Gas Fracking

nedzer2011

NewVision wrote: »

I did post a link to the Wikipedia article about the Bhopal Disaster that everybody could read what it's all about. Unfortunately one of the mods deleted this post.

If you like to read more about the risks of fracking I recommend the websites, Fracking Ireland, Fracking Free Ireland or What The Frack. They're all Irish websites with tons of articles.

Thats not my point though - Because the previously detailed event just mentions Bhopal and Fracking in the same paragraph, it may lead to someone looking up Bhopal on wikipedia/google whatever and associate the two without any further research or consideration.

Just had a quick look on one of the links there and saw this on the homepage.



Somewhat representative but pretty misleading - fracture propagation to groundwater elevation?? Has it actually happened?

NewVision

nedzer2011 wrote: »

Thats not my point though - Because the previously detailed event just mentions Bhopal and Fracking in the same paragraph, it may lead to someone looking up Bhopal on wikipedia/google whatever and associate the two without any further research or consideration.

Just had a quick look on one of the links there and saw this on the homepage.



Somewhat representative but pretty misleading - fracture propagation to groundwater elevation?? Has it actually happened?

Not "misleading" at all. Maybe you should also have visited the News page.

=> Researchers Find Substantial Water Pollution Risks From "Fracking" To Recover Natural Gas

=> US: Government Study Shows Evidence Of Fracking Contaminating Groundwater

Or even my Open letter to the members of the 31st Dáil Éireann. Hydraulic Shale Gas Fracturing - Tamborans claims - Chemicals involved in the fracking procedure.

Not "misleading", nedzer, just reading.

NewVision

That's the way fracking has been practiced so far:

World-Renowned Scientist Dr. Theo Colborn on the Health Effects of Water Contamination from Fracking

NewVision

Wind energy is better than fracking.

Climate Change This Week: Whacking Fracking, Wind Keeps Farms Aloft, and More

Voodoo_rasher

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/osborne-offers-tax-breaks-for-shale-gas-8202949.html

Its coming closer to our fields, streams and lakes..

Pls read comments at end of article..

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NewVision wrote: »

Wind energy is better than fracking.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/uk-to-outflank-objectors-with-wind-farms-in-ireland-8202948.html

What is good for the Tories is seldom good for us Irish! The sellouts' backing for this means it can be up and running by 2018.

NewVision

Voodoo_rasher wrote: »

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/osborne-offers-tax-breaks-for-shale-gas-8202949.html

Its coming closer to our fields, streams and lakes..

Pls read comments at end of article..

**********************************

NewVision wrote: »

Wind energy is better than fracking.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/uk-to-outflank-objectors-with-wind-farms-in-ireland-8202948.html

What is good for the Tories is seldom good for us Irish! The sellouts' backing for this means it can be up and running by 2018.

The UK are desperately seeking for solutions for their oncoming energy crisis as e.g. nuclear companies are pulling out of Britain.

They have failed to invest in renewables early enough. And the Tories are still not willing to send the right signal. But the industry is now sending the UK government a strong signal.

=> Financial Times, October 8, 2012
Companies warn Osborne on renewable power

Some of the best known companies in the UK, including Microsoft, PepsiCo and Marks and Spencer, have warned George Osborne that mixed signals on green energy policy risk undermining investment in renewable power. More than 50 companies, investors and industry bodies have written to the chancellor ahead of his speech to the Conservative party conference today urging greater clarity on the coalition’s commitment to a lower-carbon economy.

The companies, which also include EDF, the French energy group, and BT, the telecoms group, called on Mr Osborne to back a 2030 target for decarbonising the electricity sector, amid coalition tensions over the goal. “It is essential for government to provide investors with the long-term confidence they need to transform our electricity market and make investments capable of driving wider economic growth,” the letter said.

The 2030 decarbonisation target is endorsed by Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat energy secretary, but Mr Osborne is wary. The chancellor has been calling for a significant role for natural gas in the UK energy mix until the 2030s and beyond.

Without specifically naming Mr Osborne, the letter warns that the government’s commitment to green power is being “undermined by recent statements calling for unabated gas in the power sector beyond 2030”.

Critics, including the government’s climate watchdog, have warned that heavy reliance on gas beyond 2030 would be incompatible with meeting legally binding emissions targets set under the 2008 climate change act.

Separately, SSE, the UK power group, has told the Financial Times it also supports a 2030 carbon intensity target because it “could provide much-needed certainty for low-carbon investors, showing developers that the government is committed to decarbonisation in the long term”.

The issue will come to a head when an energy bill is brought to parliament by Mr Davey later this year. The Commons energy committee, among others, says the 2030 target should be included in the legislation.

The letter to Mr Osborne was co-ordinated by the Aldersgate Group of green-leaning businesses. Peter Young, Aldersgate chairman, said it was critical to put an end to any political uncertainty surrounding the UK’s energy future.

“Both the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties understand this huge growth opportunity and backed a 2030 carbon target for the power sector at their party conferences,” he said. “Now the Conservative party must step up to the mark and provide the full cross-party support which businesses have been calling for.”

Whole Europe is going renewable... Only the UK are going backwards or even in circles.

But why not selling Irish renewable energy to them?

On the other hand, interconnection is one way to combat the intermittence problem of wind power, also here in Ireland.

Hope that wasn't too much off topic.

NewVision

No 'fracking' decision until 2014 (IT)

Dail told no commercial Irish fracking until 2014 (Newstalk)

You can send a letter to the Oireachtas Committee calling for a ban of fracking quite easily on this website => Dear Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communication: We call for a TOTAL BAN on Shale Gas Extraction (#Fracking)

NewVision

Tamboran promised the Irish people to work close with the local communities. We have been seeing such "close work" already in Rossport. Now we can read that it's common policy of the shale gas industry to spy and interrogate communities, and even more...

=> Shale Gas Industry Brings PSYOPs and Spy Ops to Poland

NewVision

NewVision

Oireachtas Communications Committee hosts wide-ranging discussion on fracking

More reports above...

NewVision

Shale Gas Extraction Brings Local Health Impacts

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 2012 (IPS) - Shale gas extraction is putting some U.S. communities at risk of health issues, new research released here Thursday warns.

Close to 70 percent of participants in a new study reported an increase in throat irritation, and almost 80 percent stated they have had more sinus problems after being exposed to natural gas extraction in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.

“For too long, the oil and gas industry and state regulators have dismissed community members’ health complaints as ‘false’ or ‘anecdotal’,” said Nadia Steinzor, the project’s lead author. “With this research, they cannot credibly ignore communities any longer.”

The report, by Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project, a non-profit environmental organisation, surveyed 108 residents in 14 Pennsylvania counties in addition to conducting air and water tests.

“Twenty-two households reported that pets and livestock began to have symptoms (such as seizures or losing hair) or suddenly fell ill and died after gas development began nearby,” Earthworks reported.

This report focused specifically on Marcellus Shale in central New York and Pennsylvania and the small communities affected by the extraction process.

“Though the areas studied in Pennsylvania are very rural and small, the process for all shale gas extraction is very similar and so it has the same potential impacts on any community,” Wilma Subra, the president of Subra Company, an environmental consulting firm, told IPS.

According to researchers, the results from the surveys constituted an obvious pattern of negative health symptoms due to the communities’ proximity to gas facilities.

This study compared domestic water samples from two counties to control groups by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The results showed a higher concentration ethylbenzene and xylene, volatile compounds found in petroleum hydrocarbons, at the households than the control site.

Overall, the participants reported a total of 24 health symptoms with a higher concentration and severity of symptoms closer to the gas development plants.

“For example, when facilities were 1500-4000 feet away, 27 percent reported throat irritation; this increased to 63 percent at 501-1500 feet, and 74 percent at less than 500 feet,” writes Steinzor.

Sixty-two percent of participants in the survey reported an increased sense of fatigue. The other highest percentage reported symptoms including sinus and respiratory problems (58 percent), and the survey also found a high level of behavioural and mood changes.

“The clear association between gas development and public health impacts revealed by this research demands that states stop ignoring the problem and start developing the standards necessary to protect the public,” Subra told IPS.

NewVision

Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Water and Air

List of the Harmed

The following is an ever-growing list of the individuals and families that have been harmed by fracking (or shale gas production) in the US.

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After the Boom in Natural Gas (New York Times, 20 October 2012)

...

The drillers punched so many holes and extracted so much gas through hydraulic fracturing that they have driven the price of natural gas to near-record lows. And because of the intricate financial deals and leasing arrangements that many of them struck during the boom, they were unable to pull their foot off the accelerator fast enough to avoid a crash in the price of natural gas, which is down more than 60 percent since the summer of 2008.

Although the bankers made a lot of money from the deal making and a handful of energy companies made fortunes by exiting at the market’s peak, most of the industry has been bloodied — forced to sell assets, take huge write-offs and shift as many drill rigs as possible from gas exploration to oil, whose price has held up much better.

Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, which spent $41 billion to buy XTO Energy, a giant natural gas company, in 2010, when gas prices were almost double what they are today, minced no words about the industry’s plight during an appearance in New York this summer.

“We are all losing our shirts today,” Mr. Tillerson said. “We’re making no money. It’s all in the red.”

Like the recent credit bubble, the boom and bust in gas were driven in large part by tens of billions of dollars in creative financing engineered by investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Jefferies & Company.

After the financial crisis, the natural gas rush was one of the few major profit centers for Wall Street deal makers, who found willing takers among energy companies and foreign financial investors.

Big companies like Chesapeake and lesser-known outfits like Quicksilver Resources and Exco Resources were able to supercharge their growth with the global financing, transforming the face of energy in this country. In all, the top 50 oil and gas companies raised and spent an annual average of $126 billion over the last six years on drilling, land acquisition and other capital costs within the United States, double their capital spending as of 2005, according to an analysis by Ernst & Young.

Now the gas companies are committed to spending far more to produce gas than they can earn selling it. Their stock prices and debt ratings have been hammered.

“We just killed more meat than we could drag back to the cave and eat,” said Maynard Holt, co-president of Tudor Pickering Holt & Company, a Houston investment bank that has handled dozens of shale deals in the last four years. “Now we have a problem.”

...

Confirming again what I wrote in Fracking - A Boom and Bust.

NewVision

UK public favours wind turbines over shale gas wells, poll finds (The Guardian, 23 October 2012)

More than two-thirds of people would rather have a wind turbine than a shale gas well near their home, according to a new opinion poll published on Tuesday.

Asked to choose between having the two energy sources within two miles of their home, 67% of respondents favoured a turbine, compared to just 11% who would support the gas development.

The findings of the UK-wide ICM survey shows that only nuclear power and coal are less popular than shale gas developments.

The ICM poll, together with a second new poll from YouGov, show public opinion is against George Osborne's push for a new "dash for gas" as the central plank of the government's energy policy.

NewVision

An Taisce: Can Fracking ever be successfully regulated in Ireland so as to provide an environmentally, socially and economically safe source of indigenous energy?

NewVision

Growing resistance against fracking in the US => 5 States Leading The Fight Against Fracking

NewVision

Warning over social downsides of fracking (The Irish Times, 6 November 2012)

Ireland needs to guard against the “boomtown effect” of a go-ahead for large-scale fracking, according to the Canada-based Irish author of a major report on the issue.

This effect can include increased crime, drug and alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and domestic violence, says Eilish Cleary, chief medical officer in the province of New Brunswick.

Other impacts can include housing shortages, increased cost of living and strains on hospitals, infrastructure and social services.

Dr Cleary is the author of a recent report on the possible health effects of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in New Brunswick, which is about the size of Ireland but with a population of less than one million.

She says there are many similarities between Ireland and the Canadian province. Both areas have experienced “boom and bust” economies in recent years and are attracting interest from the fledgling fracking industry.

“The public debate about fracking in Canada is polarised and there isn’t a lot of factual information available. I wanted to put down what we knew about the health impacts and to identify what we don’t know,” she said.

...

NewVision

Battle for Fracking Public Perception Lost, Says Gas Industry Insider

The gas industry has not done itself any favors by downplaying the risks associated with fracking, something the industry is apparently just realizing. Labeling affected citizens ‘fracktivists’ or ‘uneducated’ in order to delegitimize their complaints has only emphasized the industry’s callousness and inability to respond to real fears in a meaningful way. People trust the industry less than ever before, and with increased drilling across the globe, discontent is becoming even more widespread.

Now, after more than a decade of reckless drilling mishaps and a strengthening anti-fracking movement, the industry is willing to admit they’ve lost the public perception battle. From the outside this looks like a perfect opportunity for the industry to become more transparent and accountable. Instead this admission has only strengthened the industry’s resolve to up the communications ante.

...

NewVision

Fluid Migration mechanisms due to faulty well design and / or construction: An overview and recent experiences in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Play by Anthony R. Ingraffea, Ph.D, P.E., October 2012, Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Health Energy




Preliminary results of survey of leaking wells in the Pennsylvania Marcellus play based on violations issued by the DEP.

NewVision

Fractured Landscapes

This week, we look at the prospect of onshore gas extraction, or "fracking", in Ireland. We speak to people who live in areas in the North West earmarked for potential fracking licenses about their concerns with the industry.

NewVision

Michelle Bamberger and Robert E. Oswald published a conclusive article in Independent Science News, November 12, 2012. I'm only citing the conclusions here. Worthwhile reading the whole article.

Risk and Responsibility: Farming, Food, and Unconventional Gas Drilling

Conclusions

The unconventional gas-drilling boom has swept across the globe in recent years without evidence that environmental and public health can be protected. In the United States, the industry enjoys extensive subsidies, which include, among many others, exemptions from federal laws regulating clean air, clean water, and the disposal of toxic substances. A patchwork of state regulations allow secrecy rather than disclosure of substances used in all steps of the process, and nondisclosure agreements have been used to block access to information on specific cases that could provide meaningful public health information. Without complete transparency (disclosure of all chemicals used and outlawing nondisclosure agreements in cases involving public health) and complete testing, science cannot proceed unimpeded. Without careful science demonstrating, not the absence of proof of harm, but rather the clear absence of harm to public health, neither state nor federal regulations can assure that the food supply and the health of individuals living near gas drilling and processing operations will be protected.

Until we can protect public health with greater certainty, unconventional shale gas extraction should be severely limited or banned, using the subsidies currently provided to support this industry to instead develop and deploy renewable forms of energy.

NewVision

What else than toxic chemicals can we find in the brine coming back with the fracking fluids?

Fracking – The Elephant in the Gas

Like the “elephant in the room” saying means something which needs to be addressed is in fact being ignored, the Elephant in the fracking room is in the Gas. Specifically – Radiation.

Radioactivity (NORM – Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials) exist in shale formations. When disturbed by human activity it becomes known as TENORM (Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials).TENORMS are found in the drill cuttings, returned Frackwater, Produced Brine, “re-cycled” frackwater, and the natural gas itself. Equipment, such as drills, drill bits and other equipment used over and over again to created gas wells may also become contaminated with radiation due to repeated exposure. Radiation has also been detected in water wells which have been contaminated by drilling activities.

See: The Elephant in the Gas for more information.

NewVision

WWF supports IEA conclusion: two thirds of fossil fuel reserves must be left underground

Two thirds of all proven fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if the world is serious about avoiding dangerous climate change, according to the International Energy Agency in its World Energy Outlook 2012 report released today.

"The IEA's conclusion reflects sound science. CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are destabilizing our climate. We cannot burn fuels like coal and oil indefinitely without paying the price in the form of climate instability, droughts, heat waves and super storms. The IEA has done the only responsible thing by prominently highlighting this in its report," says WWF's Global Climate and Energy lnitiative leader Samantha Smith.

"This scientific and blunt assessment should be clearly heard by all countries, investors and the fossil fuel industry itself. This is not only about stopping all new large-scale fossil fuel exploration, such as those in the Arctic; this is about retiring existing dirty energy infrastructure as well, and it is the price to pay to avoid global climate disaster. We quickly needed to transition our energy economies if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe," she says

NewVision

Food & Water Europe has published a report which shows that the industry's speaking point about a 100 year supply of natural gas for the US is bogus. This report questions the assumptions behind the 100 year claim.

=> U.S. Energy Insecurity: Why Fracking for Oil and Natural Gas Is a False Solution

NewVision

Here the latest Fracking Matters Newsletter 51-12 (86)

NewVision

NewVision

No fracking of shale gas in Luxembourg

NewVision

How Unconventional Gas Threatens our Water, Health, and Climate

• The Myth that Gas is "Clean Energy"
• The Dangers Of Gas Drilling
• Big Oil's Takeover of the Gas Industry
• Gas Politics Are Polluted
• Gas Industry Lobbying Muscle
• Conclusion & Credits

• Download the PDF Version

NewVision

Why the War Against Fracking May Be Our Most Crucial Conflict, Fracking could ruin Ireland warn experts


Rural Ireland should be very wary of shale gas industry - Childers

NewVision

A Tour of Pennsylvania Hydrofracking Sites

NewVision

First Study of Its Kind Detects 44 Hazardous Air Pollutants at Gas Drilling Sites

According to a peer-reviewed study in the journal Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, more than 50 NMHCs [non-methane hydrocarbons] were found near gas wells in rural Colorado, including 35 that affect the brain and nervous system. Some were detected at levels high enough to potentially harm children who are exposed to them before birth.