General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFracking is Great! The Administration loves it so it must be Great. Here's more Great Fucking
Fracking News:
Fracking Waste is Being Dumped Into the Ocean Off California's Coast
ReWire has reported previously on a form of oil well enhancement in California that doesn't get much attention from the press, namely, offshore fracking. At least 12 rigs off the coast of California inject proprietary mixes of potentially dangerous chemicals into undersea rock formations at high pressure. They do this in order to break those rocks up which makes it easier to pump out the crude.
That's the process commonly known as fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing. The fluid pumped into the wells usually gets pumped back out again as wastewater. And if you suddenly have an uneasy feeling about where those offshore rigs dispose of that wastewater, you may well be correct. About half of the state's offshore rigs pump at least some of their wastewater right into the Santa Barbara Channel.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, oil rig operators have federal permits to dump more than nine billion gallons of fracking wastewater into California's ocean waters each year. That's enough wastewater to fill more than 100 stadiums the size of the Rose Bowl brim-full of toxic waste. And CBD wants the Environmental Protection Agency to do something about it
In a legal petition filed Wednesday, CBD is urging the EPA to rewrite those federal wastewater dumping permits to keep fracking waste out of the ocean, and to develop national guidelines for offshore rig wastewater disposal that address the threat from fracking chemicals.
<snip>
Fracking wastewater contains more than just the chemicals used by oil and gas companies to break up the rocks, including toxic substances like methanol, benzene, naphthalene, and trimethylbenzene. It can also include nasties that it picks up from those deep rock formations, including lead and arsenic. And while safely disposing of such substances isn't easy in the best of situations, ocean disposal poses special risks for those who play in, live near, or eat fish from the sea.
<snip>
http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/petroleum/fracking-waste-is-being-dumped-into-the-ocean-off-californias-coast.html
Hahaha. Those foolish petitioners! The EPA will set them straight.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
antiquie
(4,299 posts)California coastal regulators said they were unaware until recently that offshore fracking was even occurring, and are now asking oil companies proposing new offshore drilling projects if they will be fracking.
Because the area of concern is located more than three miles off the state's shoreline, federal regulators have jurisdiction over these offshore exploration efforts. However, the state can reject a permit in federal waters if the work endangers water quality.
"It wasn't on our radar before, and now it is," said Alison Dettmer, a deputy director at the California Coastal Commission.
Most fracking efforts off California have yielded mixed results. The first time Venoco fracked offshore in the 1990s, it had limited success. Chevron's one try failed. Out of Nuevo Energy's nine attempts, only one was considered very successful, according to company and BSEE records.
"Fracking is Great! The Administration loves it so it must be Great. Here's more Great Fucking"
...it is not "great." Governor Brown just signed a fracking bill into law.
California Fracking Bill Signed Into Law By Governor Jerry Brown
The California law would require oil companies to obtain permits for fracking as well as acidizing, the use of hydrofluoric acid and other chemicals to dissolve shale rock.
It would also require notification of neighbors, public disclosure of the chemicals used, as well as groundwater and air quality monitoring and an independent scientific study.
The hotly contested bill drew strong opposition from many environmentalists, who said it did not go far enough and complained that a proposed moratorium was taken out, along with some tougher regulations.
In his signing statement, Brown, who favors some level of fracking in the Monterey Shale, said he believed more changes would be necessary even as the law goes into effect next year.
- more -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/21/california-fracking-bill_n_3965069.html
More information from the Center for Biological Diversity:
CALIFORNIA
The Center is a trailblazer in the movement to stop dangerous, destructive fracking in California as the oil and gas extraction method becomes increasingly common in the state despite a startling lack of necessary regulation.
In December 2011, the Center and the Sierra Club sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to prevent dangerous fracking in Monterey and Fresno counties. In July 2011, we and our allies had filed a formal protest against the BLM’s plans to lease about 2,700 acres of delicate ecosystems in Monterey and Fresno counties for oil and gas activities, including fracking. The agency rejected our protest and green-lighted the lease without reviewing the potential effects of fracking.
The lease sites include habitat for the San Joaquin kit fox — protected as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act and as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act — and for the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, protected as endangered under both Acts. This land also includes important watershed areas in Monterey County. Fracking under the leases would risk a great disaster for California’s wildlands, wildlife, water and air quality.
To stop this disaster, in August 2012 we launched federal litigation challenging the Bureau of Land Management for failing to properly evaluate hydraulic fracturing’s threats to endangered species on public land leased for oil and gas activities in California. In October of that year, we filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (the agency responsible for regulating the state's oil and gas industry) to force it to abide by the California Environmental Quality Act in regulating fracking — because, as a December 2012 Center analysis revealed, proposed California fracking regulations would do little to protect the state's public health and environment. We filed suit again in Alameda County Superior Court in January 2013 to protect the state from fracking, since California regulators hadn't followed the law by allowing fracking to expand without lawful oversight.
Not despite our long, hard work on the issue, on May 7, 2013, the BLM postponed all oil and gas lease sales in California for the rest of the fiscal year.
NATIONAL
The Center is also fighting fracking beyond California. In August 2011 we went national, joining a broad coalition of public health, environmental, academic, faith-based and other organizations in sending a formal letter calling on President Barack Obama to do everything possible to halt the expansion of fracking across the country. The next year, we submitted comments to the BLM opposing the Mary’s River Project in Nevada, a 20,622-acre oil and gas project that would use fracking on public lands providing important habitat for the imperiled greater sage grouse and other wildlife — and that would threaten Nevada's public health as well.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/california_fracking/our_campaign.html
8. Don’t state and federal laws protect people and wildlife from fracking?
Fracking is poorly regulated. In 2005 Congress exempted most types of fracking from the federal Safe Water Drinking Act, severely limiting protections for water quality.
The industry has also been free, until recently, to spew essentially unlimited air pollution during fracking. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just finalized new Clean Air Act rules called “New Source Performance Standards” that will limit air pollutants from fracked gas wells, but the rules don’t cover oil wells, don’t set limits on methane release — and won’t take effect until 2015.
Some states do little or nothing to regulate fracking. California officials, for example, don't currently even keep track of when or where fracking is done in the state or what chemicals are used in the process.
Inadequate disclosure and poor protections are common features of state laws. In Texas, for example, companies routinely exploit a trade secrets loophole to avoid disclosing what chemicals they’re using in fracking fluid. Companies used the Texas trade secrets exemption about 19,000 times in the first eight months of 2012, according to a Bloomberg News investigation.
Even oil and gas companies fracking wells on federally managed public lands are rarely fined for violating environmental and safety rules — and the few fines levied are small compared to industry profits, according to a 2012 Congressional report.
Fracking pollution occurs even in states with regulations. The best way to protect our water, air and climate is to ban fracking now.
9. But hasn’t fracking been done in the United States for many years?
Yes, but today’s fracking techniques are new and pose new dangers. Technological changes have facilitated an explosion of fossil fuel production in areas where, even a decade ago, companies couldn’t recover oil and gas profitably.
Directional drilling, for example, is a new technique that has greatly expanded access to rock formations. Companies also employ high fluid volumes to fill horizontal “well bores” that sometimes extend for miles. And oil and gas producers are using new chemical concoctions called “slick water” that allow injection fluid to flow rapidly enough to generate the high pressure needed to break apart rock.
As fracking methods have changed and fracking has expanded, so has the threat to public health and the environment.
- more -
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/fracking/10_questions.html
Letter to the administration, 2011:
Fracking involves shooting millions of gallons of water laced with carcinogenic chemicals deep underground to break apart rock to release trapped gas. Despite its obvious hazards, regulation necessary to ensure that fracking does not endanger our nation’s water supply has not kept pace with its rapid and increasing use by the oil and gas industry.
To date, fracking has resulted in over 1,000 documented cases1 of groundwater contamination across the county, either through the leaking of fracking fluids and methane into groundwater, or by above ground spills of contaminated and often radioactive wastewater from fracking operations. Rivers and lakes are also being contaminated with the release of insufficiently treated waste water recovered from fracking operations. In addition, fracking typically results in the release of significant quantities of methane – a potent greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere despite the availability of cost-effective containment measures.
We acknowledge the steps your administration has taken to address fracking. However, much more needs to be done. For example, EPA has convened an effort to study the impacts of fracking on drinking water. The first phase will end by 2012, but this study will take several years to complete. By this time, even more of the nation’s drinking water may become contaminated by fracking. In addition, the EPA study will not include an analysis of the efficacy of the existing regulatory framework to address fracking impacts. And while Secretary Chu has assembled a committee to recommend and identify best practices to improve safety and environmental performance of fracking, best practices, assuming they are even implemented, can of course not in themselves provide adequate protection from risks that are not yet fully known.
- more -
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/dirty_energy_development/oil_and_gas/pdfs/11-8-8_CEO_fracking_letter_to_Obama.pdf
cali
(114,904 posts)a subject without your crutch of cut and paste and nothing but cut and paste, and present a cogent opinion that is all about the adoration and defense of President Obama, you'll deserve the courtesy of real discussion. As it is, your unbroken stream of posts that serve nothing but your feelings about the President, rarely actually address the op that you inevitably view as not laudatory to a President you believe is the best in history. That's quite the emotional investment- and boy does that show.
Now don't forget the little laughie thingamajig. But this is it for our discourse in this thread.
"whatever, pro. when you can actually address a subject without your crutch of cut and paste and nothing but cut and paste, and present a cogent opinion that is all about the adoration and defense of President Obama, you'll deserve the courtesy of real discussion."
...without "your crutch of cut and paste," here is your entire commentary in the OP:
<...>
Hahaha. Those foolish petitioners! The EPA will set them straight.
"As it is, your unbroken stream of posts that serve nothing but your feelings about the President, rarely actually address the op that you inevitably view as not laudatory to a President you believe is the best in history. That's quite the emotional investment- and boy does that show.
Now don't forget the little laughie thingamajig. But this is it for our discourse in this thread. "
To quote you: "Hahaha."
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)
jsr
(7,712 posts)
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)And when it comes out of the hole it's wastewater.
I think they should be sued for dumping fracking fluid without permits. Clearly they don't think it's water when they pump it onto the well.
cali
(114,904 posts)and mostly they don't have to.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Seems like it shouldn't be able to be done.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)Ernest Moniz, a physicist, former science official in the Clinton administration and the head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative, is Obama's pick for the Energy Department post.
Moniz's nomination has ruffled more than a few feathers in the environmental community. He is known for supporting nuclear power and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial natural gas drilling technique, according to the Washington Post.
And under Moniz's leadership, MIT’s Energy Initiative received hundreds of millions of dollars in support from BP, Shell, Saudi Aramco, Chesapeake Energy and other oil and gas giants.
"No one is alleging that Moniz has personally financially gained directly from moneys from the oil and gas industry for fracking studies," Anthony Ingraffea, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell, told the Huffington Post. However, Ingraffea questions whether or not any actions were taken that "benefited the people paying, despite knowing those actions were not in the best interest of the public, students, his university or the country."
http://www.livescience.com/27617-moniz-energy-mccarthy-epa.html
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)I used to try to keep track of these horrible corporate appointments, but they come so fast and consistently now that it's impossible to keep up.
