The time has come for everyone to adopt new lifestyles to minimize GHG.

An Overview from Oxfam Policy & Practice, United Kingdom, November 7, 2022

The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments. New analysis of the investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies. Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act. Governments must hold them to account, legislating to compel corporates and investors to reduce carbon emissions, enforcing more stringent reporting requirements and imposing new taxation on wealth and investments in polluting industries.

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NOTICE ~ Twenty (20) of the richest billionaires are emitting more than 8000 times more greenhouse gases (GHG) than the billion poorest people.

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INFORMATION FOR COMPARISONS WITH LARGE NUMBERS:

1,000,000,000. One BILLION seconds is equal to 31.5 years.

Table 1. Standard & Poor’s Companies 1980 — 2018*

From an Article by Tom Sanzillo and Kathy Hipple, IEEFA, August 27, 2018

An outdated mindset that no longer lives up to its hype! For decades, the fossil fuel sector literally fuelled the global economy and powered the world’s investment markets.

This is no longer the case. The long-standing and now outdated investment thesis around fossil fuels—that such holdings would make large and reliable annual contributions to institutional funds—has crumbled.

The sector now lags the broader market, and the one-time assumption that an oil and gas company’s value equalled the number of barrels of oil, or reserves, it owned has collapsed alongside the core steady-returns rationale for investing in the sector.

A new paradigm is emerging: Cash, revenue, and profits matter, and risks cannot be ignored. Fossil fuel companies are responding in different ways to this shift, some more responsibly than others. But some companies (and their investors) ignore what’s happening, and they do so at their peril.

The absence of a coherent and honest industry-wide value thesis today places fossil fuel investors at a true disadvantage. The days of powerhouse contributions by such companies to investment fund bottom lines are over. The risks of continuing to invest in coal, oil and gas are formidable and unlikely to abate.

Given the industry’s lackluster rewards and the daunting risks it faces, responsible trustees and investors must ask: “Why are we in fossil fuels at all?” (See our recent report on that question here).

In the early 1980s, fossil fuel stocks comprised seven of the top 10 companies in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index. Today, only one, ExxonMobil, is in that class, where it ranks seventh after having been number one as recently as 2010.

* – Table 1: Standard and Poor’s Top 10 Companies, 1980-2018 (Source: https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/sp-500)

For the past five years, the energy sector has lagged almost every other industry globally. Instead of bolstering portfolio returns, energy stocks dragged them down, and investors lost billions of dollars.

Paradoxically, the fossil fuel sector’s fall was caused largely by a drop in prices that grew out of a major technological innovation: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which increased the supply of cheap oil and gas and emerged as a new source of supply that disrupted the dominance of OPEC. After 2014, oil prices crashed, oil company revenues plummeted, expensive capital investments failed, massive amounts of reserves were written off as no longer viable, and major bankruptcies occurred.

THE SECTOR’S DECLINE EXPOSED WEAKNESSES IN THE OLD INVESTMENT RATIONALE, part of which was built on the assumption that a company’s value was determined by the reserves it owned.

According to this thesis—one promoted by the industry and supported by many analysts and investors —oil and gas companies had to maintain an abundant portfolio of reserves, no matter the cost. These reserves would allow companies to deliver returns in any investment climate, specifically by weathering price declines that were viewed as temporary, and then profiting from relentless global economic growth that would forever spur demand for more oil and gas. Hydrocarbon reserves thus became a key metric of long-term value (see “Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power,” New York: Penguin Books, 2012, pps. 186-193).

This rationale worked for decades, and, as a result, many investors assumed that new reserves, even those acquired at great cost, would ultimately yield handsome rewards. The shale boom encouraged the oil and gas sector to double down on the reserve growth thesis, and Wall Street—long accustomed to viewing oil reserves as a key metric of financial value—bought into that mindset.

But fracking undermined the old reserve-based investment mindset in two ways. First, it rendered old estimates of total global reserves meaningless, as supplies of oil and gas were now viewed as abundant and no longer in short supply (at least not on a time frame that mattered to Wall Street).

Second, the price collapse caused by the new abundance of oil and gas actually destroyed the economic value of many reserves. Accounting rules define proven reserves in both geologic and economic terms: a reserve represents the amount of oil and gas that could be profitably extracted at expected future prices. But as expectations for future prices fell, many “reserves” were seen as suddenly unprofitable, forcing the industry to write off many of them as worthless.

As the old, reserve-focused investment thesis withered, oil and gas became just another commodity investment subject to the same short-term variables—prices, profits, cash flows, debt, dividends, and asset quality.

Cash is king now. And risk can no longer be ignored.

AS THE REWARDS OF INVESTING IN THE SECTOR HAVE DIMINISHED, RISKS HAVE RISEN—and will likely continue to rise. The sector is ill-prepared for a low-carbon future because of the many idiosyncratic factors of individual companies and an industry-wide failure to acknowledge—and plan for—the energy transition that is gaining momentum.

The global economy is shifting toward less energy-intensive models of growth, geopolitical tensions are creating near-daily volatility, fracking has driven down commodity and energy costs and prices, and renewable energy and electric vehicles are gaining market share.

Add to all that the fact that litigation on climate change and other environmental issues is expanding and campaigns in opposition to fossil fuels have matured. Such forces are now a material risk to the fossil fuel sector and an argument unto themselves for the reallocation of capital to renewable energy and electric vehicles.

These risks, taken cumulatively, indicate that the old investment rationale for investing in the coal, oil and gas sector has lost its validity. Successful investing in these industries now requires deep expertise, strong judgment, a hefty appetite for risk and a robust understanding of how individual companies are positioned with respect to their competitors both inside and outside the industry.

Where passive investors could once choose from a broad basket of oil and gas industry securities with little reason to fear they would lose money, that assumption no longer holds. Blue-chip stocks with stable returns are far more appealing, and—simply put— coal, oil, and gas equities are no longer worth the risk.

>>> Tom Sanzillo is IEEFA’s director of finance. Kathy Hipple is an IEEFA financial analyst.

SEE ALSO: IEEFA Update: How Gas and Oil Companies Are Starting to Look Like the Yellow Pages

Representative Gas Well Depletion Curves

Part 4. The future expense(s) to investors, to drillers, to government, and to you!

Original Article by S. Tom Bond, Retired Professor of Chemistry and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

The drilling treadmill. This is a name given to the result of rapid decline in production of shale wells. Most shale wells produce substantially for a year, then rapidly decline thereafter. Thus if a field is to maintain production, another well must be drilled in three to five years, then another, then another.

The “drilling treadmill” was first recognized by David Hughes, a prominant geologist in Canada after studying 65,000 different wells from 31 different unconventional shale rock formations. He “warned that shale gas and tight oil operations shared four big challenges: escalating capital costs, uneven performance and a growing environmental footprint, all followed by rapid depletion.” And “Shale gas can continue to grow, but only at higher prices and that growth will require an ever escalating drilling treadmill with associated collateral financial and environmental costs — and its long term sustainability is highly questionable…” This study was done in 2012.

Geological consultant Arthur Berman has seconded that analysis and expanded it. In an article published in March of this year he says ” On the gas side, all shale gas plays except the Marcellus are in decline or flat. The growth of US supply rests solely on the Marcellus and it is unlikely that its growth can continue at present rates.”

On oil, ” The idea that Texas shales will produce one-third of global oil supply is preposterous.” He also says, “Oil companies have to make a big deal about shale plays because that is all that is left in the world. Let’s face it: these are truly awful reservoir rocks and that is why we waited until all more attractive opportunities were exhausted before developing them. It is completely unreasonable to expect better performance from bad reservoirs than from better reservoirs.” And “None of this is meant to be negative. I’m all for shale plays but let’s be honest about things, after all! Production from shale is not a revolution; it’s a retirement party.”

The Telegraph of London Calls the fossil fuel industry the “subprime danger of this cycle. The article begins ” The epicentre of irrational behaviour across global markets has moved to the fossil fuel complex of oil, gas and coal. This is where investors have been throwing the most good money after bad.” Then “Data from Bank of America show that oil and gas investment in the US has soared to $200 billion a year. It has reached 20 % of total US private fixed investment, the same share as home building. This has never happened before in US history, even during the Second World War when oil production was a strategic imperative.”

One of the world’s premiere financial newspapers, it says, “A large chunk of US investment is going into shale gas ventures that are either underwater or barely breaking even, victims of their own success in creating a supply glut. One chief executive acidly told the TPH Global Shale conference that the only time his shale company ever had cash-flow above zero was the day he sold it – to a gullible foreigner.”

Energy Aspects, a consulting firm which also publishes material on the web at www.energyaspects.com, in an article entitled “The other tale of shale” has this to say about shale: “The very nature of shale wells, which exhibit high decline rates, results in the need to constantly allocate capital towards exploration drilling in order to maintain and grow production volumes. As a result, the average capital expenditure spending of the 35 companies analyzed to serve as a guide to the industry has amounted to a staggering $50 per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) over the last five years, at a time when their revenue per BOE has averaged $51.5. For these same companies, free cash flow has been negative in almost every quarter since Q2 07.” (Free cash flow is the money a company has to distribute to investors, assuming they don’t want to use it to grow.)

This sort of explains why your friends who have royalties haven’t been getting them lately – in effect they have been making a forced loan to the driller that doesn’t cost him interest, and one he can take out without going to the bank. I know of one family suing for retained royalties in the amount of $8,000,000! And others.

Continuing damage.  As long as wells are drilled more damage is going to be done. Land use will be converted, roads broken, people made sick, future production of food and timber prevented, out door recreation destroyed, retirement possibilities for out of state couples denied, and living in the drilling field made unpleasant to impossible.

Pennsylvania state inspection records, no less, show compromised cement and/or casing integrity in up to 9.1% of the active oil and gas wells drilled since 2000, with up to a  2.7-fold higher risk in un-conventional wells drilled since 2009 relative to conventional well types. Hazard modeling suggests that the cumulative loss of structural integrity in wells across the state may actually be slightly higher than this, and upward of 12% for unconventional wells drilled since January 2009.

A recent investigative report of water contamination cases confirmed PA-DEP determination letters and enforcement orders indicating that at least 90 private water supplies across the state were damaged due to subsurface gas migration between 2008 and 2012.

Keep in mind that water in an aquifer may move very slowly. It may take years or decades for contamination to reach some water wells. Hydraulic cement decays over time. So it is not unreasonable to expect water wells will continue to be contaminated by shale drilling for a long indefinite time.

There is no formal provision for plugging shale wells. The permits only cost $25,000 and plugging is not in the leases. Plugging would cost something like $100,000. West Virginia has 51,000 abandoned wells. Can you expect history to repeat itself? I am predicting here that most shale wells that will be plugged in the next 100 years will be done at public expense.  Mark Twain is supposed to have said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” I think we can anticipate this, unless we can get our citizens to intervene.

Go to: www.wvsoro.org

Public Meeting on Gas Property Leases in Weston, WV

Review & Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer and Retired Chemistry Professor, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV, July 2, 2014

On Tuesday, July 1, 2014, Tim Greene and Land and Mineral Management of Appalachia (LMMA) held a meeting in Weston to inform Lewis County residents of their services. He was assisted by Rob Wilming, and Mark Burdette handled physical details. LMMA offers management of oil and gas from leasing, through management of one’s income flow (making sure the lessor is not cheated by the leasing company, as Chesapeake may have done in two current court cases), to investment of the royalty received to provide long term income.

Mr. Greene began by giving several examples of bad deals in some leases. He explained LMMA will be able to spot these and explain how they will affect the lessor’s surface. They will be able to ask the right questions in behalf of the lessor and know the going rates for comparable tracts. They are experienced negotiators.

After the presentation there was an extended discussion of heirship in oil and gas ownership. One couple said one of the other heirs was a lawyer. Mr. Greene’s reactions was “Oh, my!” as if that would make it more difficult. During this discussion he also described partition suits, and said LMMA could handle your lease interest in such cases.

When asked if they handled other forms of natural resources, Mr. Wilming answered that they managed timber and “anything that has value.” The firm doesn’t have any lawyers in it, but has contacts to access lawyers when necessary.

One member of the audience said he had been approached about a right-of-way which was to extend 100 feet on each side of the 42 inch pipeline, and was offered $12,000 an acre. It is to carry gas from West Virginia to the Carolinas.

Another asked how long the gas would last. Some of the audience mentioned the well known rapid decline rate of shale wells. Mr. Wilming said he believes the companies will “come back and redrill and refracture.”

Still another audience member asked if the driller would plug the old well that gives a family free gas before drilling a Marcellus well. The answer was “sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t.” The reaction from the audience was that loosing free gas was a very important result to most rural people. One doesn’t usually receive free gas from a Marcellus well. One lady in the room claimed she had a relative that did.

Mr Greene’s concluding remarks included the statement that LMMA is working with clients, gathering information, but the clients decided whether to sign. “Our goal is to get ahead of the information,” he said. “If they don’t pay royalty we don’t get paid.” He also claimed this is being done elsewhere, it is a new concept , and that another company is doing it in southern West Virginia. One member of the audience remarked Mr. Greene was putting LMMA in a position requiring a remarkable degree of trust from the mineral owner with leasing, managing the flow of income, and investing it.

After the meeting this author discussed this approach by email with an expert who has extensive experience with leases, someone who was in the audience. He suggests this is what could happen:

What these guys are doing is trying to obtain exclusive rights to as much land and minerals as possible in order to gain more influence/leverage over the operators and thus drive lease prices and royalties. This is very similar to the land owner coalitions in NY. Once they get enough acreage accumulated the idea is to lease the entire leasehold for the highest price because the operator will have enough instant drilling units and room for transmission infrastructure.

It would thus give this group a huge amount of influence over the operator, and the landowner, because once you give them exclusive rights to negotiate for you then you are tied to the hip with them and have very little choice who they lease to. Since they want a retainer fee and commission sales agreement to advocate, that is why I asked for how long they held the corporation accountable, because the lease should stipulate that if there is water well contamination or anything that would affect the quality of life for the landowner, will they advocate for them.

I suspect the answer is no, they just want to lease and profit from the leasing. When the advocating is over, the landowner has no way to recover from a home that may now be uninhabitable with no potable water, etc. They will not advocate when the landowners property value drops or the quality of life is destroyed. If they stipulated or factored this into the lease then it is possible, but no operator in the world would go for it.

It could be, in the end, the only person they are really advocating for is themselves and their bank accounts, negotiating the lease never to be heard from again once the ink dries on the paper.

>>> NOTE: LAMMA above is one of a number of “Lawyers and Experts for Surface and Small Mineral Owners” listed by the WV Surface Owner’s Rights Organization.

"induced seismicity" under study

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV

1. The top ten well-pads in Pennsylvania [in 2013] have produced 820 million dollars worth of natural gas, with estimated total royalty payouts of over 100 million dollars. These values are based on a total production of 245 million Mcf, at-the-wellhead pricing of $3.35/Mcf (the most recent pricing published by the US Energy Information Administration), and estimated 1/8th royalty payments (no allowances for production deductions). The residential pricing value of the produced gas is 2-1/3 billion dollars.

www.MarcellusGas.org 30 May 2014

With a few wells like this, no wonder the urban gambling investors are ready to despoil the countryside! Perhaps they think all Marcellus wells are as good.

2. The Bazhenov in Russia may be the largest shale play on earth. 80 times bigger than the Bakken. Despite the threat of sanctions hanging over Russia because of the standoff with Ukraine, Russian oil and gas opportunities like the Bazhenov appear to be too lucrative for Western companies to pass up, as follows:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/06/04/bakken-bazhenov-shale-oil/

ExxonMobil and Statoil have joint ventures with Rosneft, the Russian company. Not a drop of national loyalty to the U. S. to be seen here. Both the U. S and Norway (to a much lesser extent) are at loggerheads with Russia over Ukraine, while the oil companies are kissing Russia up, trying to get the oil.

3. Between 1967 through 2000, there were an average of 21 earthquakes yearly above magnitude 3.0. That rate shot up to an average of 300 earthquakes yearly after 2010. Because of the recent jump in earthquakes, and their significant size, the USGS plans to estimate the national shaking risk from “induced seismicity” for the first time, as follows:

http://news.yahoo.com/fracking-linked-earthquakes-may-strike-far-wells-133057848.ht

Ever see the old physics demonstration where the instructor fills a one gallon jug with water, inserts a cork so no air is between the cork and the water, then hits the cork lightly? The jug breaks easily. The identical force applied by one square inch of cork applies to each and every square inch of the interior of the jug.

Imagine the force that develops down the well when the equivalent volume of many tankers of water are forced down it day after day!

4. In 2013, the average total water volume for a fracturing event at a Pennsylvania unconventional well site was 5,365,363 gallons – the equivalent of 670 full tanker trucks. This is a 25% increase when compared to the average volume of water used per event in 2012 (4,259,693 gals). Our review of fracturing events shows the highest water usage recorded was nearly 19 million gallons. On February 15, 2012, the DCNR 595 6H well in Bloss township Tioga county, operated by Seneca Resources Corp, used 18,754,176 gallons of water for a fracturing event – enough to fill over 2,340 tanker trucks.

www.MarcellusGas.org 5/2/14

This “670 full tanker trucks average” is 96 truckloads of water a day for 7 days or one every 15 minutes, day and night for a full week. Noise, dust, diesel odors, lights at night, harrowing traffic conditions, school bus risk; and if rural, road destroyed, flag men, livestock and crops affected. If only Aubrey McClendon and Rex Tillman could live in such luxury, they would understand “externalized cost.”

5. Aubrey Miller found 52,000 unconventional (shale) gas wells in the U. S., yet when he searched the literature for research, he found little. “How do we have no data on an enterprise of this magnitude?”

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/science/20140302_GreenSpace__The_uncertain_state_of_gas_drilling_and_health.html#YRFxEB1kyymCLpea.99

The short answer: Because the industry doesn’t want any data let out.

Tomorrow, let’s focus on West Virginia specifically.

>>> Tom Bond is a retired professor of chemistry and resident farmer in central West Virginia <<<

Wet Gas By-Product Storage Tanks

Local Shale Industry Spending Ramping Up Rapidly

 >> Construction expenditures for the area take a huge jump from 2012

From an Article By Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, 01/14/14

 WHEELING – Powered by extensive Marcellus and Utica shale processing and pipelining infrastructure, the Wheeling Metropolitan Statistical Area saw construction investments grow from $60.3 million in 2012 to $1.72 billion in 2013. “I see another 5-10 years of construction like this,” said Keith Hughes, business manager at Ironworkers Local No. 549 in Wheeling. “It has been tremendous for our area and we appreciate all of the work we are getting.”

Williams Energy will eventually invest a total of $4.5 billion for Utica and Marcellus shale natural gas processing infrastructure in Marshall County, while Blue Racer Midstream and MarkWest Energy continue working on similar ambitious projects throughout the Upper Ohio Valley. Simultaneously, new hotels are opening at The Highlands, in St. Clairsville and in Morristown to accommodate those individuals now working in the shale regions.

It all adds up to show that construction in the Ohio (WV), Marshall (WV) and Belmont (OH) counties – collectively known as the Wheeling Metropolitan Statistical Area – grew to $1.72 billion in 2013. According to McGraw Hill Construction, the same area saw only $60.3 million worth of construction in 2012.

McGraw Hill tracks and analyzes construction trends throughout the nation. The company’s data shows that 2013 saw $1.7 billion worth of “non-residential” construction in the MSA, up from $54.3 million in 2012. Non-residential building includes offices, hotels, retail outlets, warehouses, manufacturing, education, hospitals and government buildings and infrastructure. The remaining amounts for both years are for “residential” building – $10.8 million in 2013 and $6 million in 2012.

The numbers could be even more impressive next year, as construction does not seem to be slowing. In Marshall County, the Williams company has three sites of operation: the Fort Beeler processing plant; the Oak Grove processing plant; and the Moundsville fractionation plant. While each of these sites are in some level of operation, the company continues building at each site, with most of these efforts now focused on the Oak Grove facility.

Once all projects are up and running, they will work as a cohesive unit to separate the liquid portions of the natural gas stream from the dry portions. Williams officials believe they will be able to process at least 2.5 billion cubic feet on natural gas per day.

In April 2012, Williams paid about $2.3 billion to acquire the Fort Beeler cryogenic processing plant – which can be seen along U.S. 250 between Moundsville and Cameron – and the other Marshall County operations of Caiman Energy. Williams is now in the midst of expanding with an additional $2.2 billion expenditure.

Williams spokeswoman Helen Humphreys said her company performed $1.64 billion worth of new construction in 2013, with plans to build $1.3 billion more this year. Hughes said the union appreciates Williams. ”We have 40 ironworkers out at Oak Grove right now,” Hughes said. “We are also doing work for MarkWest and Blue Racer. It is really a boon for us and for the whole area.”

MarkWest has invested $2.2 billion into pipelines, processing and fractionation plants in the region. MarkWest expanded its Majorsville facility in eastern Marshall County in 2013, via supply agreements with Consol Energy and Noble Energy. MarkWest also started a second de-ethanizer at the Majorsville site. Blue Racer continued building onto the Marshall County Natrium plant and its pipeline network in 2013 until a September 21, 2013 fire. (That facility has not yet resumed operation.)

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U.S. oil & gas industry to invest $890B in infrastructure to 2025

From an Article By Katherine Lymn, Forum News Service, January 9, 2014

The U.S. oil and gas industry is investing confidently in infrastructure the near future, according to a recent report on infrastructure investments. Those investments, of a projected $890 billion over the next 12 years, will pump the national economy with hundreds of thousands of jobs along with the ripple effects of a workforce with more spending money.

“It’s a time of optimism for the industry,” said James Fallon, director of downstream energy consulting at IHS Global Inc., which did the study. The investments will break down into an especially strong year this year, carrying over from a “banner year” in 2013, and will sustain at annual investments of at least $80 billion in midstream and downstream infrastructure until 2020.

The report noted developing shale formation areas will require more extensive investments in gathering and support facilities because they are not historic production regions. That issue is ever present in the minds of Bakken industry players as flaring of natural gas, which often occurs because of a lack of a pipeline hookup to transport the gas, becomes a top problem.

The study said pipelines will be the primary mover of oil and gas despite other methods increasing in popularity as of late. Investments in crude oil pipelines increased from $1.6 billion in 2010 to $6.6 billion last year.

North Dakota is seeing ripple effects across the state, such as the fertilizer plants in Jamestown and Grand Forks, and the manufacturing industry in Fargo where oilfield equipment is built. There’s also the ripple economic effect that comes from the increased workforce. “They need to eat somewhere, they need to sleep somewhere, they need places to refill their vehicles, they need leisure activities,” Fallon said.

An overall theme of the changing infrastructure is a shift in the focus of the industry toward exports away from the historical infrastructure supporting imports, a relic of the now outdated focus on getting oil from elsewhere.

With $24 Billion Already Invested in the U. S., and Losses of $2 Billion, Royal Dutch Shell is Shuffling & Studying

From an Article by Scott Detrow / StateImpact — Pennsylvania / October 7, 2013

Shell’s outgoing CEO Peter Voser tells the Financial Times of London that he regrets the company’s large investment into U.S. shale.

In an exit interview with the Financial Times, outgoing Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser says the company has yet to profit from its $24 billion investment into “unconventional” shale oil and gas in the United States.

Voser’s comments come just a little more than a week after Shell announced it would be selling its stake in Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale and after a $2 billion write down on its shale assets. Voser told the Financial Times that company was disappointed by the results of exploration in U.S. shale beds.

This may not be good news for Pennsylvania where Shell has been actively drilling in Tioga County and has proposed building a gas processing plant called an ethane cracker in Beaver County. In August, the company announced it was going out to bid for suppliers as part of an ongoing site evaluation process. But in an e-mail to StateImpact Pennsylvania, a Shell spokeswoman downplayed the news as merely a project update. The deadline for bids was on Friday, October 4 and the company is not expected to make a final decision until next year.

Governor Tom Corbett has high hopes for the project and is doing what he can to convince Shell to seal the deal by pushing for large tax breaks and touting the thousands of jobs it could bring to western Pennsylvania.

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Know Your Drillers – Shell (Royal Dutch Shell)

 From “Frack University” via Occupy the Hollers, October 18. 2013

Shell has a 5:6 violation-to-well ratio. Out of 603 wells drilled, we found that Shell subsidiaries, East Resources Inc., East Resources Mgmt. LLC and SWEPI LP, were cited for 494 violations by PA DEP.

90 percent of Shell’s violations were environmental in nature. Out of 494 violations, we identified 443 that were environmental in nature, which have, or are likely to cause harm to the environment.

Shell has been cited for a casing failure rate of about one percent of wells for a total of six citations. It is important to note that well casings are meant to protect aquifers from contamination by chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” , process. 

Shell was cited violations 45 times for Improper Construction of Waste Impoundments, 37 times for Faulty Pollution Prevention Practices, 25 times for Discharge of Industrial Waste. This presents imminent danger to surface and ground water supplies.

The Shale Game in a Nutshell with a White Elephant in the Room

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From the Op-Ed Commentary by S. Thomas Bond, The Charleston Gazette, February 14, 2013  

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Shale drilling has to be the strangest industrial development in history. The technology was brought into existence, to some considerable extent, at the Morgantown Energy Research Center under federal government funding and then by one determined individual, George Mitchell. There was no scale up phase with examination of the effects on the surroundings.

The estimate of vast quantities of gas available to new technology by Terry Engelder of Penn State University enabled an old industry in decline and short of reserves to tell a story to investors of a prospective bonanza. That brought oodles of money in from all over the world. Financial buccaneers over leased, over drilled, and now have had to slow down production because of a lack of market. Existing storage is full. It’s as though all that gas has to come out of the ground before it goes out of style.

The moneymaking part of the business has been the top end. Down where the gas must be sold the business is stalled. Companies such as Chesapeake are hurting. Two quick answers are proposed. One is to move production to natural gas liquids, which involves vast additional investment to utilize it. The other is to ship United States gas to other countries where the price is much higher, enabling their industries to compete better, increasing the price here and burdening our industries since the price will go up here also. This means it will not last so long, either.

The industry is like that famous statue in the Bible, which had a head of pure gold, chest and arms of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet of clay. Still the shale gas story is told over and over and elaborated further, because that’s what it takes to make the money roll in at the top.

The other side of the story is damaged aquifers, sickness of people and animals and property damage that affects not only the owners, but eventually the public also. Damaged areas are withdrawn from production for an indefinite long time, essentially forever. The industry ignores this, claiming it never happens. However, there are simply too many affected people to ignore it, everywhere the technology goes, in some 32 or states and elsewhere in the world.

Shale drilling is capital intensive, that is, it takes a lot of capital relative to the labor required. Other measures, such as energy conservation, with known technologies, put a lot more of the investment into labor, which quickly reenters the economy.

Then there is global warming. Each year see new evidence for a warming world caused by emissions of burning hydrocarbons. Climate change is destroying the forest in the West because beetles are not killed in winter. Storms and droughts are getting worse yearly. They caused some 52 billion dollars damage this year in the U. S. The ocean is rising due to melting glaciers and ice toward the poles. And the ocean is becoming more acid, dissolving reefs, where fish are most abundant, because carbon dioxide makes carbonic acid when it dissolves.

Global warming is the “white elephant in the room.” In other words something the people in power see, but can’t discuss. Petroleum is the world’s most wealthy industry. Some parts of it support global warming denial. All of it wishes to retain its almost unlimited freedom of action and high profit. It has sufficient influence through lobbying and campaign contributions, apparently, to throttle the discussion. In spite of the universal agreement among scientists, and wide spread acceptance of the concept among voters, it was not even mentioned in presidential debate this year!

When I was a student in organic chemistry at WVU, I remember Charles Lazzelle, the professor, say, “Its a shame to burn hydrocarbons. You can make such useful things from them.” He would be dismayed that we haven’t had any more progress in the 50 years since.

Without the profit and the jobs, shale drilling is an ugly thing. We need a crash scientific program for non-hydrocarbon energy and conservation, not more diddling with past technology in our crowded world.

Tom Bond is a retired teacher, has a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry, and is a member of the Guardians of the West Fork and the Monongahela Area Watersheds Compact. He lives on and maintains a 500-acre farm near Jane Lew in Lewis County, WV.