Hydraulic Fracturing

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    Pass Me a Joint – Pot Smoking Coming to NY, But Not Fracking

    New York State Health Commission Nirav Shah apparently has no problem rushing his “research” and decision that New York State is ready for pot smoking–but dang, there’s just no telling how long it will take to figure out if fracking is OK for New York. That’s what he told New York lawmakers yesterday during budget hearing testimony.

    Whip out a joint–for “medical purposes” (wink wink nod nod)–and that’s hunky-dory with Shah. Lower everyone’s energy costs, create thousands of new jobs, take some of that nasty carbon out of the environment, and stick some coin in farmers’ pockets? Nah–a bridge too far for Nirav Shah (i.e. Andrew Cuomo). We wonder what they’ve been smoking…
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    CT DEEP Wants Frack Waste Reclassified Hazardous to Keep It Away

    The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) is concerned that fracking waste–both wastewater and drill cuttings–may end up coming to the state. So DEEP has asked CT legislators to consider a bill that will reclassify fracking waste as hazardous waste–even though the federal government itself doesn’t consider fracking waste “hazardous.” Apparently the DEEPers are afraid that those wily shale drillers will sneak across the border and contaminate the pristine wilds of CT, so they want to put severe restrictions on frack waste hauling with the aim of just keeping it away.

    Here’s the DEEPer story:
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    League of Liberal Democrat Women Voters Targets Fracking in WNY

    Recently the Portland Town Board in western NY held a special meeting to learn more about fracking. So who did they have present? Who did they find to present the facts on both sides of this contentious issue? That’s right, the League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters. You know–that “non-partisan” organization? (Excuse us as we now pick ourselves up off the floor from laughing so hard.)

    The LO[LD]WV is, of course, extremely partisan, extremely liberal and extremely anti-drilling–so it’s no wonder the town board members in Portland (located near Buffalo), got an honest-to-goodness real western NY snow job…
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    JLCNY Lawsuit Imminent – But Not the One You Thought

    court gavelLike all things legal–and like all things NY–this story is a tad complex, so please bear with us. If you have an interest in whether, and when, NY begins shale fracking, this is an important story. For some time MDN has told you about the lawsuit that has been prepared and waiting (for funds) to move forward by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY). Their lawsuit was to focus on “takings,” the legal concept that New York State has denied landowners the sovereign right to use their own property as they see fit–to lease it for shale drilling–and by doing so the state owes them just compensation for “taking” away that value (see our story from last April: JLCNY Provides Extensive Update on NY “Takings” Lawsuit).

    The JLCNY has changed legal strategies–that is the big news. Instead of pursuing the “takings” lawsuit at this point, which is a long, expensive legal process, the JLCNY has instead decided to change their legal focus to an Article 78 lawsuit. Sound familiar? Recently Norse Energy hired Albany attorney Tom West to file an Article 78 on behalf of their now bankrupt company (see Norse Energy Sues Gov. Cuomo to Force Release of Fracking Regs). By adding the voice of 70,000 landowners to a second Article 78 lawsuit, which is a legal way of forcing Gov. Cuomo, DEC Com. Martens and Health Com. Shah to perform their sworn duties, the JLCNY believes this new legal strategy will offer a more effective, quicker resolution to the long-standing moratorium (now in place over 5 1/2 years). We have a copy of the “demand” letter by the JLCNY to Martens, a press announcement and a fundraising appeal from the JLCNY below…
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    Binghamton Newspaper Censors JLCNY Lawsuit News

    Once again a glittering example of why mainstream media news sources, like the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, are dying. Fast. Because they simply ignore (suppress? censor?) news that doesn’t fit their own anti-drilling philosophy.

    You might think that an organization that boasts 70,000 members throughout New York State (the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, or JLCNY) that has just sent a letter to the governor, the head of the Dept. of Environmental Conservation and the state health commissioner telling them they’re about to get sued (see our companion story today) might be newsworthy. Further, if the chief lawyer and the president of said group (representing 70,000 landowners) called a press conference to explain the upcoming lawsuit–you might think it would at least rate a paragraph or two in the local newspaper of record. Right? If you live in the Binghamton area, that answer would be–wrong…
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    Range Floats Plan to Use Drill Cuttings to Build Roads

    This one is sure to set the anti-frackers into a tailspin. Range Resources has applied to the PA State Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to begin using drill cuttings (leftover rock and dirt that comes out of the ground) as an “aggregate” or material to build roads to drilling sites. There’s nothing wrong with drill cuttings, but sometimes there are low levels of radioactivity found in them–far below any kind of health threat. But we can see the headlines now: Radioactive Roads! Run for the Hills! Drillers Want to Poison Mother Earth! That’s how the shrill anti-fossil fuel lobby will try and spin this.

    We’re sure Range knows they’ve opened a can of worms with this one. Let’s see how it all plays out in the coming 60 days, the time period authorized by the DEP to receive public comments on the proposed plan…
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    The Secretive Ways of NYS Health Com. Nirav Shah

    It’s no secret that New York State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah is having his chain yanked by his boss, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on the issue of hydraulic fracturing. The Health Department has been involved every step of the way with the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) over the past 5 1/2 years, evaluating proposed drilling regulations with an eye on whether there are so-called public health impacts and ramifications. But at the eleventh hour last year, Cuomo instructed Shah to do yet another review, and that review, which at one point Shah said was just “weeks away” from being completed, is still not done more than a year later. Why? Cuomo told him to slow it down. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.

    Recently Shah as quizzed about the process he’s using to “evaluate” fracking regulations and potential health impacts. Shah has been super secretive about what he’s up to. He’s gone on record saying the process he’s using should not be transparent as it’s being done–only at the end. Anti-drillers are as frustrated with him as pro-drillers. Both sides have sued Shah (for different reasons) and according to anti-drilling former Gannett reporter Tom Wilbur, Shah is about to be forced to reveal what he’s been up to…
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    Vol 2 Photojournal for Cabot Well in Susquehanna County, PA

    Photojournal of a PA NatGas Well Vol 2A quick note to let you know that tomorrow (Saturday, Feb. 1) you can once again download Photojournal of a Pennsylvania Natural Gas Well: Book 1: Ground Preparation. It’s a really cool book of photos (and captions) taken by a non-professional photographer, Susquehanna County resident Janice Gavern. MDN recently reported on Janice’s project to document a Cabot Oil & Gas shale well being drilled just outside of Montrose, PA, close to (yes) Dimock (see PA Resident Snaps 8,000 Pictures of Cabot Well Construction).

    Jancie has been a busy beaver. She’s now posted her second volume in this multi-volume series: Photojournal of a Pennsylvania Natural Gas Well: Book 2 Site Set-up. You can grab a copy of this volume for free on Sunday, Feb. 2. Be sure to grab them while they’re free! It will save you $9.99 (or if you like, download it and pay the $9.99 to give Jan a little bit of money for her efforts).

    What if you don’t own a Kindle reader? No problem. You can download and install a Kindle reader application on your computer, smartphone–just about any device you have that connects to the internet. So don’t lack of a Kindle stop you from grabbing a copy of Jan’s books.

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    NY DEC Com. Martens Says No NY Fracking Until 2015 Earliest

    litigationIn what is sure to be a bitter disappointment to New York’s landowners, Dept. of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens said yesterday in testimony to lawmakers that he’s not going to issue any permits for shale drilling before 2015. Unless, of course, he’s forced to by a court (see Norse Energy Sues Gov. Cuomo to Force Release of Fracking Regs). Martens’ comments came as he gave testimony about the DEC’s budget for the next fiscal year, which begins on April 1st. Martens is not including anything in the DEC budget for shale drilling oversight and told lawmakers it would be “extremely unlikely” that permits would be issued before the end of March 2015, hence no need to bulk up his budget for it.

    Are we surprised? Not really. The decision of whether or not to allow fracking in New York has been a political and not a scientific one for a long time now–we’d say for years. Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to push off the decision–not Health Commissioner Nirav Shah, not Joe Martens, but Cuomo. Shah and Martens are just foot soldiers that do their master’s bidding. This latest revelation of no fracking until 2015 further validates landowners’ resolve in pushing forward with lawsuits on various aspects of the drilling issue at various levels of the court system. It’s now obvious we will have to litigate for our freedoms–or loose them forever…
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    Former Mainstream Reporter Sees the Fracking Light

    Is there any hope that mainstream media reporters will ever tell the truth about the miracle of fracking? You may despair, but every now and again there’s hope. We spotted a column written in the more-or-less conservative Washington Times by a former reporter for the Associated Press, someone who also has worked for Newsweek, ABC News and “20/20”. That’s mainstream media cred if we’ve ever heard it! Not only that, but this reporter was once funded (in a professorship) by the rabidly anti-drilling Park Foundation. Fait accompli–a dyed in the wool mainstream media guy.

    And yet, this mainstream media guy was able to see through the lies of the anti-drillers and come to the conclusion that yes, fracking is indeed a miracle and does not destroy the environment. Hallelujah! A mainstreamer who saw the light. Maybe there is hope?…
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    The Band is Back Together! Anti-Drillers to Visit Binghamton U

    The band is three-fourths back together. A group of radical anti-drilling organizations, including NYRAD (New York Residents Against Drilling), the League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters, NYPIRG, the Sierra Club and other lesser-known wacko organizations are sponsoring an “information” (i.e. propaganda) night at Binghamton University this Friday. And they’ve re-assembled most of the band, er, anti-drilling “experts” that visited Cornell University with their traveling road show/circus last October (see Latest Laughable NY Anti Tactic – Not Enough Gas, Just Move Along).

    Retired systems engineer for IBM and Lockheed Martin Jerry Acton will be there to induce death by PowerPoint. So too will retired Mobil Oil Executive Vice President Lou Allstadt (who’s already made his millions, so he doesn’t want any silly “farmers” to make money too, who the *$#@ do they think they are?). Oh, and Brian Brock, an anti-drilling retired geologist. Notice a theme here? All retired, all anti-drilling, with nothing to do. Road trip!…
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    Glow-in-the-Dark Bob Hagan: Shrill and Nutty

    Ever notice that when anti-drillers can’t seem to convince the public of their views, they get nuttier? They start spinning wild yarns, like all that fracking waste is radioactive and we’re going start glowing in the dark any day now. That’s the kind of wild tale being spun by Youngstown, OH Rep. Bob Hagan (Democrat).

    Because not enough Ohioans are turning against Utica Shale drilling, it’s time to ratchet up the rhetoric and old Bob is ready to pour it on. Here’s his latest glow-in-the-dark warning…
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    EPA Chief McCarthy Tells NRDC States Have Lead Role in Fracking

    Generally, Gina McCarthy, administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, is ready to poke her nose into fracking whenever and wherever she wants. Apparently she doesn’t want to–at least for now. McCarthy has dialed back her fervor on regulating fracking and (lately) has been deferential to state regulators. That doesn’t sit well with unreasonable so-called environmentalist groups like the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). In responding to a letter from the NRDC, McCarthy said, to her credit, that the states have the key/lead role in investigating concerns about fracking and potential pollution. That went over like a lead balloon at the NRDC.

    The NRDC, and other so-called environmentalist groups, want all oil and gas regulation under the thumb of the feds. They don’t like having to deal with that messy thing called the U.S. Constitution which says oil and gas regulation comes under the purview of the individual states. Statists don’t like that particular inconvenient truth and were hoping an Obama acolyte like McCarthy would be more statist in her approach, assuming authority not granted her under the Constitution. For now (thankfully) the EPA under McCarthy is stepping back from a more active role. At least until their “study” of fracking is completed sometime this year…
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    Ongoing Fallout from PA Supreme Court’s Wrong Act 13 Decision

    bozo mushroom cloudOne month ago Pennsylvania got the sad news that the state Supreme Court struck down important (and large) sections of the 2012 Act 13 Marcellus Shale drilling law (see PA Supreme Court Rules Against State/Drillers in Act 13 Case). The disappointing aspect of the decision is that Chief Justice Ron Castille, a Republican, joined three Democrats on the bench in deciding to use, for the first time, PA’s Environmental Rights Amendment to create new rights that didn’t exist before (drunk on their own power?). In fact the basis on which Castille made his poor judgment was based on his admitted prejudiced view that drilling and fracking is inherently harmful to the environment–which of course is not the case (see Industry Vet Points Out Error in PA Supreme Court Act 13 Ruling).

    One of the biggest problems with the PA Supreme Court decision is that the four justices agreeing to strike down zoning (and other) provisions in Act 13 could not agree on their reasons for doing so, weakening the decision’s usefulness in future cases. They also sent portions of the original case back to a lower court that, if those decisions go the wrong way, will totally wipe out the Act 13 law, sending PA back to the drilling stone ages again, without important environmental protections provided for under the law. Last week Penn State University law professor Ross Pifer analyzed the high court’s poor decision on a webinar call…
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    New Study: Conventional Gas Wells Produce 3X Wastewater as Shale

    Let’s frame this up so you have a proper understanding for the source of this information: A postdoctoral research associate dude at Duke University (a really smart student) teamed up with another smart student getting her master’s degree in environmental management at Duke, to study how much wastewater is produced by both conventional (or traditional) natural gas wells and unconventional horizontally-drilled shale wells in Pennsylvania. In essence they researched and wrote a term paper on the topic which will be published in the February issue of the journal Water Resources Research (see below). The postdoctoral dude has since left Duke and is now an assistant professor of biogeochemistry at Kent State. Hence, we have a “new study issued by Kent State and Duke University.” We’re not denigrating their accomplishments! Just giving you a proper understanding for how these “studies” are sometimes researched and how they’re reported about in the media.

    Anywho, the research from our two intrepid students shows that overall, because there are so many shale wells in PA, and because it takes a lot more water to frack a shale well than a conventional well, that (surprise!) shale wells produce more wastewater that conventional wells. The interesting aspect of their research–the finding that is worthy of putting their names in academic lights over–is that per unit of gas recovered, shale wells produce only 1/3 as much wastewater as conventional wells. Let’s put this startling discovery another way: If irrational anti-drillers banned all horizontal fracking of shale wells tomorrow in PA (whoops, the PA Democrat Party is trying to do just that!), and we went back to the days of only mining gas by conventional wells, in order to produce as much gas as we now produce today, we would produce three times as much wastewater to get it from conventional wells. We’d also have to sink way more holes in the ground to get it…
    Read More “New Study: Conventional Gas Wells Produce 3X Wastewater as Shale”

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    Glow in the Dark: Are We Being Irradiated by Frack Waste?

    radioactive zombiesThe fear-mongering continues by those who oppose shale drilling. One of the scare tactics used by anti-drillers is to say that frack wastewater and drill cuttings (leftover rock and dirt) are loaded with radiation and by disposing of it in landfills and via wastewater recycling facilities we’ll all end up irradiated, dying long slow deaths from cancer. Or worse yet, we’ll all become radioactive zombies. Hey, maybe someone could make a movie about that! (Unbelievably, they already have: see Friday Foibles: The Scientific Link Between Fracking and Zombies.)

    The Ohio EPA and Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) is not much impressed by all these radioactivity claims. Neither are we. One of the favorite drive-by media claims is that drill cuttings are setting off radiation alarms at landfills in record numbers (“hundreds” of times a year). Thing is, those same alarms go off when medical waste is hauled in too–they’re that sensitive that even radioactive dyes are picked up by them. It proves NOTHING. Yet you see that argument often used–fracking dirt contains radition! Whatever. Here’s the latest drive-by attempt to scare people with radioactive waste concerns, this one emitted by the Columbus Dispatch…

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