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In our last episode of ‘Rocks Are Our Friends”, A BP For The Rest of Us Aunt Toby discussed the issue of using hydro-fracturing to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. A lot of people are ‘agin’ it – a lot of others think we’re idiots.
Today’s lesson is a discussion of ‘Where Rocks and Food Intersect’. No, we are not going to discuss salt mining in the Finger Lakes. I’m still stuck on the Marcellus Shale (Aunt Toby is a tad obsessed). A story appeared in papers regarding an announcement by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, quarantining a herd of cows on a Wellsboro, PA farm, due to exposure to used fracking fluid (sometimes called ‘brine’) when the wall of a retaining pond used by East Energy in their drilling operations leaked.
All over the field next door.
Oh, and there wasn’t any security around the pond. So the cows had access to the pond itself.
“According to Rhoads (East Company’s representative), hydraulic fracturing on the farm began April 2. The holding pond contained only fresh water until April 9, when it began collecting wastewater. Rhoads said East first heard of a possible leak on May 2 and went out to investigate.
East and the agriculture department differed on one point in the timeline, with East saying it had immediately fenced off the affected pasture area. Redding’s statement said cattle had "potential access to the pool for a minimum of three days until the gas company placed a snow fence around the pool to restrict access." Rhoads said water was removed and that testing using the state environmental department’s strictest standards began the next day; the affected soil was removed from the site by May 5.
The holding pond was removed entirely two days later, and the hydraulic fracturing phase was completed.” PA DOA Quarantines Cows
Let’s look at this, step by step:
– The company ‘first heard of a possible leak about a month after a farm fresh water holding pond started to become contaminated with ‘wastewater’ from the drilling operation. It is impossible from the article to know exactly where the drilling is taking place – is it ON the farmers’ property itself? Is it on a neighbor’s property? Either way, one fact remains – East Energy was not – and perhaps is not required by PA regulation, either – monitoring fresh water sources in the area of the drilling for contamination. Considering that contamination of fresh water sources is a huge concern in the whole ‘fracking’ in the Marcellus Shale, this is a huge red flag.
– Once “the hydraulic fracturing phase was completed” the holding pond and the soil were removed from the site. In other words, the Commonwealth of PA allowed the company to continue to drill, even while it knew that soil, water were contaminated and that the cows had been compromised. The biggest worry is that the fracking wastewater contains not only chromium, but also strontium, which ‘hides out’ in the bones and therefore would be dangerous not only for the long term survival of the animals, but also their milk, any unborn calves they have, or their meat.
So, the animals have been quarantined for period of up to January 1 of next year. The farmer must keep them, keep them fed, keep them as healthy as he can, allow testing, and…not sell them or any products from them. In other words, lose income because of the company’s negligence.
Question: Will the Commonwealth allow for the farmer to sue the company for the value of the cows? For the contamination or and therefore loss of the fresh water pond and the field? How about making the company rehabilitate the field? You see, cleaning up soil and water contamination is no easy trick. And if state governments make drilling for natural gas expensive enough that using hydraulic fracturing just is not cost effective any longer, perhaps they will…just…stop. The Marcellus Shale and the natural gas have been there a very long time – the only reason the companies are after this now is that the price of natural gas is now higher than their ‘costs’ of hydraulic fracturing – we need to get State governments to include other costs – and potential costs – to bring the total lifetime costs of a well to a point where cost-benefit ratio of hydraulic fracturing becomes negative. That is the only thing the companies will listen to – if it no longer ‘pays’ to do it, then they will stop.
(photo courtesy of David Clow)
45 Comments
What’s a few dead cows?
Got Strontium?
Thank you for this, Toby. Sue them into the groundwater, asap!
I’m still sitting here like a bad student feeling a little foggy. But I suppose our polluters count on that, don’t they?
Thanks Toby.
Our underground aquifers are under attack.
I hear lawsuit is a four letter word these days.
While the costs to the environment of widespread drilling for NG are very large, the benefits are very short-lived. The most recent estimates of the total resource of natural gas are about 2,400 trillion cu. ft. (Tcf). The industry touts this as a 100-year supply because, annually in the U.S., consumption is about 24 Tcf. However, only 20-30% of the gas is recoverable – so 100 years diminishes immediately to 20-30 years. That time interval is based on levels of CURRENT consumption. If we convert power plants to NG, it is easy to imagine current consumption doubling – so 20-30 years becomes 10-15 years. If was assume the industry is lying about the resource (as they typically do), we might assume the actual total amount is only 1/2 what they claim – so 10-15 years becomes 5-7.5 years. Thus, one can see the urgency for drilling. Have a great holiday!
Good Morning Auntie and Firedogs,
fyi – from this Pro Publica article,
Thank you cbl2!! So, the well is also on the farmer’s property. That actually changes nothing about the issue – it just allows for the fact that the farmer’s neighbors now must ask themselves whether or not THEIR fresh water sources have been contaminated as well.
Just north of the city I live in, CVPS just opened a new set of solar panels. We’re still battling over wind turbines, but there are a few places here in Vermont that are going ahead with them. We’re ramping up our Cow Power input, and hydro is working nicely.
Why do I feel like I live in the only state in the Union which is working hard to get as far from fossil fuels as possible.
If people do not lease their land that would help force the cost of drilling up too. O/G would be forced to buy land tracks rather than pay the minimal cost for leasing. Another reason why O/G do leases rather than offer to buy the land is because most land owners that sign a lease might not be reading the fine print on clean up and such, and o/g wants that. Many of those leases do not require the lessee to do cleanup on the adjacent properties.
And most O/G hit rural communities on purpose. Usually more elderly people there that might not thoroughly read the leases, and most people regardless of age to not want to take on the expense of paying a lawyer to read over the lease and thus take out clauses or add them to protect the leaser or communities.
Don’t mean to put it off on the landowner, but they are signing on the dotted line. Tell O/G they can buy all the properties. It would be too expensive for them and they would get the hell out of that community. Not just because of the expense, but the O/G company would know these people are educated on the issues. O/G don’t want no educated people and communities.
I came late to the party on this issue. “Gasland” on HBO documents the horror of fracking. Most states have been under assault from the natural gas companies for the last five years. Those companies have no laws to abide by and can poison anything they want because no laws apply to them. Already over 40,000 wells in the U.S. and the drillers are lined up to get to the Marcellus Shale. “Gasland”..a must see for every thinking American.
Extending my comment @10 into what your wrote: Smaller Solar and Wind companies should consider the lease programs rather than trying to get on only State or Federal areas. The smaller companies could sell the energy in community settings. I think many environmentalist have forgotten the simplicity of “act local” and sell and buy local.
No reason why profits can not be made in local communities. Sometimes I can think like a capitalist. Hell, I could put up solar panels on my 10 acres and sell just to a few neighbors and make a profit if I do my math right. We do not have to wait on the Feds.
I, for one, have no intention of selling my solar to “the grid” and getting on the thing. We must start thinking deeper before the Feds come along and force or mandate that people tap into the grid.
A book, “Stupid to the Last Drop” by William Marsden about the ongoing environmental catastrophe brought about by mining of Alberta tar sands, also discusses the associated pollution in Alberta and Saskatchewan by “fracing”(pronounced “fracking”) of coal bed seams for coal bed methane. Maybe this has been discussed on FDL before, but I did not know this. Marsden reports that fracing was developed by -get ready for this- Halliburton in 1949, which thereafter patented the process. Supposedly intended for deep gas reserves, the most recent use is of shallow reserves of coal bed methane. This has created serious problems in the US and Canada in the contamination of drinking water wells.
Between 1995-2000 Halliburton under Dick Cheney sought to exempt fracing from the Safe Water Drinking Act. Initially that was denied but Cheney eventually got his wish after 2000. In 2004, the Bush-Cheney EPA issued a report claiming that fracing posed little or no threat to drinking water in groundwater aquifers. Some whistleblower EPA engineers complained to Congress that the report was “unsupportable” and based on “limited research.” EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley opened an investigation on the fracing report. She resigned in 2006 after her salary was made contingent on performance review by the White House. I haven’t heard if fracing is still exempt from Safe Water Drinking Act regulations but in light of the BP disaster and the leftover contamination of the agency in charge of regulating offshore drilling with Bush-era moles, I’m guessing it is.
I’m with you on buying and selling locally. But how can someone with solar panels get their energy to their neighbors if not through the grid? The only way many people can afford small scale solar or wind energy is by interconnecting to the grid and selling their surplus output to the local energy company. Most of the problems arising from wind energy are from “big wind” farm projects using 1 mW size turbines. These require huge investments in transmission lines to transport the energy to population centers.
A better solution would be for many landowners in rural and semi-rural areas to install small wind machines (under 40 kW) and use existing transmission lines to resell the output locally.
From my reading, yes, it is still exempt. I believe there have been hearings and legislation introduced about it. Obama admin has not helped it along. I believe the amendment that the CO Congresswoman introduced in the Climate Change Bill dealt with it. She withdraw it.
Also Halliburton has fought for years not to disclose the chemicals in the fracing fluid. They say it is a proprietary issue. I don’t know if it was the EPA that recently put out the chemical makeup or a watchdog group. Either way I suspect Halliburton will be suing someone for the release of “their” formula.
I have watched this great documentary a couple of times. Everyone adult in America and every kid in school should see this. This is corporate crime at it’s worst. When you see the chemicals they use and the posionous result to the land and water and public health, it is really homocide they are committing. Any elected official that bends to the industry is just as culpable. The apathy and ignorance of Americans is what is killing this nation. Most Americans have handed off all responsibility for government and protecting civil and environmental rights to some elected official with self enrichment his main goal instead of the people’s interests. I am afraid the screaming won’t start until the damage is beyond reversible.
or the “if you don’t do what we desire you don’t get paid” contingency.
I wonder what kind of subsidies the frackin’ fracing companies are getting. How does that translate into cost per person using the natural gas. I wonder how much our gasoline really costs us when we add up the degradation to the environment, continuing long term cost to clean up the oil volcano, subsidies, and price per gallon at the pump. How much does one zip lock baggy really cost us? Everything we touch has been fouled by the energy crime syndicate. Between the banksters, the energy crime syndicate, the two party different sides of the same coin system, the for profit we don’t care if you die care system, the kill old people to kill middle eastern people social security system I say we are fucked big time.
I am going to get my second cup o coffee.
I hear you. I have thought about this for a while, and know the transmission lines would be a huge expense. I think it would be less expensive for solar however in overall material cost. I just keep toying around with the lease thing. Property owners would also have an incentive to lease their land because of royalties they would get.
There is just something that does not “feel” right about tapping into the grid to buy back the same energy my solar panels are producing. The power company would have to pay for half or more of my cost to install the solar for me to do that. I would be buying back the same energy that I payed the cost to install.
And, once you are in the grid, you are at their whim. They could set the price at their discretion as to what the pay you. They would say something like “market price”. When an energy company figures out how to own a wind vein or solar “reserve” we will have alternatives. And not until.
Just think about “shared waters”. They lease them in blocks. There is no reason why they would not devise a system to create blocks in wind veins or solar areas as well. Mark my word: when you here of legislation that mandates people to tap into the grid and rumors of creating blocks in the sky to lease, the fix will be in.
Through our utility bills every month, we in Georgia are paying for new nuclear plants that may or may not (resoundingly hopefully NOT) be built here in the next 10 years. So Georgia is battling between nuclear and coal. Yaaahhh Stupid Us! Georgia – where evolution meets Sisyphus! I can say it because I was born and raised here.
In his book I mentioned. Marsden says that one of he whistleblowing EPA engineers named Weston Wilson objected to the draft of the report being reviewed by a 7 member panel of outside experts, three of whom worked for energy companies including Halliburton and two of whom were former employees of energy companies. This panel pressured the EPA into removng references to the dangers posed by fracing to drinking water and to include a recommendation exempting fracing from drinking water safety regulations. They also pressured the EPA into removing statements revealing that fracing fluids contained high concentrations of dangerous, i.e. toxic, chemicals, like benzene, phenanthrenes, naphthalene, fluourenes, ethylene glycol and methanol. Marsden’s source is the Oil and Gas Accountability Project.
He adds that in 2003, Halliburton and two other firms engaged in this business voluntarily agreed to remove diesel fuel from the fracing fluids but not because they agreed using diesel fuel posed any danger to drinking water.
You have some good ideas and I think future land use planning should look at new development that enables us to avoid wasting energy, just as post 1970 development assumed the primary mode of transport as the gas fired single owner automobile.
Maybe here you live the regulations are different but in Minnesota, there is a law passed as part of the state PURPA legislation called “net billing” which pays the small IPP for the excess over what he/she produces and sells at the retail rate. Also, energy companies are regulated as to the price they must pay, although I agree it has been and is problematic. The price is supposed to be at “avoided cost” under the 1978 PURPA law. Avoided cost is supposed to be determined by the energy company’s costs of building or buying energy alternative to buying it from the small power producer. Negotiating a contract with a large energy company has been made impossible because these companies refuse to negotiate for avoided capital costs with small power producers on an individual basis. Until someone takes an energy company to a utility commission or court, this will not change. The law does support such a change.
It is not only fracking fluid, it is also the chemicals in “mud” that is used. One is bad enough. Mud still comes after the fracing fluid. What a toxic soup. And heads up: a few companies have began R&D with fracing in the deep waters. They do not have to drill as far.
They want the fracing for Methane production primary, land and sea, more than anything for the future. Even as Steven Chu said (paraphrased), “There is enough Methane to fuel the world for centuries.” When they say “natural gas” they are really talking about Methane.
And we have all clearly seen what Methane Hydrates can do in deepwater. With the mine explosions as of late, we also know what it can do on land. Hell, as we know from Gasland, water faucets can already be sat in fire. Think what it can do when they deliberately start drilling for it.
Exelon Corp was one of Obama’s primary donors in the Primaries. I believe first before Goldman overcame. They are out of Illinois and he had helped them out when he was an Illinois Senator. They are nuclear and “clean coal” technology. They have got their payback in stimulus and budgets already. Money for new Nuclear plants and R&D for clean coal.
Here in Vermont, we have a lot of farm land, and a lot of small wind and solar plants along with methane extractors on several dairy farms. It’s been pretty effective, over all. Our biggest problem is that the big wind farms are too destructive. One up on Suzie Peak did a lot of damage before the state shut them down. The solar plant that CVPS put up seems to be on a portion of land that they bought from a local farm that was useless for farming, but perfect for building solar farms on. I also know of a few places, including the old dump, where they could put in more arrays. Vermont is slowly shifting, but it is taking time here too.
We’re in the process of shutting down Vermont Yankee and replacing it with wind, solar, and methane power.
I use to live in Georgia- Brunswick specifically. I remember the attitude there. I am so glad I moved back to Vermont.
It’s all Democrat and Republican corporate collusion. I started hearing about the anticipated Georgia Public Service Commission rate hike to our utility bills to pay for new nuclear plants from a friend at Georgia Tech well before Bush-Cheney thankfully departed. But then they simply handed the nuclear/coal baton off to Obama, and he ran with it like a Jamaican Olympian lightning Bolt.
I don’t know where you live but we went with a Solar Leese with nothing down… Here is a link to my Solar system output page… This has been well worth it to us saving about $200.00 a month … You can check out my vendor at http://www.solarcity.com .. They have been great to work with…I highly recommend them..
About the title: This is a serious subject. No colon jokes, please.
Thanks. I am off mostly off the grid, but convincing the neighbors is tough. Thanks for more info on the leasing programs. I have seen one or two here so far. Sad. I live in “the solar capitol of the world” (where McCain is going to end up going for the POS Climate BIll because he will get more Nuclear Plants in the freaking desert and get to mine for Uranium in the Grand Canyon). Oh, by the way, we are getting a huge solar panel manufacturing plant here…a company owned out of China. Go figure. Though, jaded, I still try, we all must try, to keep plugging away, and not count on the Feds or States. Corporatism is here to stay.
I did not even think about it being a pun or a joke.
Toby, keep being obsessed. As you can imagine, I feel llike a pretty well-informed person, but I had no idea about fracking or what was happening in the Marcellus Shale. Your pieces have been extremely enlightening.
This story is particularly appalling – although there’s so much to be appalled about it’s hard to rank what’s most so.
Keep it up.
Yes, thank you, Toby. Good processing on “Independence” Day. I did read your piece last week too. I started a piece on the R&D for fracing in the Arctic continental shelf. Think how much Methane Hydrate can come out of there. Thanks for the encouragement. I think I should finish it. I will double post it at the Seminal. Everyone have a good one.
Thanks for continuing to cover this, Toby. I just want to point out that it was not the farm’s pond that was contaminated.
The drilling companies dig holding pits, called brine ponds, that first hold the fresh-water that will be mixed with chemicals and other components into fracking fluid. The pits are then used to hold the returned fracking fluid until it can be pumped into tanker trucks and transported to a treatment facility.
Whether or not the well is located on the farmer’s land may not matter. In most states, mineral rights are considered superior rights to those of the surface. This means that if you have a house and there is oil under it that is controlled by someone else, they could come in, tear down your house, mine the resource, and when done, they have to replace the surface uses (i.e., your house). This doesn’t happen very often to a house, but it does on ag properties all the time. So many people don’t have the right to tell an oil company “no” because they never owned the rights in the first place.
We don’t quit burning gasoline in our cars if the tanks in a gas station leaks, or when a tanker tips over, or when refineries polute miles around them. We won’t even stop burning gasoline while watching the oil spill in the Gulf.
Yet after an accident like mentioned in the above post, they want to quit all Natural Gas Drilling.
Would You please provide proof that strontium even accures naturally, and not a manmade eliment?
Brine is salt water, because much of the earth below is composed of salt which that water runs through, and yes it picks up minute amounts of metals, but seldom in concentrations to hurt much of anything.
In a purified water report You will find most of the same metals and chemicals are present in even city water.
If you haven’t read THIS yet, you need to ASAP. There is info about introducing methane producing molecules into rock formations-among other geoengineering ideas…read the whole thing.
Blogs and Comments – Comments – Other Comments – The link between …Jun 28, 2010 … BP won’t stop at dangerous deep water drilling: the company is bent on still more … The link between BP, geoengineering and GM. Jim Thomas …
http://www.theecologist.org/…/the_link_between_bp_geoengineering_and_gm.html – Cached
Surviving Capitalism – a daily selection of the best articles on …Jul 2, 2010 … The link between BP, geoengineering and GM. from the Ecologist. Like the banking industry, the article shows how BP is also engaged in high …
survivingcapitalism.blogspot.com/…/link-between-bp-geoengineering-and-gm.html – Cached about methane producing microbes used in rock formations,you need to…ASAP.
The link between BP, geoengineering and GM
Jim Thomas
28th June, 2010
BP won’t stop at dangerous deep water drilling: the company is bent on still more dangerous projects, including genetic modification and hacking the planet’s atmosphere…
Sometimes you have to notice the silences. Where has Dr. Steve Koonin, Under Secretary for Science at the US Department of Energy, been since the Gulf disaster happened?
Koonin was intimately acquainted with the very technologies that have failed so spectacularly on the Deepwater Horizon rig in his former job as BP’s chief scientist. It was under Koonin’s tenure at BP that the oil giant invested an undisclosed sum to develop microbes that could be injected into coal seams and tar sands to release methane. Such methanogenic bacteria exists naturally in parts of the Earth’s crust but the ecological implications of artificially injecting super powerful methane-creating bugs and the potential for an accidental release of powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere has yet to be studied. Of course BP would counter that their experimental technology would not escape, just like hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil was not expected to gush out of the seabed.
If we have learnt one thing out of the BP-Halliburton-Transocean disaster it is this: do not trust those who are profiting from the use of a technology with its safety.And then there is geo-engineering –the biggest technological gamble of all –which Koonin and BP see as a viable backup plan. Geoengineering refers to seemingly outlandish large-scale schemes to re-engineer atmospheric and ocean systems in order to counteract global warming. A Plan B for the world
In 2008 David Eyton, BP VP for science and technology announced that a new area of investigation for BP was indeed geo-engineering. ‘We cannot ignore the scale of the challenge,’ he wrote ,‘and we all need to have a plan B if the world is unable to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations and the worst of climate change predictions are realized.’ To state the obvious, big oil would certainly benefit if the atmosphere could be engineered to withstand higher concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Excerpt,….Blogs and Comments – Comments – Other Comments – The link between …Jun 28, 2010 … BP won’t stop at dangerous deep water drilling: the company is bent on still more … The link between BP, geoengineering and GM. Jim Thomas …
http://www.theecologist.org/…/the_link_between_bp_geoengineering_and_gm.html – Cached
If anyone has not seen the excellent film,”There Will Be Blood”,they are missing out on a real primer on early oil exploration,and land rights use in this country.
i actually haven’t see it – yet. Glad to get a positive review for it, now would be a good time to see it. (and there is that Daniel Day Lewis…)
Ain’t it the truth?
That Daniel sure makes MY day!
That’s actually not the case in most states – but it is usually in states that have long had valuable minerals, such as W.Virginia, pa, Tex, Okla, etc. I’d bet that in states like Vt. or Michigan mineral rights are not separate. I am pretty sure that Indiana doesn’t separate them. Just listing the states I’ve lived in and therefore have some knowledge of. But it’s always been my impression (including in law school) that separating ownership of the surface rights and the mineral rights is the exception.
Not so sure why a couple of cows drinking bad water is a news story, but whatever.
1) The story above does NOT say when the pond started becoming contaminated. It could have been just before the Gas Company checked. They always check wells to set a “baseline” so that it can be checked after drilling.
2)The article states that the holding pond was removed, THEN the fracking was completed. The company was not allowed to continue to pollute.
3) The article stated that the contaminated soil WAS removed by the gas company.
4) The farmer can always sue for damages to his cows, he doesn’t have to ask the State for permission.
5) Having grown up on a Dairy Farm, I can assure you that our cows would have been fenced off from the gas operation.
6) The price of natural gas is actually very low right now. The “high cost” of fracking is apparently offset by the amount of gas in the shale and the proximity to the NE markets.
7) If they did not frack or use horizontal drilling, the number of well sites would be astronomical and the chances of some sort of problem even greater.
Remember that The Sierra Club has endorsed the use of gas to replace oil (from the oily Gulf) and coal because it is far safer and has a far smaller carbon footprint.
The biggest problem with gas in the Marcellus is that it is in Liberals’ back yard, causing environmentalists to become NIMBYs. Where you stand depends on where you sit.
Using the Proud Veal Pen member, Sierra Club as an example of groups that have signed off on destroying the environment is not going to gain many adherents around here.
And it sounds like you’re comfortable with poisoned meat and dairy getting into the food chain with your blithe dismissal of “a couple of cows drinking bad water”
The cows obviously should be taken out of the food chain. However, the CAFOs using drugs to keep mass quantities of animals “healthy” are a far greater problem then a few cows that need to be watched and tested.
I think that gas drilling does less harm than mountaintop removal for coal or drilling in the Gulf. I think that is obvious. I don’t think that even we Progressives/Liberals/lefties will want to stop all oil/gas/coal production tomorrow and then shiver in the dark while waiting for enough solar/wind/biomass energy to be produced. Am I wrong?