by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 7, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By Wildlife Conservation Society
A study by the Wildlife Conservation Society documents that intense development of the two largest natural gas fields in the continental U.S. are driving away some wildlife from their traditional wintering grounds.
Researchers tracking 125 female pronghorn in Wyoming’s vast Jonah and PAPA gas fields using GPS collars discovered an 82 percent decline of habitat classified as “highest quality” – meaning highest probability of use for wintering animals. Widespread natural gas development in these areas, which are part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, has led to a sharp increase in well pads, roads, and other associated infrastructure. This in turn is driving pronghorn to the periphery of areas historically classified as crucial winter ranges, the five-year study says.
The study appears in the March, 2012 print edition of the journal Biological Conservation. Authors include Jon Beckmann and Rene Seidler of WCS; Kim Murray of Institute for Systems Biology; and Joel Berger of the University of Montana and WCS.
“In our study we have detected behavioral shifts for pronghorn in response to natural gas field development and infrastructure on federal BLM lands,” said Jon Beckmann of WCS’s North America Program and lead author. “By detecting behavioral changes, it is possible to identify threshold levels of gas field infrastructure development before any significant population declines. Maintaining the integrity of crucial wintering areas is particularly important in harsh winters to avoid diminishing pronghorn numbers.”
WCS has developed recommendations to protect pronghorn on BLM lands. Some of the recommendations include: baseline data being collected on population sizes and distribution prior to any development occurring. Data would then be used to define crucial winter range and keep development levels lower in key areas. Habitat and population levels should be monitored over time in both the gas fields and in similar control sites where no gas is being developed using scientifically rigorous methods to examine impacts of gas fields. Directional drilling should be used to reduce surface disturbance and limit habitat loss and fragmentation.
Fifty percent of North America’s pronghorn live in Wyoming, which are declining in other parts of the U.S. Herds from throughout the western half of the state winter in the region where the gas fields are located including the herd from Grand Teton National Park that conducts the longest overland migration in the continental U.S. Herds that were attracted to the mesa above the natural gas deposits with windswept flat terrain and subsequent lack of deep snow are now being forced into less desirable areas.
The authors warn that pronghorn can only lose so much winter range before they will begin to decline in population. Mule deer have already declined by more than 50 percent from this region.
Joel Berger, a WCS co-author on the study, said: “Ultimately this is a policy issue for petroleum extraction on U.S. public lands. In several cases science indicates that petroleum developments have had negative impacts on wildlife. We are hopeful that studies like these will inform future energy development on public lands in the West.”
From Wildlife Conservation Society: http://www.wcs.org/press/press-releases/natural-gas-development-linked-to-habitat-loss.aspx
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 6, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Environment News Service
A federal government proposal requiring oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing only after the completion of fracking operations is running into opposition from environmental groups.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves the high pressure injection of chemicals, sand and water into shale rock thousands of feet deep, fracturing it to release hydrocarbons trapped in tight spaces.
The Bureau of Land Management Friday issued a proposed rule that would, for the first time, require companies to publicly disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations on 700 million subsurface acres of federal public lands and and 56 million subsurface acres Indian lands – but not before the chemicals are pumped deep underground.
The current fracking-enabled gas drilling boom across the United States has brought reports of poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, and sick families. But industry secrecy has made it difficult for researchers to get the facts on health and environmental impacts of fracking.
Currently, there is no specific requirement for operators to disclose these chemicals on federal and Indian lands, where 90 percent of the wells drilled use hydraulic fracturing to greatly increase the volume of oil and gas available for production.
Now, the BLM proposes three new practices to protect public health, drinking water, and the environment. First, the agency proposes to require the public disclosure of chemicals used in fracking operations on federal and Indian lands after fracturing operations have been completed.
Second, the BLM proposes to require confirmation that wells used in fracturing operations meet appropriate construction standards. The agency says this would improve assurances of well-bore integrity to verify that fluids used in wells during fracturing operations are not escaping.
And third, the agency proposes to confirm that oil and gas operators have a water management plan in place for handling fracturing fluids that flow back to the surface.
“As the President has made clear, this administration’s energy strategy is an all-out effort to boost American production of every available source of energy,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, announcing the proposed rule late Friday.
Read more from Environment News Service:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 4, 2012 | Mining & Drilling
By ENews Park Forest
The Army Corps of Engineers has confirmed that Canadian oil firm TransCanada has submitted applications to Corps district offices in Tulsa, Galveston, and Ft. Worth for a Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP 12) to build the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma through Texas to the Gulf Coast.
TransCanada has pursued a NWP 12 to further evade a thorough, science-based review of its pipeline’s likely impacts. Its recent application submission triggers a 45-day deadline by which the Corps must approve or deny the permits. The Corps can approve or reject the permits before the 45 days are over but if the agency does not respond within the 45 days, the permits are automatically approved by default, allowing TransCanada to proceed with construction.
In a November 8, 2011 letter to the Galveston district office of the Army Corps of Engineers, EPA Region 6’s Associate Director in the Ecosystems Protection Division, Dr. Jane Watson, determined that the southern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline is ineligible for a NWP 12:
[O]f the 101 crossings that require preconstruction notification to the Corps, it appears that approximately 60 crossings of waters of the U.S. would each result in greater than a ½ acre loss of waters of the U.S., and would therefore not be eligible for authorization under NWP 12.
Dr. Watson’s letter further clarifies that individual Clean Water Act Section 404 permits are required for the southern segment of Keystone XL — a permitting process that would ensure a minimum requirement of environmental review and public input through the National Environmental Policy Act. As Region 6 Administrator Dr. Al Armendariz has stepped down this week, it is imperative that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson intervene to ensure a permitting process for the southern segment that is transparent, science-based and rigorous as required by bedrock environmental law.
The Obama administration unconscionably gave its blessing to expedite the southern segment of the Keystone XL in March, despite widespread public outcry from national and local environmental, public interest, indigenous and landowner groups. Despite acknowledging the severe risks to the Ogallala Aquifer in delaying approval for Keystone XL in November, President Obama shamelessly ignored the southern segment’s potential impacts on the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer in Texas, which provides drinking water to more than 10 million Texans.
Adding to the appearance of an opaque and furtive process overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, landowners and citizens all along the proposed pipeline’s path from Oklahoma and Texas have been stonewalled by the agency in their simple requests for information regarding the application, timeline, and process for TransCanada’s southern segment permits. The public has the right to know the particulars of a process through which a pipeline that would have massive impacts on land, water, public health and our shared climate may be approved any day now.
As the key segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, the southern leg of Keystone XL would provide the crucial link to relieving the current glut of tar sands oil in the Midwest by piping it down to refineries and international shipping ports on the Gulf Coast for export. The project would inflate oil industry profits while threatening our heartland with costly spills, amplifying the already-debilitating air pollution in refinery communities on the Gulf Coast, and vastly drive the expansion of climate-destabilizing tar sands development and consumption.
From ENews Park Forest
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 3, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Abraham Lustgarten / ProPublica
A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.
More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.
Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth’s underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry’s argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.
But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as “just a few years.”
“Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable,” said the study’s author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups.
“The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability,” he said. “Fluids could move from most any injection process.”
The research for the study was paid for by Catskill Mountainkeeper and the Park Foundation, two upstate New York organizations that have opposed gas drilling and fracking in the Marcellus.
Much of the debate about the environmental risks of gas drilling has centered on the risk that spills could pollute surface water or that structural failures would cause wells to leak.
Though some scientists believed it was possible for fracking to contaminate underground water supplies, those risks have been considered secondary. The study in Ground Water is the first peer-reviewed research evaluating this possibility.
The study did not use sampling or case histories to assess contamination risks. Rather, it used software and computer modeling to predict how fracking fluids would move over time. The simulations sought to account for the natural fractures and faults in the underground rock formations and the effects of fracking.
The models predict that fracking will dramatically speed up the movement of chemicals injected into the ground. Fluids traveled distances within 100 years that would take tens of thousands of years under natural conditions. And when the models factored in the Marcellus’ natural faults and fractures, fluids could move 10 times as fast as that.
Where man-made fractures intersect with natural faults, or break out of the Marcellus layer into the stone layer above it, the study found, “contaminants could reach the surface areas in tens of years, or less.”
The study also concluded that the force that fracking exerts does not immediately let up when the process ends. It can take nearly a year to ease.
As a result, chemicals left underground are still being pushed away from the drill site long after drilling is finished. It can take five or six years before the natural balance of pressure in the underground system is fully restored, the study found.
Myers’ research focused exclusively on the Marcellus, but he said his findings may have broader relevance. Many regions where oil and gas is being drilled have more permeable underground environments than the one he analyzed, he said.
“One would have to say that the possible travel times for a similar thing in Arkansas or Northeast Texas is probably faster than what I’ve come up with,” Myers said.
Read more from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/fracking-fluids-aquifers_n_1472355.html?ref=green
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 2, 2012 | Mining & Drilling
By Rupert Neate / The Guardian
BP is planning to start three new oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico this year. The launch of the new rigs will bring the number of BP rigs in the Gulf to eight – more than the oil giant had before the devastating Deepwater Horizon disaster three years ago.
Bernard Looney, BP’s executive in charge of new wells, said BP is expecting to spend $4bn (£2.5bn) on new developments in the Gulf of Mexico this year and hopes to “invest at least that much every year over the next decade”.
“After much soul-searching in the fall of 2010, we concluded it would be wrong to walk away [from the Gulf of Mexico],” Looney said at an offshore oil conference in Houston, Texas, on Monday. “We would have been walking away not only from our past, but from a key component of our future.”
He said the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 people, had “challenged us to the core”, but said the company has been working hard to help prevent “such an accident from ever happening again”.
While conceding that BP was in “absolutely no position to preach”, he called on the industry to adopt broader safety standards.
Last October US regulators granted BP its first permit to drill a new well since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, that spewed 4.9m barrels of oil into the fragile Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. The permit, for drilling in BP’s Kaskida field 250 miles south-west of New Orleans, was approved after BP’s well design met more stringent post-spill standards.
Looney did not state where the new rigs will drill, but industry figures said they expect an appraisal well in BP’s “giant” Tiber field 250 miles south-west of New Orleans. BP has long wanted to explore the area it discovered in 2009, but had been banned by regulators.
The company’s next big project, Mad Dog phase 2, is expected to start production towards the end of the decade. Looney said the field, which was discovered in 1998 and first began producing oil in 2005, holds more than 4bn barrels of oil – enough to promote it to the “super-giant” oil field category.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/30/bp-new-gulf-mexico-oil-rigs
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 1, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Dawn Paley / Vancouver Media Co-op
On Friday, the Chilean Supreme Court ratified a lower court ruling that rendered Goldcorp’s environmental assessment for the El Morro mine null, due to irregularities including the company’s failure to properly consult with the Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community, whose lands would be destroyed if the mine is built.
Following the lower court ruling, Goldcorp stated that they would not stop working until they received an order declaring the Resolution of Environmental Quality, a kind of environmental permit, to be without effect. “This is the order, and there is no appeal,” said Sergio Campusano Villches, President of the Diaguita Huascualtino community.
The Chilean press is reporting that the Supreme Court decision was unanimous, and that the company must respond to the ruling before taking further steps towards opening the mine.
The judgement in their favour was a surprise, according to Campusano, who was already preparing to take the legal battle international.
“We were afraid because three of the five judges in the Chilean Supreme Court have been accused of being bought off,” Campusano told the Vancouver Media Co-op. “We were actually even preparing to go to the Inter American Commission, since we know there’s a lot of money at play here.”
The decision has raised the question of whether Goldcorp actually would prefer to deal with this case inside of Chile rather than in international courts, says Campusano. But, he says, his people will continue to oppose proposed copper mine, which requires an almost $4 billion investment by co-owners Goldcorp (70 per cent) and New Gold (30 per cent). Both companies are based in Vancouver.
“These days the ideas of ‘consultation’ and ‘consent’ have been manipulated by consulting and human resources firms that work for the government, local governments also stick their noses in there without knowing what they’re doing,” said Campusano. “All we did was play the game that they want us to play, and ‘the illusion’ has ended.”
The Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community have already taken a case against Barrick Gold to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Campusano will be in Vancouver in early June to speak at the Shout Out Against Mining Injustice event, organized by the Council of Canadians.
From Vancouver Media Co-op: http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/chilean-supreme-court-red-lights-goldcorp-environmental-assessment/10689
