal substances may be safely secured for a few years or even decades, but that is no guarantee for the years down the road and its certainly not the millenia as promised by Halliburton and others in the industry. In fact, many of the wells have been forgotten, abandoned, and are lost to the record books.
As ProPublica reports:

There are upwards of 2 million abandoned and plugged oil and gas wells in the U.S., more than 100,000 of which may not appear in regulators’ records. Sometimes they are just broken off tubes of steel, buried or sticking out of the ground. Many are supposed to be sealed shut with cement, but studies show that cement breaks down over time, allowing seepage up the well structure.

And many of these are injection wells, where all kinds of unwanted, toxic substances are dumped in order to be forgotten… though not necessarily gone.

Not only are these practices taking place, they are widespread… and widely defended, even with the known failures and safety issues.

Many scientists and regulators say the alternatives to the injection process — burning waste, treating wastewater, recycling, or disposing of waste on the surface — are far more expensive or bring additional environmental risks.

Subterranean waste disposal, they point out, is a cornerstone of the nation’s economy, relied on by the pharmaceutical, agricultural and chemical industries. It’s also critical to a future less dependent on foreign oil: Hydraulic fracturing, “clean coal” technologies, nuclear fuel production and carbon storage (the keystone of the strategy to address climate change) all count on pushing waste into rock formations below the earth’s surface. (source)

Sure, maybe it’s better than dumping it directly into the waterways, but still. This isn’t just playing with fire, this is playing with the lives of everyone in the nation for generations to come.

Please read ProPublica’s full series of reports on this, starting here. Things have to change.

These people should not have started messing with something they did not know how to fully and safely manage.

How long can this madness continue until it winds up tainting every drinking glass in America?

Engineer Mario Salazar, who worked as a technical expert for 25 years with the EPA’s underground injection program in Washington, told ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten something that should give us all pause about how radioactive nuclear waste and industrial pollutants in general are being handled, and where they may ultimately end up:

“In 10 to 100 years we are going to find out that most of our groundwater is polluted. A lot of people are going to get sick, and a lot of people may die.”

Oklahoma’s earthquake problem is getting worse

The Extinction Protocol | Feb 6, 2015

February 2015 – OKLAHOMA - A lawsuit claims that Oklahoma’s great increase in earthquake activity has been caused by pumping waste from drilling operations back underground. The suit involves the largest measured quake in the history of the state, a 5.6 tremor that happened in Prague, east of Oklahoma City in November 2011. As the volume of drilling waste pumped underground has grown, the number of earthquakes with magnitude 3 or higher has increased. In particular, as the drilling has intensified along the northern border, the quakes have followed. The Prague 5.6 magnitude quake in 2011 had one 4.8 magnitude foreshock and one 4.8 magnitude aftershock.

The Prague 5.6 magnitude quake had one 4.8 magnitude foreshock and one 4.8 magnitude aftershock. Altogether there were 63 quakes of magnitude 3 or higher, concentrated mostly in the center of the state, where the 860 million barrels of waste pumping was centered. Drilling activity increased in northern Oklahoma but the 34 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater remained concentrated in the center of the state. Waste pumping increased to more than 1.2 billion barrels, with a big increase in the north. Earthquakes surged with 106 magnitude 3 or greater, including a string of quakes in the north of the state, where waste pumping also increased as the statewide volume rose to more than 1.5 billion barrels. The rate of quakes multiplied with 567 jolts at least magnitude 3 with the heaviest concentration in the northern end of the state.  Waste-pumping data for 2014 is not yet available. –Washington Post

 

German govt under pressure to legalize fracking, critics call on people to protest

Reuters/Axel Schmidt

RT | Feb 15, 2015

Germany has proposed a draft law to allow commercial shale gas fracking, overturning a moratorium that has been in place for the last two years.

The proposal has drawn fire from environmentalists who have urged people to protest before the exploration begins.

The government has been under pressure from the energy industry lobby to allow fracking (drilling for gas using water, sand and chemicals under high pressure through drill holes to prop open shale rock) citing rising energy costs in Germany and cheaper gas in the US, due to fracking's popularity in North America.

Commercial fracking for shale gas and coal bed methane would be banned at levels below 3,000 meters, but allowed for exploration at shallower levels, subject to the assessment of the expert panel, according to the Guardian. The draft law would reportedly affect only hydraulic fracturing for shale oil and tight gas in water protection and spring healing zones.
 
“It is important to have a legal framework for hydraulic fracturing as until now there has been no legislation on the subject,” the president of Germany’s federal environment agency (UBA), Maria Krautzberger, told the Guardian.
 
“We have had a voluntary agreement with the big companies that there would be no fracking but if a company like Exxon wanted, they might do it anyway as there is no way to forbid it,” she said, adding that this is “a progressive step forward.”

Anti-fracking groups and environmentalists claim that the panel is not going to be independent, however, with a number of the government experts belonging to institutions that signed the Hanover Declaration promoting exploration of shale gas.
 
"You don’t need a panel to tell you that shale gas is dangerous. We can see the problems with water pollution, earthquakes and methane emissions. We need people to protest about it before the exploration begins,” José Bové, the French Green MEP, said.

Germany is estimated to have up to 2.3 trillion cubic meters of shale gas reserves. Under the current fracking ban, there has been a decline in domestic production. If fracking is allowed, domestic natural gas production could go up, with fuel and electricity prices going down in Germany, which has some of the highest electricity prices in the EU.

A vote on the proposed draft in the Bundestag will take place in May. If passed into law, fracking could resume in Germany in the near future.

Reversing Course, UK Opens National Parks to Fracking

A view of the South Downs National Park
from Devil's Dyke in southern England.
(Photo: Escowles/Wikimedia/cc)

Common Dreams | Feb 12, 2015 | Sarah Lazare

Environmental groups say lawmakers' backpedaling could pave way for fracking near drinking water sources

Fracking will now be permitted in national parks, "areas of outstanding natural beauty," and potentially near drinking water sources, members of the UK Parliament said Wednesday,  marking a reversal of course from the commitment it made just three weeks ago to pass a prohibition, and infuriating opponents of toxic drilling.

On January 26, the House of Commons agreed to an amendment banning toxic drilling in the aforementioned special areas. The prohibition—if implemented—would have halted drilling in 40 percent of England's shale areas, according to a study by the Guardian.  But the new change allows for drilling in these areas as long as the drilling rigs themselves sit just outside of the areas. 

The ban had already been criticized as falling short of an all-out halt to fracking from grassroots organizations, as well as parliament's own Environmental Audit Committee, which released a report in late January that warned the toxic drilling is not compatible with the country's "efforts to keep global temperature rise below two degrees."

But since committing to the prohibition, the government has backpedaled on this and other protections, prompting the accusation by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas that ministers are "doing the dirty work of fracking companies for them."

As the Campaign to Protect Rural England notes, "It was hoped that the Government, at the insistence of MPs from across the House, would reinstate strong protections."

However, statements made by energy and climate change minister Amber Rudd on Wednesday show that the Conservative government is not taking such a stand.

"In the case of areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks, given their size and dispersion, it might not be practical to guarantee that fracking will not take place under them in all cases without unduly constraining the industry," Rudd told Parliament.

Moreover, Rudd indicated that the definition of "protected areas" will be reexamined down the line, raising the possibility that water sources will not be shielded from fracking.

According to Richard Casson of Greenpeace UK, "What this means is that national parks and water sources won’t be fully protected from fracking. So while Scotland and Wales have raised clear concerns about the health and environmental impact of fracking, in England it’s full steam ahead with the dash to drill for shale gas and oil."

However, Casson says there is still hope. "We know that David Cameron wants to go all out for shale gas, but the Labour Party is far from decided," he writes, urging opponents of fracking to escalate pressure on lawmakers.

Friends of the Earth agrees. "All eyes will now be on the Labour Party," the organization declared in a statement released Thursday. "It committed to oppose fracking altogether if the Government didn’t meet its conditions—including protecting all national parks and ground water source protection zones from fracking. 'All or nothing' were the words which Labour shadow minister Tom Greatrex used."

California wants to close fracking wells to protect drinking water during historic drought

RT | Feb 11, 2015

The US Environmental Protection Agency has waded into the fight between oil and water in drought-stricken California. A mandated review of oil and gas injection wells used in hydraulic fracturing ‒ better known as fracking ‒ discovered that over 2,500 wells are injecting fluid into water aquifers. Now state regulators are set to take action. RT’s Lindsay France takes a closer look at how the Golden State proposes protecting drinking water from fracking chemicals.

Methane deceptions

Ice Age Now | Jan 31, 2015 | Paul Driessen

Deception, agenda and folly drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon rules. Are farmers next?

---

No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change, President Obama insisted in his 2015 State of the Union address. So now he wants his Environmental Protection Agency to compel drilling companies to slash methane emissions, which he says contribute to “dangerous manmade climate change.”

His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.

However, companies already control their methane emissions, and the supposed warming effect of this gas is wildly inflated, by as much as 100 times. Moreover, there is no evidence that we face dangerous manmade warming or climate change, now or in the near future. What we are really dealing with is a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by an alarmist scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance – and EPA’s determination to use methane’s alleged impacts on Earth’s climate to control a highly successful fracking industry that has thus far been largely free of federal interference, because it operates mostly on state and private lands that are governed effectively by state and local regulators.

---

Methane deceptions

Deception, agenda and folly drive latest Obama EPA anti-hydrocarbon rules. Are farmers next?

Paul Driessen

---

First they came for the coal mining and power plant industry, and most people did not speak out because they didn’t rely on coal, accepted Environmental Protection Agency justifications at face value, or thought EPA’s war on coal would benefit them.

In fact, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon gave the Sierra Club $26 million, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the Club $50 million, to help it wage a Beyond Coal campaign. The Sierra Club later claimed its efforts forced 142 U.S. coal-fired power plants to close, raising electricity rates, threatening grid reliability, and costing thousands of jobs in dozens of states.

Mr. McClendon apparently figured eliminating coal from America’s energy mix would improve his natural gas business. The mayor likes renewable energy and detests fossil fuels, which he blames for climate change that he tried to finger for the damages ‘Superstorm’ Sandy inflicted on his city.

Now the Obama EPA is coming after the natural gas industry. Hopefully many will speak out this time, before more costly rules kill more jobs and damage the health and welfare of more middle class Americans. The war on coal, after all, is really a war on fossil fuels and affordable energy, and an integral component of President Obama’s determination to “fundamentally transform” the United States.

Proposed EPA regulations would compel drilling and fracking companies to reduce methane (natural gas or CH₄) emissions by 40-45% by 2025, compared to 2012. Companies would have to install technologies that monitor operations and prevent inadvertent leaks. The rules would apply only to new or modified sites, not existing operations. However, Big Green activist groups are already campaigning to have EPA expand the rule to cover existing gas wells, fracking operations, gas processing facilities and pipelines.

But companies already control their emissions, to avoid polluting the air, and because natural gas is a valuable resource that they would much rather sell than waste. That’s why EPA data show methane emissions falling 17% even as gas production increased by 37% between 1990 and 2014, and why natural gas operations employing hydraulic fracturing reduced their methane emissions by 73% from 2011 to 2013. The rules are costly and unnecessary, and would bring few benefits.

The Obama Administration thus justifies them by claiming they will help prevent “dangerous manmade climate change.” Methane, EPA says, has a warming effect 50 times greater than carbon dioxide. This assertion is wildly inflated, by as much as a factor of 100, Dr. Fred Singer says. Atmospheric water vapor already absorbs nearly all the infrared radiation (heat) that methane could, and the same radiation cannot be absorbed twice. The physics of Earth’s surface infrared emission spectrum are also important.

More importantly, to borrow a favorite Obama phrase, let me make one thing perfectly clear. There is no dangerous manmade climate change, now or on the horizon. There is no evidence that methane or carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the complex, powerful, interconnected natural forces that have driven warming, cooling, climate and weather fluctuations throughout Earth and human history. There is no evidence that recent extreme weather events are more frequent or severe than over the previous 100 years.

Indeed, planetary temperatures have not budged for more than 18 years, and we are amid the longest stretch since at least 1900 (more than nine years) without a Category 3-5 hurricane hitting the United States. If CO₂ and CH₄ are to be blamed for every temperature change or extreme weather event, then shouldn’t they also be credited for this lack of warming and deadly storms? But climate hype continues.

We are repeatedly told, “Climate change is real, and humans are partly to blame.” The statement is utterly meaningless. Earth’s climate fluctuates frequently, and human activities undoubtedly have some influences, at least on local (especially urban) temperatures. The question is, How much of an effect?  Are the temperature and other effects harmful or beneficial, especially when carbon dioxide’s enormous role in improved plant growth is factored in? Would slashing U.S. CO₂ and CH₄ emissions mean one iota of difference, when China, India and other countries are doing nothing to reduce their emissions?

Nevertheless, the latest NASA press release asserts that 2014 was “the hottest since the modern instrumental record began,” and again blames mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. This deliberately deceptive, fear-inducing claim was quickly retracted, but not before it got extensive front-page coverage.

Let me make another fact perfectly clear. The alleged global temperature increase was 0.02 degrees C (0.04 degrees F). It is not even measurable by our most sensitive instruments. It is one-fifth the margin of error in these measurements. It ignores satellite data and is based on ground-level instruments that are contaminated by urban heat and cover less than 15% of Earth’s surface. Even NASA admitted it was only 38% confident of being correct – and 62% certain that it was wrong. Analyses by Dr. Tim Ball, Marc Morano, Anthony Watts and other experts provide more details eviscerating this bogus claim.

In the end, though, all these real-world facts are irrelevant. We are dealing with a catechism of climate cataclysm: near-religious zealotry by a scientific-industrial-government-activist alliance that has built a financial, political and regulatory empire. They are not about to renounce any claims of climate catastrophe, no matter how much actual evidence debunks their far-fetched computer model scenarios.

Their EPA-IPCC “science” is actively supported by most of the “mainstream media” and by the World Bank, universities, renewable energy companies and even some churches. They will never willingly surrender the political influence and billions of dollars that CAGW claims bring them. They won’t even admit that wind and solar facilities butcher birds and bats by the millions, scar landscapes, impair human health, cannot exist without coal and natural gas, and are probably our least sustainable energy option. They want gas prices to rise again, so that heavily subsidized renewable energy is competitive once more.

Meanwhile, polls reveal that regular, hard-working, middle-income Americans care most about terrorism, the economy, jobs, healthcare costs, education and job opportunities after graduation; climate change is always dead last on any list. Regular Europeans want to end the “energy poverty” that has killed countless jobs, and each winter kills thousands of elderly people who can no longer afford to heat their homes properly. The world’s poorest citizens want affordable electricity, higher living standards, and an end to the lung infections, severe diarrhea, malaria and other diseases of poverty that kill millions of children and parents year after year – largely because alarmists oppose nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants.

But federal regulators, climate chaos “ethicists” and “progressives” who loudly profess they care deeply about the poor and middle classes – all ignore these realities. They focus on methane, because they view it as a clever way to inject federal oversight and control into an energy sector that had been largely free of such interference, because the fracking revolution has thus far taken place mostly on state and private lands governed effectively by state and local regulators. (Federal lands are mostly off limits.)

The proposed methane rules would generate more delays, paperwork, costs and job losses, to comply with more federal regulations that will bring no detectable benefits – and much harm, at a time when plunging oil and gas prices are forcing drillers to reduce operations and lay people off.

President Obama devoted 15 lines of his 2015 State of the Union speech to climate fables and propaganda. His goal is steadily greater control over our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties, with little or no transparency or accountability for regulators, pseudo-scientists or activists.

It won’t be long before EPA and Big Green come for farmers and ranchers – to curtail “climate-wrecking” methane emissions from cattle, pig and sheep flatulence and dung, and exert greater control over agricultural water, dust and carbon dioxide. By then, there may be no one left to speak out.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

North Dakota pipeline leaks crude oil, 3mn gallons of fracking byproduct

Clean-up efforts continue about 15 miles outside Williston,
North Dakota January 22, 2015 (Reuters / Andrew Cullen)

RT | Jan 23, 2015

Nearly 3 million gallons of saltwater and an as yet unknown amount of crude oil have leaked from a northwest North Dakota pipeline into a creek that feeds into the Missouri River. Officials have called the leak the largest of its kind in state history.

The leak in the 4-inch saltwater collection line, owned by Summit Midstream Partners LP and operated by subsidiary Meadowlark Midstream Co., was discovered earlier this month and was reported to the state on January 7, according to Reuters.

The pipeline, about 15 miles north of Williston, will be out of commission for an undetermined amount of time, Summit said.

Although Williston residents receive drinking water that comes from the Missouri River, the leak does not threaten supplies, according to the North Dakota Department of Health. However, the city has the ability to shut off collection valves to avoid harmful water, Reuters reported.

Yet some of the brine made it to the Missouri River, the Williston Herald reported, and the state found "high readings" of contamination at the confluence of the Little Muddy and Missouri Rivers southeast of Williston, according to Karl Rockeman, the director of water quality at the Department of Health.

Williston sits in the middle of North Dakota’s oil boom, and the saltwater is said to be a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

To unleash oil or natural gas, fracking requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. The contents of fracking fluid include chemicals that the energy industry and many government officials will not name, yet they insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradicting findings by scientists and environmentalists. Once used, toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields or used over again.

Fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, an uptick in earthquakes in other states, exacerbation of drought conditions and a host of health concerns for humans and the local environment.

Summit is working with the state to find the cause of the spill before it repairs the saltwater line, spokesman Jonathan Morgan said.

Monitored by the state's Department of Health, Summit has sent environmental contractors to address the spill, though cleanup will be more difficult given the ice covering much of the area.

Reuters reported that about 2 million gallons of water has been taken from the affected streams, yet it is unclear if that amount was mostly saltwater or the creeks’ normal water.

The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources is inspecting Summit’s pipeline network, according to officials, which mostly transports natural gas.

Summit recently announced it had agreed with an ExxonMobil subsidiary, XTO Energy, to develop a 'natural gas gathering system' in southeastern Ohio’s Utica Shale. XTO was fined in 2013 for spilling 50,000 gallons of fracking wastewater into Pennsylvania waterways.

Summit also operates in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, where the current leak is located, and the DJ Niobrara Shale in Colorado.

The Bakken region has seen other chemical accidents, including train derailments, amid the area’s energy boom. In McKenzie County, a blown-out well leaked a massive amount of fracking wastewater in February 2014. Other states, including California and Colorado, have struggled to adequately address safe wastewater storage.

Disposal of fracking wastewater is underregulated, according to Hannah Wiseman, a law professor at Florida State University.

“A typical well can spit about 1,000 gallons a day,” Wiseman told Marketplace. “Some of the water is recycled back into fracking, stored in pits or used to de-ice roads. It’s also injected deep underground, which has been known to cause earthquakes.”

In October, a report was released that detailed how a number of US oil companies are taking advantage of the so-called “Halliburton Loophole” to circumvent federal legislation regulating diesel-based fluids in fracking, to dump even more toxic chemicals into the environment.

Meanwhile, the cleanup continues in Montana, where a breached oil pipeline spilled as many as 50,000 gallons of crude oil in and around the Yellowstone River last week, threatening drinking water in the Glendive area.

Kansas Officials Admit "Strong Correlation" Between Quakes & Fracking

Zero Hedge | Jan 21, 2015 | Tyler Durden

“If the government and the Kansas Corporation Commission care about the people of Kansas and the damages, they will order a moratorium,” exclaims Joe Spease, chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club's fracking committee following a report from Kansas officials, who have been reluctant to link the mysterious earthquakes in south central Kansas to fracking, admitted last week that "we can say there is a strong correlation between the disposal of saltwater and the earthquakes."


As LJWorld reports, it's the first time state officials have so clearly stated the likely cause of the earthquakes, which are afflicting a region where fracking is widely used, as Rick Miller, a geophysicist and senior scientist for the Kansas Geological Survey, said he believes the injection of fracking chemicals into the earth has been a catalyst for the quakes.

During hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for short, operators use a mixture of saltwater and chemicals to break tight underground rock formations to release oil and gas. To get rid of the water after the fracking process, operators inject the water deep into disposal wells.

Naming the cause of the earthquakes is, in part, a matter of semantics. Questions have long been raised about whether fracking activity is causing the earthquakes, and officials in other states have concluded that it has. But Kansas officials consider the waste water disposal a separate process, and so have not considered the fracking itself to be the key factor in the quakes.

At issue now is what, if any, action to take. The state’s Sierra Club chapter wants Kansas to follow in the steps of New York, New Hampshire, Maryland and numerous local governments nationwide and call a moratorium on fracking. Others, including Lawrence Rep. Tom Sloan, ask where the nation will get energy if the option is off limits.

...

“He is not being sincere,” said Joe Spease, chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club's fracking committee and owner of a renewable energy company in Overland Park.

“It is so ridiculous, this issue of semantics,” Spease said. “There are millions of dollars in property damages happening, and we have our scientists playing word games.”

The Kansas Sierra Club supports a bill, not yet introduced, to impose a moratorium on fracking to give the oil and gas industry time to develop a solution to the saltwater disposal issue, Spease said.

“If the government and the Kansas Corporation Commission care about the people of Kansas and the damages, they will order a moratorium,” Spease said. “If they only care about the profits of the oil and gas (industry), it will be business as usual. I hope that is not the case.”

As RT reports, this is not the first linkage...

According to a team of scientists working under Duke University geochemistry professor Avner Vengosh, wastewater associated with fracking sites contains large amounts of ammonium and iodide, which may in turn encourage the formation of certain carcinogenic byproducts.

“We were not aware that they existed in oil and gas waste products,” Vengosh told ThinkProgress. “Until now, no one was aware — no one was monitoring for those contaminants.”

“The relatively high frequency of spills associated with the intensity of shale gas development and reports of an overall increase of the salinity in watersheds associated with hydraulic fracturing activities, combined with data presented in this study, suggest that the release of [oil and gas wastewater] to the environment is one of the major risks associated with the development of hydraulic fracturing,” the study reads. “Our findings indicate that discharge and accidental spills of [oil and gas wastewater] to waterways pose risks to both human health and the environment.”

As RT reported previously, a separate study published earlier this month determined that fracking in an Ohio community caused 77 earthquakes during a span of just a few days last March.

Ironically, two days after the paper published its report, four small quakes occurred in the southern part of the state and through neighboring Oklahoma.

Of course - only one thing matters...

State Rep. Tom Sloan, a Lawrence Republican who has served on several Federal Energy Regulatory Commission committees and task forces, said a moratorium would hurt the economy.

“How do you draw the line?” he asked.

“If you don’t allow fracking, you will shut down the entire industry,” he said.

*  *  *

Newly found chemicals in fracking wastewater lead to cancer

RT | Jan 19, 2015

University researchers have discovered two new pollutants in fracking wastewater that can have potentially devastating effects on waterways and those who depend on them. Professor Avner Vengosh identified both ammonium and iodide in samples taken by his team, which says that the two chemicals have never before been linked to the natural gas extraction process. Although not deadly by themselves, according to scientists, when combined with other substances used by the natural gas drilling industry, they become carcinogenic. Dr. Ken Carlson of Colorado State University explains the importance and of the findings to RT’s Ben Swann.

What’s to Blame for Our Dying Planet?

Activist Post | Jan 18, 2015 | Catherine J. Frompovich

Anthony Freda Art

What a question even to ask! But – someone, something—perhaps conspiracies—as many are encouraged by the global media to believe – truly have brought the planet and humankind out of mediaeval misery, but equally into profoundly dangerous circumstances. However, not many who, apparently, are responsible for Planet Earth, aka Mother Earth—Gaia, being trashed before our very eyes, either are fessing up or getting their respective or collective recognition, and all while continuing to profit from poisoning our dying planet.

Every day, commonplace humans who live, work, and try to make ends meet are being blamed for ruining Planet Earth. Why?

We, the ‘seeming-low-life’ in the elite’s minds, are saddled with being responsible for all the ills that plague the planet, if you listen to the media. Yet, that deflection is nowhere near fact, in this writer’s opinion. My reasoning: Who really is it that, manufacturers, finances, operates, and mainstreams the money-making technologies that have been touted and allowed to run without checks and balances on how they negatively impact Planet Earth, the environment, and all living matter?

Who controls business and industry?

Aren’t moguls such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller responsible for setting the corporate paradigm while creating industrial and economic dynasties that, in essence, have overtaken science, the environment, and created vested interest lobbying practices that make certain 99% of non-elites comply with their fascist-like quest for wealth through influencing government?

Read more..

Fracking's future is in doubt as oil price plummets, bonds crash

Burning money? North Dakota flaring of gas
out of the Bakken Formation. Photo:
Joshua Doubek via Wikimedia
Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Ecologist | Jan 7, 2015 | Kieran Cooke

There's no doubt that US-based fracking - the process through which oil and gas deposits are blasted from shale deposits deep underground - has caused a revolution in worldwide energy supplies.

Yet now the alarm bells are ringing about the financial health of the fracking industry, with talk of a mighty monetary bubble bursting - leading to turmoil on the international markets similar to that in 2008.

In many ways, it's a straightforward case of supply and demand. Due to the US fracking boom, world oil supply has increased.

But with global economic growth now slowing - the drop in growth in China is particularly significant - there's a lack of demand and a glut in supplies, leading to a fall in price of nearly 50% over the last six months.

US oil is flooding the market

Fracking has become a victim of its own success. The industry in the US has grown very fast. In 2008, US oil production was running at five million barrels a day.

Thanks to fracking, that figure has nearly doubled, with talk of US energy self-sufficiency and the country becoming the world's biggest oil producer - 'the new Saudi Arabia' - in the near future.

The giant Bakken oil and gas field in North Dakota - a landscape punctured by thousands of fracking sites, with gas flares visible from space - was producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day in 2007. Production is now running at more than one million barrels a day.

Fuelled by talk of the financial rewards to be gained from fracking, investors have piled into the business. The US fracking industry now accounts for about 20% of the world's total crude oil investment.

But analysts say this whole investment edifice could come crashing down.

Extreme oil is expensive oil

Fracking is an expensive business. Depending on site structure, companies need prices of between $60 and $100 per barrel of oil to break even. As prices drop to around $55 per barrel, investments in the sector look ever more vulnerable.

Analysts say that while bigger fracking companies might be able to sustain losses in the short term, the outlook appears bleak for the thousands of smaller, less well-financed companies who rushed into the industry, tempted by big returns.

The fracking industry's troubles have been added to by the actions of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which, despite the oversupply on the world market, has refused to lower production.

The theory is that OPEC, led by powerful oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, is playing the long game - seeking to drive the fracking industry from boom to bust, stabilise prices well above their present level, and regain its place as the world's pre-eminent source of oil.

There are now fears that many fracking operations may default on an estimated $200 billion of borrowings, raised mainly through bonds issued on Wall Street and in the City of London.

In turn, this could lead to a collapse in global financial markets similar to the 2008 crash.

Is fracking a busted flush?

There are also questions about just how big existing shale oil and gas reserves are, and how long they will last. A recent report by the Post Carbon Institute, a not-for-profit think tank based in the US, says reserves are likely to peak and fall off rapidly, far sooner than the industry's backers predict.

The cost of drilling is also going up as deposits become more inaccessible.

Besides ongoing questions about the impact of fracking on the environment - in terms of carbon emissions and pollution of water sources - another challenge facing the industry is the growth and rapidly falling costs of renewable energy.

Fracking operations could also be curtailed by more stringent regulations designed to counter fossil fuel emissions and combat climate change.

Its backers have hyped fracking as the future of energy - not just in the US, but around the world. Now the outlook for the industry is far from certain.

---

Kieran Cooke writes for Climate News Network, where this article was first published.

Fracking Confirmed as Cause of 3.0 Earthquake

ALLGOV | Jan 8, 2015 | Noel Brinkerhoff

Seismograph reading
of the 3.0 quake
(photo: U.S.
Geological Survey)

Scientists say hydraulic fracturing caused a series of earthquakes, including one with a magnitude of 3.0, last March in Ohio near the border with Pennsylvania.

A study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America says fracking near Poland Township triggered a previously undiscovered fault. The result was more than 70 earthquakes ranging in magnitude of 2.1 to 3.0, the latter of which was described as “rare” by the experts.

“These earthquakes near Poland Township occurred in the Precambrian basement, a very
old layer of rock where there are likely to be many pre-existing faults,” Robert Skoumal, co-author of the study, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “This activity did not create a new fault, rather it activated one that we didn’t know about prior to the seismic activity.”

Hilcorp Energy, operator of several oil and gas wells in the area, was forced to shut down its drilling after the 3.0 quake.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said the seismologists’ research was consistent with its finding of a “probable” link between fracking and seismic events.

In the fracking process, large quantities of water and toxic fluids are pumped into the ground to release trapped oil or gas.

Lawsuit seeks to uncover truth about offshore fracking in Gulf of Mexico

Reuters/Lee Celano

RT | Jan 9, 2015

Environmentalists filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, DC this week in an attempt to force the United States government into disclosing details about any hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, being done in the Gulf of Mexico.

The suit, filed Thursday by attorneys representing the Center for Biological Diversity, takes aim at the Obama administration’s failure to promptly respond to Freedom of Information Act requests made last year for documents pertaining to fracking operations in the gulf.

Having neglected issuing a response to the Arizona-based environmental group’s October 2014 FOIA request for records identifying any wells in the gulf’s Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”) region where hydraulic fracturing has been used since January 1990, both the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management were named as defendants this week in a complaint that seeks to have a District Court judge compel the agencies to provide answers.

“The public has a right to know where, when and how much fracking the federal government is allowing in the Gulf of Mexico,” Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the plaintiffs, said in a statement.  “Offshore fracking has been shrouded in secrecy in the Gulf, but we know this dangerous activity pollutes our water and air and poses a toxic threat to marine wildlife and fragile ocean ecosystems.”

According to the suit, the Center for Biological Diversity believes the BOSEE and BOEM have authorized fracking to occur at over 100 sites in the gulf during 2013. FOIA requests for records about those alleged operations have gone unanswered for months, however, and environmentalists say it’s imperative that the government explains as much about the allegations as possible on account of the long-term effects associated with the practice not being quite clear at this time.



“Fracking — a practice that involves blasting huge amounts of water and dangerous chemicals into the earth at enormous pressure to crack rock formations beneath the ocean floor — is inherently dangerous and has no place in fragile ocean ecosystems,” the center’s lawyers argue in the legal filing. “Nevertheless, BSEE and BOEM have permitted fracking in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“On information and belief, BOEM and BSEE authorized fracking for at least 115 wells in the Gulf of Mexico in 2013, or about 15 percent of wells completed for production that year,” the complaint continues. “But by failing to respond to the Center’s FOIA request, BSEE and BOEM are keeping the center, its members and local communities in the dark about exactly where, when and how much fracking has occurred in the Gulf, in violation of FOIA’s clear legal mandates.”

Monsell, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said her group is “trying to untangle the web of secrecy that surrounds offshore fracking in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“We know it’s happening and know the government is approving it — the public ought to know how much and how often. Fracking doesn’t belong in the ocean, and the federal government has a legal and moral obligation to reveal how widespread this inherently dangerous activity has become in our coastal waters,” she said.

Yet Samantha Joye, a marine sciences professor at the University of Georgia, told the Associated Press this week that no scientific studies have actually been conducted yet to take on what effect, if any, fracking chemicals have had on the ocean.

"It is unfathomable that this process is not tightly regulated and restricted both on land and at the sea bed," she told the AP.

"There's very little public information on the practice, and to date, we just simply don't know a great deal about where and when it's taking place," Jayni Hein, a policy director at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, added to New Orleans’ WWL-TV.

According to Bloomberg, a surge in offshore fracking since 2007 has increased the below-water drilling market to almost the size of Russia’s onshore industry.

In August, the US Department of the Interior received $109,951,644 million in high bids for 81 tracts in the Gulf of Mexico covering 433,823 acres, with more than one-third of those bids coming from offshore energy companies.

“The Gulf of Mexico has been and will continue to be a cornerstone of our domestic energy portfolio, with vital energy resources that spur economic opportunities and further reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Interior Deputy Secretary Mike Connor said at the time.

"The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most productive basins in the world, and the Obama Administration’s robust Five Year Program supports a balanced approach that encourages the development of the Gulf’s offshore oil and gas resources, while protecting the human, marine and coastal environments and ensuring a fair return to the American people," said Connor.

Fracking caused earthquake boom in Ohio town – study

Anti-fracking demonstrators protest on 51st
Street and 7th Avenue.(AFP Photo / Bryan Thomas)

RT | Jan 6, 2015

In March 2014, hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – caused 77 earthquakes in a small Ohio town that had no previous experience with seismic activity, according to a new study. One quake was large enough to be felt in neighboring areas.

Fracking in Poland Township, Ohio was halted two days after the area was hit with a magnitude-3 earthquake along a hidden fault in rock which was deep beneath a natural gas well in the Utica Shale, according to research published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

The study's authors said the magnitude-3 quake was "one the largest earthquakes ever induced by hydraulic fracturing in the United States."

All 77 quakes occurred between March 4-12, the study found.

Besides the magnitude-3 quake, the study reported that most of the seismic activity was not felt by Poland Township's population, which numbered 14,960 in the 2010 census.

No previous seismic activity had occurred in Poland Township, which sits near the Pennsylvania border, and the quakes stopped once fracking operations were put on hold, according to lead study author Robert Skoumal, a graduate student in seismology at Miami University in Ohio.

To unleash oil or natural gas, fracking requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. The contents of fracking fluid include chemicals that the energy industry and many government officials will not name, yet they insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradicting findings by scientists and environmentalists. Once used, toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields or used over again.

Fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, an uptick in earthquakes in other states, exacerbation of drought conditions and a host of health concerns for humans and the local environment.

Ohio and many other US states, including Oklahoma and Texas, have been subject to intense amounts of fracking in recent years, as the effects of the process have caused controversy from coast to coast.

For instance, a separate study released in October found that fracking had a direct connection to some 400 micro-earthquakes in the eastern Ohio town of Canton.

Last month, New York became the first US state to ban fracking.

“I cannot support high volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York,” said Howard Zucker, acting New York State Health Commissioner. He equated fracking to second-hand smoke, the health risks of which were not fully understood until many years of scientific studies were conducted.

A fracking ban was recently instituted in Denton, Texas, a town of 123,000 located on top of the natural gas goldmine that is the Barnett Shale formation, the birthplace of the much-maligned oil and gas extraction method.

Meanwhile, dozens of other US cities, towns, villages, and counties have passed measures against the practice, according to Food and Water Watch.

In November, cities in Ohio voted on fracking ban measures, with mixed results. The cities of Gates Mills, Kent, and Youngstown – all located in northeast Ohio, near Poland Township – voted down bans, while the town of Athens approved one.

Yet city bans are not always sure to remain in place, as local ordinances against fracking can run afoul of state laws that allow the process, as is the case in Ohio.

In Colorado, for instance, state officials have worked to supersede local, voter-approved bans through the legal system.