by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 17, 2012 | ACTION, Indirect Action, Mining & Drilling
By Fiona Harvey / The Guardian
The biggest meeting on the issue of fracking for shale gas to be held in the UK will take place in Manchester on Saturday in an attempt to set up a broad nationwide coalition to stop the controversial practice.
Protest groups have been set up in areas currently affected by shale gas exploration activities or likely to be the sites of fracking in future.
But anti-fracking campaigners want to step up the pace of their protests as support for shale gas grows rapidly in some political circles.
The concerns over fracking follow its widespread use in the US over the last few years. Environmentalists say it has caused contamination of water supplies, gas leaks and the despoliation of the countryside over wide areas.
They want to ensure that similarly destructive practices do not take hold in the UK. Green groups also fear that an over-emphasis on gas will put carbon-cutting targets far out of reach – some research even suggests that shale gas from fracking produces more greenhouse gas emissions than coal when burned – and will crowd out investment in renewable forms of energy.
But Cuadrilla, the only UK company currently engaged in fracking, argues that the bad examples of the US would not apply in the UK, where the industry is more tightly regulated.
The company has invited people to its site and says its equipment and methods are of a higher standard than those that have caused problems in the US.
All fracking operations for shale gas in the UK are currently suspended, pending scientific evaluation of two small earthquakes in the Blackpool area last year that, according to a report from European seismic experts, were directly linked to fracking operations in the area.
Read more from The Guardian
Photo by Paul-Alain Hunt on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 8, 2012 | Toxification
By Krishna Ramanujan
A new report has found dozens of cases of illness, death and reproductive issues in cows, horses, goats, llamas, chickens, dogs, cats, fish and other wildlife, and humans. It says these conditions could be the result of exposure to gas drilling operations.
Hydraulic fracturing, popularly called hydrofracking, is a process for extracting natural gas from shale using chemicals and water.
The paper’s authors, Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and veterinarian Michelle Bamberger, DVM ’85, interviewed animal owners in six states — Colorado, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas — and cited 24 cases where animals were potentially affected by gas drilling.
According to the study, recently published online and appearing soon in print, in New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, making a direct link between death and illness is not possible due to incomplete testing, proprietary secrecy from gas drilling companies regarding the chemicals used in hydrofracking, and non-disclosure agreements that seal testimony and evidence when lawsuits are settled.
“We have a number of case studies — they don’t tell us about the prevalence of problems associated with hydraulic fracturing, but they do tell us how things can happen,” said Oswald.
Some of the case studies include:
- In Louisiana, 17 cows died within an hour of direct exposure to hydraulic fracturing fluid. A necropsy report listed respiratory failure with circulatory collapse as the most likely cause of death.
- A farmer separated his herd of cows into two groups: 60 were in a pasture with a creek where hydrofracking wastewater was allegedly dumped; 36 were in separate fields without creek access. Of the 60 cows exposed to the creek water, 21 died and 16 failed to produce calves the following spring. None of the 36 cows in separated fields had health problems, though one cow failed to breed in the spring.
- Another farmer reported that 140 of his cows were exposed to hydrofracking fluid when wastewater impoundment was allegedly slit, and the fluid drained into a pasture and a pond. “These farmers saw workers slitting the liner to decrease the amount of liquid in the impoundment in order to refill it,” said Bamberger. “We have heard it now on several occasions.” Of the 140 cows, about 70 died, and there were high incidences of stillborn and stunted calves.
The authors note that the “most striking finding” of their study was how difficult it was to get solid information on the link between hydrofracking and health effects.
To provide better assessments of health impacts, the researchers recommend:
- prohibiting nondisclosure agreements when public health is at stake;
- increasing food safety testing and research, as the study documented that animals exposed to chemicals were not tested prior to slaughter, and little is known about the effects of hydrofracking chemicals on meat and dairy products;
- improving the monitoring of routes of exposure, including in water, soil and air; and, most importantly,
- fully testing the air, water, soil and animals prior to drilling and at regular intervals after drilling is completed, and disclosing fully the chemicals used when hydrofracking.
“Without knowledge of all the chemicals being used, you can’t test before drilling,” said Bamberger. “And if we don’t have predrilling tests then if you find a chemical postdrilling, how can you prove that” it came from hydrofracking, she added.
From Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-reproductive-problems-death-animals-exposed.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 25, 2012 | Education, Movement Building & Support
By Dave Cooper / Huffington Post
While combating dirty fossil-fuel energy sources like coal and shale gas, activists can sometimes find themselves so intensely focused on one issue that they lose track of important developments in other related fossil fuel campaigns.
Mountain Justice Spring Break (MJSB), March 21-28 in northern West Virginia, seeks to build bridges between the long-established anti-mountaintop removal (MTR) campaign in Appalachia and the fast-growing anti-fracking campaign.
College students and young people on their spring breaks from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Virginia, New York and other states will attend MJSB for a week of trainings, skill-sharings, workshops, documentary films, speakers from the mountains and the hollows — learning about Appalachian music and culture through bluegrass, folk and old-time music in the evenings. A special emphasis at MJSB is connecting activists in the anti-MTR campaign with the “Fracktivists” in the anti-fracking campaign.
Mountain Justice Spring Break will offer site tours to see mountaintop removal and fracking sites in Wetzel County, West Virginia, plus tours of a coal slurry impoundment and a strip mine near Morgantown, West Virginia.
MJSB participants will also hear from citizens who live close to coal-burning power plants with air pollution and ground water contamination from multiple large power plants and large coal ash impoundments.
Other MJSB workshops will focus on anti-oppression, community grassroots and campus organizing, listening projects, coal slurry impoundments, non-violent direct action, tree-sits, media skills, fundraising, citizen air monitoring, and coal ash.
The MJSB camp location in northern West Virginia is surrounded by drilling sites for oil and natural gas, and large fracking equipment and tanker trucks constantly thunder up and down the main highway.
The dual focus of MJSB 2012 is significant, because while natural gas drilling is booming in places like northern West Virginia, coal continues to decline as a source for America’s electricity: According to the US government’s Energy Information Authority (EIA), from 2007 to 2011 coal declined from 49% to 43% as a share of the nation’s electricity supply. The EIA projects that coal will continue to decline over the next 25 years to 39%.
Yet the Sierra Club’s Bruce Nilles, Senior Director of the club’s Beyond Coal campaign, calls these numbers conservative and predicts that the percentage of electricity supplied by coal will fall even farther. “For many years the EIA has exaggerated coal’s prospects for the future, and every year has had to downgrade its projections,” said Nilles. “We know coal’s future is even darker than EIA is predicting.” For example, in 2010 the EIA predicted it would take 25 years for coal to drop to 44% of the electricity supply — it actually took only two years.
The EIA attributes this decline in coal to “slow growth in electricity demand, continued competition from natural gas and renewable plants, and the need to comply with new environmental regulations.”
While the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign has been very successful in opposing new coal plants and helping shut down dirty, older power plants, the club formerly referred to natural gas as a “bridge fuel” — a transitional source of energy until more renewable sources of energy come on line.
A Feb. 2 story in Time magazine’s Eccocentric blog points out that the club had in the past accepted donations from the natural gas industry and notes that “mainstream environmental groups have struggled to find the right line on shale natural gas and the hydraulic fracturing or fracking process.” Since 2010, the Sierra Club has refused any further donations from the natural gas industry, even turning down a promised $30 million donation, but the issue has caused concern among club members in states where fracking is underway. The Sierra Club no longer uses the term “bridge fuel,” and in 2010 launched a Natural Gas Reform priority campaign.
Environmental groups combating fossil fuels are facing titanic energy industries and a congress that is deeply indebted to them for big campaign contributions. There are many difficult choices and difficult decisions. No one has all the answers, but building stronger bridges between the campaigns against coal and fracking — as Mountain Justice Spring Break seeks to do — seems like a good start.
From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-cooper/mountaintop-removal-and-f_b_1299580.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 24, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Kevin Begos, Associated Press
A western Pennsylvania woman says state environmental officials refused to do follow-up tests after their lab reported her drinking water contained chemicals that could be from nearby gas drilling.
At least 10 households in the rural Woodlands community, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, have complained that recent drilling impacted their water in different ways.
The Department of Environmental Protection first suggested that Janet McIntyre’s well water contained low levels of only one chemical, toluene. But a review of the DEP tests by The Associated Press found four other volatile organic compounds in her water that can be associated with gas drilling.
DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said on Friday that the low chemical concentrations were not a health risk, and suggested that the contamination may have come from the agency’s laboratory itself or from abandoned vehicles on or near the property. But Sunday didn’t answer why DEP failed to do follow-up tests if the DEP suspected that its own lab was contaminated.
One public health expert said the lack of follow-up tests by DEP doesn’t make sense.
“DEP cannot just simply walk away,” said Dr. Bernard Goldstein, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.
McIntyre and other residents say the water problems started about a year ago, after Rex Energy Corp. of State College, Pa., drilled two wells. But a map Rex provided also shows gas wells from other companies in the area.
Residents in the community have been complaining for nearly a year, but DEP never revealed the possible presence of chemicals to the general public.
Read more from Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-pa-chemicals-drilling-area.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 22, 2012 | Mining & Drilling
By BBC
A gas-fuelled fire, with flames as high as 5m, may burn for months in waters off the Niger Delta in south-east Nigeria, Chevron has told the BBC.
Two workers died after January’s explosion at the KS Endeavour exploration rig, owned by the US firm.
Friends of the Earth says this is the world’s worst such accident in recent years.
Chevron spokesman Lloyd Avram says, despite the fire, the situation is now under control and no oil is leaking.
Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa.
Pouring cement
A fire is burning in a 40m-wide area on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, 10km off the Nigerian coast.
The company is trying to put out the fire by piercing a hole in the original gas well – through which cement will be poured.
“There’ll be 10,000ft of drilling and interestingly we need to hit an area that is approximately 12sq inches,” Mr Avram told the BBC.
“It is going to take some time, but I cannot predict how long that is going to be – conceivably months,” he said.
Scientists are conducting tests to find out if local food and water has been contaminated by the gas in the ocean – after local people raised concerns.
Almost 100 people have left towns close to the fire and local chiefs are asking Chevron to relocate more.
A major build-up of gas pressure from drilling caused the explosion that set the rig on fire in the middle of January, according to the Nigeria’s state run oil company.
From BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17126335
