Frack! Earthquakes and poisoned water are ‘safe, clean energy’?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I do not watch much television, and yet I have seen these ads from Exxon-Mobil for what seems like a million times.

A century's supply of natural gas was right here in North America.
With technology, ExxonMobil is safely unlocking this important resource.

Oil Sands projects like Kearl and the Keystone Pipeline will create jobs,
while providing secure and reliable energy to North America.

And a series of ads like this one from energytomorrow.org featuring this actress/spokesperson a million times more:

With advanced drilling, we can access more domestic oil from a
single location, increasing our energy while decreasing our impact.

The money you are paying at the gas pump is being used for a saturation advertising campaign to influence public opinion for the oil & gas industry, the single most profitable business in the history of the world, for things not directly mentioned in these ads: eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency; rolling back provisions of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act; exempting their practices from the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, and other environmental quality laws and regulations; continuing taxpayer subsidies for oil and gas; limiting their exposure to legal liability, etc.

At the state level, disturbing legislation like Pennsylvania's Act 13 gives gas companies the right to drill anywhere. Fracking Democracy: Why Pennsylvania's Act 13 May Be the Nation's Worst Corporate Giveaway (This is the first of two articles about Pennsylvania’s Act 13, perhaps the worst new environmental law in the nation, and the effort to stop it from taking effect. You can read the second one here.) The law strips rights from communities and individuals while imposing new statewide drilling rules that favor oil and gas companies.

If you have seen the documentary film Gasland, a film by Josh Fox, there is reason to doubt the "safe, clean energy" claims of the oil and gas companies. Our dwindling fresh water supplies are threatened with contamination by the "fracking" process. Fresh water is the one resource humans cannot live without. People have and wil kill each other over water.

There are two recent reports about the U.S. Geological Survey study that has linked oil and natural gas drilling operations to a rash of recent earthquakes from Alabama to the Northern Rockies. Scientists: Increase in US Earthquakes Almost Certainly Manmade:

As hydraulic fracturing has exploded onto the scene, it has increasingly been connected to earthquakes. Some quakes may be caused by the original fracking — that is, by injecting a fluid mixture into the earth to release natural gas (or oil). More appear to be caused by reinjecting the resulting brine deep underground.

Last August, a USGS report examined a cluster of earthquakes in Oklahoma and reported:

Our analysis showed that shortly after hydraulic fracturing began small earthquakes started occurring, and more than 50 were identified, of which 43 were large enough to be located. Most of these earthquakes occurred within a 24 hour period after hydraulic fracturing operations had ceased.

In November, a British shale gas developer found it was “highly probable” its fracturing operations caused minor quakes.

Then last month, Ohio oil and gas regulators said “A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth.”

Now, in a paper to be deliver at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America, the USGS notes that “a remarkable increase in the rate of [magnitude 3.0] and greater earthquakes is currently in progress” in the U.S. midcontinent. The abstract is online.

The USGS scientists point out that ”a naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region.” They conclude:

While the seismicity rate changes described here are almost certainly manmade, it remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production.

Another report on the USGS report, USGS: Recent Earthquakes 'Almost Certainly Manmade:

According to the study led by USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth, the spike in earthquakes since 2001 near oil and gas extraction operations is “almost certainly man-made.” The research team cites underground injection of drilling wastewater as a possible cause.

* * *

[T]he USGS report is another piece of evidence that shows we have to proceed carefully,” said Dusty Horwitt, Senior Counsel and chief natural resources analyst at Environmental Working Group. “We can’t afford multi-million-dollar water pollution cleanups or earthquakes that could pose risks to homes and health.”

Environmental Working Group analysis: USGS: Recent Earthquakes “Almost Certainly Manmade”; Report Implicates Oil and Natural Gas Drilling

The USGS authors said they do not know why oil and gas activity might cause an increase in earthquakes but a possible explanation is the increase in the number of wells drilled over the past decade and the increase in fluid used in the hydraulic fracturing of each well. The combination of factors is likely creating far larger amounts of wastewater that companies often inject into underground disposal wells. Scientists have linked these disposal wells to earthquakes since as early as the 1960s. The injections can induce seismicity by changing pressure and adding lubrication along faults.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that between 1991 and 2000, oil and gas companies drilled 245,000 wells in the U.S. compared to 405,000 wells between 2001 and 2010 – a 65 percent increase.1 As an example of how much more fracking fluid is used, New York state’s review of oil and natural gas drilling regulations in 1988 assumed that companies would use between 20,000 and 80,000 gallons of fluid for hydraulic fracturing per well.2 The state’s 2011 review of regulations for natural gas drilling in shale formations assumed that companies would use 2.4 million to 7.8 million gallons of fluid per well – a 100-fold increase.3

According to Anthony Ingraffea, a professor of engineering at Cornell University who has conducted research on hydraulic fracturing, the increase in both the number of wells drilled and the amount of hydraulic fracturing fluid used per well has been driven by a shift of drilling into so-called unconventional formations such as shale in which gas and oil are distributed over very large volumes of rock, which need stimulation by fracking. Companies have increasingly tapped these formations because they have depleted most of the conventional formations in which gas and oil are contained in a relatively concentrated pool. In these conventional formations, companies can simply perforate the pool with their drill bit and drain a significant quantity of oil or gas. In unconventional formations, however, energy companies must drill more wells because the energy deposits are widely dispersed. Drillers must also use significantly more fracturing fluid to create larger fractures that can access a broader area of oil or gas.

“The rate of drilling and the volume of fluid used have increased tremendously,” said Ingraffea.

* * *

The latest report from USGS states that:

In Oklahoma, the rate of M >= 3 events abruptly increased in 2009 from 1.2/year in the previous half-century to over 25/year. This rate increase is exclusive of the November 2011 M 5.6 earthquake and its aftershocks. A naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region.

Although the report links earthquakes to drilling activities, it is still too early to say whether this is due to the increase in rate of drilling or a specific technique. However the fact remains that it is now an indisputable fact that fracking causes abnormal seismic activity. This definitely puts the oil and gas industry as the most environmentally damaging enterprise.

And this is why the oil and gas industry is doing everything in its power to have its way with Congress and state legislatures, and to eliminate its liability to communities and individuals for its environmentally damaging enterprise.