Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Food and Water Watch recently demonstrated that the dominant narrative, “100 years” of unconventional oil and gas in the United States, is false. At most, some 50 years of this dirty energy resource may exist beneath our feet.

Bill Powers, editor of Powers Energy Investor, has a new book set for publication in May 2013 titled, “Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth.”

Powers’ book will reveal that production rates in all of the shale basins are far lower than the oil and gas industry is claiming and are actually in alarmingly steep decline. In short, the “shale gas bubble” is about to burst.

In a recent interview, Powers said the “bubble” will end up looking a lot like the housing bubble that burst in 2008-2009, and that U.S. shale gas will last no longer than ten years. He told The Energy Report:

My thesis is that the importance of shale gas has been grossly overstated; the U.S. has nowhere close to a 100-year supply. This myth has been perpetuated by self-interested industry, media and politicians…In the book, I take a very hard look at the facts. And I conclude that the U.S. has between a five- to seven-year supply of shale gas, and not 100 years.

The hotly-anticipated book may explain why shale gas industry giants like Chesapeake Energy have behaved more like real estate companies, making more money flipping over land leases than they do producing actual gas.

Powers told The Energy Report:

Put simply: There is production decline in the Haynesville and Barnett shales. Output is declining in the Woodford Shale in Oklahoma. Some of the older shale plays, such as the Fayetteville Shale, are starting to roll over. As these shale plays reverse direction and the Marcellus Shale slows down its production growth, overall U.S. production will fall.

Powers believes we are quickly approaching a gas crisis akin to what occured in the 1970′s and because of that, prices will soon skyrocket.

Art Berman Also Sounds the “Shale Gas Bubble” Alarm

Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

MCW Enterprises Ltd., a Canada-based corporation, announced on Nov. 19 that it has received all necessary permits to streamline tar sands extraction at its Asphalt Ridge plant located in Vernal, Utah starting in December.

Tar Sands protest in New Orleans

The announcement comes just weeks after U.S. Oil Sands Company received the first ever green light to extract tar sands south in the United States.

Recently changing its name from MCW Energy, MCW Enterprises Ltd. owns MCW Oil Sands Recovery LLC as a wholly owned subsidiary. The company’s CEO, R. Gerald Bailey – often also referred to as Raymond Bailey or Jerry Bailey - is the former President of Exxon Arabian Gulf and also served as an Executive for Texaco (since purchased by Chevron) for 15 years.

MCW’s website explains that its stake in the Asphalt Ridge is a “proven/probable resource of over 50+ million barrels of oil” and that it “is seeking other oil sands leases in Utah, which contains over 32 billion barrels of oil within 8 major deposits.”

Bailey told Flahrety Financial News that he sees this first project as a crucible, or testing grounds, with the potential for more extraction to come down the road.

“This is really going to be a technology play,” he stated. “I don’t plan to build another Exxon out there in the desert.”

The Frac Sand Connection

In June 2012, Temple Mountain Energy (TME) – also based in Vernal, UT – cut a five-year oil sands supply agreement deal with MCW.

“Under this five year Supply Agreement, Temple Mountain will supply MCW with 8,333 tons of oil sands material per month until the year 2016,” MCW’s website explains.

Once the bitumen is extracted, TME plans on selling the fine-grained sand under which it sits to unconventional oil and gas companies forhydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).

“The recent rapid expansion of shale gas and shale oil drilling…has greatly increased the need for fracking sand in this region,” TME wrote on it website. “Asphalt Ridge is well-positioned to serve this high-volume market—both in terms of geographic location and in terms of sand quality.”

To date, frac sand mining companies have targeted five states - Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, Arkansas, and Iowa - transforming tens of thousands of acres of land into “Sand Land.” Utah is soon to become number six.

Race for What’s Left: End of “Easy Oil,” Heavy Price to Pay

With domestic unconventional oil and gas wells under-producing, setting the stage for the shale gas bubble to burst, the push to extract tar sands in the United States is a depiction of the oil and gas industry’s reckless push to extract every last drop in a “race for what’s left.”

The age of “easy oil,” to borrow the term from scholar Michael Klare, is over. In a May 2012 interview with FutureMoneyTrends.com, Bailey acknowledged this as well, stating that the “cheap, easy oil is pretty much behind us.”

Bailey defines “cheap” here with regards to the price of extracting the “tough oil” from a production point-of-view.

But as the Alberta tar sands north of the border have shown, it’s the ecosystem and climate that really pays the heaviest price of all. Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

On Nov. 19, The Los Angeles Times’ Neela Banerjee, writing from Chippewa County, WI, explained what we covered here in June in our “Sand Land” investigation.

The skinny: mining for frac sand creates a whole slew of problems and must be taken into consideration in the “cradle to grave” equation when quantifying the ecological hazards associated with hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for unconventional oil and gas.

“In time, 800 acres of farmland will be mined to feed an energy boom sweeping the United States,” explained Banerjee.

The crystalline silica sand currently being mined from this farm land is blasted into hard rock shale basins during the horizontal drilling process popularly referred to as fracking. This particular fine-grained, circular sand is the perfect shape to break open up pours for shale oil and gas to flow out from under the ground.

“Ground zero for industrial sand mining is western Wisconsin, in counties like Trempealeau, Buffalo and Chippewa,” wrote Banerjee, echoing our findings here on DeSmog. ”At least 60 industrial sand mines are functioning or in the permit process in the area, up from five in 2010…[A] fracked well could use anywhere from 2 million to 5 million pounds of sand.”

The airborne dust eminating from mining for frac sand, a study published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently demonstrated, can lead to silicosis for miners working on site. Comparatively speaking, “little is known about its effect on people who live near mine sites,” Banerjee explained.

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s Crispin Pierce, a toxicologist and head of the environmental public health, believes a comparison between smoking cigarettes and exposure to secondhand smoke is an apt one to make here.

“These are dangerous substances, but what are the levels you’re exposed to if you live near a sand mine or near a rail line where trains filled with sand pass five times a day?” he rhetorically asked The Times.

A “Hopeless” Future?

Community members aren’t happy with the ever-expanding “land grab” unfolding and some have chosen to speak out.

“People here say this is an issue of property rights, that they can do what they want with their land,” Ken Schmitt, a cattle farmer and anti-mining activist told The Times. “But individual rights end when you start affecting others’ health and welfare.”

Others are completely distraught and feel all hope is lost.

“Fighting this just seems so hopeless,” said an anoymous cranberry farmer. “The companies just have so much money. They can just buy everybody. It seems like nothing can stop them. There’s got to be better ways than this.”

From the frac sand mines; to shale gas basins around the world; from the unmonitored and unregulated pipelines that take that fracked gas and ship it to market; and lastly, to LNG export terminals; the unconventional gas industry is destroying the ecological landscape from cradle to grave.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Retuers has revealed the identity of the mysterious third party contractor tasked to publish the economic impact study on LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports on behalf of the Department of Energy (DOE). Its name: NERA Economic Consulting.

“NERA” is shorthand for National Economic Research Associates, an economic consulting firm SourceWatch identifies as the entity that published a June 2011 report on behalf of coal industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). ACCCE’s report concluded, “clean-air rules proposed by the Obama administration would cost utilities $17.8 billion annually and raise electricity rates 11.5 percent on average in 2016.”

That report went so far to say that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations of the coal-generated electrcity sector would amount to some 1.5 million lost jobs over the next four years.

NERA was founded by Irwin Stelzer, senior fellow and director of the right-wing Hudson Institute’s Center for Economic Policy. In Oct. 2004, The Guardian described Stelzer as the “right-hand man of Rupert Murdoch,” the CEO of News Corp., which owns Fox News.

According to NERA’s website, the late Alfred E. Kahn, the “father of deregulation,” advised NERA’s 1961 foundation.

In 2010, NERA published a letter to the New York Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to protest the prospective closure of theIndian Point Nuclear Power Plants.

A NERA report from earlier this year provided the basis for the popular King Coal refrain that the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) Rule would cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars and “kill” 180,000-215,000 jobs.

These figures were picked up and cited by climate change denier U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in June when he spoke out against President Barack Obama’s mythological “war on coal,” as well as by the Republican Policy Committee in a May policy paper titled, “Obama’s War on Coal.”

With a track record like this, it’s best to view whatever report the Obama Administration’s DOE (aka NERA) produces on the economic impact of LNG exports, set to come out by the end of the year, with extreme skepticism if not downright hostility.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Food and Water Watch (FWW) released a report today titled “U.S. Energy Security: Why Fracking for Oil and Natural Gas Is a False Solution.”

Gas from a shale deposit in Pennsylvania

It shows, contrary to industry claims, there aren’t 100 years of unconventional oil and gas sitting below our feet, even if President Barack Obama said so in his 2012 State of the Union Address. Far from it, in fact.

The report begs the disconcerting question: is the shale gas bubble on its way to bursting?

FWW crunched the numbers, estimating that there are, at most, half of the industry line, some 50 years of natural gas and much less of shale gas. This assumes the industry will be allowed to perform fracking in every desired crevice of the country. These are the same basins that advocates of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) claim would make the U.S. the “next Saudi Arabia.”

“The popular claim of a 100-year supply of natural gas is based on the oil and gas industry’s dream of unrestricted access to drill and frack, and it presumes that highly uncertain resource estimates prove accurate,” wrote FWW. “Further, the claim of a century’s worth of natural gas ignores plans to export large amounts of it overseas and plans for more domestic use of natural gas to fuel transportation and generate electricity.”

The race is on for the gas industry to export unconventional gas on the global market, implement a gas-powered utilities sector, and create a gas-powered vehicle market. Due to these races, FWW says that the resource is being depleted at a rate far more quickly than the industry would like to admit to the mass public, writing,

The oil and gas industry’s plans to export shale gas, America’s supposed ticket to energy security, reveal that the only thing the industry seeks to secure is its bottom line. But the oil and gas industry’s push to increase U.S. dependence on natural gas in the transportation and electricity sectors is perhaps even more insidious.

The unfortunate reality is that peak domestic production may have passed, and over the coming years, production rates will likely decline. This means short-term, profit-oriented thinking will lead to contaminated air, polluted water, human health impacts, and even the industrialization of university campuses. Most importantly of all, it means a continued assault on the global climate, which makes for deadly and expensive extreme weather events. Think Hurricane Sandy.All for a few decades of further fossil fuel addiction that doesn’t solve any of the problems that future generations will face.

FWW explained,

The United States consumed about 18.8 million barrels of oil per day in 2011, yet it produced only an estimated 0.55 million barrels of tight oil per day. The EIA does project that tight oil production will increase, but to only about 1.2 million barrels per day between now and 2020, peaking at 1.33 million barrels per day in 2029 before starting to decline. This peak would amount to only about 7 percent of the 18.8 million barrels per day consumed in the United States in 2011.

It’s these numbers that have moved analysts to discover that the unconventional oil and gas craze is a potential economic crisis rather than a blessing, not to mention the accompanying climate and ecosystem costs and consequences of fracking the future.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

The oil and gas industry is waging an 11th hour astroturf campaign in Mansfield, OH in an attempt to defeat the “Community Bill of Rights“ referendum.

A “yes” vote would, in effect, prohibit hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) injection wells in Mansfield, a city of 48,000 located in the heart of the Utica Shale basin between Cleveland and Columbus.

In March 2012, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) conducted a study linking the 12 earthquakes that have occurred in Youngstown, OH to injection wells located in the city. Further, recent investigative reports by ProPublica show that these new dumping grounds – with a staggering 150,000 injection wells in 33 states and 10 trillion gallons of toxic fluid underground - are a public health hazard in the making.

And yet, for the most part, hardly anyone is talking about it.

Preferred Fluids Management LLC is the upstart business that received two well injection permits from the ODNR in the spring of 2011 that motivated the “Bill of Rights” initiative. Industry front groups ranging from Energy in Depth (EID), Energy Citizens, Ohio Energy Resource Alliance and “Mansfielders for Jobs” are leading the charge in the astroturf campaign to defeat it.

Why, though, has the fracking industry put so much time and effort into the placement of a measly two injection wells in Mansfield for this relatively unheard of LLC? Michael Chadsey of EID Ohio explained the importance of the waste dumping grounds at a forum on Jan. 30, 2012, stating,

If for some reason they just said, you know, we’re going to stop this process, eventually the tanks that are on-site are going to get filled up. And then all the drilling pads are going to have to shut down and all of the truck drivers will have to stop.

So…this is the part of the process that is the end part of the process. When you shut down the end, you can’t even start or continue because you have to have all the pieces of the puzzle to make this thing move. Everything is interconnected.

There’s that and then there’s the fact that Preferred Fluids Management LLC isn’t merely a “new kid on the block.” Owned and founded by Steven Mobley, the business has a story of its own worthy of sharing, as it’s closely connected to gas industry powerhouse, Chesapeake Energy.

Preferred Fluids Management LLC: A Quick Primer

According to documents on the Ohio Secretary of State’s Division of Corporations website, Preferred Fluids Management was originally incorporated in February 2010. Since then, fracking waste injection wells have been in the eye of the backlash storm from grassroots activists, environmental NGOs, lawyers, and both federal- and state-level regulators nationwide.

In Ohio, this ongoing backlash motivated Preferred Fluids to withdraw its Mansfield well permits on June 26, 2012.

“While this withdrawal appears to be a city victory over a company that sought to injection toxic poison into our soil, the city must remain vigilant against other companies,” Mansfield Mayor Tim Theaker and Law Director John Spon declared.

Roughly three weeks later, Preferred Fluids responded by filing a federal lawsuit in the Northern District Court of Ohio, stating that Mansfield “has no right under Ohio law to regulate the injection wells,” according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In response to the lawsuit, on Sept. 9 the Mansfield City Council voted to put the “Community Bill of Rights” referendum on the ballot for the Nov. 6 election.

The crazy set of twists and turns continued, when on Oct. 19, perhaps seeing that it’d been one-upped by the citizens of Mansfield, Preferred Fluids decided to drop its federal lawsuit.

“The need to adopt the charter amendment is even greater because it’s very possible that this industry is just regrouping to commence another assault,” Mansfield Law Director John Spon told the Mansfield News Journal, foreshadowing the astroturf battle citizens and grassroots activists are facing in Mansfield.

On Oct 5, 2011 Preferred Fluids Management owner Steven Mobley also incorporated a new company, Buckeye Brine LLC, according to the Ohio Department of State’s Division of Corporations. “It seeks to be a positive force in the communities in which it operates, buying and hiring locally whenever possible, with a strong commitment to local community causes,” according to Buckeye Brine’s website.

The Coshocton Tribune explained that, like Mobley’s Preferred Fluids Management proposal in Mansfield, the plan is to place two injection wells in Coshocton, a city of just over 11,000 southeast of Mansfield.

Buckeye Brine says it will only bring five jobs to Coshocton and has the capacity to process 4,000 to 5,000 barrels of waste fluids a day, according to the Tribune.

Mobley Family Connection to Chesapeake, Injection Wells, Earthquakes

The unanswered question remains on the table: who is Steven Mobley?

Steven Mobley’s brother is David Mobley, who currently serve as Chief Adminstrative Officer and formerly served as Land Manager of Chesapeake Operating Inc., a subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy.

Steven and David were both formerly partial co-owners of their family business, Mobley Environmental Services, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) forms. Businessweek‘s profile for Mobley Environmental Services reads,

In May 1997, Mobley Environmental Services, Inc. sold its only operating division, waste management services, to United States Filter Corporation…It also provided oilfield services, including transporting, marketing, storing, and disposing of various liquid materials used or produced as waste throughout the lifecycle of oil and gas wells.

In 1999, Vivendi Environnement aquired United States Filter Corporation for $6.2 billion. Vivendi Environnement is now known as Veolia Environnement and remains in the oil and gas industry wastewater treatment sector. Facing hard financial times in 2004, Veolia sold US Filter for $1 billion to the German corporation, Siemens, which is also in the oil and gas industry wastewater treatment business.

The frightening and growing nexus between the water privatization industry, the shale gas industry, and the wastewater treatment industry has been pointed out in reports authored by both the Colorado Independent and Food and Water Watch.

Like Mobley Environmental Services and its predecessors – and like Preferred Fluids Management and Buckeye Brine – Chesapeake Operating is also in the fracking wastewater injection business, notorious for its activity in Arkansas.

Paralleling Ohio, Arkansas, home of the Fayetteville Shale basin, has seen over 1,200 waste injection well-related earthquakes, leading the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission to place a ban on injection wells in July 2011 in the area where the earthquakes were most prevalent, though there are still wells in other areas across the state. A February 2011 magnitude 4.7 earthquake near Greenbrier, “was the most powerful to hit the state in 35 years,” according to the Associated Press.

AP further explained that Chesapeake Energy was one of the main well injection operating culprits:

The two injection wells are used to dispose of wastewater from natural-gas production. One is owned by Chesapeake Energy, and the other by Clarita Operating. They agreed March 4 to temporarily cease injection operations at the request of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission.

The barrage of earthquakes served as a motivation for an ongoing class action lawsuit filed by Emerson Poynter LLP in May 2011 at the federal-level Faulkner County Circuit Court in Conway, AR against Chesapeake Operating, as well as BHP Billiton, Petroleum Americas Inc., and Clarita Operating LLC.

In a press release, Emerson Poynter explained it is suing for “millions of dollars in damages for property damage, loss of fair market value in real estate, emotional distress, and damages related to the purchase of earthquake insurance.”

Since the closure of the two injection wells, the number of earthquakes occuring in the area has fallen dramatically, according to the Arkansas Geological Survey.

Chesapeake is closely tethered to or is a member of all of the front groups waging the gas industry’s astroturf campaign in Mansfield, except for the shadowy “Mansfielders for Jobs,” including Energy in Depth, American Petroleum Institute, the Buckeye Energy Forum (API front group), and the Ohio Energy Resource Alliance (OERA).

OERA is an API front group led by the former head of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity Ohio, Rebecca Heimlich, who now also serves as Campaign Manager for API Ohio. OERA’s members include EID Ohio, API, the Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA), and America’s Natural Gas Alliance, among others. Chesapeake is also a member of OOGA and ANGA.

Big Picture: Chesapeake’s Big Plans in the Utica Shale

Cheseapeake, a company currently in deep financial straits, sees the Utica Shale basin as a potential saving grace, with Forbes saying that the Utica is “crucial for Cheseapeake’s future” in a July article.

In a recent call with investors, controversial CEO Aubrey McClendon said he’s “thrilled” with its potential. He also said that Chesapeake is particularly focused on production in Columbiana, Carroll and Harrison counties.

These counties are all within 50-100 miles of Richland and Coshocton counties, the two counties where Preferred Fluid Management LLC’s and Buckeye Brine LLC’s operations are both set to be located, respectively. That makes Richland and Coshocton easily accessible dumping grounds for Chesapeake’s toxic waste.

The fracking waste injection business is a burgeoning and lucrative one, but with it comes huge costs that go above and beyond earthquakes alone.

“In 10 to 100 years we are going to find out that most of our groundwater is polluted,” Mario Salazar, an engineer who worked for 25 years at the EPA’s underground injection program told ProPublica. “A lot of people are going to get sick, and a lot of people may die.”

Grassroots activists have pledged to fight this one tooth and nail as the high stakes battle goes down to the wire.

“The battle lines are being drawn between the greed of the oil and gas industry and the rights of individuals at the local level, Bill Baker, an organizer for Frack Free Ohio told DeSmogBlog in an interview. ”Powerful organizations with no vested interest in the Mansfield community, other than to turn it into a toxic waste dump, are spending millions in advertising to convince citizens to vote ‘no’ on the Bill of Rights.”

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Photo: Claytonn Conn / Tarsandsaction / Flickr

The race is on for the up-and-coming U.S. tar sands industry. To date, the tar sands industry is most well-known for the havoc it continues to wreak in Alberta, Canada - but its neighbor and fellow petrostate to the south may soon join in on the fun.

On Oct. 24, the Utah Water Quality Board (UWQB) approved the first ever tar sands mine on U.S. soil, handing a permit to U.S. Oil Sands, a company whose headquarters are based in Alberta, despite it’s name.

In a 9-2 vote, the UWQB gave U.S. Oil Sands the green light to begin extracting bitumen from its PR Spring Oil Sands Project, located in the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah. The UWQB concluded that there’s no risk of groundwater pollution from tar sands extraction for the prospective mining project.

Members of the public were allowed to attend the hearing but “were not permitted to provide input,” according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

“The PR Spring project remains on track for commercial startup late in 2013, and the decision ultimately illustrates the merits that our responsible approach to oil sands development has for the environment and local communities,” Cameron Todd, CEO of U.S. Oil Sands stated in a press release in response to the decision.

Living Rivers, the Moab, Utah-based offshoot of Colorado Riverkeeper says it will likely appeal the decision to the state’s court system, ”arguing that tar sands mining will contaminate groundwater in a largely undeveloped area of Utah’s Book Cliffs region that drains into the Colorado River,” explained the Associated Press.

In an Oct. 9 interview on Democracy Now!, John Weisheit, Conservation Director of Living Rivers said the harms associated with looming tar sands extraction in the Uinta Basin aren’t merely limited to groundwater contimination. Rather, the entire surrounding ecosystem would be endangered. He told Amy Goodman:

Well, we’re concerned because this particular locality is in a high-elevation place called the Tavaputs Plateau, and it’s one of the last wild places in Utah. It’s a huge refuge for elk and deer. It’s also a beautiful watershed. It not only would affect the Colorado River, but it also—at this particular site, it’s at the top of the drainage, so it would also affect the White River and the Green River.

The PR Spring mining site is 5,930 contiguous acres with a “land position totalling 32,005 acres of bitumen extraction rights on leases in the State of Utah,” according to U.S. Oil Sands’ financial statement for the first half of 2012. AP explained that U.S. Oil Sands plans to extract 2,000 barrels of tar sands crude in Utah in 2012, “in the start of what could grow into a much larger operation.”

Two main grassroots activist groups are currently battling Utah’s upstart tar sands industry: Utah Tar Sands Resistance and Before It Starts. “The Utah Water Quality Board is an entirely inappropriate authority for determining the safety of both water safety and water availability for the 30 million people who depend on the Colorado RIver, most of which do not live in Utah,” Kate Finneran, Co-Director of Before It Starts told DeSmogBlog in an interview.

Though Living Rivers will appeal the decision, U.S. Oil Sands isn’t wasting any time in forging ahead, and according to the AP is already “looking to take on a partner, ordering equipment, hiring Utah contractors and preparing the site” for extraction.

5,900+ acres is a drop in the bucket for an industry sitting on some 232,065 acres of land open for tar sands extraction in the state of Utah, according to a Sept. 2012 story by Inside Climate News.

The U.S. tar sands are deemed a “strategically important domestic resource that should be developed to reduce the growing dependence of the United States on politically and economically unstable sources of foreign oil imports” in Sec. 369 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Most well-known for the “Halliburton Loophole,” the Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempts oil and gas corporations from complying with the dictates of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, making the chemicals injected into the ground (and into groundwater) while hydraulic fractruing (“fracking”) for unconventional gas a “trade secret.” The law was written with the helping hand of oil and gas executives via then Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force in 2001.

By legal mandate, it appears, the race to extract bitumen from “Tar Sands South” has just begun. It’s a race that, like the one being run by its Canadian neighbor to the north, can’t possibly end well for the ecosystem, public health, water quality and the global climate.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Photo: Jeffrey Beall / Flickr

In a missive titled “White Paper: Financial Risks of Investments in Coal,” As You Sow concludes that coal is becoming an increasingly risky investment with each passing day. The fracking boom and the up-and-coming renewable energy sector are quickly superseding King Coal’s empire as a source of power generation, As You Sow concludes in the report.

As You Sow chocks up King Coal’s ongoing demise to five factors, quoting straight from the report:

1. Increasing capital costs for environmental controls at existing coal plants and uncertainty about future regulatory compliance costs

2. Declining prices for natural gas, a driver of electric power prices in competitive markets

3. Upward price pressures and price volatility of coal

4. High construction costs for new coal plants and unknown costs to implement carbon capture and storage

5. Increasing competitiveness of renewable generation resources

Prong one pertains to what groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Republican Party at-large, and the conservative media echo chamber have coined a “War on Coal” and a “Regulatory Train Wreck,” echoing what the shale gas industry’s PR squad has coined a “War on Shale Gas.”

According to As You Sow, regulations have tied the hands of the coal industry to a sufficient level that it’s no longer as lucrative of a venture to make a capital investment into coal as it is to invest in the shale gas and renewable energy industries. “Uncertainty about future regulations plagues coal plant operators who face the incremental imposition of more stringent standards over time,” As You Sow explained.

Shale Gas “Killing” Coal Power Plants

Read the rest of this entry →

(Photo: Marcellus Protest/flickr)

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Pennsylvania recently passed Act 147 – also known as the Indigenous Mineral Resources Development Act - opening up the floodgates for hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on the campuses of its public universities. As noted in a recent post by DeSmog, the shale gas industry hasn’t limited Version 2.0 of “frackademics” to PA’s campuses, but is also fracking close to hundreds of K-12 schools across the country, as well.

We noted the devastating health consequences of fracking close to a middle school/high school in Le Roy, New York, where at least 18 cases of Tourette Syndrome-like outbreaks have been reported by its students. This has moved Erin Brockovich‘s law firm to investigate the case, telling USA Today, “We don’t have all the answers, but we are suspicious. The community asked us to help and this is what we do.”

Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability‘s just-published report, “Gas Patch Roulette: How Shale Gas Development Risks Public Health in Pennsylvania,“ makes the case that the decision to allow fracking on PA’s campuses has opened up a Pandora’s Box stuffed with a looming health quagmire of epic proportions.

The health survey and environmental testing conducted by Earthworks took place between Aug. 2011 and July 2012 and the report opens by stating, “Where oil and gas development goes, health problems often follow.” The summary report explains, “Many residents have developed health symptoms that they did not have before—indicating the strong possibility that they are occurring because of gas development.”

Surveying 108 residents in 14 Pennsylvania counties, the report found ”that those living closer to gas facilities reported higher rates of symptoms of impaired health.”

Earthworks reports,

[W]hen facilities were 1500-4000 feet away, 27 percent of participants reported throat irritation; this increased to 63 percent at 501-1500 feet and to 74 percent at less than 500 feet. At the farther distance, 37 percent reported sinus problems; this increased to 53 percent at the middle distance and 70 percent at the shortest distance. For severe headaches, 30 percent reported them at the farther distance, but about 60 percent at the middle and short distances.

And how about the health impacts of fracking for young people, who will be attending the K-12 schools and universities set to be situated right next to where drilling is set to occur?

“Surveyed children averaged 19 health symptoms, including some that seem atypical in the young, such as severe headaches, joint pain, and forgetfulness,” wrote Earthworks. ”Among all the survey respondents, it was children living within 1500 feet of facilities who had the highest occurrence of frequent nosebleeds (56%),” also noting severe throat irritation as a reported ailment by 69-percent of people younger than the age of 16.

Schools and campuses, of course, require fresh running water to drink and use for other purposes such as showers for lockers rooms, as well as water for students to wash their hands with in the bathroom. Fresh air to breath in, as opposed to the alternative, is also always a plus.

That being the case, the water and air tests conducted by Earthworks demonstrate that students, teachers, professors, faculty and staff should be on high alert, to say the least.

“More than half of the water well samples had elevated levels of methane and some had iron, manganese, arsenic, and lead at levels higher than the Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) set by the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP),” the report stated. “All of the air samples were taken in rural and residential areas; in several, higher levels of the BTEX chemicals (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, which are known carcinogens) were detected, as compared to samples taken by the DEP in 2010.”

Pennsylvania For Sale, Open for Bidding To the Oil and Gas Industry

It’s a dim outlook in PA to put it mildly, with a recent cherry on the top: Anadarko Petroluem Corporation is in the midst of “talks” with PA’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources about fracking in the Rock Run area, site of a state-owned park. Republican Governor Tom Corbett recently fired the Director of its state parks system, John Norbeck, who was diametrically opposed to fracking in PA’s parks.

“Pennsylvania…[is] forging ahead with oil and gas development without considering the public interest,” said Nadia Steinzor, Marcellus Shale Organizer for Earthworks, in a press release. “That needs to change. And they can start by refusing to permit new drilling until regulators can assure the public that they’ve taken all necessary to steps to prevent risks to their health.”

It’s a nice thought in theory.

But the current reality in Pennsylvania under the Corbett Administration is far darker, with whatever’s left of the state’s public assets currently being auctioned off for fracking - in what author and activist Naomi Klein described as “shock doctrine” fashion - to the oil and gas industry’s highest bidders.

Photo Credit: Glynnis Jones | Shutterstock

Photo: CREDO.Fracking / Flickr

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

In Pennsylvania – a state that sits in the heart of the Marcellus Shale basin – the concept of “frackademia” and “frackademics” has taken on an entirely new meaning.

On Sept. 27, the PA House of Representatives – in a 136-62 vote – passed a bill that allows hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” to take place on the campuses of public universities. Its Senate copycat version passed in June in a 46-3 vote and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett signed it into law as Act 147 on Oct. 8.

The bill is colloquially referred to as the Indigenous Mineral Resources Development Act. It was sponsored by Republican Sen. Don White, one of the state’s top recipients of oil and gas industry funding between 2000-April 2012, pulling in $94,150 during that time frame, according to a recent report published by Common Cause PA and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania. Corbett has taken over $1.8 million from the oil and gas industry since his time serving as the state’s Attorney General in 2004.

The Corbett Administration has made higher education budget cuts totaling over $460 million in the past two consecutive PA state budgets. The oil and gas industry has offered fracking as a new fundraising stream at universities starved for cash and looking to fill that massive cash void, as explained by The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Half of the fees and royalties generated by leases of State System of Higher Education lands would be retained by the university where the resources are located. Thirty-five percent would be allocated to other state universities. The remaining 15 percent would be used for tuition assistance at all 14 schools.

“I’ve become extremely concerned, disturbed, and disgusted by the environmental consequences of fracking,” a professor at Lock Haven University told Mother Jones in a recent article. “They’ve had explosions, tens of thousands of gallons of chemicals spilled. And we’re going to put this on campus?”

Mother Jones‘ Sydney Brownstone also explained that Pennsylvania isn’t the only state playing this game, writing:

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