Saturday, May 18, 2013


DOE Approves Second Fracked Gas LNG Export Terminal  
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Friday is the proverbial “take out the trash day” for the release of bad news among public relations practitioners and this last Friday was no different. 
In that vein, yesterday the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a conditional approval for the second-ever liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal. 
LNG is the super-chilled final product of gas obtained—predominantly in today’s context—via the controversial hydraulic fracturing process that is taking place throughout many states in the U.S. Fracked gas is shipped from the domestic shale basins via pipelines to various coastal LNG terminals, and then sent on LNG tankers to the global market.
The name of the terminal: Freeport LNG.
Freeport LNG is 50 percent owned by ConocoPhillips and located in Freeport, TX, an hour car ride south of Houston. The export facility is the second one approved by the DOE, with the first one—Sabine Pass terminal, owned by Cheniere and located in Sabine Pass, LA—approved in May 2011. 
DOE gave its rubber stamp of approval to Freeport LNG to export up to 1.4 billion cubic feet of LNG per day from its terminal. 
The announcement comes in the aftermath of an April DeSmogBlog investigation revealing that recently confirmed Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz—a former member of the Board of Directors of ICF International—has a binder full of conflicts of interest in any decision the DOE makes to export the U.S. shale gas bounty.
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Sunday, May 12, 2013

Radioactive fracking debris triggers worries at dump sites 

By Timothy Puko 

Published: Saturday, May 11, 2013, 9:00 p.m.Updated 20 hours ago 

When a garbage truck from a shale gas well set off radiation detectors at a South Huntingdon landfill on April 19, it drew attention from township officials.
But they aren't the only ones watching what's become a growing issue all over Pennsylvania. The number of garbage trucks setting off radiation monitors had a fivefold increase between 2009 and 2012, drawing renewed attention from state officials who hadn't believed radiation would be a big problem from the state's drilling industry.
South Huntingdon is trying to block MAX Environmental Technologies Inc. from receiving DEP permission to accept a higher level radioactive waste, supervisor Melvin Cornell said.
“This stuff they compile as they dump it. It will grow and grow and grow,” Cornell said. “Hey, if there's nothing wrong, take it down, and make a playground with it where they live. That might sound harsh, but we don't want it here.”
Between 2009 and 2012, radiation alarms went off 1,325 times in 2012, with more than 1,000 of those alerts just from oil and gas waste, according to data from the Department of Environmental Protection.
The state's landfills have to one day be fit for people to live on after they close, so the state has to make sure they aren't allowing a dangerous build-up of radioactivity, officials said.
The spike in radiation alarms gave them pause for concern and is a big reason they started a year-long study of radioactivity in the shale gas industry, which the DEP announced in January.
“All the data we have indicates public health is protected. We want to make sure going forward, long term, things stay that way,” DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said.
State regulators, industry supporters and some scientists say that treating shale waste properly eliminates big health risk. But there are critics who argue that bringing large quantities of even low-level radioactive particles to the surface can lead to a slow, incremental build up of particles that people breathe or eat throughout their lifetimes.
The state began requiring radiation monitors at landfills in 2002 because of medical waste. But oil and gas waste — which brings up naturally occurring radiation formerly locked a mile or so underground — has become an increasing concern.
The spike in radiation alarms roughly corresponds shale drilling activity. Radiation detectors went off 423 times in 2008 and 1,325 times in 2012, according to DEP data. Gas drillers punched 335 new shale wells in 2008 and 1,354 new shale wells in 2012.
The average radium content in Marcellus shale wastewater samples was more than double the content found in wastewater from other gas-producing formations, the Geological Survey found in 2011.
Read more: http://triblive.com/business/headlines/3945499-74/gas-radiation-radioactivity#ixzz2T81PB3tL 
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Friday, May 3, 2013

May 3, 2013

Middlefield drilling ban upheld

By Joe MahoneyThe Daily Star
The Otsego County town of Middlefield and the Tompkins County town of Dryden — along with the principle of home rule — scored major victories Thursday, with the state Appellate Division issuing twin rulings that uphold their trail-blazing bans on natural gas drilling.
The towns had also prevailed in the first round of the case, with state Supreme Court judges backing their right to enact home-rule legislation against drilling.
The cases could end up before New York’s highest court — the Court of Appeals.
On the losing side of the mid-level appeals court decisions are the natural gas industry and Jennifer Huntington, operator of Cooperstown Holstein Corp., who said the town of Middlefield’s zoning change in June 2011 put a stop to her plans to have a conventional gas well at her property.
In the Dryden decision, which was cited in the Middlefield case, the court wrote: “We hold that (current law) does not preempt, either expressly or impliedly, a municipality’s power to enact a local zoning ordinance banning all activities related to the exploration for, and the production or storage of, natural gas and petroleum within its borders.”
Huntington said she decided to file the lawsuit against Middlefield in order to get legal clarity over whether the town had the right to prevent local landowners from allowing gas wells to be put into operation on their parcels.
“This is how the democratic process works in the United States,” she said. “If you have a question or a concern with a rule or law, this is how you go about it. There were regulations already on the books. There was a disagreement in the interpretation of them. It was a difference of opinion.”
Kurkoski took issue with the decisions, saying: “The Appellate Division interpreted the oil and gas law by relying on a mining case decided by the Court of Appeals. The laws and the policy behind each law are vastly different. The mining laws specifically allow zoning but the oil and gas law does not. Most importantly, New York will never have an effective energy policy if our courts equate the state’s interests in promoting the production of sand and gravel with the production of energy.”
Middlefield Town Supervisor Dave Bliss told The Daily Star: “We’re pleased that the court has agreed with our position that a ban is not a regulation, and we had the authority to do what we did.”

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Thursday, May 2, 2013


Appeals Upholds Home Rule
May 2, 2013
Jon Campbell
ALBANY — A mid-level appeals court on Thursday said local governments in New York can ban hydraulic fracturing and shale-gas drilling within their borders, delivering a major blow to the natural-gas industry and landowners who had sought to have the bans overturned.
The state Appellate Division ruled unanimously in favor of the Tompkins County town of Dryden and the Otsego County town of Middlefield, both of which passed zoning laws that prohibit natural-gas drilling. The rulings upheld decisions last year from a lower court.
The so-called "home rule" issue has been a topic of contention among the gas industry and critics of fracking, a technique where water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground to fracture shale and release natural gas.
Proponents of fracking contended New York law prohibits local bans because it defers all regulatory oversight of drilling to the state; Dryden and Middlefield argued the clause in state law doesn't impede on their ability to use zoning laws as they see fit.
Since the appeals court ruled unanimously, Norse Energy and Middlefield farmer Jennifer Huntington -- the plaintiffs in the two cases -- would have to receive permission from the state Court of Appeals for the case to be appealed
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Wednesday, May 1, 2013


First County in US Bans Oil and Gas Extraction

By Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund   Published: Wednesday 1 May 2013
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Monday the County Commission of Mora County, located in northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the U.S. to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction.
Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights—including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature—while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.
Communities across the country are facing drilling and fracking. Fracking brings significant environmental impacts including the production of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which can affect drinking water and waterways. Studies have found that fracking is a major global warming contributor, and have linked the underground disposal of frack wastewater to earthquakes.
“Existing state and federal oil and gas laws force fracking and other extraction activities into communities, overriding concerns of residents,” explained Thomas Linzey, Esq., CELDF executive director. “Today’s vote in Mora County is a clear rejection of this structure of law which elevates corporate rights over community rights, which protects industry over people and the natural environment.”  
“This vote is a clear expression of the rights guaranteed in the New Mexico Constitution which declares that all governing authority is derived from the people. With this vote, Mora is joining a growing people’s movement for community and nature’s rights,” said Linzey. 
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Sunday, April 28, 2013


West Virginia Judge Recognizes Trespass by Hydraulic Fracturing

McGuirewoods
April 23, 2013
The notion that an oil and gas producer can commit a trespass by engaging in hydraulic fracturing gained traction on April 9, 2013, when U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey of the Northern District of West Virginia denied a motion for summary judgment filed by oil and gas producer defendants Chesapeake Appalachia, LLC, Statoil USA Onshore Properties, Inc. and Jamestown Resources, Inc. in Stone v. Chesapeake Appalachia, LLC. In this case, Chesapeake Appalachia drilled a horizontal Marcellus Shale well with a vertical well bore within 200 feet of the plaintiffs’ property and a horizontal well bore within “tens of feet” of the plaintiffs’ property. Although Chesapeake Appalachia maintains a lease for the oil and gas underlying the plaintiffs’ property, plaintiffs’ lease does not authorize pooling or unitization of the Marcellus formation.
Defendants urged the court to follow the ruling in Coastal Oil & Gas Corp. v. Garza Energy Trust, in which the Supreme Court of Texas held that a landowner’s claims of trespass where the operator extended hydraulic fracturing underlying the landowners’ property were barred by the rule of capture, the highly regulated nature of oil and gas in Texas and other reasons. The court declined to do so, explaining that under the rule announced in Garza, oil and gas companies would be able to dictate that a landowner either sign a lease on the producer’s terms or the producer will hydraulically fracture under the property and take the oil and gas without compensation. Observing that under West Virginia law, trespass is an entry on another person’s property without lawful authority, and doing some damage, however inconsiderable, to his real property, the court predicted the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals would find that hydraulic fracturing under the land of a neighboring property without that person’s consent is not protected by the rule of capture, but rather constitutes an actionable trespass. Although not expressly stated, it appears that the trespass claim rests on plaintiffs’ allegation that the hydraulic fracturing fluid entered the subsurface of plaintiffs’ property.
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Friday, April 26, 2013


Report: Wyoming, other states must track water used for fracking

By LAURA HANCOCK    Star-Tribune staff writer
Wyoming and other Western states need to better track the amount of groundwater that’s depleted by hydraulic fracturing, according to a new report by a regional land-use organization.
If the states don’t do so, there may not be water left for municipal and agricultural uses, according to the report by the Billings, Mont.-based Western Organization of Resource Councils, which represents smaller, grassroots land-use groups.
“Little notice is given to what in the long term may become a more serious threat,” Bob LeResche, a Clearmont rancher and board member of the Billings organization and the Sheridan-based Powder River Basin Resource Council, said during a Thursday teleconference to promote the report.
“This water, once it’s used, is gone for good,” said Pat Wilson, a land and mineral owner from Bainville, Mont., and member of the Northern Plains Resource Council. “Unlike any other human use that I can think of, it’s extracted from the hydrological cycle, never to return.”
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