Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

“Frackademia” – shorthand for bogus science, economics and other research results paid for by the oil and gas industry and often conducted by “frackademics” with direct ties to the oil and gas industry – has struck again in California.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Florida may soon become the fourth state with a law on the books enforcing hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) chemical disclosure. The Florida House of Representatives’ Agriculture and Natural Resources Subcommittee voted unanimously (11-0) on March 7 to require chemical disclosure from the fracking industry. For many, that is cause for celebration and applause.

FL Rep. Ray Rodrigues didn’t mention the law still contains the “trade secrets” loophole.

Fracking for oil and gas embedded in shale rock basins across the country and world involves the injection of a 99.5-percent cocktail of water and fine-grained sillica sand into a well that drops under the groundwater table 6,000-10,000 feet and then another 6,000-10,000 feet horizontally. The other .5 percent consists of a mixture of chemicals injected into the well, proprietary information and a “trade secret” under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which current President Barack Obama voted “yes” on as a Senator.

That loophole is referred to by many as the “Halliburton Loophole” because Dick Cheney had left his position as CEO of Halliburton - one of the largest oil and gas services corporations in the world – to become Vice President and convene the Energy Task Force. That Task Force consisted of the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation and Energy. One of its key actions was opening the floodgates for unfettered fracking nationwide.

Between 2001 and the bill’s passage in 2005, the Task Force held over 300 meetings with oil and gas industry lobbyists and upper-level executives. The result was a slew of give-aways to the industry in this omnibus piece of legislation. On top of the “Halliburton Loophole,” the bill also contains an exemption for fracking from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcement of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The federal-level response to closing the ”Halliburton Loophole” is the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, a bill that never garnered more than a handful of co-sponsors.

The state-level response, the story goes, is versions of the bill that recently passed onan 11-0 bipartisan basis in a Florida state house subcommittee.

Introduced as the “Fracturing Chemical Usage Disclosure Act” on Feb. 13, bill sponsor Rep. Ray Rodrigues (R-76) told The Palm Beach Post the day the bill passed in Subcommittee that there is ”every indication … at some point in the future” that fracking will proceed in the Sunniland Shale basin and that being “proactive” is the way to go. A senate companion bill was also introduced as SB 1028 by Sen. Jeff Clemons (D-27) and if the bill passes in both chambers, it will be labeled SB 1776.

What Rodrigues didn’t mention: the law was written by what investigative journalist Steve Coll referred to as a “private empire,” ExxonMobil.

Like its federal-level predecessor, it still contains the “trade secrets” loophole. It’s also a model bill distributed both by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), asfirst revealed by The New York Times in April 2012, and the Council of State Governments (CSG), as first revealed here on DeSmogBlog.

FracFocus Façade: Sunshine State’s Copy-Paste and Disaster-in-the-Make

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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Transcanada and the oil industry are borrowing from the Big Tobacco playbook to spin their bad publicity.

On March 1, the U.S. State Department published its long-awaited Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the TransCanada Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline.

The KXL is slated to bring tar sands crude – also known as diluted bitumen or “dilbit” - from Alberta, Canada to Port Arthur, TX. From Port Arthur, it will be refined andexported to the global market.

Flying in the face of the slew of scientific studies both on the harms of burning tar sands and on the KXL itself, State determined that laying down the pipeline is environmentally sound.

Unmentioned by State: the study was contracted out to firms with tar sands extraction clientele, as revealed by InsideClimate News.

“EnSys Energy has worked with ExxonMobil, BP and Koch Industries, which own oil sands production facilities and refineries in the Midwest that process heavy Canadian crude oil. Imperial Oil, one of Canada’s largest oil sands producers, is a subsidiary of Exxon,” InsideClimate News explained. “ICF International works with pipeline and oil companies but doesn’t list specific clients on its website.”

Writing for Grist, Brad Johnson also revealed the name of a third contractor – Environmental Resources Management (ERM) Group - which TransCanada hired on behalf of the State Department to do the EIS.

“(ERM) was paid an undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement, which is now an official government document,” Johnson explained. “The statement estimates, and then dismisses, the pipeline’s massive carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, because, it asserts, the mining and burning of the tar sands is unstoppable.”

ERM, a probe into the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) Tobacco Archives reveals, has deep historical ties to Big Tobacco. Further, a key employee at ICF International – via familial ties – is tied to the future of whether hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for shale oil and gas becomes a reality in New York’s portion of the Marcellus Shale.

TransCanada Utilizes Tobacco Playbook in Hiring ERM Group

ERM Group - headquarted in the City of London - a square mile sub-section of London infamous for its role in serving as a tax shelter for multinational corporations - has aided the tobacco industry in pushing the “Tobacco Playbook.”

Many fossil fuel industry public relations flacks learned the tactics of mass manipulation by reading the “tobacco playbook,” meticulously documented in Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik Conway’s classic book, “Merchants of Doubt.”

“Doubt is our product,” a tobacco industry document once laid out the playbook, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

ERM has done studies on behalf of both R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, penning a report titled “Fundamentals of Environmental Management” for the latter.

It was also a former member of the American Tort Reform Association, a group that fights to limit the tort law rights of citizens to sue for damages inflicted upon them by corporations and featured in the documentary film, “Hot Coffee.”

ERM: In-Service to Big Oil, like Big Tobacco

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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

New York Sate Capitol, Albany

In a roll call vote of 95-40, the New York State Assembly has passed a two-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), the toxic horizontal drilling process through which oil and gas is procured that’s found within shale rock basins across the country and the world.

The bill, if passed by the Senate and signed off by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, would close the state’s doors to the oil and gas industry’s desire to begin operating in New York’s portion of the Marcellus Shale basin until May 2015. New York has had a moratorium on the books since 2008.

This is the third time the Assembly has passed such a bill, with similar moratorium bills passing in 2010 and 2011, but then dying a slow death in the Senate and never reaching the Governor’s desk, meaning the de facto moratorium has remained in place.

Could the third time be a charm in 2013 in the Empire State?

Signs point to “quite possibly,” because the bipartisan Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) bloc of the Senate - which shares control of the Senate with the Republicans – has come out in support of the bill’s passage, according to the Associated Press (AP).

“We have to put science first. We have to put the health of New Yorkers first,” Sen. David Carlucci (D-38) and an IDC member told the AP.

Activists see it as a temporary reprieve and a victory for now. Alex Beauchamp of Food and Water Watch told the Albany Times-Union:

Hundreds of New York health professionals agree with the State Assembly that we should not move forward without a full, comprehensive examination of the health impacts of fracking…Moving forward would simply enrich oil and gas companies that want to ship their gas overseas and their profits to Texas at the expense of New York’s public health and environment.

The oil and gas industry, unsurprisingly, is up in arms. New York Petroleum Council Executive Director Karen Moreau told the Times-Union:

Today’s vote by the State Assembly to further delay natural gas development is tantamount to telling the people of the Southern Tier to ‘Drop Dead.’ Once again, Albany politicians are putting politics before science, and the special interests before the people. The people of New York deserve better, to say the least

Given New York’s ability to fend off the industry’s desires to enter the state for going on five years, all eyes in the fracking stratosphere will be on the Senate and Cuomo – a potential 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate - in the coming days and weeks. Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Illinois is the next target for ALEC's environmental tampering.

Illinois is the next state on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)‘s target list for putting the oil industry’s interests ahead of the public interest.

98 percent funded by multinational corporations, ALEC is described by its critics as a “corporate bill mill” and a lobbyist-legislator dating service. It brings together corporate lobbyists and right wing politicians to vote up or down on “model bills” written by lobbyists in service to their corporate clientele behind closed doors at its annual meetings.

These “models” snake their way into statehouses nationwide as proposed legislation and quite often become the law of the land.

Illinois, nicknamed the “Land of Lincoln,” has transformed into the “Land of ALEC” when it comes to a hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) regulation bill - HB 2615, the Hydraulic Fracturing Regulation Act - currently under consideration by its House of Representatives. “Fracking” is the toxic horizontal drilling process via which unconventional gas and oil is obtained from shale rock basins across the country and the world.

HB 2615 - proposed on Feb. 21 with 26 co-sponsors - has an ALEC model bill roped within this lengthy piece of legislation: the loophole-ridden Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act.

As covered here on DeSmogBlog, this model bill has been proposed and passed in numerous statehouses to date. If the bill passes, Illinois’ portion of the New Albany Shale basin will be opened up for unfettered fracking, costumed by its industry proponents as the “most comprehensive fracking legislation in the nation.”

“If At First You Don’t Succeed, Dust Yourself Off and Try Again”

This isn’t ALEC’s first fracking-related crack at getting a model bill passed in Illinois. In 2012, the Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act – introduced as SB 3280 - passed unanimously by the Illinois Senate but never passed the House.

SB 3280 isn’t merely an ALEC model, but is a Council of State Government’s (CSG) model, too, as covered here on DeSmog.

The “disclosure” standards’ origins lay in the Obama Department of Energy’s (DOE) industry-stacked fracking subcomittee, formed in May 2011 ”to study the practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), and determine if there are ways, or even a necessity, to make it safer for the environment and public health.”

As exposed by The New York Times in April 2012, these ”disclosure” standards were originally written by ExxonMobil, first passed in Texas in June 2011, and now serve as both an ALEC and CSG model bill for the states. I say “disclosure” – as opposed to disclosure – because the bill includes loopholes for “trade secrets,” ala the “Halliburton Loophole” written into the industry-friendly federal Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Section 77 of HB 2615, titled “Chemical disclosure; trade secret protection,” also includes the same trade secrets exemption from the ALEC/CSG ExxonMobil-written model bill.

Ever persistent, ALEC has taken the late pop diva Aaliyah’s words to heart with regards to chemical fluids “disclosure,” at first not succeeding and dusting itself off and trying again.

The FracFocus Façade

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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Red Wing Mayor Dennis Egan

Usually “revolving door” connotes a transition from a stint as a public official into one as a corporate lobbyist or vice versa.

In the case of Red Wing, MN - a southeastern Minnesota town of 16,459 located along the Mississippi River - its Mayor Dennis Egan actually obtained a gig as head lobbyist for the frac sand industry trade group Minnesota Industrial Sand Council while serving as the city’s Mayor. The controversy that unfolded after this was exposed has motivated Egan to resign as Red Wing’s Mayor, effective April 1.

Without the fine-grained silica frac sand found within “Sand Land” (or manufactured ceramnic proppants resembling it), there is no hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for the oil and gas embedded within shale rock deposits. In other words, frac sand mining is the “cradle” while burning gas for home-heating and other purposes is the “grave.”

Egan is also the former head of Red Wing’s Chamber of Commerce and the public relations firm he runs, Egan Public Affairs, is a Chamber member both at the Red Wing- and state-level. One of his other lobbying clients is Altria, which Big Tobacco’s Phillip Morris renamed itself in Feb. 2003 during its rebranding process with the help of PR powerhouse, Burson-Marsteller.

Many citizens living within the conflines of ”Sand Land” in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa,Texas, and Arkansas are deeply concerned about the ecological impacts of frac sand mining and the fracking at-large the sand enables.

Direct respiratory exposure to silica sand can lead to development of silicosis, a lung disease that can lead to lung cancer, akin to exposure to the tobacco smoke that Egan lobbies on behalf of. Exposure to silica sand was deemed a workplace hazard by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in a June 2012 report.

Egan’s Frac Sand Ties Engender Citizen, City Council Backlash

Given this “price of sand,” residents reacted with outrage about the conflict-of-interest and started circulating a recall petition to send Egan packing as Mayor.

So too did Red Wing’s City Council, with three of its members demanding Egan resign at a Feb. 11 meeting and the City Council at-large voting unanimously at that same meeting to hire an outside investigator to dig deeper into the entirety of Egan’s conflicts-of-interest.

The brewing dramatic three-week-old scandal has come to a close, though, as Egan announced he will step down from his mayoral post.

“I believe that a mayor must live to a higher standard than just avoiding conflicts of interest,” he told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “If a mayor’s activities serve as a distraction or roadblock for the city, the public is not well-served.”

Red Wing’s City Council, in turn, decided to drop the investigation on Egan and the recall petition is now null-and-void.

“We understand his decision and wish him well in his new position,” Red Wing City Council President Lisa Bayley told Minnesota Public Radio. “I think he had to make that decision — what we wanted to do. I just don’t think the two positions were compatible and he needed to pick something.”

Red Wing resident and recall petitioner Dale Hanson told the Star-Tribune that he believes this investigation should proceed regardless of Egan’s choice to step down as Mayor “to ensure that if there was corruption, ethics violations, or other vital issues that we have an accurate sense of how much damage may have been done.”

The announcement comes in the aftermath of a major Feb. 20 MN state Senate hearing on frac sand mining. Another one is slated for Feb. 26.

“Heads in the Sand”: Egan Not Alone in Cashing in on Frac Sand Boom

As it turns out, the sordid truth is that corruption and ethics violations with regards to frac sand mining and local governments go far above and beyond Egan and Red Wing. In a Dec. 26 story, the Star-Tribune explained that “at least five public officials in three counties are trying to make money from frac sand.”

Despite this reality and the enormous cradle-to-grave ecological costs and consequences of fracking, public officials have their “heads in the sand” – both literally and figuratively - with regards to the frac sand mining boom.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Fracking and Wall Street Creating a New Housing Bubble

Two long-awaited reports were published today at ShaleBubble.org by the Post Carbon Institute (PCI) and the Energy Policy Forum (EPF).

Together, the reports conclude that the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) boom could lead to a “bubble burst” akin to the housing bubble burst of 2008.

While most media attention towards fracking has focused on the threats to drinking water and health in communities throughout North America and the world, there is an even larger threat looming.  The fracking industry has the ability – paralleling the housing bubble burst that served as a precursor to the 2008 economic crisis – to tank the global economy.

Playing the role of Cassandra, the reports conclude that “the so-called shale revolution is nothing more than a bubble, driven by record levels of drilling, speculative lease & flip practices on the part of shale energy companies, fee-driven promotion by the same investment banks that fomented the housing bubble…” a summary details. “Geological and economic constraints – not to mention the very serious environmental and health impacts of drilling – mean that shale gas and shale oil (tight oil) are far from the solution to our energy woes.”

PCI’s report is titled “Drill Baby, Drill,” authored by PCI Fellow and former oil and gas industry geoscientist J. Dave Hughes, while EPF’s report is titled “Shale Gas and Wall Street,” authored by EPF Director and former Wall Street financial analyst Deborah Rogers.

“100 Years of Natural Gas”? Uh huh…

In President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address, he repeated the fracking industry’s favorite mantra: there are “100 years” of natural gassitting beneath us.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” he stated.

Hughes concludes that the “100 years” trope serves as a disinformation smokescreen and at current production rates, there are – at best – 25 years under the surface.

Industry proponents rely on a figure known as “technically recoverable reserves” when they promote the potential of shale basins. The figure that actually matters though, is production rates, or what the wells actually pull out of the reserves when fracked.

In the case of U.S. shale gas, the booked reserves are operating on what Hughes coins a “drilling treadmill,” suffering from the law of “diminishing returns.”

Hughes analyzed the industry’s production data for 65,000 wells from 31 shale basins nationwide utilizing the DI Desktop/HPDI database, widely used both by the industry and the U.S. government. He sums up the quagmire he discovered in doing so, writing,

Wells experience severe rates of depletion…This steep rate of depletion requires a frenetic pace of drilling…to offset declines. Roughly 7,200 new shale gas wells need to be drilled each year at a cost of over $42 billion simply to maintain current levels of production. And as the most productive well locations are drilled first, it’s likely that drilling rates and costs will only increase as time goes on.

The reality, he explains, is that five shale gas basins currently produce 80 percent of the U.S. shale gas bounty and those five are all in steep production rate decline.

And shale oil? More of the same.

Over 80 percent of the oil produced and marketed comes from two basins: Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale and North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, both of which are visible from outer space satellites.

“[T]aken together shale gas and tight oil require about 8,600 wells per year at a cost of over $48 billion to offset declines,” Hughes writes. “Tight oil production is projected to…peak in 2017 at 2.3 million barrels per day [and be tapped by about 2025]…In short, tight oil production from these plays will be a bubble of about ten years’ duration.”

At current production rates, Hughes concludes, there is 5 billion barrels of shale oil located underneath the Bakken and Eagle Ford, which equates to ameasly ten months worth of oil at current runaway climate change-causing U.S. oil consumption rates.

PCI accompanied Hughes’ report with 43 charts and graphs and a digital U.S. map with the production data of all 65,000 fracking wells in the lower 48.

Wall Street’s Complicity

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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Fracktivists stand firm while Cuomo waffles.

New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration – led by a potential 2016 Democratic Party nominee for president - has announced it won’t achieve the late-Feb. deadline it set on whether or not it would green light shale gas drilling, known by most as “fracking” (hydraulic fracturing).

This announcement fell a day after DeSmogBlog released what “fracktivists” have now dubbed the “New York Fracking Scandal” documents, also housed on NYFrackingScandal.com.

These documents reveal that Cuomo’s chief-of-staff, Larry Schwartz, has thousands of dollars in stock portfolio investments in oil and gas corporations with a financial stake in fracking proceeding in New York, a possible violation of the state’s conflict-of-interest law and potentially a form of insider trading. The documents also detailed that lobbyists from these very same corporations have also had VIP meetings with Cuomo’s top-level aides in the past several months, granted prime access to the Administration to influence-peddle in the run-up to the looming fracking decision.

Yesterday, citing the necessity to “let the science determine the outcome,” NY Department of Health Commisioner (DOH) Nirav Shah wrote that the DOH ”will require additional time to complete based on the complexity of the issues” in a letter to NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner, Joe Martens.

Shah closed his letter by stating, “Whatever the ultimate decision on [fracking] going ahead, New Yorkers can be assured that it will be pursuant to a rigorous review that takes the time to examine the relevant health issues.”

Martens offered a brief response, concurring with Shah and writing that ”the science, not emotion, will determine the outcome.”

Front-line fracktivists see the Administration’s reprieve as a positive development – at least for now.

“Commissioner Shah is correct that the state needs to take the time to do a comprehensive study of the health effects of fracking to protect the public health,” said Sandra Steingraber, previously interviewed on DeSmogBlog in late-2011 about her latest book, “Raising Elijah.”

“As he notes, no comprehensive studies have been done to date and New York must do so before making a decision about fracking. We are confident that such a review will show that the costs of fracking in terms of public health are unacceptable.”

A recent webinar hosted by one of the outside peer reviewers of the delayed DOH study, though, reveals that the water here is a bit muddier than it appears on the surface.

Concerned Health Professionals of NY: DOH Review Fatally Flawed

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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Lawrence Schwartz, Secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo

New York could soon become the newest state in the union to allow hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the controversial technique used to enable shale oil and gas extraction. The green light from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo could transpire in as little as “a couple of weeks,” according to journalist and author Tom Wilber.  

That timeline, of course, assumes things don’t take any crazy twists or turns.

Enter a press conference today in Albany, where seven groups, including Public Citizen, Food and Water Watch, Frack Action, United for Action, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, and Capital District Against Fracking, called for an Albany County District Attorney General investigation of the Cuomo Administration.

They are asking “whether Lawrence Schwartz, Secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, has a conflict of interest between his stock investments and his involvement in the state’s decision on whether to allow high-volume hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.”

Schwartz – dubbed “the ringleader” of Governor Cuomo’s administration – potentially has what these groups describe as a legal conflict-of-interest. A months-long DeSmogBlog investigation reveals that Cuomo’s chief-of-staff actually has a direct financial interest in fracking going forward in New York state, potentially falling under the sphere of insider trading.  

Above and beyond Schwartz’s annual oil and gas industry stock holdings in corporations ranging from Occidental Petroleum, Williams Companies, ExxonMobil/XTO, and General Electric (GE) for the past decade, the Cuomo Administration has also held numerous meetings with lobbyists representing some of these same corporations dating back to when Cuomo assumed office in Jan. 2011, records obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) by DeSmogBlog reveal.

Dirty Details: Oil/Gas Industry Stock Holdings, Meetings with Lobbyists from Same Corporations

The details are dirty, both figuratively and literally.

A September 2012 investigation by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) examined Schwartz’s past three financial disclosure forms. That probe revealed that he had stock holdings of $1,000+ each in Occidental, Williams, Exxon/XTO, and GE in both 2010 and 2011, respectively. All four of these corporations possess a financial stake in Cuomo approving fracking in New York.

2009 saw much of the same, a year in which Schwartz had $1,000+ in his stock portfolio invested in GE, Williams, and Burlington Resources (purchasd as a subsidiary by ConocoPhillips in 2005).

DeSmogBlog followed in the footsteps of the EWG investigation by filing both an Executive Chamber FOIL request, as well a FOIL request to Schwartz’s former employer, the Westchester County Executive Office, asking for his financial disclosure forms dating back to 2002.

That latter request revealed that Schwartz has had stock holdings in the oil and gas industry dating back to 2002. At that time he was working as chief-of-staff to then-Westchester County Executive, Andrew J. Spano.

In 2002 and 2003, Schwartz had over $1,000 in stock holdings in Chevron and GE. Until 2001, Texaco – purchased in 2000 as a subsidiary by Chevron – was headquarted in Westchester. The Westchester County Executive Chamber did not possess Schwartz’s forms for 2004 or 2005.

His 2006 filings reveal $1,000 or more in his stock portfolio invested in Burlington Resources, GE, and Williams Companies.

Records obtained from Cuomo’s Executive Chamber also revealed that lobbyists from the very corporations Schwartz has thousands of dollars of stock holdings in have earned the ear of Cuomo in the form of exclusive meetings with his high-level aides.  

One case in point: Both in April 2012 and in Sept. 2012, Williams Companies lobbyists had meetings with Cuomo aides on the status of its proposed Constitution Pipeline, a joint venture between Cabot Oil and Gas, Piedmont Natural Gas and Williams Companies. That 120-mile long, 30-inch prospective pipeline, if approved, will carry gas produced in NY’s section of the Marcellus Shale to markets throughout the northeastern U.S.

The latter meeting was held between two Williams’ lobbyists – Tonio Burgos and John Charlson – and upper level Cuomo aides.

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Ed Rendell

A breaking investigation by EnergyWire appears to connect the dots between shadowy lobbying efforts by shale gas fracking company Range Resources, and the Obama EPA’s decision to shut down its high-profile lawsuit against Range for allegedly contaminating groundwater in Weatherford, TX.

At the center of the scandal sits former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, the former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the National Governors’ Association.

Just weeks ago, the Associated Press (AP) broke news that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shut down the high-profile Texas lawsuit and buried an accompanying scientific report obtained during the lawsuit’s discovery phase in March 2012.

That confidential report, contracted out to hydrogeologist Geoffrey Thyne by the Obama EPA, concluded that methane found in the drinking water of a nearby resident could have originated from Range Resources’ nearby shale gas fracking operation.

Range Resources – which admitted at an industry conference that it utilizes psychological warfare (PSYOPs) tacticson U.S. citizens – launched an aggressive defense against the EPA’s allegations that the company might be responsible for contaminating resident Steve Lipsky’s groundwater.

AP explained in its investigation that resident Steve Lipsky, who has a wife and three young children, had “reported his family’s drinking water had begun ‘bubbling’ like champagne” and that his “well…contains so much methane that the…water [is] pouring out of a garden hose [that] can be ignited.”

In response, the Obama EPA ordered Range to halt fracking. Range was non-cooperative every step of the way, refusing to comply with the legal dictates of the discovery phase and not complying with the censored water sample study implicating the company with groundwater contamination.

The new twist exposed by EnergyWire‘s Mike Soraghan is that Ed Rendell, acting “as a spokesman for Range” Resources, “proposed certain terms” to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Exactly what was said remains unclear, but the EPA ultimately dropped its case against Range.

Over a thousand pages of emails obtained by EnergyWire “offer behind-the-scenes insights in a case that has come to be seen as a major retreat by the agency amid aggressive industry push-back and support for natural gas drilling by President Obama.”

Rendell: Range’s Chosen One or Rogue Lobbyist?

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