“natural” gas is NOT “clean energy”

From the Safe Water Movement’s petition to support a total ban on gas drilling in low-permeable deposits in New York State:

1. With a failure rate of between 2 to 8 percent, horizontal drilling and hydrofracking pose an unacceptable risk to our drinking water and the quality of groundwater, aquifers, lakes and streams.

13.Recent preliminary assessments reveal that “natural” gas is not “clean energy” but rather just another polluting, non-renewable fossil fuel contributing to global warming”

Links about dirty gas:

The Dirty Truth Behind Clean Natural Gas (from the National Wildlife Federation)

Gas is dirty energy and may be dirtier than coal ( regarding Australia)

The Dirty Truth Behind Hydrofracking (from Environmental Graffiti )

The Dirty Truth Behind The New Natural Gas ( from Kentucky Rural Water Association) ( a comprehensive overview )

The Dirty Secret of Shale Gas (from Motley Fool)

Public Health Impacts of Oil & Gas ( from No Dirty Energy )
(Take the PLEDGE)

Cornell’s Howarth Warns EPA… (good links )

Even if

Even if one manages the drilling like an angel, and has the luck of God… even if, there are inspectors hanging from every rig… and ten feet of regulations at each worker’s side, even if… even if…

It will not change the inexorable facts that with each fracking: we retire millions of gallons of drinking water from the earth’s scarce supply, and we saturate the air with pollutants.  Also, we horizontally fracture miles of rock  below us, and fill those sharded caverns with a toxic slurry of brine, radioactivity, and nasty chemicals.  That is the present state of reality.  Even if we don’t want to believe it.

modern magic

Oh these chemists –
they perform magic!

(much of it black)

2007

photo source:

update on the nothing

I have not abandoned this little outpost in the frackosphere. I have been elsewhere on various missions.

This blog was quickly started in response to my awakening. It has no affiliation with any other entity or organization. FrackMountain represents the sole opinion of this author, unless otherwise noted.

If you have not joined the struggle, please consider doing so.

water is a closed system

This planet is a terrarium orbiting the sun. The flaming star casts a million terawatts of energy upon us each day. Earth has been given all that it needs. We will either thrive, or render this terrarium useless. We make our own destiny. It is insanity to let big conglomerates dictate the condition of this planet. And, it is cowardice.

Each fracking leaves approximately 4.5 million gallons of water sequestered beneath the earth – taken out of the water cycle – never to be replaced. For every 420 horizontal frackings, the equivalent of the Huntsville Reservoir is polluted and left underground (1.9 billion gallons). Water that has touched the lips of our ancestors, now gone from the equation.

Oh, we may see it again, but next time as a spoiler of our diminishing clean water supply.

I have no beef

I have no beef with the guy who signed a lease, thinking it was “safe”. Or the family who was desperate and overtaxed. I have no animosity for the one who was lied to and manipulated.

But I do have a big problem with the already wealthy guy who brought it here, and the insiders who parlayed their land holdings into a rape of our sensibilities. And all those who are riding the gravy train just because it is gravy. And all those who still refuse to do their homework.

Communities are about sensibilities, such as what works best for all. Isn’t that how democracy was born?

Thank you, we will carry on…

They didn’t die
for eminent domain
or Made in China
or farmland foreclosure…

Selective Citizens’ Voice

The Citizens’ Voice chose a holiday weekend Saturday to squeak out its opinion that: Drilling’s OK, but commonwealth must be protected. Below is their piece followed by my letter to them.

Development of the Marcellus Shale gas formation has followed lines that generally have applied to resource extraction throughout the nation’s history.

There are substantial economic benefits and substantial environmental costs. Folks doing the actual extraction work hard and play hard, bolstering the local economy but not always in accordance with local cultural and behavioral standards. Some people profit; some people suffer losses through affected property values. The government plays catch-up because the industry drives the market and the technology.

All of that has played out in the early days of the Marcellus Shale Development. Yet there also is a broad, sensible and achievable consensus that the gas can be extracted in a way that boosts the economy without devastating the environment.

The problem is that the political debate, as political debates often are, has been driven from the ends of the spectrum rather than the middle.

As a bill in Harrisburg to establish an 8 percent “severance” tax on gas extraction has begun to move, for example, anti-tax Republicans have claimed that it would stifle further development of the Marcellus Shale field. It’s a remarkable assertion, because similar taxes just about everywhere that gas drillers operate have done nothing of the kind. Rather, those taxes are considered by the industry as part of the cost of doing business.

The plan is for an 80-20 split of the proceeds among the state government and affected local governments, which could use the money for regulatory enforcement and to mitigate the impact on roads on other infrastructure.

In Harrisburg this week, state police contended that crime has increased in drilling areas, a downside to the boom that few had anticipated. That requires continued vigilance, and also is a good argument for the severance tax, part of which could be directed to law enforcement in affected areas. It also should be an incentive to expedite the training of more local workers for jobs in the expanding industry.

Industry estimates indicate that gas extraction could be a major industry across much of Pennsylvania for as long as a century. Lawmakers should move now to ensure that the commonwealth at large benefits from the boom, and that the environmental and social costs are mitigated.

Not OK

Regarding your May 29 editorial titled “Drilling’s OK, but commonwealth must be protected”: You conclude by stating “Lawmakers should move now to ensure that the commonwealth at large benefits from the boom, and that the environmental and social costs are mitigated.”

To mitigate means to lessen. I guess more crime is OK, just not too much? Dead aquifers are OK, just not too many? You also claim there is a “broad” consensus that this gas extraction can be done without “devastating the environment”. Just where is this broad consensus? In the clubhouse?

That would be American

“The world’s whole petroleum resource is estimated at a million terawatts, which happens to be equal to the amount of solar energy that reaches the earth every day.” 

above quote from The Independent Home by Michael Potts

Just as the world is moving forward with sustainable and alternative energy sources and management, we are allowing our piece of it to be raped and plundered by Big Gas.

Just as the United States consumers are buying more and more locally, we allow our farmland to become an industrial zone.

We are willing to let a small minority of our fellow citizens pollute the resources one hundred percent of us use. What is sane or democratic about that? We all share this halo of air and water.

Our aim should be to make each home energy independent.  No monthly bills.  That is what we can leave our children.  That would be American.

here is your “American” energy independence

Royal Dutch Shell to buy U.S. owner of shale gas holdings

International energy firms have aggressively sought a bigger foothold in the U.S. oil shale industry.

The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Friday it will buy East Resources Inc., a major owner of shale gas holdings in the northeast United States, for $4.7 billion from private investors.

Europe’s largest oil company said it will pay cash for East Resources, a Pennsylvania company that owns more than 2,500 oil and natural gas wells in the United States. It also controls 1.25 million acres of land, mostly in the energy-rich Marcellus Shale region that runs from New York to southwest Virginia.

Shell CEO Peter Voser said the acquisition fit with plans to “grow and upgrade” its holdings of shale gas in North America.

International energy companies have aggressively sought a bigger foothold in the U.S. oil shale industry, even with natural gas prices slumping to less than half of what they were in 2008.

Earlier this year, Japanese energy giant Mitsui Co. said it would pay $1.4 billion for a stake in Anadarko Petroleum Corp.’s shale assets. India’s Reliance Industries Ltd. also recently paid $1.7 billion for part of Atlas Energy’s shale gas deposits.

See rest of article via link above.