PA DEP confirms that well-water claims not related to “natural gas exploration and production activities”; Calls such claims “unfortunate”
Drinking Water Claims Made Last Week …
Drinking Water An Issue In Marcellus Shale Debate
KDKA-TV
Jul 23, 2010
Bill Eakin, of Avella, says his once-pristine well water is now contaminated and that it has killed his garden and made him and his wife Shirley ill.
He blames the Atlas Energy Company which has been drilling for natural gas close by for the past two years.
In a statement, Atlas Energy says testing showed that their drilling had nothing to do with the contamination of Bill Eakin’s well.
“The results did not indicate contamination due to natural gas exploration and production activities. We subsequently notified their lawyer of the results and discontinued the courtesy water service that has been provided during the testing process.”
… Debunked by Scientific, DEP Data This Week
DEP Tests Don’t Find Water Contamination
KDKA-TV
Jul 27, 2010
In a statement, Atlas told KDKA’s Andy Sheehan their tests of the village’s water wells came up negative:
“The results did not indicate contamination due to natural gas exploration and production activities.”
On Tuesday, the state Department of Environmental Protection said its independent testing showed the same thing.
“That’s exactly right,” Helen Humphreys, a spokesperson for the DEP, said. “The test results came back with results that are consistent with water in southwestern Pennsylvania.”
The DEP says it also has been unable to verify any contamination cases in the state caused by drilling, even though much of the public believes otherwise.
“It is counter to a perception and it’s unfortunate,” Humphreys said. “We really need to be sure that people are seeing the data that we’re seeing.”
Six Reasons to Oppose Stowaway HF Provisions Tucked Into Reid Energy Bill
Undermines the states, stifles energy development in America, asks for things we might not even own … Energy In Depth counts down the ways
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Hydraulic Fracturing Key to Job Growth Across the Nation
For 60 years, energy-producing states have used hydraulic fracturing – a tightly regulated energy stimulation technology – to access and increase domestic oil and natural gas production. Without this technology, much of America’s job-creating energy resources would simply be unreachable. And today, thanks to advancements in horizontal drilling techniques coupled with fracture stimulation, enormous amounts of homegrown energy are being leveraged in stable supplies of America-made energy and tens of thousands of good-paying jobs.
North Dakota’s Bakken Shaleformation is a shining example of how fracturing is positively impacting not only the state, but the nation’s energy security altogether. As national unemployment rates continue to hover near double digits, and with millions still without steady work, North Dakota’s economy, and its workforce, have never been stronger — thanks in large part to hydraulic fracturing.
This from Reuters today:
North Dakota and Alaska have added the most jobs, while Nevada, California and Florida have lost the most, in the last five years, according to research released on Monday. … In first place, North Dakota added 21,300 jobs, and Alaska followed by adding 10,100 jobs from 2005 to 2010, it said. North Dakota saw an increase of 3,200 jobs in the last year alone, it said.
Some in Washington, unfortunately, continue to work to increase layers of unnecessary bureaucratic red tape aimed to stripping energy-producing states of their ability to effectively regulate fracturing. You see, fracturing has always been – and continues to be – ably and closely regulated by individual states, who are best equipped to oversee this critical process. Recognizing the devastating economic and national security threats posed by such actions, some members of Congress – including North Dakota Congressman Earl Pomeroy – continue to fight back.
“Shutting Down the Bakken?” is how North Dakota’s KFYR-TV describes these efforts in Washington. This from the new report:
It may not look like much, but hydraulic fracturing is what makes drilling in North Dakota possible. The process, also known as hydro fracking or just fracking, breaks up rocks two miles below the ground, allowing rigs to bring the oil to the surface. “Without fracking, we can`t get the Bakken oil out, period,” says Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-North Dakota. That’s what has Pomeroy and oil workers in our state so concerned about proposals in Congress to add new regulations for hydraulic fracturing. Pomeroy says cutting down on fracking on land is no way to address concerns raised by the Gulf oil spill. He believes ending what frack crews do would be devastating for North Dakota.
And from Oklahoma to Upstate New York, major newspapers and energy industry experts are also speaking about attempts in Washington to discredit fracturing’s long and clear record of environmental safety and effectiveness.
In a recent editorial, under the headline “Rep. Henry Waxman seems obsessed by fracturing concerns,” The Oklahoman writes this:
Hydraulic fracturing’s effect on water supplies has been examined for years and likely will be until the last syllable of this administration’s executive orders is written. Tomorrow and tomorrow can’t come soon enough for energy executives. No adverse impact from fracturing has been proven. Shaking up rock through fracturing is essential for releasing natural gas from shale formations; natural gas is essential for transitioning power generation away from coal. Gas is also key (along with offshore oil drilling) in reducing dependence on foreign supplies.
And IOGA-NY’s Michelle Blackley took to the pages of the Syracuse Post-Standard to highlight the important role that fracturing plays in job creation and energy security. Under the headline “Hydrofracking has safe record and spurs economy,” Ms. Blackley writes this:
Hydrofracking is an environmentally responsible way to stimulate the flow of energy from new and existing oil and gas wells. It is well-regulated and has been employed over 1 million times without a single incident of drinking water contamination. Hydrofracking’s record of safety and impressive ability to help make the most of our domestic energy resources designate it as one of the most important tools in our nation’s effort to achieve greater energy independence.
ICYMI – Marcellus Landowners Put GasLand Under the Microscope
Fictionalizing the Facts: Fox’s Flaming Faucets
By Peter Wynne
The Hancock (N.Y.) Herald
July 14, 2010
If you watch Josh Fox in his movie “Gasland,” listen to the narration he wrote and read some of the interviews he’s giving to the media, you’ll likely be convinced he was born among the green hills of Wayne County, Pa., and grew up in a little house on a dirt road in the middle of the woods. More than that, the house was built by his parents, who taught him his first word, “hammer.”
Fox gives out details like that and does it with seeming sincerity, but his heart-warming tale is mostly a fantasy, just so much bait to hook an audience and pull viewers over to his side. The movie’s straight-talking Josh Fox, who wears jeans and a baseball cap and finger-picks a five-string banjo, can’t be trusted to tell anything like the whole truth.
Fox is playing a role in his movie. Besides being a film director, he’s an experienced actor who eight years ago was already claiming he had appeared in more than 60 plays. He’s also a playwright with at least 16 stage plays to his credit. In fact, it’s in the program notes for one of those plays — in 2002 at the La MaMa ETC theater in New York City — that he mentions his acting experience.
In those notes, he also volunteers that he “was born and raised above 96th street and grew up almost entirely in Manhattan,” adding that he’s “a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in Theater Arts.”
That doesn’t sound at all like the star and narrator of “Gasland,” and it’s because the Josh Fox of the film is basically a fictional character. His father does own a modest house on the unpaved John Davis Road in Milanville, and Josh no doubt spent some time there as a child, when he wasn’t growing up “almost entirely in Manhattan.” As with everything else in the movie, Foxed picks only the facts that help him win his case and fills the gaps with fiction.
Fox is a capable and well respected artist who works mostly in a tradition that can be traced back to the leftist propaganda theater of the Great Depression, things like Marc Blitzstein’s “The Cradle Will Rock.” He clearly understands that audiences will view him and his crusade against gas exploration with far greater sympathy if he represents himself as someone born and bred in the countryside he says he’s defending, and not just some Upper West Sider whose parents were well enough off to have a rustic retreat for weekends and summer vacations.
He claims he refused an offer of nearly $100,000 as a signing bonus for leasing the drilling rights to the Milanville property. He says that in May 2008 he got an offer of $4,750 an acre on the family’s 19-1/2 acres, but offers of that much money just weren’t being made on properties in northern Wayne County at that time.
The Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, whose members then represented something like 60,000 acres, was struggling to get high-bidding Chesapeake Energy to increase its bonus-money offer from $1,750 an acre. And large aggregations of property were attracting much higher offers than little stand-alone parcels.
The fictions aside, one of the gravest and most consistent problems with “Gasland” is the way Fox ignores the huge differences in geology, production techniques and government regulations that exist across our vast and diverse country. He lavishes generous amounts of screen time on things he observed in Colorado, for example, but very little of what he saw there is germane to Pennsylvania or to many other states.
He points out, for example, that gas wells in Garfield County, CO, are very closely spaced, and this is supposed to be a warning to the rest of us. But what he doesn’t say is the wells are spaced this way because natural gas in Garfield County is found in lens-shaped pockets of porous sandstone that are entirely surrounded by gas-free solid rock.
The only way to extract gas from these “lenses” is to drill into them vertically from above, and efficiently exploiting a gasfield of this type requires placing wells just a few hundred feet apart.
The Marcellus Shale allows — almost requires — an entirely different approach. The shale continuously covers thousands of square miles in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Here a driller can bore down to the shale, 6,000 to 8,000 feet below the surface, and then extend the wellbore horizontally for a mile or more.
The same well pad can be used for multiple wells that extend outward like the spokes of a wheel, and a single location can be used to drain the gas from beneath many hundreds of acres. Here well pads can be spaced thousands of feet apart.
Out West, Fox also found evaporation ponds, which are used there to concentrate the tainted water that flows back to the surface from a newly fracked well. The flowback or “produced” fluid is sprayed into the air so that much of the water it contains evaporates, reducing the amount of fluid that has to be trucked to a disposal site. This is a technique designed for remote desert settings and cannot be used in Pennsylvania; our Department of Environmental Protection won’t allow it.
An industry group called Energy in Depth has prepared a rebuttal to “Gasland” that runs to nearly 4,000 words and carefully details some of the dozens of factual errors and outright fictions that can be found in the film. It would make no sense to repeat them all here, when the reader can find the piece online.
One subject worthy of comment is Fox’s flaming faucets, which provide some of the most arresting images in the movie. These are kitchen faucets that spout flames because the water wells supplying them have become contaminated with highly combustible methane gas and someone sets it ablaze.
Fox filmed these scenes in Colorado and lets the viewer conclude that the problem was caused by gas drilling, as the homeowners interviewed seem to believe. The most dramatic sequence of the lot, filmed at the home of Mike Markham in Ft. Lupton, gets about 10 minutes of screen time, but there’s no mention that the methane in the water came from bacterial contamination of Markham’s well, which is what Colorado state investigators determined.
In any case, Fox’s basic goal in “Gasland” is to convince his audience that hydrofracturing, or fracking, poses a grave and imminent threat to the environment and every living thing in it — in Pennsylvania and everywhere else. However, fracking has nothing to do with methane in water wells, which is the product of “migration” or “seepage.”
Methane contamination of water wells can be dangerous, to be sure. A methane-gas explosion in Dimock in Susquehanna County at the start of this year blew apart the underground enclosure of a water-well system and left a gaping hole in the ground.
A recently drilled gas well was less than 1,300 feet away, and gas seems to have migrated upward from a pocket 1,500 feet below the surface, along the outside of the steel well casing, which seems not to have been adequately cemented in place. The gas then seeped through the ground to the well enclosure. At least that was the scenario suggested a month or so later by the DEP.
It should be pointed out, however, that methane seepage is nothing new in northeastern Pennsylvania. Francis Tully, a Thompson resident who drilled literally thousands of water wells in the region starting in the 1940s, says gas seepage is relatively common in our area.
In an interview published in “The Hancock (NY) Herald” in February, the now retired Tully remarked that in his time water-well drillers often found they could flare matches at faucets. Near Clifford in Susquehanna County, he said, nearly every water well has natural gas in it, and people drink the water there all the time without harm. (Clifford and Dimock are about 20 miles apart as “the crow flies.”)
Back in January 2007, a brief video of a flaming faucet in Susquehanna County was posted by a homeowner there on You Tube. That was months before any gas wells had been drilled in the county.
Images of flaming faucets can be frightening, even though they’re totally irrelevant, and Fox is hoping, of course, that viewers will associate the unsettling emotional experience he has put them through with the idea of fracking. If you look at the headlines showing up in the popular press these days, you have to admit his tactic is working very well.
If “Gasland” were being offered to the public as an artistic endeavor, a scary, apocalyptic cautionary tale, it mightn’t be too bad. But Fox casts himself in the role of a “gas-drilling detective,” a downhome journalist presenting his findings in a film documentary, but he cherry-picks the facts for their shock value and blends them with at least an equal helping of fiction. The consequences of this deception could be profoundly destructive and longlasting.
Peter Wynne, who’s also a native of Manhattan, spent many years working as a journalist in New York City.
To say that Congressman Earl Pomeroy, a North Dakota Democrat, and Rick Perry, the Lone Star state’s conservative Republican governor, don’t see eye-to-eye on a host of issues would certainly be fair. But when it comes to creating jobs, delivering stable supplies of homegrown energy, the odd-couple, of sorts, couldn’t be more aligned.
You see, hydraulic fracturing – which has been used to stimulate energy production in America for more than six decades – has always been, and continues to be, effectively and tightly regulated by energy-producing states.
But some in Washington (and their allies “in the arts”) — who oppose the responsible development of domestic oil and natural gas — are working to erect unnecessary regulatory barriers. If the EPA were to be given outright authority to oversee this process, and given the directive to issue permits for fracturing, production of American oil and natural gas would be dramatically undercut in the best case scenario, and altogether halted in the worst.
Henry Waxman, the Beverly Hills congressman who chairs the powerful Energy & Commerce Committee, continues to kick around the idea of giving EPA authority to regulate fracturing. At the same time, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has made his intentions and beliefs clear that unelected Washington bureaucrats know better than folks in Pennsylvania when it comes to regulating fracturing, which is principally responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs across the Commonwealth.
But when it comes to protecting their states from an onslaught off Washington attacks that threaten jobs and economic activity, Earl Pomeroy and Rick Perry are not standing by idly.
The Minot (N.D.) Daily News reports this about a recent letter the Pomeroy sent to Speaker Pelosi:
Pomeroy called it “irresponsible” for Congress to enact new [fracturing] regulations before the results of that study are known.
“Imposing new regulations now will do nothing to protect drinking water and will only serve to slow down development resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs and more imported oil. It is critical that any legislation related to the Gulf oil spill focus on responding to that tragedy and not include additional burdens on hydraulic fracturing,” he said.
Pomeroy pointed out that over the past two years, North Dakota has significantly increased its oil production, rising from the ninth largest oil producing state to the fourth. “This increase in production has resulted in a significant state budget surplus and the nation’s lowest unemployment rate,” he said.
Pomeroy said the regulation of hydraulic fracturing is best left to the states
. “Regulators in each individual state have a better idea of what steps are necessary to protect their residents and environment. Additionally, they are better equipped to implement commonsense regulations that fit their states unique needs than a catchall Environmental Protection Agency regulation,” he said.
And in a speech yesterday, Gov. Perry didn’t mince his words:
Perry dismissed questions about the safety of hydraulic fracturing. …”I am a very strong advocate of hydraulic fracking,” Perry said. “I’ve got great concerns that the federal government is trying to regulate that aspect of our drilling industry. It would basically shut down the oil and gas industry for hydraulic fracking to be outlawed or frankly, allow radical environmental interests to come in and have a say on how it … can be used by the federal government.”
Echoing Pomeroy’s comments, Perry adds this:
“I think the state of Texas is doing an appropriate job and I think we’re doing a pretty good job of making sure that companies that have misused the technique are being punished appropriately,” Perry said.
For its part, Energy In Depth continues to disseminate the facts about hydraulic fracturing’s long and clear record of safety. This from The Hill:
Energy in Depth, an industry-backed group fighting new regulation of fracking, had this to say about the new Waxman letters:
“The basic geological reality of shale gas exploration is the formations we fracture are separated from the formations carrying potable underground water by thousands and thousands of feet — and millions and millions of tons — of solid, impermeable rock. If the chairman is looking for some additional information on that scientific phenomenon, or on the steps that operators take at every wellsite in America to ensure what happens inside the wellbore has no way of communicating with what occurs outside it, that’s a conversation we look forward to being part of,” spokesman Chris Tucker said.
- “No verified incident of hydraulic fracturing harming groundwater”
- “We’ve never had any problems with hydraulic fracking”
Top Colo. Oil, Gas Regulator: “No verified incident of hydraulic fracturing harming groundwater”: “David Neslin, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, told the EPA the state has found no verified incident of hydraulic fracturing harming groundwater. Industry representatives from as far as North Dakota defended the safety of producing oil and gas by underground injection of high-pressure fluids to fracture formations, and spoke of the necessity of the practice for energy development. (Grand Junction Sentinel, 7/14/10)
Colo. Woman Drives Over 4 Hours to Defend America’s Oil, Natural Gas Producers: “Mariah Raney traveled all the way from Grand Junction to Denver to deliver a simple message Tuesday. The oil and gas industry is economically important to families such as hers, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should consider the industry’s job and tax benefits as it moves forward with a study of the possible groundwater and other effects of hydraulic fracturing by energy companies, she told EPA officials. … Raney said she has a brother-in-law who works as a welder in the industry and other family members who work in areas such as education and health care that benefit from taxes generated by oil and gas development. “I don’t think that people realize it’s important to everybody’s family,” Raney said later in an interview. “Every time you flip on your lights it’s important to your family.” (Grand Junction Sentinel, 7/14/10)
Colo. County Commissioner on Fracturing: “It’s safe”: “It’s safe. In Weld County, where we have more than 30,000 wells, 19,000 active wells, more than any other county in the nation, we’ve never had any problems with hydraulic fracking,” Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer said. … Gas and oil companies say fracking is safe, and 95 percent of wells in the western U.S. are stimulated by the process. “It’s like robotics to the automotive industry, without fracking we can’t develop most of the natural gas in the United States,” Western Energy Alliance Director of Government Affairs Kathleen Sgamma said. (9 News, 7/14/10)
Petroleum Engineering PhD: “Drilling is a safe and economically urgent choice”: “Fears of environmental ruin are exaggerated and examples often have no relevance to shale gas technology. A narrow 5z-inch diameter horizontal hole more than a mile beneath the surface, sealed with multiple layers of casing and cement, stimulated by a time-proven technology of creating micro-fractures no more than 150 feet in height, presents no danger … Industry is already quickly approaching near 100 percent reuse and recycling of waste water in closed loop systems that minimize the surface spill risks. … Obstructionists with no practical energy or economic alternatives fiddle from their ivory towers while typical upstate New Yorkers and communities struggle in quiet desperation epitomized by what a local struggling farmer recently told me: “We are in the fight of our lives for our economic survival and our basic mineral rights.” … It’s time to move forward rather than hinder this exceptional economic opportunity. (Buffalo News Op-Ed, 7/14/10)
- “States should continue to play the chief regulatory role”
- “There has never been a confirmed report of groundwater contamination”
- “There are no documented cases of fracturing causing groundwater contamination”
- “There have been more than one million wells using hydraulic fracturing drilled nationally since the 1960s and not a single instance of direct groundwater contamination has been tied to the process”
Ground Water Protection Council: “The Oklahoma City-based Ground Water Protection Council that Paque heads takes the position that states should continue to play the chief regulatory role because they already have experienced staffs in place and are more knowledgeable about the unique geology and hydrology of their regions. The council is an association of state regulatory agencies that oversee the oil and gas industry and impose rules to protect groundwater. Members include the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which deals with various water issues. “It would be nigh impossible for the federal government to step in and replace the thousands of people the states have doing it now,” Paque said. (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 6/29/10)
Top Texas Oil, Natural Gas Regulator: “With many thousands of fracs taking place in Texas, Commission records do not indicate a single documented water contamination case associated with hydraulic fracturing in our state. The study the EPA is conducting, like other studies in the past, will show the positive benefits of this homegrown technology that has increased our supply of clean burning natural gas that makes America more energy secure. (Texas Insider, 7/9/10)
Alabama Oil, Natural Gas Regulator: “There have been thousands of fracking operations in the state, according to board Deputy Director Dave Bolin, going back to the 1940s, when the process was in its infancy. “There has never been a confirmed report of groundwater contamination,” said Bolin, citing regulations requiring operators to seal fracking pipes with steel and cement to 300 feet below the water table, to prevent the fracking fluids from seeping in. “And the fact is, if we as a state want this resource to be viable, the hydraulic fracturing process is necessary.” (Birmingham News, 7/12/10)
Texas Oil, Natural Gas Regulator: “Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Victor Carrillo also strongly defended fracturing, saying that without it, gas recovery from tight rock formations such as the Barnett Shale — the leading gas-producing area in the nation — would be “impossible.” There are no documented cases of fracturing causing groundwater contamination in Texas, he said. (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 7/8/10)
Pa. Oil, Natural Gas Assoc.: “[Hydraulic fracturing] has been used in oil and natural gas development since 1949. It is not new. It is not unproven. It is not experimental. … Without hydraulic fracturing – which is regulated competently by the states – we would not have new oil and natural gas resources in the United States. We would continue to rely on foreign countries for the oil we need to turn into gasoline to drive our cars. We would have coal and nuclear power to meet some of our electricity needs, but we would not have a homegrown source of natural gas “bridge fuel” we will need for decades as we work to increase the reliability and economics of renewable fuels. (Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, 7/10/10)
Texas Alliance of Energy Producers: “Additionally, during the past 25 years, the Congress, federal regulatory agencies, state regulatory agencies, state legislatures, and the courts have examined hydraulic fracturing extensively. Yet, not one case of contamination by hydraulic fracturing has been proven. In 1995, EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who serves as Obama’s energy and environmental czar, wrote that hydraulic fracturing closely was regulated by the states and, “EPA is not legally required to regulate hydraulic fracturing.” Most importantly, she further wrote that there was “no evidence that hydraulic fracturing resulted in any drinking water contamination” in the litigation involved. Also, two EPA officials testified just a few months ago that they did not know of any contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing. (Standard-Times, 7/10/10)
Pa. Paper: “Stick to the facts”: “There have been more than one million wells using hydraulic fracturing drilled nationally since the 1960s and not a single instance of direct groundwater contamination has been tied to the process. The source on that is not the gas industry but rather DEP’s director of Bureau of Oil and Gas Management. … And a spill is not an environmental disaster. Recently, a well owned by EOG Resources had a leak and fracturing fluid was spilled. The situation was addressed without fracturing fluid entering water sources. The source on that information is not the gas industry but John Hanger, state DEP secretary. (Williamsport Sun-Gazette Editorial, 7/9/10)
Just The Facts: Gasland Debunked
Fracing film’s flim flam: “Hydraulic fracturing, as many OGJ readers know, has been around for decades. Recently, its use has driven development of US natural gas reserves locked in shale. And it promises the same for other global areas. … Coinciding with that showing, oil and gas producer organization Energy in Depth (EID) issued a 4,000-word, point-by-point rebuttal of virtually every allegation the movie makes against the technique and the industry that employs it. With that as background, call what follows a point/counterpoint on, as it happens, a subject well known to many Journal readers. (Oil and Gas Journal, 7/12/10)
Gasland aims to “create an atmosphere of fear”: “The Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association (PIOGA) said “Gasland” is and inaccurate portrait of fracking made to create an atmosphere of fear. In fact, they said fracking is being performed safely in 38 states. “They are all saying the same thing in a million wells we have not had a problem with contamination by hydraulic fracturing,” said Lou D’Amico, President of PIOGA. (WFMZ-TV, 7/12/10)
Fort Worth gets set for EPA info session on HF tonight
EPA’s science advisory board may have already released its scoping recommendations for the agency’s upcoming study on the safety and performance of hydraulic fracturing technology, but none of that is expected to take away from the circus atmosphere of tonight’s “public information session” hosted by EPA at the Hilton Fort Worth.
As of noon on Wednesday, more than 60 people had signed up for a speaking slot with EPA, according to a report in today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Doors open at 5:00p local time, and from what we’ve been able to gather in surveilling the blog chatter this afternoon, the final number is expected to come in significantly higher than that. Now, how many of these folks will arrive with a willingness to engage in a constructive dialogue over the real history and real facts related to the 60-year history of safe fracturing operations nationwide? Guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s news round-up to get a better sense of that.
Of course, unlike the upcoming EPA event in Binghamton, NY next month, activists and revisionists attending the session in Fort Worth this evening will be arriving in a city and state that continues to benefit handsomely from responsible shale gas exploration in general and innovative technologies such as hydraulic fracturing in particular. An information sheet compiled this week by EID, and sent along to folks we expect to attend today, provides a quantitative snapshot of precisely that phenomenon.
Take a look for yourself: In 2009, the state of Texas collected more than $1.4 billion – with a “B” – in state tax revenue – just from natural gas production. It took in another $883 million from its oil development – just about all of it made possible thanks to the safe and steady use of hydraulic fracturing. All told, more than 1.7 million people in the state owe their jobs to the continued use of these technologies. Thanks to the Barnett Shale, Texas is the most prolific producer of natural gas in the entire country. And our country, for what it’s worth, just recently surpassed Russia as the most prolific producer of natural gas in the entire world.
And just so you have it handy, here are a few other fact sheets and issue alerts we’re forwarding along to the folks expected to speak at and report on the EPA hearing this evening. More to come as EPA moves to Denver next, then on to PA, and finally wrapping it all up in NY.
- Texas DSHS debunks mayor of DISH (fact sheet)
- A fluid situation (fact sheet)
- How deep do we frack? (graphic)
- 2004 EPA hydraulic fracturing study (fact sheet)
- GasLand Debunked (fact sheet)
- Federal Statutes Govern Every Stage of HF Process (graphic)
- Letter from Texas Railroad Commission stating that “not one” case of groundwater contamination has ever been attributed to HF
- The Truth about Full Disclosure (fact sheet)
AP story on “potentially harmful” chemicals used in fracturing process runs everywhere in Pennsylvania – two days later, we learn DEP sent AP the wrong list (!)
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