PHMSA proposal would broaden gas pipeline safety requirements

From an Article by Nick Snow, Oil & Gas Journal, March 17, 2016

The US Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has proposed broader natural gas transmission pipeline safety regulations that would add new assessment and repair criteria, and include lines in medium population density areas, called moderate consequence areas, where an incident would pose a risk to human life.

The proposed regulations provide pipeline operators with regulatory certainty, and respond to both congressional mandates and outside safety recommendations, the US Department of Transportation agency said as it released the proposed rule on March 17.

Specifically, they address four congressional mandates from the 2011 Pipeline Safety Reauthorization law, one Government Accountability Office recommendation, and six National Transportation Safety Board recommendations, including one adopted following the September 9, 2010, gas pipeline rupture and explosion in San Bruno, Calif., which killed eight people (OGJ Online, Jan. 6, 2011).

PMSA said pipelines built before 1970 are currently exempt from certain pipeline safety regulations because they were constructed and placed into operation before such requirements were developed, PHMSA explained. In its investigation of the PG&E gas pipeline failure and explosion, NTSB concluded that hydrostatic testing of grandfathered pipelines would have likely exposed the defective pipe that led to the San Bruno pipeline’s failure, PHMSA said.

“Following significant pipeline incidents such as the 2010 San Bruno, Calif., tragedy, there was a pressing need to enhance public safety and the integrity of the nation’s pipeline system,” PHMSA Administrator Marie Therese Dominguez said. “The proposal’s components address the emerging needs of America’s gas pipeline system, and adapt and expand risk-based safety practices to pipelines located in areas where incidents could have serious consequences.”

Comments on the proposed rule will be accepted for 60 days following its publication in the Federal Registered, which was expected shortly.

PHMSA said the proposed changes also are expected to reduce pipelines’ methane and other greenhouse gas emissions by lowering the number of incidents. The rule also would change the way pipeline operators secure and inspect gas transmission pipeline systems following extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and flooding. It also would:

• Modify repair criteria for pipelines inside and outside of high-consequence areas.

• Provide additional direction on how to evaluate internal inspection results to identify anomalies.

• Clarify requirements for conducting risk assessment for integrity management, including addressing seismic risk.

• Expand mandatory data collection and integration requirements for integrity management, including data validation and seismicity.

• Require additional post-construction quality inspections to address coating integrity and cathodic protection issues.

• Require new safety features for pipeline launchers and receivers.

• Require a systematic approach to verify a pipeline’s maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) and requiring operators to report MAOP exceedances.

Interstate Natural Gas Association of America Pres. Donald F. Santa said the association, which represents interstate gas pipelines, was encouraged to see PHMSA’s long-awaited proposals, and would begin to prepare its comments.

“Our initial analysis will focus on whether PHMSA’s proposal is consistent with the voluntary pipeline safety program INGAA’s members undertook in 2012,” he said on March 17. “This plan included several provisions that we anticipate will be addressed in this new rule, including expanding the federal pipeline integrity management program and ensuring that all pipelines are fit for service.”

An American Petroleum Institute official also reinforced the oil and gas industry’s general goal of improving safety and reducing incidents to zero as PHMSA released its proposed gas pipeline safety requirements.

“Safety is our industry’s core value,” said API Midstream Group Director Robin Rorick. “As we assess the content of the rule, we will be looking to ensure that any proposed change to the current regulatory framework does not compromise safety.

“Our industry continues to lead on creating new standards to enhance pipeline safety, and we look forward to working with PHMSA to ensure this new rule works with ongoing industry efforts to achieve our joint goal of zero incidents,” he noted.

American Gas Association Pres. David J. McCurdy noted that gas utilities also have been working closely with PHMSA for the past 5 years to develop pipeline regulations. “We appreciate PHMSA’s efforts and look forward to continuing to work with them to help ensure that the final rule is technically-based, reasonable, and cost-effective,” he said.

“We will take the time to analyze the proposed changes and work with our members to evaluate the rule’s impact and the estimated costs for implementation,” McCurdy said. “AGA will submit detailed comments that reflect our members’ commitment to infrastructure safety and public safety, without placing an undue economic burden on our customers.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Compendium on Risks & Harm of Fracking, 3rd Ed.

What is the future for West Virginia? For our children?

>>> Letter to Editor, S. Tom Bond, Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram, November 1, 2015

It is interesting that the E-T article on a pact among the Governors of  West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania to advance horizontal drilling for natural gas came the same day a review of the third edition of a compendium on the risks of fracking arrived.

These states are no stranger to allowing, even encouraging, a sacrifice zone for big business to operate. The history of West Virginia counts several waves of destruction of people and land. Much of Harrison County is underlain by coal mines or covered with strip jobs. The orange water from hundred year old mines still flows in many areas and there are sinkholes from old mines dotting the surface.

The timbered areas have largely recovered with smaller trees. The areas once affected by oil and gas development, where salt water discharged down hillsides, and oil was lost overland until it covered creeks, have regained cover but not productivity.

The effective slavery of working for a company that paid in script is being forgotten, as are the many broken bodies left in caved in mines. Where was democracy in those days? Who in the legislature represented those diminished people who worked in the extraction industry?

“If natural resource extraction made an area rich, West Virginia would have streets paved with gold.” The fact is that natural resource extraction provides dull jobs that make one ill adapted to doing other work, and in hard times no one wants to hire such people.

So the governors of these three states are setting us up for another round. Anybody want to guess West Virginia won’t be the butt of it all?

What is coming this time is clearly indicated in the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking, third edition, published by Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Physicians for Social Responsibility. Chemicals are used by companies with no chemical expertise and no idea of health effects. Often sold by companies with no knowledge of health effects.

It is no longer possible to look at the data and conclude that fracking is safe.

Government agencies must act to protect the citizens they represent. If they fail to do so, citizens need to take local action to make sure their communities are protected.

As for the economics, drilling for gas and oil are notoriously high capital, low labor enterprises. The subsequent chemical industry is also not labor intensive, and both do not require much decision making on the part of the labor, failing to make them versatile enough to do other work if necessary.

So what kind of future is there for West Virginia? For our children? I’d suggest our political class needs to look around and find out what is going on in the world and not just talk to people who have schemes to get themselves rich.

>>> S. Tom Bond is a retired Professor of Chemistry and resident Farmer living in Lewis County in central West Virginia. He is an active participant in various conservation groups.

Everyone has UN human rights

“Guide to International Human Rights Law and Fracking” now available

From a Summary by Jessica Ernst, Jessica Ernst Blog, June 12, 2015

Guide to International Human Rights Law and Fracking by the Sisters of Mercy International Association: Global Action, and Aine O’Connor, RSM Mercy Global Action Co-ordinator at the United Nations, writers and editors include Rita Parks and Elizabeth Willmott-Harrop, June 12, 2015

INTRODUCTION

The hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry is booming. So are industry cash settlements and property buyouts for people who say fracking has ruined their water, lowered their house prices and destroyed their quality of life. From farm animals dropping dead overnight to low birth weights in human infants, fracking is becoming synonymous with harm, and the process is seen to harm ecosystems, as well as animal and human health.

Often overlooked in the fracking debate is the fact that fracking can breach international human rights law in multiple ways. What can also be overlooked is the fact that existing international human rights mechanisms are available to people on the ground in asserting their rights.

This Guide aims to contribute to the debate on fracking by outlining how International Human Rights Law can empower and reposition people and communities as rights-holders, providing an extensive overview of accountability mechanisms to address threats or harms from fracking. These can be manyand include violations to the right to health, water, food, housing, freedom of information and expression, the rights of children, and the cultural and collective rights of indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, and peasant communities.

As with all new and emerging technologies, the risks and negative impacts of fracking are also new and emerging, and the legal framework must keep pace with these consequences.

This challenges civil society actors to contribute to the dialogue and debate about what is appropriate in the name of economic progress and the thirst for fuel and, conversely, what must be halted or changed.

We hope that this Guide will contribute to the improvement of environmental, social and economic policy with regard to fracking and, indeed, as policy applies to any other extractive technology or activity seeking to affect or exploit the natural environment.

As such, this Guide is also a tool for governments as a reminder of their responsibilities both toward their citizens and in preventing rights violations by non-state actors such as  extractive industries.

Primarily, however, this is a guide for action by individuals in claiming their rights. Whether you as a reader are an individual affected by fracking in your community, or belong to a campaigning group wishing to highlight global concerns, you can use this Guide to take action.

The Guide focuses on how the existing international human rights framework can be applied to the issue of hydraulic fracturing with a view to understanding the impact of fracking on human rights and how action can prevent human rights violations.

The business sector can also benefit from using this Guide to become better informed about its responsibilities in upholding people’s rights and respecting the Earth.

This Guide is produced by the Sisters of Mercy (NGO), Mercy International Association: Global Action, enjoying special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. We wish to thank Franciscans International for their consultation in its development.

>>> A Colorado State scientist called the state’s oil and gas boom “a death sentence for soil.” <<<

In a submission to the Parliament of South Australia, Natural Resources Committee Inquiry into Unconventional Gas (i.e., fracking) in February 2015,  Anne Daw summarized the impact on the community:

“Valid community concerns exist in regard to environmental, economic, water security, sustainable food bowl, local, national and international export markets, and tourism. People are concerned with demographic changes, associated strain on community services, loss of lifestyle as they now know it, and insecurity regarding their futures. Impacts on landscape, triggering of earthquakes, seawater intrusion and the fact that the South East is built on limestone with a number of caves, fault lines, sinkholes and subsidence … Limestone subsidence and sinkhole formation are hastened by unconventional gas activities.”

Access to basic services like quality water and sanitation are indivisible from the realization of the right to adequate housing. If fracking can impact people’s access to water of adequate quantity and quality, it in turn impacts the right to adequate housing.

…

2.5 FRACKING AND THE RIGHT of access to information

Due to secrecy in the fracking process and policies of nondisclosure, citizens and regulators cannot always know all the risks or indeed whether negative trends in health and environment, for example, are directly related to fracking. There are two major ways in which practices of hydraulic fracturing often lack transparency:

• The identity of chemicals injected underground can be kept hidden from the public, and
• Lawsuits against drilling companies are often resolved through confidential legal settlements.

…

Early Warnings, Later Lessons
The human rights impacts of fracking are both far-reaching and severe.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Support OVEC on 6-15-15

The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition Continues Their Outstanding Work

Remodeling the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex

LNG Terminals and the Environmental Unlearning of Philadelphia

From an Article by Michael Silverstein, Earth Island Journal, May 27, 2015

The lure of fossil fuels for America’s fifth largest city

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It’s hard not to think of that definition when considering current plans to build Philadelphia’s economic future on making it a major fossil fuel-based energy hub.

Philadelphia has a long history as a fossil fuel based energy hub, and business and political leaders are now hoping to revive that history with a new LNG export terminal.

The insanity factor here is that this history as a fossil fuel-based energy hub brought very painful consequences. The United State’s first oil wells were drilled in Pennsylvania in the 1850s. It was natural that much of the output from these wells would be processed in the state’s largest city. Over the years, even into the 1970s, refineries (there were seven then, five today), petrochemical manufacturers of plastics and other fossil fuel dependent products, along with related infrastructure, proliferated in around Philadelphia.

The cumulative result of all this economic activity was a massive build up of pollution residues. Which was why Forbes magazine in 2011 ranked Philadelphia the country’s most polluted large American city, the “capital of toxicity,” in the magazine’s own trenchant phrase.

Given that history, what could now lead Philadelphia’ business and political leaders to promote a major fossil fuel-based energy hub to reanimate the city’s future economy, a plan leading the press to dub Philadelphia, “the new Houston?” The answer to this question comes down to four words: Marcellus shale natural gas.

Most of the prolific production from Marcellus shale gas wells is now generated in Pennsylvania. The “new Houston” development plan envisions Philadelphia as the a major recipient of this gas, almost all of which now goes elsewhere by pipeline, primarily to processing facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. A proposed LNG (liquefied natural gas) exporting terminal in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond section has in recent months become the focus of much of the debate over this whole energy hub concept.

The environmental objections to this LNG terminal touch upon its possible (and indeed likely) negative effects on local air and water quality. They also include upstream environmental issues, notably the enhanced Marcellus shale fracking that would be necessary to meet the natural gas supply needs of a Philadelphia LNG producer/terminal and the resulting impact on climate change.

The risks to air quality were neatly laid out this March by Matt Walker, the community outreach director with the Clean Air Council, in testimony at a Philadelphia City Council hearing. “A fossil fuel energy hub as it’s currently being envisioned,” he said, will include “liquefied natural gas, oil trains, gas and gas liquids pipelines, and petrochemical manufacturing. Increasing the number of such facilities [including the proposed LNG terminal] would reverse the progress the city has made in cleaning up its air by re-invigorating and ramping up many of the same types of pollution sources as those largely responsible for Philadelphia’s history of poor air quality…. Such a build-up will substantially further degrade Philadelphia’s air quality and have a disproportionate impact on low-income neighborhoods being asked to host such facilities.”

“A fossil fuel energy hub,” he continued, “would also increase the potential risk to public safety should an accident occur.” This last comment has an almost prescient quality. Two months after Walker’s testimony, a horrific Amtrak accident on rails running through Port Richmond (where the LNG facility would be located) killed eight and injured scores.

Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of Delaware River Keepers, pointed out that the proposed LNG terminal would pose risks to shipping on the Delaware River from transport leaks, explosions, and fires. She added, “You also should be looking at the myriad upstream impact problems … [including] cumulative life cycle gas emissions. There are huge lifecycle risks to be considered … but no cradle to grave evaluations on the local and regional environment have been done,” she said.

One very troubling aspect about the LNG terminal debate in Philadelphia, and indeed the whole energy hub debate in the city, is the fact that officials who will ultimately be called upon to make key decisions in this realm don’t seem to be listening to environmentalist arguments very closely. “City Council seems more interested in special interests than taking the public’s interests seriously,” said Carluccio. “There hasn’t been a true opportunity for environmental and community groups to be heard … and when we are heard, we’re given short shift.”

Adding to this view, Walker noted: “Most energy hub hearings at City Council are industry dog and pony shows. Environmentalists routinely get pushed to the end of the hearing agendas…. [They] have only had token opportunities to speak to mostly empty rooms to present their case to City Council.”

Walker opined that much of this may be due to confusion among City Council members about the nature of frack-generated natural gas. “They don’t appreciate that this energy is not ‘green’ energy but fossil fuel-based energy,” he said. An important point, not only when it comes to the proposed LNG terminal in Philadelphia or to the city’s whole energy hub planning, but with respect to the broader future of natural gas as part of the world’s power generating and transportation mix.

Currently, the mid- and long-term future of the city’s LNG export terminal seems dim, not because of many well-founded environmental concerns, but due to economic and competitive factors.

Almost all of the 60-odd large-scale LNG export terminals already in operation or planned and under construction around the world, including 12 in the United States, will likely become operational before a Philadelphia one could do so, co-opting the world LNG market. The pipeline infrastructure to make a Philadelphia LNG export terminal operational does not yet exist, and money to bring it into being is not currently available. And most significant, a similar terminal in Cove Point, Maryland already has the necessary infrastructure in place and government export terminal construction approval.

The Philadelphia facility’s future aside, however, LNG terminals like it are a good focal point when it comes to considering the larger issue of the future of natural gas, like the huge quantities now coming from Pennsylvania’s fracking-dependent Marcellus shale deposits.

Is this fossil fuel destined to win grudging approval from environmentalists, its fracking genesis and methane emissions notwithstanding, because it might be better than coal for electricity generation and better than diesel as a transportation fuel? Or are renewables such as solar, wind and geothermal coming on so quickly for electricity generation and electric transportation models building enough momentum to dispense with natural gas as an intermediary between the fossil fuel energy past and the green energy future?

These are the big questions to ask. Once answered, questions about LNG export terminals like the one now being considered in Philadelphia will find their own answers naturally. And cities planning their economic growth with an emphasis on energy might start looking beyond the kind of futures long peddled by fossil fuel and petrochemical interests.

>>> Read about the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex, receiving natural gas liquids (NGL) via the Mariner East pipeline.

>>> See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net

"The Real Cost of Fracking", Beacon Press, Boston (2014)

Seven (7) books on “fracking” (horizontal drilling with slick-water high-pressure hydraulic fracturing using silica sand)

From an Article by Katharine Whittemore, Boston Globe,  May 23, 2015

Blame — or thank — the volcanoes. Out here in Western Massachusetts, we sit on a geological shelf called the Hartford Basin, which runs from Vermont to the Connecticut shore, and its shale is pretty lacking, for fracking, because ancient volcanic activity heated up the trapped natural gas so much, it likely cooked it off. That’s why fracking companies, in search of natural gas, don’t much care for New England; in the Northeast, they love Pennsylvania, and its baked-just-right geology. In fact, the Marcellus Shale, named for a town in New York and stretching west to Ohio and south to Tennessee, is the nation’s biggest natural-gas producing region. How big? It holds 84 trillion cubic feet of the stuff. But the Hartford Basin? Only 3.5 billion. We aren’t worth the candle.

Massachusetts may not do fracking, with all the environmental concerns it stirs up, but the practice affects us nonetheless. Over the weeks I read these books, I spotted lots of “Say No to the Pipeline” lawn signs, courtesy of nofrackedgasinmass.org; the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. wants to funnel their Marcellus loot through New England, as far as Dracut. Pipeline yes or no, one fourth of US energy use now comes from natural gas. Amazing, since its been “as inaccessible as the sword in the stone from Arthurian legend,” writes Russell Gold, until innovations in hydraulic fracturing changed the game forever.

Gold is the senior energy reporter for the Wall Street Journal and author of “The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World” (Simon and Schuster, 2014). He issues a smart overview of the history, the process, and the players, with a charged personal twist; his parents debate whether to let Chesapeake Energy frack their Pennsylvania farmland. We think of fracking as a new technology, but there’s a long comet trail of trial and error here. Just after the Civil War, an oilman named Edward Roberts invented the “Roberts torpedo,” cylinders filled with gunpowder that were lowered into water wells, in order to jet new seams in nearby oil-rich rock. After World War II, oilman Bob Fast added surplus napalm to the water, but this, and many like efforts after, produced too little return.

Gold also covers our modern pioneers, George Mitchell of Mitchell Energy and Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy. The turning point comes when hydraulic fracturing (shooting “slick-water,” full of chemicals and abrading sand) gets married to horizontal drilling, in that a long vertical drill (think the letter I) bends perpendicular far underground (now it’s an L). The water mixture is pumped in under high pressure, prying cracks open in the rock, and freeing gas trapped within. Gold is no fracking apologist here. But he does emphasize the benefits, namely that natural gas is the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel (its footprint is 60 percent lower than coal’s, the most carbon-intensive). It’s a bridge fuel, buying us time to perfect how to power the earth on sun and wind: “Until then, natural gas is the best available option available for reducing carbon emissions, without grinding the wheels of modern economies to a halt.”

In “Groundswell: The Case for Fracking” (Signal, 2014), Ezra Levant comes out swinging. He calls the opposition “hysterical” and “environmental extremists.” He also says the EPA has “found no proven cases of fracking-related contamination. Exactly zero. Not a single one, anywhere, ever.” It’s true that it’s hard to prove whether contaminants come from the fracking process, though rebuttals thrive in my other books. His more compelling point is that fracking is not just “about the cash,” it’s “about freedom.” Indeed, natural gas means that America is no longer beholden to those OPEC nations, or any other oil producers, that violate human rights. The choice is between “western shale gas versus Russian Gazprom gas, Iranian ayatollah gas, or Qatari sharia gas.” He adds: “It’s the choice between ethical energy and conflict energy.”

Richard Heinberg disdains the other side, too, though he’s got a better sense of humor about it in “Snake Oil: How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future” (Post Carbon Institute, 2013). “[L]et the metaphor begin!” he says, and rolls out two teams, the first dubbed the “Cornucopians,” who think the natural gas supply could last up to a hundred years, like a horn of plenty. Their philosophy? “There’s nothing to worry about, folks. Just keep driving.” The Cornucopians are selling you snake oil, says Heinberg, thus his book title. But the Peakists (Heinberg’s team) can prove the downward slide is already here; he crunches the stats (or maybe gives the frackonomics?), stressing that the extraction rate stopped growing in 2005, so the peak has passed. All in all, it’s “downright dumb” to keep relying on fossil fuels.

Words like dumb or hysterical never appear in this next, refreshingly dispassionate, entry. In “Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University, 2013), Alex Prud’homme says fracking “is neither all good nor all bad,” though he admits that his case-against-it chapter is longer than the case-for-it one. Still, natural gas has been called “the fuel of no choice” because it’s better than oil and coal (because of those lower carbon emissions) and nuclear (because it releases no radioactivity). I was alarmed, however, to learn that companies are not required, by law, to reveal which chemicals slick their water; veteran fracking states like Pennsylvania have now passed disclosure laws, but new ones to the game (like Kansas) haven’t. In 2011, a congressional report said that of the 2,500 chemicals used in the fracking process, 650 contain “known or possible human carcinogens.” Meanwhile New Jersey and Vermont have banned fracking, and New York is holding off, until environmental impact studies are done.

“Shale Gas: The Promise and the Peril” (RTI, 2012) tries to be even-handed, too, but it certainly cants toward promise over peril: Author Vikram Rao was the former chief technology officer of Halliburton, and currently directs North Carolina’s Research Triangle Energy Consortium. Rao is astute at presenting science-for-regular-people and clear-eyed that the boom market for natural gas, the second-chance fossil fuel, has slowed the onset of the renewables age. Thus “[p]olicy mechanisms are needed to level the playing field.” As such, Rao points to Alberta, Canada, where they tax oil from the Tar Sands, siphoning the revenue toward fixing eco-problems linked to oil and gas.

My last two books may not be carbon-neutral, but they are jargon-neutral, since they’re well-written, well-reported, and very human. “Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale” (Cornell University, 2012) is by Tom Wilber, a former newspaper reporter in upstate New York, and because an academic press published it, the book was peer reviewed. And indeed, it opens with a field trip with a professor of geosciences (Terry Engelder of Penn State), the renowned (and controversial) authority on the Marcellus Shale. But Wilber also gives us many residents of Dimock, Pa., like the dairy farmer, the plumber’s widow, and more, who wrestle with the Faustian bargain of selling drilling rights to their land.

Finally, to my most marvelous title, “The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone” (Random House, 2011). Author Seamus McGraw is both meticulous and moody in this memoir/long-form journalism combo, kind of John McPhee meets Karl Ove Knausgaard. In 2007, when the writer’s mom calls from their Pennsylvania farm to say a fracking company had approached her — to the tune of $250,000, with perhaps millions in royalties later — McGraw admits he didn’t know the “difference between Marcellus Shale and Cassius Clay.” But, having grown up here, he does know the abundance underground: “Even in the dead of winter, if you reach down and touch the ground, it’s hot. It’s like hell is buried one shovelful down.”

He goes on to describe the material and psychological disturbances of living in Frackistan. The sounds of blasting, construction, the endless trucks carting in water. But more than that, it’s the fraying of community. “[P]eople who had always stoically shared the hardships of rural life seemed no longer willing to share anything at all,” McGraw writes. It was, as one woman put it, “the end of country.” Thanks to once active volcanoes, and current volcanic activists, the Bay State has kept that, at least, at bay.

Katharine Whittemore is a freelance writer based in Northampton, MA. Another book that could (should) be considered is: The Real Cost of Fracking, Beacon Press, Boston, 2014. Also of prime importance is “climate change” as discussed for example in: This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein, Simon & Schuster, 2014.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Risks of Living Near Ground Zero

Public health advocates push for Marcellus Shale registry

From an Article by Marie Cusik, NPR State Impact (Pennsylvania), May 20, 2015

More than seven years into the drilling boom, health advocates continue to push the state to track drilling-related complaints.

Public health advocates continue to urge the state to do a better job of tracking health complaints related to natural gas development. The state Department of Health and Department of Environmental Protection are discussing ways to work together to better monitor Marcellus Shale related health issues. But so far, there’s no money for those efforts.

Governor Wolf has proposed $100,000 to the health department in his budget plan, but it’s not guaranteed to make it through the legislature. Acting DEP Secretary John Quigley says he takes the issue seriously. “If that doesn’t pass, we’ll have to look for Plan B. This is an issue that’s not going away,” he says. “There are questions. They need to be dealt with in a transparent way.”

Health advocates say $100,000 is not enough money to fund a health registry, but they’re encouraged the state is taking steps to investigate complaints.

Raina Rippel directs the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, which tracks drilling related complaints. She spoke to DEP’s Citizens Advisory Council Wednesday about the benefits of monitoring health issues. “We truly believe this is a timely, urgent issue,” says Rippel. “We want to see action on this as soon as possible. We understand the political machine is such that it could take some time to see this fully up and running.”

In 2012, when Pennsylvania updated its oil and gas law, $2 million was set aside for the health department to track the issue—but the funding was ultimately cut from the legislation.

As StateImpact Pennsylvania has previously reported, some people who live near gas infrastructure believe their ill health is linked to drilling, but doctors say they simply don’t have the data or research – from the state or other sources – to confirm that.

Over the past four years the PA state health department says it has received 86 complaints from people who believe their symptoms are associated with gas development.

See also: Southwestern Penna. Environmental Health Project

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

See also the “List of the Harmed” being compiled by the Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Water & Air. This list currently counts 16,220 individuals that have been harmed as of May 18, 2015. And, this list is incomplete, very much so!

Rural Oil & Gas Industrialization

Why damages “never” occur in oil and gas extraction!

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

The human animal is a creature of habit. Analysis of our behavior involves the expenditure of energy, which is abhorred by our animal nature; and so custom, precedent and habit, lag behind change. Occasionally the spirit soars when understanding comes on a higher level, but to change our society is very difficult.

Oil and gas extraction began a long time ago, very gradually. Little energy was required, in fact little was available. The return was great, and since little area was disturbed by extraction, damages could be ignored. Most of what was used, lumber and nails, most of the waste oil and gas were removed by natural microbiological processes, and the iron machinery was valuable enough to be removed for junk. The marks down the hillside caused by salt water are still there, but grassed over – I have worked over them all my farming life. The oil on the creeks has washed away. The drilling platform was made by pick and shovel and occasionally by horse drawn slip scraper, and you can still find them, but they are not conspicuous.

Another factor was that the West was still open, so land was cheap. Cash money was hard to come by – think of the inflation since then. Much of the time in those days the wage for farm workers was “a dollar a day and all you can eat” – one good meal!

So it didn’t occur to people who owned both land and petroleum to separate the total return from the minerals into two parts – damage and mineral payment – it looked like a lot of money, just take it and smile.

When their children decided to move to town, some clever lawyers figured out a way to allow them to continue receiving the “royalty” payment for the specified minerals, and allow some land hungry person to buy the “surface.” This is called “separation of estates.” Invariably the mineral owner retained the “right to remove the (specified) minerals,” by methods unspecified. The new surface owner doubtless thought of the methods then in use and land value then current. He could hardly have been expected to think of changes in technology that would occur in 100 years.

Those early wells were drilled by spudding. That is raising and dropping a weight of solid iron about 6 inches in diameter weighing about a ton. Water was pumped out of the well, not brought to it, and the road was only wide enough for the oxen to drag up the engine block and later one track to allow a standard truck to come up and go down the hill one way at a time. Little rock was used, because it had to be broken up to the preferred size by hand. Qualitatively it was a different technology.

Fracking up to the 1950′s was done by dropping a bottle of nitroglycerin “down the hole.” In the early years the bottle was brought to the site by a horse and buggy which everyone on the road very carefully avoided. The remains of this extraction method are not conspicuous in 2015.

Today fracking involves 1000 truck-loads of water, carrying 4,000,000 gallons of water, truck-loads of chemicals of known and unknown toxicity. This is for each well and each well produces an average of 1,000,000 gallons of toxic flow-back carrying not only the chemicals sent down the well, but chemicals dissolved in the 180 degree temperature below. Trucks must pass, so the roads are often wider than the public road they hook up to. Drill pads and roads use acres and acres of land covered with thick crushed limestone that will be readily identifiable 2000 years from now. And acres and acres of pipeline right of way that will not be producing timber for 70 or more years after the production is abandoned. The return on capital and energy expended in drilling has diminished from over 50 to 1 to something like 10 to 1. Environmental damage has increased as a consequence by a similar factor.

And still there is no damage in the gas field, they say. Technology has outpaced custom and law. The rules are the same as they were in the beginning – the damage can be ignored because the return is so large. The owner of the minerals is not the owner of the damage, however. With separation of the minerals from the surface estate, separation of the income from the damage also took place. The surface owner took the environmental damage, the risk to his/her family from contamination of air and water, the inconvenience of the operation on the farm with fences to be rebuilt, areas cut off from the rest of the farm, diversion of storm water from its original path, toxic effects on the crops and livestock, and inconvenience to living standards. He still pays the same property tax while drilling and extraction is going on and in spite of the reduced productivity afterwards.

No damage done in the gas field? Deep mendacity. Mental laziness. Conservatism in the worst sense of the word – no thought.

The notion that environmental damage is less with slick water horizontal drilling and fracture is the invention of those who look at maps, not people who look at the result. It is not what the parties had in mind with separation of estates 70 years ago. It can absolutely ruin the small owner. Continuation of this practice is the result of the difficulty of making mental and legal rearrangement with a gradual change which has now become a revolution.

There is a precedent for making such a change, however. When strip mining first came into use a similar severance claim was the rule with coal. The miner obtained the coal and striped it with no compensation to the land owner. This unfairness was so obvious it was soon changed. By the late 1940′s the usual division was half for the land owner and half for the coal owner.

The original notion that the minerals belong to the land owner is somewhat arbitrary. In many countries they do not. In Poland and Australia, for example, the government owns the minerals. In Australia they famously say, “The landowner owns post hole deep.” Probably the reason minerals belong to the landowner in the United States is three fold: because of the huge abundance of land when the country was taken from the Indians, the fact the land owner was likely to be the one who extracted mineral value as well as agricultural value, and the desire to keep the government (of the individual states) corruption free and sensitive to citizen interests. At that time the Federal Government was concerned with defense, currency and diplomacy, and little more.

Separate mineral ownership is somewhat of a two edge sword for the oil and gas people. Royalty is a very good deal for the remote owner, with only tax to pay, no loss such as the landowner bears, so they are likely to grab what is offered. On the other hand such royalty is often very fragmented. And, it is hard to get agreement on price and all necessary signatures. Still the convenient fiction continues “no great damage in the extraction of oil and gas.” Yes, sometimes a nominal sum is paid. But, as the company man says, “Well, we find that West Virginians are mostly docile.” So, payments for damages aren’t typically very much.

The truth is that if damages were fully accounted for, present and future loses to agriculture, fracking wouldn’t be economic. Corporations seldom try to look much beyond seven years in any but the most hazy way. (Think about global warming and the inexoriable rise of world temperature.) The era of burning hydrocarbons is just a blip on the scale of human time, now understood at least in general outline for some 12,000 to 14,000 years.

Yes, damage occurs on that time scale (in more than one way). But not in the minds that are doing fracking or deep ocean drilling or mountian top removal or in the minds of those regulating these.

Severe Road Damages are Widespread

Road damages shown here; see also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net and  www.Marcellus-Shale.us

HVHF Marcellus Drilling & Fracking is Not Safe

New York’s Health Department Completes Public Health Review of Marcellus Drilling & Fracking — It is Not Safe!

“And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.” Movie buffs may recognize those words as belonging to Marge Gundersun (played by Frances McDormand) as she surveyed the carnage of a serial killer in the Coen brothers movie, Fargo.

I think of that quote when I consider fracking. Fracking wrecks communities. It poisons drinking water, releases carcinogenic compounds into the air, and destroys quality of life and land value. Those individuals who profit from this industry know that. So the negative health impacts may be less dramatic than the murders of Fargo, but the concept is the same. Fracking activities are harming others for the sake of money. Well. I just don’t understand it.

So, now that New York State has completed its “public health review” of Marcellus drilling and fracking, it’s time for WV, PA, OH and MD to go in a new direction.  Consideration of the public health, as well as the earth (air, water, streams, rivers, lakes, soils, roads, farms, and residential neighborhoods), should be the primary focus before profits to the major corporations.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation has issued the following press release:

New York State Department of Health Completes Review of High-volume Hydraulic Fracturing
>>> Acting DOH Commissioner Zucker Recommends Activity Should Not Move Forward in New York State

>>> DEC Commissioner Martens Will Issue a Findings Statement Early Next Year to Prohibit High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing

The state Department of Health has completed its “public health review of high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF)” and Acting DOH Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker recommended that high-volume hydraulic fracturing should not move forward in New York State. Dr. Zucker announced his findings and recommendations today at a Cabinet Meeting in Albany.

“I have considered all of the data and find significant questions and risks to public health which as of yet are unanswered,” said Dr. Zucker. “I think it would be reckless to proceed in New York until more authoritative research is done. I asked myself, ‘would I let my family live in a community with fracking?’ The answer is no. I therefore cannot recommend anyone else’s family to live in such a community either.”

In 2012, Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens asked the DOH Commissioner to conduct a review of the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement for High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (SGEIS). Dr. Zucker’s report fulfills that request.

As a result of Dr. Zucker’s report, Commissioner Martens stated at the Cabinet Meeting today that he will issue a legally binding findings statement that will prohibit HVHF in New York State at this time.

“For the past six years, DEC has examined the significant environmental impacts that could result from high-volume hydraulic fracturing,” DEC Commissioner Joe Martens said. “DEC’s own review identified dozens of potential significant adverse impacts of HVHF. Further, with the exclusion of sensitive natural, cultural and historic resources and the increasing number of towns that have enacted bans and moratoria, the risks substantially outweigh any potential economic benefits of HVHF. Considering the research, public comments, relevant studies, Dr. Zucker’s report and the enormous record DEC has amassed on this issue, I have directed my staff to complete the final SGEIS. Once that is complete, I will prohibit high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York State at this time.”

DEC will incorporate the findings of the public health review into the Final SGEIS, which will be released with a response to public comments early next year. A minimum of 10 days later, Commissioner Martens will issue the findings statement prohibiting HVHF. This action will conclude the State Environmental Quality Review Act process for HVHF.

DOH’s review found significant uncertainties about: the adverse health outcomes that may be associated with HVHF; the likelihood of occurrence of adverse health outcomes; and the adequacy of mitigation measures to protect public health. DOH’s report concludes that it will be years until science and research provide sufficient information to determine the level of risk HVHF poses to public health and whether those risks can be adequately mitigated. Given the red flags raised by current studies, absent conclusive studies that disprove health concerns, the report states the activity should not proceed in New York State.

In conducting its public health review, DOH reviewed and evaluated scientific literature, sought input from outside public health experts, engaged in field visits and discussions with health and environmental authorities in nearly all states where HVHF activity is taking place, and communicated with local, state, federal, international, academic, environmental and public health stakeholders. DOH’s review (1.54 MB) can be found at:

http://www.health.ny.gov/press/reports/docs/high_volume_hydraulic_fracturing.pdf

At the Cabinet meeting, Governor Cuomo thanked the Commissioners and their respective departments for their work.

BXE Rally in DC: November 1 - 7

Beyond Extreme Energy: People Taking Action to Retire Fossil Fuels, Nov. 1 – 7 in Washington, D.C.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issues permits for pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals. That means more deep shale extraction activities in our communities, which means more contaminated well water, more tainted streams, more sickening air emissions, more plummeting property values, more low-level radioactive waste in landfills…

Even as communities across the nation have risen up to fight pipelines, gas storage under lakes, compressor stations and fracked-gas export plants in our backyards, FERC has remained unmoved, unresponsive and unaccountable. FERC has answered only to the fossil fuel industry, rubber-stamping almost every project.

In the face of increasing threats to our health, communities, democracy, property values, environment and climate, people from across the nation will gather in Washington, D.C. next week to stop FERC’s business-as-usual and to deliver a list of demands.

Nov. 1 – 7: Beyond Extreme Energy: People Taking Action to Retire Fossil Fuels

Join the Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) action — sign up here. Click here for details on each day’s actions, as well as information on trainings, lodging, food and more. If you need a ride or can share a ride, check out this rideboard. (Signing into ridebuzz is quick and painless.) If you are coming to the action, get your story told (meme it!) with this BXE story submission form.

Even if you can’t come out, please support BXE on social media with the hashtags: #FERCdoesntwork, #Fracking. Also, please consider making a donation for this week of action. And, spread the word.

>>>>>> Call to Action

https://sites.google.com/site/beyondextremeenergy/