Category Archives: Marcellus Shale

Environment, Fracking, Marcellus Shale

Fracking In Pennsylvania Sets Up Dilemma For Locals:

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Quick Money Or Long-Term Health Concerns?

By Lynn Peeples

Huffington Post

POINT MARION, Pa. — Dave Cogar counts down the days until he’s fracked.

Through a haze of cigarette smoke at the Brass Rail bar here, he laments about living on welfare. He still finds jobs where he can — working construction or fixing computers around this small town south of Pittsburgh — but he says he’s fallen short of creating the life he wants for himself and his teenage son.

So he’s come to the conclusion that natural gas hidden in the Marcellus Shale, thousands of feet beneath his rural Pennsylvania land, may offer him a second chance.

About a year ago, he signed a lease with Chevron, one of a handful of energy companies vying for rights to tap the abundant underground gas in this area. Now Cogar awaits an anticipated windfall of up to $300,000 a year for the next decade or so, according to his own estimates using figures a lease salesman ballparked for him, as well as the written conditions of his lease. The money won’t flow in until Chevron starts injecting pressurized fluids into the ground to fracture shale rock and forage for gas, the controversial process known as "fracking," but Cogar believes it will happen soon. Chevron declined to discuss the details of their agreement with Cogar.

"It should be safe, and the money looks good. Now it’s just the waiting. Like Tom Petty says, that’s the hardest part," said the bald-headed and goatee-chinned Cogar between sips of beer. He began belting lines from the song — and other Petty classics — a few moments later, attracting the attention of fellow bar patrons.

The natural gas rush is on in Pennsylvania, as well as in a growing number of other shale gas-rich states such as Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. New York and Illinois are primed to join in. For residents living near the drilling, the easy money to be had by ceding their land to drillers often competes with their concerns about drilling’s impact on their health and well-being.

Continue reading Fracking In Pennsylvania Sets Up Dilemma For Locals: →

Environment, Fracking, Marcellus Shale

Western PA Cows in Trouble, Too

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Livestock Falling Ill in Fracking Regions, Raising Concerns About Food

By Elizabeth Royte
Beaver County Blue via Food and Environment Reporting Network

In the midst of the domestic energy boom, livestock on farms near oil-and-gas drilling operations nationwide have been quietly falling sick and dying.

While scientists have yet to isolate cause and effect, many suspect chemicals used in drilling and hydrofracking (or “fracking”) operations are poisoning animals through the air, water, or soil.

Earlier this year, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca, New York, veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published the first and only peer-reviewed report to suggest a link between fracking and illness in food animals.

The authors compiled 24 case studies of farmers in six shale-gas states whose livestock experienced neurological, reproductive, and acute gastrointestinal problems after being exposed—either accidentally or incidentally—to fracking chemicals in the water or air. The article, published in New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, describes how scores of animals died over the course of several years.

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Economy, Environment, fair trade, Green Energy, Marcellus Shale, Wall Street

Exporting Gas And Oil Will Not Erase The Trade Deficit

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Western PA as a Case in Point

US trade deficit 2012

By EMS News
Beaver County Blue via Culture of Life News

The US continues the program of selling commodity raw materials while importing manufactured goods.  This futile trade deal is also not working because always, the value-added labor that goes into production is lost when a country trades this way.  If a country has a small population and lots of raw materials, it can get rich doing this but not a country with 350 million people.  Even Saudi Arabia, due to making birth control illegal, has a rapidly growing population that is eating into oil export values and soon will erase it entirely.  Japan, with half the population of the US, is seeing its trade decline, too.  While importing energy due to Fukushima.

The trade deficit was hardly mentioned during the last election.  It is as if it doesn’t exist.  Even though it is the core problem within our economy, one that has been papered over, literally, by the US printing trillions of extra dollars.  Inflation has been kept down due entirely to trade partners holding excess US dollars in FOREX accounts overseas.  But the US is desperate to generate some funds to cover the river of red ink flowing through our economy so of course, we do this by exporting lumber, gasoline, gas and oil as well as other primitive commodity products.

Naturally, this doesn’t plug the giant hole in our economy! Nonetheless, DC pundits and politicians tell us gravely, we must do this more and more and eventually it will fix things. Here is the latest delusional story from DC misleading people about the trade deficit: Natural gas exports: A boon to the economy – The Washington Post

Continue reading Exporting Gas And Oil Will Not Erase The Trade Deficit →

Environment, Green Energy, Infrastructure, Marcellus Shale

Fracking Fukushima, Batman—Is that a Natural Gas Well Making Undergrounds Explosions Near a Nuclear Power Plant?

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The Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

By Paul E McGinniss
Beaver County Blue via EcoWatch

On Oct. 3, Chesapeake Energy was issued a permit by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to drill for natural gas by fracking one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. 

This is disturbing news considering in January evidence proved that Ohio earthquakes were caused by a fracking wastewater injection well.

Shockingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) regulation and oversight rules do not cover any related activity off site, including wastewater injection wells, oil and gas drilling—including fracking—or any other types of projects that are in near proximity to nuclear power plants.

So who oversees how drilling for oil and natural gas and related activity might affect the safety of nuclear power plants? Apparently no one.

According to Shale Reporter, an indendent website that provides an unbiased presentation of information about Marcellus Shale issues:

Continue reading Fracking Fukushima, Batman—Is that a Natural Gas Well Making Undergrounds Explosions Near a Nuclear Power Plant? →

Environment, Green Energy, Marcellus Shale

Shayna Metz and Beaver County’s Marcellus Awareness Committee Defending Our Water!

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Shayna Metz, Center, at Protest

Industry Woman Cycles Against Fracking Current

By Bill Utterback
Beaver County Times

August 4, 2012 – On a cross-country cycling trip created to promote clean water as a priority over Marcellus shale drilling, Shayna Metz of Industry waded into the Youghiogheny River. She was moved to poetry.

“I push against the current … I wade deeper and stand and fight,” she wrote in an online blog.

Metz, a Geneva College graduate, pushed against the surging current of natural gas drilling by serving as project coordinator for the Tour de Frack, a bicycle trip that began July 14 in Butler County and ended July 28-29 on the lawn of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The cyclists, and a bus full of supporters from western Pennsylvania who joined them, participated in the "Stop the Frack Attack" rally, labeled the first national anti-fracking event.

Continue reading Shayna Metz and Beaver County’s Marcellus Awareness Committee Defending Our Water! →

Environment, Green Energy, Marcellus Shale

‘Fracking’: Myth Meets Realties

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A natural gas rig side by side with homes in Washington County, PA | B. Mark Schmerling

Fractured Lives

Detritus of Pennsylvania’s Shale Gas Boom

By Edward Humes

Progressive America Rising via Sierra Club

The supple hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, once known for their grassy woodlands, red barns, and one-stoplight villages, bristle with new landmarks these days: drilling rigs, dark green condensate tanks, fields of iron conduits lumped with hissing valves, and long, flat rectangles carved into hilltops like overgrown swimming pools, brimming with umber wastewater.

Tall metal methane flaring stacks periodically fill the night with fiery glares and jet engine roars. Roadbeds of crushed rock, guarded by No Trespassing signs, lie like fresh sutures across hayfields, deer trails, and backyards, admitting fleets of tanker trucks to the wellheads of America’s latest energy revolution.

 
This is the new face of Washington County, the leading edge of the nation’s breakneck shale gas boom. Natural gas boosters, President Barack Obama among them, have lauded it as a must-have, 100-year supply of clean, cheap energy that we cannot afford to pass up. However, recent data suggest that supplies of shale gas may last for only 11 years and that the extreme measures needed to recover it may make it a dirtier fuel than coal. But that hasn’t slowed the dramatic transformation of gas-rich regions from rural Pennsylvania to urban Fort Worth, Texas.

Driving this juggernaut is the amalgam of industrial technologies collectively known as "hydraulic fracturing," or "fracking," which releases the gases (the main component of which is methane) hidden deep within layers of ancient, splintery shale. With five major shale "plays" concentrated in eight states, and more under development, America has been transformed from a net importer of natural gas into a potential exporter.

Perched atop the 7,000-foot-deep Marcellus Shale formation, which undergirds most of Appalachia, Washington County not only boasts enormous reserves of methane but also leads the state in producing far more frack-worthy "wet gas" products: propane, butane, ethane, and other valuable chemicals that can mean the difference between a money pit and a money gusher. Although central Pennsylvania has more wells, this wet gas makes Washington County, in industry parlance, a "honeypot."

The lure of million-dollar payouts has led many farmers, homeowners, school boards, and town commissions to lease out their subterranean energy wealth. Royalty payments on leases so far have topped half a billion dollars statewide–money that, for some, is literally saving the farm.

"An unprecedented economic impact," Matt Pitzarella has called it. He’s spokesman for the leading driller in this part of the state, Texas-based Range Resources, which in 2004 fracked the first successful Marcellus Shale wells–at the time a shot in the dark and now believed to be tapping the second-largest natural gas field in the world. Pitzarella ticks off stories of poor families who hit the gas-lease lottery and are now able to afford college tuition, new cars, and home makeovers.

But unlocking half-billion-year-old hydrocarbon deposits carries a price, and not everyone shares in the bonanza. For every new shale well, 4 million to 8 million gallons of water, laced with potentially poisonous chemicals, are pumped into the ground under explosive pressure–a violent geological assault. And once unleashed, the gas requires a vast industrial architecture to be processed and moved from the wells to the world. Imagine the pipes, compressors, ponds, pits, refineries, and meters each shale well in Pennsylvania demands, planted next to horse farms, cornfields, houses, and schools. Then multiply by 5,000.

Continue reading ‘Fracking’: Myth Meets Realties →

Community, Environment, Marcellus Shale

PDA’s Schmetzer Stands Up to Natural Gas Bulldozer

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Gas Drilling Creates Cresswell Heights Concerns

By Bill Utterback
Beaver County Times

SOUTH HEIGHTS, Feb 25 2012 — The potential for Marcellus shale natural gas drilling in the vicinity of three wells that provide public water is creating concern in South Heights and neighboring communities.

The wells, located in South Heights, feed the Creswell Heights Joint Authority, water provider for more than 15,000 customers in Crescent Township, Hopewell Township, South Heights and a small portion of Moon Township.

“Before the train starts rolling is the time to get it stopped,” said Robert Schmetzer, president of South Heights Council. “People in South Heights don’t want to lose their water, and they don’t want to breathe air that could be intolerable.”

The owners of the former Phillips Power Station property, 54 acres including contiguous parcels in both South Heights and Crescent, met with officials from both communities in January to discuss the possibility of drilling for gas.

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2012 Election, Economy, Manufacturing, Marcellus Shale, trade unions

To Move Forward, We Still Need Unions, and in a Big Way

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Robotics and High-Tech Manufacturing

Manufacturing Illusions

By Robert Reich
Beaver County Blue via Robert Reich’s Blog

Feb 18, 2012 – Suddenly, manufacturing is back – at least on the election trail. But don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing.

Republicans have become born-again champions of American manufacturing. This may have something to do with crucial primaries occurring next week in Michigan and the following week in Ohio, both of them former arsenals of American manufacturing.

Mitt Romney says he’ll "work to bring manufacturing back" to America by being tough on China, which he describes as "stealing jobs" by keeping value of its currency artificially low and thereby making its exports cheaper.

Rick Santorum promises to "fight for American manufacturing" by eliminating corporate income taxes on manufacturers and allowing corporations to bring their foreign profits back to American tax free as long as they use the money to build new factories.

President Obama has also been pushing a manufacturing agenda. Last month the President unveiled a six-point plan to eliminate tax incentives for companies to move offshore and create new lures for them to bring jobs home. "Our goal," he says, is to "create opportunities for hard-working Americans to start making stuff again."

Meanwhile, American consumers’ pent-up demand for appliances, cars, and trucks have created a small boomlet in American manufacturing – setting off a wave of hope, mixed with nostalgic patriotism, that American manufacturing could be coming back. Clint Eastwood’s Super Bowl "Halftime in America" hit the mood exactly.

Continue reading To Move Forward, We Still Need Unions, and in a Big Way →

Environment, Marcellus Shale

Fracking Earthquakes: Do We Really Need This?

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More Ohio Injection Wells Shut Down

Via Beaver County Times and Wire Reports

Jan 2, 2012 – YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Ohio officials have suspended operations at four more injection wells near Youngstown, amid concerns of a connection to a series of earthquakes there in 2011, according to the Associated Press.

On Friday, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources announced that Northstar Disposal Services LLC, which operates fluid injection wells used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling, agreed to stop using a well near Youngstown after a 2.4 magnitude earthquake occurred on Christmas Eve.

After a 4.0 magnitude quake shook the town and surrounding region Saturday afternoon — the 11th in the area in 2011 — the state halted operations at four other wells within a 5-mile radius.

Michael C. Hansen, network coordinator for the Ohio Earthquake Information Center near Columbus, told The Times last year’s quakes were uncharacteristic for northeastern Ohio.

"Youngstown is not an area that’s traditionally a center of seismic activity," Hansen said. "The data is indicating that an injection well very close by is what is causing these earthquakes."

Department officials this weekend said they believe there is a connection to the injection of wastewater near a fault line and the shutdown was necessary to allow time for further assessment.

Environment, Marcellus Shale

What Happens When You Have the Best State Officials Money Can Buy

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Marcellus Skeptics Form Own Shale Commission

By Anya Litvak

Pittsburgh Business Times

Aug 29, 2011 – Disappointed with the work of Gov. Tom Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, a group of organizations that have aimed to temper natural gas development in the state, has formed its own panel: The Citizens Marcellus Shale Commission.

And they’re taking it on the road, with the first public hearing scheduled for Wednesday evening at South Fayette Middle School, which lies smack in the center a lawsuit filed by Range Resources (NYSE: RRC). Range is claiming the township effectively zoned natural gas drilling out of its borders.

The other four commission meetings scheduled to take place in the next three weeks will be in central and northeastern Pennsylvania, with a concluding report to follow in early October.

The commission is made up of:

  • Thomas Au, Conservation Chair, Pennsylvania Chapter, Sierra Club
  • Lynda Farrell, Pipeline Safety Coalition
  • Greg Grabowitz, Environmental Chair, Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited
  • Barb Jarmoska, Responsible Drilling Alliance
  • Anne Leisure, PA Providers Assocition
  • Rebecca McNichol, CLEAR Coalition
  • Roy Newsome Jr., Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania
  • James Schmid, Environmental Engineer
  • John Stolz, Duquesne University
  • Marybeth Sweeney/Roberta Winters: League of Women Voters
  • Ritchie Tabachnick, Equipment and Controls Africa
  • John Anthony Trallo, Residents United for Pennsylvania/Sullivan County Chapter
  • Maya van Rossum, Delaware Riverkeeper
  • Ray Werts: President of the Western Clinton County Sportsman

Continue reading What Happens When You Have the Best State Officials Money Can Buy →