Oil/Gas drilling has become “unconventional.”
How does this affect you?
A relatively new drilling method, known as high volume, slick water hydraulic fracturing, is believed by many to carry significant environmental risks—from the hydraulic fracturing and all of the stages and associated processes of drilling, production, waste disposal, etc.
Much of the current debate also includes the vast amounts of fresh water that become permanently removed from the natural water cycle and massive amounts of toxic frack waste that are being generated. Much of this waste comes from other states and is being brought to Ohio and being injected into the ground beneath our feet!
Big Oil and Gas would have us believe that fracking is a perfectly safe process that does not put our health, drinking water, or environment at risk. Should we trust this industry to look out for us?
This site is meant to be a resource to help you make informed decisions for yourself, decisions about how to help protect your community, and to keep up to date on legislative changes, industry positions, current news articles, and more…
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First County in U.S. Bans Oil and Gas Extraction
Mora Valley, New MexicoMonday 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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Gasland II: From Broken Promises to Renewable Solutions
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Three Arrested at Court Appearance for Protesting Fracking Infrastructure Storage Site
More than 150 people packed the Town of Reading Court in New York on April 17 to witness what they believe is a shocking miscarriage of justice.
Three members of a group dubbed the “Seneca Lake 12”—massage therapist Melissa Chipman of Schuyler County, farm owner Michael Dineen of Seneca County and Sandra Steingraber, PhD, author, biologist and distinguished scholar at Ithaca College—were sentenced to jail terms for their resistance to the heavy industrialization of the peaceful rural region they call home.
Dr. Sandra Steingraber was one of three arrested last night and sentenced to 15 days in jail for refusing to pay an imposed fine for trespassing while protesting the Inergy fracking infrastructure storage site on Seneca Lake in New York. Photo courtesy of Green Umbrella“What has happened to civil society?” asked a stunned Helen Savich when she saw her hero Sandra Steingraber hauled off to jail.
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Mock Wedding Illustrates Misguided Marriage Between Fracking Industry and Environmental Groups
A coalition of Pennsylvania and Ohio students and residents staged a mock wedding today at the EQT Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh, PA, to condemn the misguided union of corporations and environmental nonprofits through the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD).
Oil and gas companies, including Shell, Chevron and CONSOL Energy, and environmental nonprofits, such as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) and Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), began working together in March of 2013 in order to create a set of voluntary regulations for fracking. The demonstrators have asked all environmental nonprofits to divorce themselves from CSSD due to irreconcilable differences.
CSSD’s central mission is to promote the idea of “sustainable shale,” but fracking is fundamentally unsustainable. Burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate destabilization, and oil and gas are finite resources. The concept of sustainable shale is an oxymoron. The gas industry is using their partnership with environmental nonprofits to co-opt the brand of sustainability and hide the destruction caused by fracking.
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Scientists Say Oil Industry Likely Caused Largest Oklahoma Earthquake
Joe Eaton
Several homes were damaged in the earthquake that hit central Oklahoma on November 6, 2011. The injection of wastewater from oil production into abandoned oil wells was the likely cause, according to a new study.
Photograph by Sue Ogrocki, AP
The largest recorded earthquake in Oklahoma history was likely triggered by the injection of wastewater from oil production into wells deep beneath the earth, according to a study published Tuesday in the scientific journalGeology.
The magnitude 5.7 earthquake, which struck in 2011 near Prague in central Oklahoma, is the largest and most recent of a number of quakes scientists have tied to wastewater injection from oil and natural gas production, raising new concerns about the practice.
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Are Methane Hydrates Really Going to Change Geopolitics?
By Chris Nelder
Reuters
The right way to understand the potential of unconventional fuels like methane hydrates and tight oil is to closely examine their production rates and their prices. If these fuels can be produced at large scales and profitable prices, they very well might influence geopolitics and economics in the ways that Mann speculates. If they cannot, then it truly doesn’t matter how much of those resources may exist underground and in the ocean floor.
Unfortunately Mann offers precious little data on price or production rates.
A debate on the future of energy Read more
If Mann’s data on methane hydrates is correct, then Japan’s experiment so far has taken 10 years and $700 million to produce four million cubic feet of gas, which is worth about $16,000 at today’s U.S. gas prices, or about $50,000 at today’s prices for imported LNG in Japan. At this point, it is an enormously expensive experimental pilot project, and nothing more. We do not yet know when it might be able to recover commercial volumes of gas, or at what rate, or at what price. We have no reason to believe that if commercial quantities are recoverable by 2018 as Japan hopes–which seems incredibly optimistic–that the price of that gas will be competitive with imported LNG.
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Two New Studies Indicate Dangerous Financial Bubble in Shale Investing:
Shale Bubble – Drill Baby Drill (by J David Hughes, Post Carbon Institute)
Shale Bubble – Wall Street (by Deborah Rogers, Energy Policy Institute)
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The Baseline Water Testing Process: It is NOT Just About Getting a Sample
By Brian Oram, Professional Geologist
B.F. Environmental Consultants Inc.
Published in March ONG Marketplace
We have had the opportunity to witness a wide range of practices that have been called baseline testing. We have seen a team of 4 professionals working for the EPA in Dimock, Pennsylvania, take 4 to 5 hours to collect one water sample and we’ve seen a single sampler with virtually no training take 15 minutes to purge and sample a private well with no field measurements or even gloves.
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Portage County: Drilling blamed for home damage
(View Full Article via NEOGAP)
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Well casing failure can contaminate groundwater
View Dr. Ingraffea’s Newest Video on Shale Gas & Climate Change
View Dr. Ingraffea’s Study on Fluid Migration in Marcellus Shale
Dr. Ingraffea’s General Recommendations on Fracking:
1. Where fracking is not yet occurring, it should be banned.
2. Where fracking is already occurring, it should be done only under the strictest regulations that are rigorously enforced.
3. The use of all hydrocarbon fuels should be reduced as fast as possible.
4. The use of renewable, non-hydrocarbon fuels should be vastly accelerated.
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Gas Well Policy Guidelines for Key Bank
Click for Higher Resolution (Photo courtesy of Pete Maizitis)
- NO mortgages will be written on properties that have a Gas Well.
- Key Bank can deny mortgage underwriting to homeowners whose properties are within 600 feet of a gas well.
- No mortgages will be written on properties which have gas leases attached to them.
- Property owner/gas rights lesser and gas companies can be held liable for damages.
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