Bubbles in fracking, oil, gas, earthquake, nuclear facility news from rjs, July 13, 2014

No big spills or groundbreaking studies this week, although there was still a lot of coverage on the Cornell study linking the Oklahoma quakes to specific injection wells...there were also several articles on the dangerous increase of oil shipments by rail, and the 25 million of us who are within a mile of one of those oil rail routes, probably coinciding with a week of action on oil by rail by several environmental groups commemorating the Lac-Megantic disaster...in Ohio, there was a Carroll county study of their robust fracking industry which found that the costs outweighed the benefits and all the high paying jobs went to out of state migrant oil workers, and two new projects by GreenHunter Resources, a Texas oil-service company i'd never heard of, one involving pipelines in western PA and northern WVa which will eventually extend into Ohio, and the other to ship radioactive fracking wastewater by barge down the Ohio river to a dock in Meigs County...   We'll start with a couple articles in the British press on oil exploitation company financials, mostly because they confirm that not many of the drillers are covering their costs in the oil & gas industry, and that the investors who've been funding this fossil exploitation bubble up to now are starting to pull their money out....higher oil prices might have bailed them out, but both WTI (West Texas Intermediate, basis of domestic oil prices) and Brent (international benchmark price) fell to two month lows this week, despite the ongoing wars in the middle east...of course, the downside of independent drillers going bust is that there will be no one left to clean up or hold responsible for the damage they've done.. Fossil industry is the subprime danger of this cycle -  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. They are likely to be left holding a clutch of worthless projects as renewable technology sweeps in below radar, and the Washington-Beijing axis embraces a greener agenda. Data from Bank of America show that oil and gas investment in the US has soared to $200bn a year. It has reached 20pc 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. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global investment in fossil fuel supply doubled in real terms to $900bn from 2000 to 2008 as the boom gathered pace. It has since stabilised at a very high plateau, near $950bn last year.   The cumulative blitz on exploration and production over the past six years has been $5.4 trillion, yet little has come of it. Output from conventional fields peaked in 2005. Not a single large project has come on stream at a break-even cost below $80 a barrel for almost three years.  "What is shocking is that upstream costs in the oil industry have risen threefold since 2000 but output is up just 14%," The damage has been masked so far as big oil companies draw down on their cheap legacy reserves. "They are having too look for oil in the deepwater fields off Africa and Brazil, or in the Arctic, where it is much more difficult. The marginal cost for many shale plays is now $85 to $90 a barrel." Oil explorers hit rock bottom - FT.com: The $250m price tag attached to the sale of a 50% stake in a key project should have given a big boost to the share price of Africa-focused oil explorer Bowleven last week. It failed to. Analysts said the farm-down of the oil and gasfield off the coast of Cameroon was worth about 68p a share to Bowleven. Yet a day later, its shares were trading at just 40.5p. Its market value is now lower than the cash it earned on the Cameroon deal.  “Something is not working here,” says a person close to the company. “The market is dysfunctional.” International exploration and production companies – or E&Ps – were once stock market darlings.  But E&Ps have lost their lustre. That is partly because they seem to have lost the knack of discovering oil. “It would be great if someone actually found something with the drill bit to remind people of the reasons for holding E&P stocks,”  “Discoveries have been too sparse.”  With a few exceptions, “the whole sector is trading below core net asset value”. Disappointing exploration results are just part of the problem. The E & Ps’ fortunes rise and fall with the oil price, and crude has been more or less stable over the past two years. Also, valuations used to be supported by merger and acquisition activity in the sector. But since Cove, deals have been few and far between. “Potential acquirers are much more choosy than they were in the past,”.  Big Oil, under pressure from shareholders to show more capital discipline, has pulled back from large corporate deals. Also, E & Ps hoping to sell themselves or their assets are facing a much more crowded market, as the majors pursue multibillion-dollar asset disposal programmes. co-incident with the drop in the price of oil, there was a drop in gas prices to the level they were at before the "polar vortexes" of this past winter...at $4.148 / mmBTU, fracking gas in Ohio is a losing proposition... Oilprice Intelligence Report: Natural Gas - The Big Sell Off: This week, August Natural Gas futures posted its biggest one day drop since mid-February. The sell-off basically erased all of 2014 gains. Bearish speculators sold heavily on the notion that the uneven U.S. heat pattern this summer will weigh on demand for the power-plant fuel. Although the weather has a short-term fundamental influence on the market, the recent price action clearly suggests that natural gas is in the hands of some strong short-sellers. This is because the market is taking a hit from both the demand and supply side of the equation. The short-term demand outlook looks bearish for the rest of the month. In the East, seasonally normal temperatures are expected to return from July 12 through July 21. The Midwest is expected to experience normal to cooler temperatures during the same time period. With weather forecasters confident that these areas are not expected to see any sustained heat across the major gas-consuming regions of the U.S., prices are expected to continue to feel selling pressure. On the supply side, a record string of storage injections has alleviated the fear that the U.S. won’t have enough gas for next winter’s heating season. Gas supplies have expanded by more than 100 billion cubic feet for eight consecutive weeks. This new record according to government statistics pushed U.S. inventories up to 1.929 trillion cubic feet in the week-ended June 27. US natural gas prices touch lows - FT.com: US natural gas prices have fallen towards their lowest levels of this year, after cooler weather across the country softened demand and allowed suppliers to store large amounts of gas. Nymex August gas was priced at $4.148 per million British thermal units on Friday, down 5.9% on the week after hitting a six-month low on Thursday.   During summer months, electric power plants are the largest consumers of gas in the US as they meet demand for air conditioning. Below-average temperatures in recent weeks have diminished the sector’s hunger for gas. Cooler weather is expected to continue through to at least the end of July. While temperatures in the west appeared poised to rise slightly, a significant cold front was expected to continue in the Deep South, including Texas, according to Commodity Weather Group. “It’s not just the intensity of the cold front, but also the timing.”  Prices are currently down more than 30 per cent from a high of $6.31 per m Btu in February, after Americans consumed a record 3.2tn cu ft during the eighth coldest winter since 1950.  & here's the rest of what we've seen this week: Fracking Our Farmland, Our Families and Our Future: A New Toxic Legacy - http://www.sccma-mcms.org/Portals/19/assets/docs/fracking.pdf No False Choices: To Preserve A Livable Climate, We Need To Slash Both CO2 And Methane ASAP -- The bad news is that humanity has dawdled for so long that our only realistic chance to avoid multiple, irreversible, catastrophic climate impacts is to slash both carbon dioxide and the “super pollutants” like methane sharply starting as soon as possible. As Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, told MSNBC Tuesday: We’ve been told the basic falsehood that somehow fracking is going to save us, which is basically the opposite of the truth. What kind of good news can the world expect after ignoring near-unanimous expert advice for 25 years? Well, we can almost certainly avert the worst impacts for billions of people, but only by aggressively curtailing both CO2 (which lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years) and the super pollutants (which are much more potent at trapping heat in the short-term than CO2, but which have a much shorter atmospheric lifetime). Some confusion has been generated on this issue by a Tuesday New York Times piece, “Picking Lesser of Two Climate Evils,” which frames our optimum climate strategy as a choice between targeting CO2 and targeting super pollutants like methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and black carbon, that together cause some 40% of the warming we’re experiencing now. But that is a “false choice,” as longtime NASA climate scientist Drew Shindell explained to me. We have to do both to maximize lives saved and minimize the chances of dangerous warming. That’s a point Climate Progress has made consistently. New Research Strengthens Link Between Shale Drilling And Earthquakes - A recent study from Cornell University finds a probable link between drilling activity and an increased frequency of earthquakes in Oklahoma. Published in the journal Science, the study indicates that the practice of injecting millions of gallons of wastewater underground after a well is hydraulically fractured may increase the occurrence of earthquakes.Although scientists have yet to identify a concrete link between unconventional drilling and earthquakes, areas that have experienced an increase in oil and gas drilling have also seen an uptick in seismic activity. Oklahoma is currently the state with the highest number of magnitude 3.0 earthquakes for 2014. “It's been a real puzzle how low seismic activity level can suddenly explode to make (Oklahoma) more active than California,” says Katie Keranan, the lead researcher of the study and geophysics professor at Cornell University. A correlation between earthquakes and drilling have cropped up elsewhere, including Ohio, where regulators shut down several wells that were thought to have contributed directly to earthquakes. Ohio, in particular, has a large concentration of injection wells, and much of the wastewater from the thousands of fracked wells in places like West Virginia and Pennsylvania is trucked to Ohio for disposal. The injection wells are thought to be a contributor to earthquakes. Study: 4 big wells injecting wastewater from energy drilling trigger more than 100 quakes - A new study explains how just four wells forcing massive amounts of drilling wastewater into the ground are probably shaking up Oklahoma. Those wells seem to have triggered more than 100 small-to-medium earthquakes in the past five years, according to a study published Thursday by the journal Science. Many of the quakes were much farther away from the wells than expected. Combined, those wells daily pour more than 5 million gallons of water a mile or two underground into rock formations, the study found. That buildup of fluid creates more pressure that "has to go somewhere," said study lead author Cornell University seismologist Katie Keranen. Researchers originally figured the water diffused through underground rocks slowly. But instead, it is moving faster and farther and triggers quake fault lines that already were likely ready to move, she said. "You really don't need to raise the pressure a great deal," she added. The study shows the likely way in which the pressure can trigger fault lines — which already existed yet were not too active— but researchers need more detail on the liquid injections themselves to absolutely prove the case, Keranen said. The wastewater is leftover from unconventional wells that drill for oil and gas with help of high pressure liquids — nicknamed fracking — and from the removal of water from diluted oil. These new methods mean much more wastewater has to be discarded. While there are about 8,000 deep injection wells in the region, the amount of water injected at the four wells — named Chambers, Deep Throat, Flower Power and Sweetheart — has more than doubled since the drilling boom started about a decade ago. Fracking responsible for 22,900% increase in Oklahoma earthquakes since 2008 - A study published in July 4, 2014, issue of Science determined that the surge in earthquake activity in what had been tectonically calm Oklahoma is a direct result of hydrofracking and waste-water injection. Before 2008, Oklahoma averaged one earthquake with a magnitude of 3.0 or greater every year. To date in 2014, the state has witnessed more than 230 such tectonic events.  One of the study’s co-authors, Cornell University’s Geoffrey Abers, told Nature that “it is really unprecedented to have this many earthquakes over a broad region like this.” “Most big sequences of earthquakes that we see are either a main shock and a lot of aftershocks or it might be right at the middle of a volcano in a volcanic system or geothermal system,” he added, “so you might see little swarms but nothing really this distributed and this persistent.” Abers and his colleagues analyzed the data on rate and volume of liquids being used in waste-water injection sites and compared it to the physical properties of the rock into which it was injected. They found that a small number of waste-water injection sites could be responsible for the large increase in earthquake activity state-wide. “The risk of humans inducing large earthquakes from even small injection activities is probably high,” Abers said about a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Prague, Oklahoma, in March. Now he has evidence proving that “[s]ome of these earthquakes are as much as 20 miles away from what seems to be the primary wells that are increasing the pressure.” Earthquakes Linked To Fracking -- Research by Katie Keranen, an assistant professor of seismology at Cornell University in New York, found that injecting wastewater from fracking at underground disposal sites can cause earthquakes of moderate strength, or magnitude 3. Keranen’s research, published July 3 in the journal Science, backs up an earlier report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that found that some of the 450 earthquakes of magnitude 3 and larger in central and eastern parts of the United States between 2010 and 2013 coincided with the disposal of fracking wastewater. The USGS report said Oklahoma, which has recently been experiencing twice as many moderate quakes as even quake-prone California has, provides a better understanding of how an increase in fluid pressure and the quick movement of wastewater over broad underground tracts can cause earthquakes. It points to a study by the Oklahoma Geological Survey that Oklahoma County, which is close to a fault line, had only 6 earthquakes over 8 years starting in 2000. Yet in 2009 there were 31, and in the subsequent 15 months, 850. "It's been a real puzzle how low seismic activity level can suddenly explode to make (Oklahoma) more active than California," Keranen told USA Today. DEP considers rules on tremors and fracking: The closest earthquakes presumably caused by hydraulic fracturing stirred about a mile west of the Pennsylvania border, but regulators felt the reverberations in Harrisburg. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is considering creating rules for the first time for wells in “seismic hazard areas” — places that may be susceptible to tremors triggered by well stimulation techniques like fracking. The agency floated the proposal in recent weeks in a paper outlining conceptual changes to the state’s oil and gas well regulations under the heading “TBD – Induced seismicity.” A lot remains to be determined, including what “seismic hazard areas” are and where they might be, if the state has them at all. DEP’s chief of oil and gas compliance and data management, Joseph Lee, Jr., said the language is a placeholder for now, but the department and its partners are beginning a massive data-mining project to fill in the blanks. The issue arose after a series of earthquakes in March were linked to fracking at a Utica Shale well pad in Ohio. “The question is: Are these conditions that can occur in Pennsylvania?” Study Finds More Costs Than Benefits From Fracking -- Even before the most recent recession, Carroll County in rural eastern Ohio was struggling. Employment prospects were sparse and young people were fleeing for opportunities elsewhere. Then came 2011 and arrival of the shale industry, giving the local economy an injection of jobs and the attendant financial benefits an influx of new business creates. Though shale development has changed the county’s fortunes, the transformation from ghost town to boom town has been far from smooth, according to a study released in April by nonprofit research organization Policy Matters Ohio. Months after the study was made public, there are still lingering questions about whether the cultural, environmental and public health costs of fracking outweigh the economic benefits.“This was a region struggling for a long time, so fracking has been a shot in the arm,” said Amanda Woodrum, report author and Policy Matters researcher. “But the story does not end there.” Ohio study finds more costs than benefits in shale gas drilling -- The Carroll County study was part of a larger effort to determine the impact of shale development in four communities in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Policy Matters joined with other members of the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative for the year-long venture. Carroll County, which has half the state’s active fracking wells, is a decade newer to the shale energy game than its out-of-state contemporaries, said Woodrum. Still, about 95% of county sub-surface rights have already been bought or leased for potential use in domestic oil and gas production. The signing bonuses that came with these land sales or leases — as high as $5,800 per acre — are being spent locally on farm property and equipment, the study says. Oil and gas companies are also purchasing supplies from businesses in Carrollton, the economic heart of the county, while company employees patronize local restaurants and bars. This activity has led to a 31% increase in sales tax receipts. Increased sales tax revenues resulted in much-needed facility repairs, including a courthouse clock tower built in 1885. Fracking-related employment in Ohio has grown by about 3,000 jobs, less than one-tenth of one percent of the state’s total employment, said Woodrum. This number is far from Ohio Oil and Gas Associations claims that 40,000 new positions would be created by the industry.  In Carroll County, higher paying jobs related to oil and gas drilling, like construction of pipelines and processing plants, have been mostly going to out-of-state workers following their company’s drilling rig as it moves throughout the country. “Oil jobs are almost a new form of migrant labor.” Tracking Health Issues Related to Fracking in Ohio - does not exist -- Unbelievable! Ohio is a huge fracking state....“The Ohio Department of Health does not maintain a database nor do we have a monitoring program,” said spokeswoman Melanie Amato in an e-mail. “The Ohio Department of Natural Resources tracks oil and gas complaints, but nothing related to health.”Similarly, officials in Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming and West Virginia said their agencies had little or no regulatory role in oil and gas development. All five states referred us to their oil and gas commissions or environmental protection departments. In West Virginia, health officials in one county have struck out on their own. The Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department has created an online survey where residents can report potential health impacts such as respiratory problems or sleep disturbance from noise or light. Fracking Fire Intensifies Push to Change Ohio Chemical Disclosure Laws --- Environmentalists say the recent fire at a hydraulic fracturing well in southeastern Ohio highlights the flaws in state and federal disclosure laws for chemicals used in "fracking." The fire at the Monroe County well site on June 28 spread to 20 nearby trucks on the drilling pad, and required additional firefighters from six counties to contain it. Melissa English, development director with Ohio Citizen Action, says first responders were probably unaware of the chemicals involved in the accident because the only ones listed were "condensate and produced water." "There were more chemicals on-site at the time of the fire, because they had started fracking by that time," says English. "They had started actually stimulating the well to produce oil and gas, which they hadn't done at the time the hazardous chemical inventory was filed last year." Under federal requirements, hazardous chemicals must be reported annually, and drillers must file reports for any additional chemicals brought on-site. For chemicals deemed "hazardous," drillers have 90 days to file. For chemicals termed "extremely hazardous," drillers have 30 days. English says it's possible during that 30- or 90-day window an accident could occur - and first responders would likely be unaware of the chemicals on-site. Under Ohio law, oil and gas drillers are not required to disclose the chemicals they use. Teresa Mills with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice is among those who have worked to end Ohio's exemption for the fracking industry and bring the state in line with federal requirements. Company Seeks Barge Dock Permit for Shipping Fracking Wastewater - Ohioans are shocked to stumble on a new proposal by GreenHunter, a Texas-based fracking wastewater company, to build a barge off-loading facility on the Ohio River in Meigs County. Barging of liquid frack waste has not been approved by the U.S. Coast Guard, which received 60,000 public comments last December opposing the proposal.The dock proposal to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was found by an individual scanning the Federal Register. No notice has been issued in state or local media. The online notice posted by the Corps on June 27, specifies that public comments must be hard copies and received at the Corps’ Huntington office by July 28.  Roxanne Groff, Bern Township (Athens County) Trustee and former Athens County Commissioner, stated: It is imperative that the Corps allow more time for citizens to become informed and comment knowledgeably on this disastrous project. Most rural elected officials are not yet even aware of the project and only meet once a month. There is no time for discussion by citizens or time to even understand the potential impacts of toxic radioactive waste being offloaded to a facility that does not even have regulations for storage or transport from the river site. Groff alluded to two June 2014 Ohio fracking explosions and fires, one in Monroe County in which 20 fracking trucks burned for two days and led to a “significant fishkill,” Both explosions involved transfers of hydrocarbon-laden frack liquids.  “Imagine an explosion from a barge carrying a half-million gallons of frackwaste at a site that is storing hundreds of thousands of gallons of this toxic radioactive waste. Can you imagine, if a spark ignited an off-loading bargeful, what a half-million gallons of flammable frackwaste would do to the riverside and downstream communities?” Groff asked. GreenHunter Resources to Begin Multiple-Pipeline Project in Shale Areas -- GreenHunter Resources reports that, through its wholly-owned subsidiary GreenHunter Pipeline LLC, it has executed multiple definitive agreements to have exclusive use of three independent pipelines. This new project covers 34 miles of right-of-way to transport freshwater, oilfield waste water (brine), and hydrocarbons (oil, condensate and NGLs). The points of receipt (PORs) have been strategically chosen in two locations in southwestern Pennsylvania and northwestern West Virginia. These regions have quickly become some of the most densely populated areas for new permitting, drilling, and producing in the Marcellus shale play and in the evolving Utica shale play.The brine pipeline will be constructed of 12-inch-diameter pipe capable of transporting 100,000 bbl per day. The freshwater pipeline will be a 16-inch-diameter pipe with the capacity to handle approximately 140,000 bbl per day. The condensate pipeline will be a 6-inch-diameter pipe that will have a capacity of 30,000 bbl per day. The first phase of the project has begun with right-of-way negotiations underway, and it is scheduled to be complete and 100% operational by Jan. 1, 2016. The pipeline destination will also include a processing facility to split condensates into different quality products, typically resulting in higher value for these finished materials for ultimate marketing. The new processing plant for condensate is scheduled to be completed by the third quarter of 2016. Phase 2 of the project may consist of additional extensions to the primary gathering lines, extending further into Pennsylvania and possibly into Ohio. The parties anticipate the second phase to begin construction prior to the completion of the first phase. Frackers Publish “How to Frack the Public” --  Three years in the making, co-authored by head New York Frak Flak Karen “Mushrooms” Moreau, whose over-bearing bombast has has sold more towns on frack bans than the Slottjes, the frackers have issued their Rules of Deceit entitled “How to Frack the Public”  for land men, frak flaks, industry shills and their local accomplices. Subtitled “How to make good on the promise of pizzas“ Frackers Release Fracking Community Engagement Standard -  The American Petroleum Institute issued new propaganda specifically aimed at engaging with US communities affected by exploration and development of unconventional oil and gas resources, aka “fracking.” ANSI-API Bulletin 100-3 entitled “How to Frack the Public“emerged following 3 years of meetings and discussions with producers, state regulators, PR frak flaks, shale shysters, psy-ops specialists and spin doctors, API Minister of Information David Miller said. “It’s a first-of-its-kind industry propaganda for community engagement,” he told reporters on July 9.  “These guidelines will provide a roadmap for oil and gas operators seeking to frack as much of the country as possible, thanks to advances in fracking, payola, media buys, and frozen pizza delivery. ” The new fracking propaganda is similar to other spin that already exist for pipelines and rail transportation of exploding shale bomb trains, Miller said.  He and New York State Petroleum Council Executive Director Karen Moreau, who also participated in the teleconference, emphasized that it was not a knee-jerk response to recent court decisions or moves by communities to restrict or ban fracing or to the 150 communities that have taken steps to protect themselves from this sort of industry propaganda. Don’t Fracking Sacrifice Anyone - Fracking Ban Must be Statewide to Ensure Safety for All. “The Times Union deserves praise for its recent editorial (‘For drillers, no means no’) in support of the recent New York State Court of Appeals ruling that municipalities do indeed have the right to ban fracking. But more importantly, the Times Union supported maintaining New York’s statewide moratorium given increasing scientific evidence showing harms of fracking and that fracking hurts property values. As a rural landowner in the Southern Tier — close enough to Pennsylvania that I often grimace from the sight and discomforting smell of flaring at frack sites across the state border — I am terribly alarmed by the gas industry’s suggestion that the Court of Appeals ruling could pave the way for fracking in areas of the Southern Tier that “want it.” If the industry’s scheme comes to fruition, I could be among the first victims. As I drink my well water each day, I think of all the recent studies showing the inherent problems and dangers of fracking. Just last week, a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — where researchers examined Pennsylvania state records of more than 41,000 gas wells — found fundamental problems with well casings and cement that mean 4 in 10 fracking wells in the state will leak into the groundwater or the atmosphere over time. As a breast cancer survivor, I know all too well the harm that such chemicals can have. Arrested for Spreading Frack Filth in Texas - In New York and Fracksylvania, it’s legal to spread frack filth on roads as “de-icer” in the winter and “dust suppressant” in the summer. If you did that in Texas, you’d get arrested and thrown in the pokey. Texas Sheriff Wants Criminal Charges Filed in Fracking Pollution Case. A Texas waste hauling company that is already facing civil charges for a March accident that spread toxic drilling waste along a rural road could also be facing criminal charges. Karnes County Sheriff Dwayne Villanueva said he will ask county prosecutors to file a criminal complaint against On Point Services LLC after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Texas Railroad Commission close their civil cases against the company.   “We are prepared to ask the district attorney’s office to review the case for action,” Villanueva said. “There are two different levels of enforcement here: the civil by the state and the criminal by the county.” Chevron Admits The Truth: Oil Shale Will Use Huge Amounts Of Western Water - One of the largest oil companies in the world has been forced in court to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about one of the key environmental impacts of developing oil shale in the arid West. Namely, it will consume an enormous amount of water in a region where drought and climate change are already stressing available water supplies.   Chevron USA, in legal filings in a case brought by the conservation group Western Resource Advocates, has admitted that to meet a goal of developing a half million barrels of oil from sedimentary rock in northwest Colorado it would need 120,000 acre feet of water a year. That’s enough to meet the needs of 1 million people per year. Oil industry giants have often brushed off concerns about the water demands oil shale development would place on the Colorado River system, despite assessments by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the federal Bureau of Land Management and the Rand Corporation that it will be water-intensive. Oil shale is different from shale oil which is conventional oil produced from shale rock formations using standard drilling techniques. Oil shale is a sedimentary rock that contains kerogen, which can yield liquid hydrocarbons when the rock is heated to high temperatures. Activists Blockade Chevron Fracking Site in Eastern Romania - Twenty-five activists from across seven countries, chained themselves to the gates of a Chevron shale gas exploration well in Eastern Romania yesterday, and are calling on the government to ban fracking in the country. Photo credit: Greenpeace Romania Facebook page The Greenpeace activists—from Romania, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Germany—held banners reading “Pungesti anti-Chevron quarantine area” and “Stop Fracking!” in protest of the U.S. energy giant’s exploration work on the ground. Chevron began work on the exploration well in Pungesti, northeast of Bucharest, in December last year having postponed operations several times due to local opposition.  The protests in the village attracted widespread attention and media coverage last year as villagers, framers, protesters and the community’s religious leaders came together to block the fracking site and halt Chevron’s plans. Does Gazprom Fund European Anti-Fracking Activists? - As far as conspiracy theories involving Russia go, this one takes the cake. Unlike the United States which has experienced a renaissance in energy production through the use of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" in common parlance, Europe has not warmed to the technology. Many of the objections come from environmentalists who express concern over water usage, water pollution, earthquakes and so on. A few weeks ago, however, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Russia was working to sabotage European energy independence from its oil and gas by undermining support for fracking. The alleged preferred means? Covert Russian funding for environmental groups: Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), and former premier of Denmark, told the Chatham House think tank in London on Thursday that Vladimir Putin’s government was behind attempts to discredit fracking, according to reports. Rasmussen said: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations - environmental organisations working against shale gas - to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.” For obvious reasons, NATO is at pains to point out that Rasmussen is expressing an opinion and not the position of the organization. What is especially odd is how Putin becomes an environmentalist all of a sudden when Europe has the technology within its grasp to wean itself off Russian energy. In the context of climate change, for instance, it couldn't care less about the environment. Let's just say it is self-interested in raising environmental concerns for this particular issue that can hurt its core economic interests. For them, it's every which way but lose. Meanwhile, the "Russian collaborator" taunt is being leveled against all sorts of European environmental protesters: Rupture-Prone Oil Trains Keep Rolling After Quebec Crash -  When Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner sees rail cars full of crude oil rumble down the tracks that criss-cross his Chicago-area town, he often thinks about the derailment that killed 47 people almost a year ago in Canada. The disaster focused attention on the design of the oil tankers, yet two-thirds of the tank cars in use today are still older models that safety experts say are vulnerable to puncture. The July 6 derailment last year in Quebec and seven other major ones in the U.S. and Canada since then have spilled more than 3 million gallons of oil, with some cars catching fire or exploding. “You can see tanker car after tanker car go by on that rail constantly,” said Weisner, whose city is 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Chicago and second to it in population in Illinois."Our regulators have got to figure out whether they’re working in the interest of the American people or the oil industry.” Weisner is co-chairman of the TRAC coalition, a group of communities that are lobbying for rail safety enhancements, including sturdier cars.  Tank car owners like GATX Corp. disagree with some of the proposals to strengthen or phase out the cars quickly while railroads including BNSF Railway Co. balk at slowing train speeds. That means the trains keep barreling ahead, hauling the booming production of North Dakota -- where daily output has surged in eight years to 937,000 barrels from 4,300 barrels -- through Aurora and other cities. Industry Data Show Oil-By-Rail in North America at Record Levels -- On July 3, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) released June 2014 data showing oil-by-rail and petroleum products at-large are moving at record levels throughout North America.  The release of the data comes on the heels of the ongoing oil-by-rail nationwide week of action launched by environmental groups.  For the 26th week of 2014 (the half year point) in the U.S., 18.5% more tank cars were on the tracks carrying petroleum and/or petroleum products than last year, a total of 15,894 cars. Examined on a year-to-date basis, 7.0% more of those same tank cars were on the tracks in the U.S. this year than last, totaling 380,961 cars to date. Across the border in Canada, the same trend lines exist: for the 26th week of 2014, 6.9% more cars moved petroleum and/or petroleum products by rail than in the 26th week of 2013. Looked at in terms of year-to-date compared to 2013, that totals a 7.7% increase in tank cars moving the commodity by rail.   With its public relations work overseen and advised by SKDKnickerbocker — co-owned by former Obama White House communications director Anita Dunn — AAR has landed numerous meetings with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the attempt to water down crude-by-rail regulations currently being drafted by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).  As revealed on DeSmogBlog, AAR members gave a presentation to OIRA on June 10 on how companies would be faced with “far reaching economic impacts” if speed limits were imposed on trains carrying oil by rail. America’s Dairyland Turning to Petrostate: Wisconsin Oil-By-Rail Routes Published for First Time -  DeSmogBlog is publishing the first documents ever obtained from the Wisconsin government revealing routes for oil-by-rail trains in the state carrying oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the Bakken Shale basin.The information was initially submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) under the auspices of a May 7 Emergency Order, which both the federal government and the rail industry initially argued should only be released to those with a “need to know” and not the public at-large. The Wisconsin documents show the three companies that send Bakken crude trains through the state — Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF), Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific — all initially argued routes are “sensitive security information” only to be seen by those with a “need to know.” As covered in a previous DeSmogBlog article revealing the routes of oil trains traveling through North Dakota for the first time, the rail industry used this same line of legal argument there and beyond. As with North Dakota, BNSF is the chief mover of oil-by-rail in Wisconsin.  BNSF is owned by Warren Buffett, one of the richest men on the planet and a major campaign contributor to President Barack Obama and expected major donor for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential bid. According to the records it submitted to Wisconsin Emergency Management, BNSF moves the majority of its crude-by-rail trains along the state's western corridor, which hugs the Mississippi River. MAP: 25 Million Americans Live Within The ‘Blast Zone’ of an Oil Train Explosion --Millions of Americans live within the “blast zone” of an oil train accident, according to a new map put together by environmental group ForestEthics.  The map, created using industry data and on-the-ground reports of people living close to oil train routes, outlines the routes of oil trains across the U.S. and into Canada. Using census data, ForestEthics estimates that more than 25 million Americans live within a one mile zone that must be evacuated in case of an oil train fire — what the group calls the “blast zone.”  That number could be even higher. Eddie Scher, Communications Director for ForestEthics, told ThinkProgress that the map represents all the known routes of oil trains, but since some states don’t make that information publicly available, it’s likely missing some routes.“We are looking at this as a very conservative take on what routes are being used by these oil trains,” he said. “I’m positive that there are more routes out there that have trains on them.”The group’s mapping site allows users to search by zip code to see the closest oil train routes in their region, and includes a petition to President Obama and Congress to address oil-by-rail safety that ForestEthics is planning to deliver later this year. In it, the group calls on regulators to ban DOT-111 tanker cars, which Scher said puncture easily and have been involved in major crashes, including the one in Lac-Mégantic that killed 47 people one year ago. Higher Cancer Rates and Tainted Local Foods Linked to Tar Sands Operations -- A new study released by two Alberta First Nations communities in partnership with the University of Manitoba reports that certain carcinogens released in tar sands operations are being found in high levels in local wildlife. The study also reports a higher incidence of cancer among study participants, many of whom work in the tar sands industry,  adding to evidence that these local communities suffer from higher rates of cancer.  The Mikisew Cree Chief Steve Courtoreille said, “This report confirms what we have always suspected about the association between environmental contaminants from oil sands production upstream and cancer and other serious illness in our community… We are greatly alarmed and demand further research and studies are done to expand on the findings of this report.” The University of Manitoba study done in collaboration with the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations adds to growing body of scientific evidence that people living near tar sands operations are showing that serious health risks and problems. Projects like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline which will help the ramp more tar sands production posing even greater health risks should be rejected by the U.S. government. And despite these documented dangers, the province of Alberta and the federal Canadian government have done too little to protect the local community’s health. Now is the time for more rigorous health monitoring and a follow up investigation into elevated cancer rates. TransCanada Buys Town’s Silence On Tar Sands Pipeline Proposal For $28K - A small town in Ottawa, Canada, will be receiving $28,200 from energy company TransCanada Corp. in exchange for not commenting on the company’s proposed Energy East tar sands pipeline project, according to an agreement attached to the town council’s meeting agenda on June 23. Under the terms of deal, the town of Mattawa will “not publicly comment on TransCanada’s operations or business projects” for five years. In exchange for that silence, TransCanada will give Mattawa $28,200, which will ultimately go towards buying a rescue truck for the town.  “This is a gag order,” Andrea Harden-Donahue, a campaigner for energy and climate issues with the Council of Canadians, told Bloomberg News. “These sorts of dirty tricks impede public debate on Energy East, a pipeline that comes with significant risks for communities along the route.” The terms of the agreement did not specifically mention the controversial Energy East pipeline, which would carry more than a million barrels of tar sands crude oil across Canada each day. However, the deal is being widely seen as a way for the company to avoid obstacles that may get in the way of the pipeline’s approval — especially considering the obstacles that have long plagued the approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. The Energy East pipeline, though, is bigger than Keystone XL — in fact, it’s the most expensive pipeline project TransCanada has ever proposed. If approved, Energy East would carry about 1.1 million barrels of tar sands crude across Canada each day. That’s more than Keystone XL, which would carry 830,000 barrels per day from Canada down to refineries in Texas. Canada's Enbridge in Talks with Alaska on Natural-Gas Pipeline - WSJ — Enbridge is in talks with Alaska about building a pipeline to ship natural gas from the North Slope, according to company and state officials, who describe the project as a potential alternative to an Alaskan pipeline project backed by Canadian rival TransCanada The state is eyeing the competing projects to carry surplus natural gas from the North Slope, either to meet demand in-state through the existing utility grid or to reach foreign buyers once the gas is liquefied for transport by ship. Calgary-based Enbridge said it has begun discussions with Alaska Gasline Development Corp., a state-funded body tasked with developing a 727-mile natural-gas pipe from Prudhoe Bay to Point MacKenzie, with a spur line to Fairbanks. BP loses battle to trademark the colour green in Australia --- The oil giant BP has again failed in its long-running bid to trademark the colour green in Australia. The intellectual property watchdog, IP Australia, found BP was unable to show “convincing evidence” that it was indelibly linked in the average petrol consumer’s mind to the dark green shade known as Pantone 348C, a spokeswoman for the government agency said. BP first tried to register a trademark for the colour in 1991, and until 2013 fought legal battles against another corporate titan, Woolworths, to stake its claim to the colour as the dominant shade for its service stations. A spokeswoman for the energy company did not confirm whether BP would continue trying to claim the colour, saying only: “The colour green has been central to the BP brand since the 1930s and we believe it should be protected.” Can the Arctic Reshape Global LNG Shipping?: Rising global temperatures are melting Arctic sea ice, so much so that some companies are now viewing the Arctic Ocean as a major shipping route for energy supplies. The Wall Street Journal published an article on July 9 that detailed a joint venture between two major Asian companies seeking to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Arctic Ocean. Mitsui OSK of Japan and China Shipping Development Company announced a combined investment of $932 million on three LNG carriers that could handle the rough icy waters of the far north. China and Japan promise to be huge buyers of LNG in the coming years. China, with its cities suffocating from air pollution, is seeking to replace much of its coal fleet with cleaner burning natural gas. And Japan – which has long been the world’s largest importer of LNG – is still heavily dependent on LNG imports with its 48 nuclear reactors still offline. China and Japan continue to scour the world for new LNG supplies, and melting sea ice has opened up the option of the Arctic Ocean. The three LNG ships ordered by Mitsui and China Shipping Development will be equipped with ice breaking capability in order to plough through chunks of ice. The objective is to export natural gas from the Yamal LNG project that Russia is building in the Arctic Circle, ship it via the Northern Sea Route (NSR) along Russia’s northern coastline, and on to China and Japan. The route between Russia and Asia via the Arctic would theoretically cut down on shipping times, and thus cost. “The shorter distance would be good for buyers, by cutting shipping costs and reducing other risks,” Yu Nagatomi, an economist at the Institute of Energy Economics, told the Wall Street Journal.  U.S. Seen as Biggest Oil Producer After Overtaking Saudi Arabia - The U.S. will remain the world’s biggest oil producer this year after overtaking Saudi Arabia andRussia as extraction of energy from shale rock spurs the nation’s economic recovery, Bank of America Corp. said. U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today. The country became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2010. The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids. “The U.S. increase in supply is a very meaningful chunk of oil,” Francisco Blanch, the bank’s head of commodities research, said by phone from New York. “The shale boom is playing a key role in the U.S. recovery. If the U.S. didn’t have this energy supply, prices at the pump would be completely unaffordable.” Oil extraction is soaring at shale formations in Texas and North Dakota as companies split rocks using high-pressure liquid, a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The surge in supply combined with restrictions on exporting crude is curbing the price of West Texas Intermediate, America’s oil benchmark. The U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, still imported an average of 7.5 million barrels a day of crude in April, according to the Department of Energy’s statistical arm.  U.S.Taxpayers Lose over $21 Billion Annually in Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies - Fossil fuel subsidies have increased by 45% under President Obama's “All of the Above” energy policy.  A new report released today by Oil Change International exposes over $21 billion in fossil fuel production subsidies annually in the U.S. at the federal and state levels. The report, entitled “Cashing in on All of the Above: U.S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama,” outlines the wide array of subsidies going to the industry amidst a deepening climate crisis being spurred by continued fossil fuel extraction and production. In total, the report catalogs over $37 billion in U.S. federal and state support for the fossil fuel industry in 2013. The report focuses on exploration and production subsidies because these subsidies are tied to the All of the Above energy policy in the U.S., and because they are completely incompatible with climate science that clearly shows that most existing fossil fuel reserves need to be left underground. Much of the increase in the value of fossil fuel production subsidies in the U.S. can be attributed to the increase in oil and gas production in recent years, the report finds. In particular, federal fossil fuel production and exploration subsidies in the US have grown in value by 45 percent since President Obama took office in 2009. other environmental news: WIPP Still Leaks -- Environmental radiation releases spiked again in mid-June around the surface site of the only U.S. underground, nuclear weapons waste storage facility near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), has been shut down since February 14, when its isolation technology failed, releasing unsafe levels of plutonium, americium, and other radionuclides into the environment around the  site.  Radiation levels in the underground storage area, 2,150 feet below the surface vary from near-normal to potentially lethal. At the time of the February accident, more than 20 WIPP workers suffered low level radioactive contamination, even though none of them were underground. WIPP assumes, but cannot confirm, that underground conditions have not changed since May 31, when the last entry team went into the mine, as reported by WIPP field manager Jose Franco on June 5: In mid-March, WIPP suffered a surface radiation release almost twice the levels released in February. WIPP was designed to isolate highly radioactive nuclear weapons waste from the environment for 10,000 years. It went 15 years before its first leak of radioactivity into the above ground environment. Radiation levels in the storage area where the original leak occurred are possibly as lethal as Fukushima, hampering efforts to determine the source, cause, and scale of the February leak. How Politicians Are Trying To Fund Overseas Coal Projects Under The Guise Of Eliminating Bureaucracy - Last December, the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance foreign purchases of U.S. exports, announced it would stop financing coal-fired power plants abroad, with a few exceptions in the poorest countries in the world. Now, as political pressure puts the bank’s future in to question, those environmental guidelines are facing opposition in Congress. With a September 30 deadline for reauthorization, the efforts to reduce high carbon intensity projects are being used as political cover by far-right Republicans who have reversed course and decided to consider the bank as a form of corporate welfare after years of supporting it.  Both of the working proposals in the House and Senate to renew the bank’s charter would reverse Ex-Im guidelines that prevent financing for overseas power plants, according to the Hill. Thousands of businesses use the bank for loans and insurance for exports. While the bank has been accused of pay-for-play politics and once funded failed energy giant Enron, the current movement is based around government overreach into the free market and is aligned with recent attacks on the EPA’s proposals to cut carbon pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants.  The 80-year-old bank borrows money from the U.S. Treasury to help American companies sell their exports abroad. It provides low-cost loans to foreign buyers as well as guarantees against potential losses for exporters. As part of the Obama Administration’s Climate Action Plan, the Ex-Im Bank board voted last December to stop funding the construction of new coal plants overseas. The bank has also funded a number of renewable energy projects, including U.S. solar-modules to Mexico, thin-film solar panels to India, and materials for solar projects in Spain and Africa. Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Decimates Fish Populations in Appalachia - A study from researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) published this month provides strong new evidence that mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia is devastating downstream fish populations.That’s hardly news for long-time followers of the controversy surrounding mountaintop removal, a coal mining practice that involves blowing off the tops of mountains to access thin seams of coal and dumping the waste into valleys below. In 2010, a group of 13 prestigious biologists published a paper in Science, the nation’s premier scientific journal, that found:“Our analyses of current peer-reviewed studies and of new water-quality data from WV streams revealed serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address… Clearly, current attempts to regulate [mountaintop removal mining] practices are inadequate.”The authors of the study published last week found a 50 percent decline in the number of fish species and a two-thirds decline in the total number of fish in streams below mountaintop removal mines in West Virginia’s Guyandotte River drainage. They made this important contribution to the science by using rigorous methodology to isolate several types of water pollution most likely to have caused these staggering declines. Company That Caused Historic West Virginia Chemical Spill Fined $11k  - The company responsible for letting 10,000 gallons of a mysterious chemical seep into West Virginia’s drinking water supply this past January was fined $11,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor on Monday, just two days before the six-month anniversary of the historic spill. After inspecting the facilities at Freedom Industries’ chemical storage site in Charleston, the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that, at the time of the spill, Freedom Industries’ chemical tanks containing crude MCHM had been surrounded by a wall that was not liquid tight. That violation that warranted a $7,000 fine. OSHA also hit Freedom Industries with an additional $4,000 fine for not having railings on an elevated platform used for loading and storing the chemical in the tanks. Both violations were labeled by OSHA as “serious,” warranting monetary penalties. Less Than Tyrannical Feds Fine Freedom Industries Whopping $11,000 For Poisoning Water of 300,000 People, Because Freedom -- The over-reaching, over-regulating, money-grubbing feds of OSHA have fined Freedom Industries an exorbitant $11,000 for last January's massive spill of coal cleaning chemicals that left over 300,000 West Virginians without safe water, one in five people with reported health issues, and local businesses down an estimated $61 million. Yeah, that'll show 'em. Also, the "clean-up" site is still leaking - twice, last month - but Freedom officials say it's only because of "heavy rain" overflowing a trench whose design is "evolving" (they blamed the initial disaster on cold) and who could've predicted rain? Despite a fast-approaching deadline, only 78 families have filed legal claims against the company, perhaps because its murky leaders conveniently filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. No wonder the right keeps whining about over-regulation cramping their style. Damn socialism. New Data Says Huge West Virginia Chemical Spill May Have Been More Toxic Than Reported - The mysterious chemical that tainted drinking water for 300,000 West Virginians this past January may have been more toxic than what was previously reported, according to new federally funded research released this afternoon. Environmental engineer Andrew Whelton tested crude MCHM — a chemical mixture used in the coal production process — and found it to be much more toxic to aquatic life than was reported by Eastman Chemical, the company that makes it. Whelton said he used exactly the same process to test the chemical that Eastman did — the same water chemistry, temperature, quality, and organisms — but found a drastically different result than what was reported on Eastman’s Material Safety Data Sheet for the chemical.“To be frank, [the drastic difference in results] could be for a number of reasons,” Whelton told ThinkProgress, noting that Eastman did its research on the chemical in 1998. “It could be is that the composition of the crude MCHM they tested in 1998 was different than the crude MCHM [Eastman] sent us in 2014.” Approximately 10,000 gallons of MCHM spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River on Jan. 9, taking away normal drinking water from 300,000 civilians. In the aftermath, nearly 600 people checked themselves into local hospitals with what federal epidemiologists called “mild” illnesses, such as rash, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Eastman’s data had been used as a basis for public health response following the spill.