EU Fracking Regulations Blocked by UK

January 14, 2014 Leave a comment

UK’s opposition to the EU’s efforts to put into place legally binding environmental safeguards for fracking has been successful. The heavily lobbied effort by the UK argued that the existing rules were strong enough to protect the environment and to do otherwise would increase costs and delay investment. Prime Minister David Cameron said the the UK was “going all ... Read More »

Hydraulic Fracturing In Kalahari, Botswana?

November 22, 2013 Leave a comment

Botswana’s Kalahari wildlife reserves and water shortages are the subject of the Botswana government’s efforts to bring commercial fracking to the area. Many Kalahari communities fear that they will lose access to scarce water. The government has slowly and quietly granted licenses to companies to carry out fracking in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) to include Australian based Tamboran Resourses ... Read More »

High Stakes: Fracking In South Africa

November 13, 2013 Leave a comment

Reuters is reporting that the alliance between energy companies and the ANC (African National Congress) to develop shale gas fields in South Africa will be mapped as the starting point for an economic game changer in the region. Will the energy companies succeed? The Karoo region is a prime target for drilling and there is very little water and a great deal ... Read More »

Purification Of Produced Water…On The Cheap?

November 8, 2013 Leave a comment

MIT has developed system that cleans “produced water” from Natural gas wells and could lead to a more cost effective desalination process in developing countries. Standard distillation processes involve salt water being heated to the boiling point, and then the vaporized water condenses on a cold surface…with the salt being left behind. According to MIT news: “In the new process, ... Read More »

New EPA Study On Fracking Effect On Drinking Water Resources

November 7, 2013 Leave a comment

$frackingwater$

At the request of Congress, the EPA is conducting a study to better understand any potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources. The scope of the research includes the full lifespan of water in relation to hydraulic fracturing. The progress report was released in December 2012 and a draft report is expected to be released for public comment and peer review ... Read More »

US Coast Guard Plans To Transport Fracking Wastewater Via Barge

November 6, 2013 Leave a comment

$frackingwastewaterbarge$

The United States Coast Guard is seeking comments from interested parties regarding a proposal that will allow private companies to transport shale gas wastewater via barges. Currently, fracking wastewater is stored at drill sites or transported by truck or train to treatment plants. Barge companies are interested in taking wastewater to disposal sites in Texas and Louisiana. Read more about the ... Read More »

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How Does Fracking Work?

Hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, hydrafracking, or fracing, broadly refers to all associated processes involved in the extraction of natural gas from unconventional rock formations. The actual hydraulic fracturing of a well is the process in which a highly pressurized liquid is pumped into the well, creating and widening fissures in the gas-bearing rock. Water laced with chemicals and proppants are then injected into the well. These proppants, consisting of sand or ceramic beads, hold the cracks open to increase the permeability of the rock to allow for a seamless flow of gas and or oil. This fracking process has been used in gas and oil wells since the late 1940′s (see The History of Fracking). Recent technological advances have made it possible to turn the drill bit almost 90° once the gas-bearing formation is hit, and continue drilling in a horizontal direction. Hydraulic fracturing used in combination with this directional drilling has vastly increased the productivity of gas wells within the last decade [1].

Drilling The Wellbore

Initially, a wellbore would be drilled vertically and a series of steel pipes, known as casings, are inserted and cemented into place to prevent the hole from caving in on itself. The cemented casings also isolate the well from the surrounding formation and form an airtight seal which is important for groundwater protection [2]. When the vertical drilling has reached the gas or oil-bearing rock, which is typically located several thousand feet below the surface, drilling is continued in a horizontal direction, following the length of the formation. Drilling horizontally can continue for up to 5,000 feet [3].

Fracturing The Well

$fracking3 (2)$ Upon the completion of the drilling and casing process, explosive charges are fired by an electric current to perforate holes along selected intervals of the well. This is called the production zone. In wells that are too long to maintain, sufficient pressure plugs may be inserted into the well to divide it into smaller sections, referred to as stages. Stages are fractured sequentially from farthest to the nearest. After the fracturing, the plugs are drilled through and the well is depressurized, creating a pressure gradient so that gas flows out of the formation into the well [4].

Once this process is completed, the actual hydraulic fracturing can begin. This is generally a one-time event performed in stages. However, additional fracturing may be done on a single well if required and economically viable [5].

Pumping In The Fracking Fluids

The fracturing fluid (consisting of water, a proppant, and chemical additives – see Fracking Water Usage and Fracking Chemicals) is pumped into the borehole at a pressure high enough to induce sufficient stress on the rock to create fissures and interconnected cracks. These fissures can extend up to 1,000 feet¹. The pressure is then relieved, resulting in a portion of the fracturing fluid (the “flowback”) to return to the surface, leaving behind the proppants that hold the cracks open and maintain porosity [6]. During the flowback period, which typically lasts up to 2 weeks, a roughly estimated 10 – 40% of the fracturing fluid is returned to the surface mixed with variable amounts of naturally occurring formation water [7]. Once active gas and or oil production has begun, liquid with a very high Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) content is produced at a rate of approximately 2-8 m³/day, known as produced water. This waste water can contain both light and heavy petroleum hydrocarbons which can be separated and recovered.

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Worldwide Impact

From both conventional and unconventional sources combined, Russia is the largest producer of natural gas worldwide. The United States comes in a close second behind Russia. The European Union and Canada follow with a less than a quarter of the volume of Russia or the US in terms of natural gas production [1]. In the Middle East, Iran is the 5^th largest producer, followed by Qatar, China, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Algeria. Much of this gas is extracted from conventional wells, but the hydraulic fracturing is becoming increasingly more popular worldwide due to it’s overall effectiveness.

The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the volume of recoverable shale gas worldwide is approximately 7,299 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCFG).

The countries with the largest shale gas reserves are as followed (Trillion Cubic Feet of Gas) :

· China: 1,115

· Argentina: 802

· Algeria: 707

· United States: 665 – 1161

· Canada: 573

· Mexico: 545

· Australia: 437

· South Africa: 390

· Russia: 285

· Brazil: 245

· Poland: 148

· France: 137

· Ukraine: 128

Source: [2][3].

The global demand for natural gas is expected to increase by more than 50% from 2008 to 2035. Unconventional gas production (shale gas, tight gas and coalbed methane gas) is projected to increase rapidly over the next 20 years to meet the demand, but a scarcity of data on global recoverable resources makes any numerical estimates difficult.[4]

http://frackingresource.org/what-is-fracking/fracking-impact/

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A new problem for fracking: Drillers are running out of water

By Todd Woody @greenwombat May 2, 2013

A new problem for fracking: Drillers are running out of water

By Todd Woody @greenwombat May 2, 2013

Ceres

Could severe water shortages short-circuit the US shale gas boom? With 64% of the country in drought, water is looming as the next hot-button issue in the debate over hydrofracturing, also known as fracking, which involves injecting chemical-laden water under high pressure to create fissures in subterranean rock formations so gas and oil can be extracted.
A comprehensive survey of fracking and water availability, due to be released Thursday, found that 47% of oil and gas wells are located in high or extremely high water-stressed areas. The report compiled by Ceres, the Boston-based nonprofit that promotes corporate sustainability, is based on water consumption information from 25,450 wells reported by drillers to a database called FracFocus between January 2011 and September 2012.
When Ceres researchers drilled down into the data by correlating the water consumption data with water stress maps created by the World Resources Institute, they found widespread water shortages in some of the US’s most gas-rich states.
In Colorado, 92% of 3,862 wells were in areas designated as extremely high water stressed, meaning that 80% of the available water is already being drawn down for residential consumption or for industrial and agriculture use.
In Texas, which is suffering through a long-running drought that has devastated cattle ranchers and farmers, 51% of wells are in high or extremely high water-stressed locations. Tarrant County, Texas, alone consumed 10% of all water used in fracking in the state, according to the report.
“Prolonged drought conditions in many part of Texas and Colorado last summer created increased competition and conflict between farmers, communities and energy developers, which is only likely to continue,” the study found. “In areas such as Colorado and North Dakota, industry has been able to secure water supplies by paying a higher premium for water from other users or by getting temporary permits. Neither of these practices can be guaranteed to work in the future.”
During the study period, drillers nationwide used 68.5 billion gallons of water—equivalent to the amount 2.5 million people would consume in a year. But Ceres researchers said that number most likely underestimates water use by fracking because disclosures to the FracFocus database are voluntary.
So what is to be done?
Report author Monika Freyman, manager of the Ceres water program, tells Quartz that some drillers are using recycled water and tapping non-drinking water sources such as wastewater and saltwater. Recycling rates for fracking water have hit 40% in Pennsylvania, for example.
While much of the controversy over fracking has centered on water pollution, Freyman said investors should start paying attention to a more basic issue: Fracking is an incredibly water-intensive process, and there isn’t that much to go around.
“I think the focus is starting to look more at the water sourcing issues, especially in Texas and Colorado as the drought continues,” she says. “We’re really asking for far more disclosure from operators, and from an investor perspective we want to see far more quantifiable numbers of water use by region.”

Texas towns run out of water due to fracking

8/12/2013 9:30am by Gaius Publius 66 Comments

Across the south-west, residents of small communities like Barnhart [Texas] are confronting the reality that something as basic as running water, as unthinking as turning on a tap, can no longer be taken for granted. Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry’s outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers. And climate change is making things worse.

In Texas alone, about 30 communities could run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Nearly 15 million people are living under some form of water rationing, barred from freely sprinkling their lawns or refilling their swimming pools. In Barnhart’s case, the well appears to have run dry because the water was being extracted for shale gas fracking.

http://americablog.com/2013/08/texas-run-out-of-water-fracking.html

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Swarms of Earthquakes Shake Up Shale Gas Fields

Do tremors plaguing industry in Texas, Holland, and beyond offer a glimpse of BC's future?

By Andrew Nikiforuk, 31 Jan 2014, TheTyee.ca

House damage in central Oklahoma from the magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2011. Research conducted by U.S. Geological Survey geophysicists suggests it was induced by injection into deep disposal wells in the Wilzetta North field. Photo Credit: Brian Sherrod, USGS.

· Fracking Shale Gas: Myths and Realities

· Home, Fracked Home: Lost Hair and Dead Cows

Alberta landowners say nearby industry has fractured their lives. First in an occasional series.

· Fracking and Quaking: They're Linked

And scientists, the military, and frackers themselves have known it for years.

The locals call it "incoming," and some compare the violence of the tremors to living in a war zone.

Others say it's like having their homes hit by a truck.

The scene is north Texas, home to the Barnett Shale, the largest unconventional gas field in the United States.

There, industry, often touted as the new engine of the U.S. economy, has punctured and fractured the landscape with 17,000 gas wells, as well as thousands of disposal sites to get rid of related toxic waste fluids.

It's in north Texas where the unconventional gas industry, together with what it calls the "safe and proven" practice of hydraulic fracturing, has been making unconventional, earth-shattering headlines.

In the last three months, the community of Azle, located just northwest of Fort Worth, has suffered a swarm of earthquakes -- more than 30 -- that has cracked the foundations of the houses, frightened local residents, created sinkholes and raised concerns about property values.

Five quakes in January alone ranged from a magnitude of 2.3 to 3.1.

"We're sitting there, and 11:40, it rumbled right on through the house," Azle resident Tracy Strickland told KERA news, a public broadcaster in north Texas earlier this month.

"It feels like a truck hits the back of the house, and the whole house just shakes. So, it's something."

In many respects the Texas tremors, along with significant earthquakes in Groningen, Holland, offer a glimpse of the geological challenges that will accompany massive drilling activity in northern British Columbia to support the provincial government's scheme to export unconventional gas to Asia.

After an angry town hall meeting in early January, the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state's oil and gas regulator, vowed to hire an earthquake specialist to study the phenomenon. It initially denied any connection between tremors and oil and gas activity.

"No disrespect, but this isn't rocket science here," Lynda Stokes, the mayor of Reno, Texas (a community near Azle) recently told officials at a 300-strong protest in the state capitol, Austin. "Common sense tells you the wells are playing a big role in all this."

Quaking and fracking

So, too, does the science.

A string of studies, including one by B.C.'s Oil and Gas Commission, have not only implicated hydraulic fracturing but the related practice of pumping dirty wastewater deep underground as the cause of unprecedented swarms of earthquakes in Ohio, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, B.C. and even Alberta.

A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that the rate of earthquakes greater than a magnitude of three has steadily increased in the U.S. Heartland since 2001, the beginning of the shale gas boom, "culminating in a six-fold increase over 20th century levels in 2011."

"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," concluded the study.

Studies in England, Oklahoma and B.C. have pointedly implicated hydraulic fracturing as earthquake triggers too.

A 2011 fracking operation in the Bowland Shale near Blackpool, England set off 50 minor earthquakes.

In B.C. the industry, which uses three times more water and often at higher pressures than other shale gas formations, set off more than 200 quakes in the Horn River Basin between April 2009 and Dec. 2011.

At least 19 of the quakes ranged between a magnitude of two and three, and one reached a magnitude of 3.8, an event that surprised most scientists.

Compared to other forms of man-made quaking activity such as dam building, conventional oil and gas field depletion, water injection for geothermal energy recovery, and wastewater disposal, hydraulic fracturing was only supposed to make very small earthquakes.

The tremors caused by fracking all took place after high-pressured pumping of fluids either connected to natural faults or created fractures to the fault.

The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission concluded that that the quakes were indeed "induced by fault movement resulting from injection of fluids during hydraulic fracturing." Moreover, the man-made quakes likely resulted in "two instances of wellbore deformation" within the horizontal well portion of target zones.*

As a result the Commission has started a broader study along with the University of British Columbia to look at "factors related to the extent, magnitude, impact and control of induced seismicity in northeast B.C."

Another culprit: wastewater

In Azle, Texas and other shale fractured landscapes, scientists suspect the culprit may not be fracking but its companion industry: dirty water disposal.

A 2012 study by Cliff Frohlich, a senior researcher at the University of Texas in Austin, noted that a swarm of tremors in the Barnett Shale near Dallas were all located near deep well disposal sites.

"You can't prove that any one earthquake was caused by an injection well," said Frohlich. "But it's obvious that wells are enhancing the probability that earthquakes will occur."

William Ellsworth, a geophysicist with the USGS, argues that several of the largest earthquakes in the U.S. Mid-continent in 2011 and 2012 were probably triggered by the practice of disposing of salt and drilling fluids more than 10,000 feet underground in disposal wells.

At these depths the waste fluids can destabilize and lubricate natural faults beyond their tipping point.

While extracting oil and gas, the petroleum industry yearly produces between 15 to 20 billion barrels of highly toxic wastewater contaminated with salt, heavy metals hydrocarbons and radioactive material.

The U.S. Argonne National Laboratory, for example, reports that aging U.S. wells produce an average of more than seven barrels of water for each barrel of oil. Meanwhile, 260 barrels of water are produced for every million cubic feet of natural gas.

Industry injects most of this toxic brew back underground. But the fracking industry has exponentially increased the amount of toxic water needing disposal.

Pumping these wastes permanently underground remains a big and uncertain business. Texas operates more 50,000 injection wells, five of which are located near Azle, the state's new earthquake centre.

Alberta has nearly 2,000 injection well sites and Oklahoma, which experienced a record 2,600 quakes last year, is home to 5,000 injection sites. As of 2007, B.C. employed more than 100 wastewater wells in its gas fields.

Many of continent's more than 680,000 injection and disposal wells have sprung leaks or have fractured into aquifers.

Since the advent of hydraulic fracturing of shale gas plays in northern B.C., the volume of water disposed by the industry through deep injection wells has grown from approximately 1.2 billion litres in 1990 to 4.2 billion litres in 2009 -- an average increase of seven per cent per year.

Hyper hydrocarbons

Geologists have known for years that various forms of hydrocarbon production, from drilling and pumping to injecting and fracturing, can cause man-made earthquakes. Experts call the phenomenon "induced seismicity."

One 2013 study found that large earthquakes in Japan and Chile were now unsettling injection waste disposal sites in Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado, creating smaller earthquakes.

"The remote triggering by big earthquakes is an indication the area is critically stressed," said author Nicholas van der Elst, a researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The natural gas industry sparked a swarm of major earthquakes in the 1970s and '80s in central Alberta. The rapid draining of a sour gas field near Rocky Mountain House triggered as many as 146 quakes in one year.

Oil sands waste disposal in Cold Lake, Alberta triggered earthquakes in the '60s and '80s.

The natural gas industry also shook up Gazli, Uzbekistan with earthquakes as high as 7.3 on the Richter scale in the '70s.

Russian scientists concluded that a series of major quakes were "the strongest of all the known earthquakes in the plain of Central Asia" and that "the amassed data indicate that the Gazli earthquakes were triggered by the exploitation of the gas field."

But the with the advent of multi-stage horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which injects large volumes of water and chemicals at extremely high pressures much deeper underground than ever before and produces enormous amounts of waste fluids, the industry has set off earthquakes with startling regularity.

Even the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, which is responsible for the safety of 640 dams, is getting alarmed. It has requested 3,000-ft buffer zones around dams and other impoundments due to worries about tremors caused by multi-stage horizontal fracturing.

Corp engineers fear that fracking could cause shifts along natural faults and weaken dam foundations.

They suspect that "poorly controlled hydrofracturing" or "breakouts" could erode "the embankment along existing faults located in the foundation, abutments or outlet works," leading to a dam failure.

A 2013 study by the Alberta Geological Survey shows that earthquake activity in the hydrocarbon rich province has increased from an average of 20 minor quakes a year to more than 40 from 2000 to 2010.

Source: Alberta Energy Regulator.

In particular, clusters of tremors have increased in areas of ramped-up tight oil activity and multi-stage hydraulic fracking, such as Brazeau County and Del Bonita near the Montana border.

Landowners have also reported structural damage from tremors in Cochrane, Ponoka and Strathmore, where intense fracking has taken place.

As a consequence, the government of Alberta quietly issued controls on fracking around critical infrastructure and imposed severe restrictions on activity near the Brazeau Dam after lobbying by TransAlta pressed for tighter regulations last year.

The Dutch danger

Meanwhile, a series of earthquakes in northern Holland, under Europe's largest and oldest natural gas field, illustrate another geological danger posed by the gas industry.

There the issue isn't fracturing, but the rate and volume of gas that the industry has sucked out of the ground, down to depths of 2,900 metres underneath the Dutch province of Groningen.

So much gas has been pumped out that the land is now collapsing or subsiding which, in turn, has triggered a series of devastating quakes as high as four in magnitude.

More than 60 per cent of 60,000 homes in northern Holland have now been damaged by scores of recent earthquakes directly induced by the gas industry.

One significant quake recently shook a dyke holding back the North Sea and sparked protests from thousands of frightened landowners.

Several decades ago, the rate of gas extraction triggered an average of 20 tremors a year. Now the quakes average one a week.

The Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), a gas consortium including Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil Corpgas, admits it is dealing with more than 6,000 damage claims.

Daniella Blanken, a director of a protest group known as the Groningen Ground Movement, told the BBC last year that the quakes were growing more intense.

"It comes rumbling towards you, louder and louder and louder. Everything starts to shake. It ends with a bang, like a massive weight dropped on the house. Boof! And that is frightening, really really frightening," she said.

As a consequence of the increase in earthquake swarms as well as public protests, the Dutch government reluctantly ordered a reduction in the field's production by 15 to 20 per cent.

The Dutch government, which earned $12 billion in Euros from Groningen gas production, said it will also pay $1.6 billion in damages to homeowners. Without gas revenue, the Dutch economy would be as indebted as that of Cyprus.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/01/31/Shale-Gas-Earthquakes/

NETHERLANDS - FRACKING DISASTER

The earth moves in Holland due to ‘gas quakes’

It is happening regularly – a tremor in the earth close to the city of Groningen in Holland. The latest shook the area on Wednesday night.

The epicentre was in a village near Loppersum where residents have blamed gas exploration for the series of shocks which have caused damage to homes.

Wednesday’s tremor has led to over 30 complaints to the Dutch Petroleum Company.

“When I sit here on the couch in the evening sometimes I hear cracks from the settling from the constructions. So one day maybe the roof will fall on us,” said one home owner Hans Kroeze.

The latest tremor measured 3.0 on the Richter scale. The drilling for gas has been reduced but a spokesperson for the Dutch Petroleum Company said it would not provide immediate results. One expert said they are getting stronger.

“After 2003 more events started to become higher with a magnitude greater than 3 to 3.6,” explained local seismologist Bernard Dost.

Residents have staged protests in their bid to have the gas drilling stopped. The Netherlands government has admitted the quakes are caused by the drilling which is done using hydraulic fracturing commonly called fracking. It is expected the bill for compensation for damages to the villages will top 1.2 billion euros.

The government will reduce its gas production in the next two years by 21 percent.

http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/13/the-earth-moves-in-holland-due-to-gas-quakes/

Mounting Evidence: The Harm Caused By Fracking

Posted on January 7, 2014 by radix

Summary

Below we document the impacts of fracking. Click on a link to jump to a particular section:

UK Specific

Water Contamination

Air Pollution

Radioactive Contamination

Human Health

Agriculture & Animal Health

Blowouts, Spills & Explosions

A tidal wave of extreme energy extraction is sweeping across the globe, of which unconventional oil and gas extraction (colloquially known as fracking) is a major component. It is being driven by the progressive depletion of easier to extract fossil fuels which is leading to the exploitation of increasingly harder to extract resources. This process in itself has severe effects on human societies but the more immediate effects where the extraction takes place are becoming all too obvious.

The evidence from the US, Canada and Australia where tens of thousands of shale oil and gas and coal bed methane (CBM) wells have already been drilled, that fracking destroys water supplies, air quality, and people’s health has been mounting for years, and is now becoming very difficult to ignore. Beyond these more well known issues lurks a whole host of local and regional impacts, from frack sand to ‘orphaned’ wells.

Globally, we can afford to burn considerably less than half (perhaps only a quarter) of known conventional fossil fuel reserves and still have some chance of maintaining a liveable planet. Any exploitation of unconventional fossil fuels is putting the world on a path to a devastated future. That said, the cumulative effect of all the local impacts spread over the vast areas needed by fracking cannot be underestimated.

If we do not make a stand fracking will lead us into a hellish future. While fracking is bad it is also very short term, and the greatest threat it poses is actually as a gateway to even more extreme extraction methods. The government is already selling licences for underground coal gasification (UCG), literally setting fire to coal underground, to try to extract energy. What crazy schemes to profit from scrapping the last dregs from the fossil fuel barrel will be thought up next?

This post links to news articles (rather than the scientific studies on which they are often based) to make it accessible to as many people as possible. However, if you are interested in digging more deeply please see our Reports & Evidence page. If you have suggestions for additional material, reports of broken links or issues we have missed out, do e-mail us at info@frack-off.org.

UK Specific

$http://frack-off.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/balcombe.jpg$

Leading UK Fracking Company, Cuadrilla Resources, Whose Site At Balcombe Was Blockaded Last Summer, Has Been Censured By The ASA And DECC (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking in the UK would require tens of thousands of wells to be drilled, severely impact local water resources and be completely incompatible with UK’s carbon emissions targets

Water shortages may make fracking impractical, industry says (Guardian, November 2013) Fracking may be impractical in parts of the UK due to the scarcity of local water supplies, and in other areas will have an impact on local water resources, the water industry has admitted, but they are collaborating with the fracking industry anyway

Water firms raise fears over shale gas fracking (Telegraph, July 2013) Fracking for shale gas will raise the risk of water shortages and could contaminate drinking supplies with with methane gas and harmful chemicals, Britain’s water companies have claimed

Cuadrilla censured by advertising watchdog over fracking safety claims (Guardian, April 2013) Cuadrilla censured by Advertising Standards Authority for claiming that it uses “proven, safe technologies” and that fracking does not lead to water contamination

Sepa probe at coal-bed methane wells (The Herald, April 2013) The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is launching an investigation into claims that methane is leaking from wells drilled to test for the gas in coal seams, owned by Dart Energy, near Canonbie in Dumfries and Galloway

Fracking company Cuadrilla halts operations at Lancashire drilling site (Guardian, March 2013) Cuadrilla has been warned by ministers over its “performance as a licensee” because it did not report for six months the well casing damage produced by the earthquake that it caused

UK shale gas no “get out of jail free card” (Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Feb 2013) To replace the UK’s current imports with shale gas would require up to 20,000 wells to be drilled in the next 15 years, draining an area over twice the size of Lancashire and is unlikely to result in low natural gas prices

Gas strategy should be ‘plan Z’, government’s climate adviser warns (Guardian, December 2012) Chief executive of Committee on Climate Change says a new dash for gas is ‘completely incompatible’ with UK’s legally binding carbon emissions targets and should be “plan Z”

Water Contamination

$http://frack-off.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/contam.jpg$

Chemical Contaminants Detected In Two Different Water Wells (Purple And Orange) In Pavilion, Wyoming Which Sits In The Middle Of A Gas Field (Click To Enlarge)

Thousands of cases of water contamination with toxic and carcinogenic substances caused by unconventional oil and gas extraction have been documented including in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio, Alberta and Queensland

EPA report on fracking in Texas raises new concerns (LA Times, December 2013) Over three years, the EPA has sampled water in Dimock, Pa., Pavillion, Wyo., and Parker County after residents complained that their water had turned foul once natural gas drilling began nearby and in each case the EPA found evidence of contamination but declined to pursue further water sampling or disciplinary action against the energy companies

Study: High Levels of Arsenic in Water Near Gas Wells (Texas Tribune, July 2013) Study of 100 water wells in the Barnett Shale, Texas found dangerously high levels of arsenic in third of wells that are closer to natural gas extraction sites

Sunday Times review of DEP drilling records reveals water damage, murky testing methods (Scranton Times-Tribune, May 2013) State environmental regulators determined that oil and gas development contaminated the water supplies for at least 161 Pennsylvania homes, farms, churches and businesses between 2008 and the fall of 2012

Drilling spills reaching Colorado groundwater; state mulls test rules (Denver Post, December 2012) Oil and gas in Colorado have contaminated groundwater, including with cancer-causing benzene, in 17 percent of the 2,078 spills and slow releases that companies reported to state regulators over the past five years, state data show

Canadian authorities: Fracking operation contaminated groundwater (Natural Resources Defense Council, December 2012) Canadian Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) investigation into a September, 2011 groundwater contamination incident caused by gelled propane fracking of a gas well in Alberta, finds elevated levels of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) remain a year later

Pennsylvania Report Left Out Data on Poisons in Water Near Gas Site (New York Times, November 2012) Pennsylvania officials reported incomplete test results that omitted data on some toxic metals that were found in drinking water taken from a private well near a natural gas drilling site

Diesel in Water Near Fracking Confirms EPA Tests Wyoming Disputes (Bloomberg, September 2012) A retest of water in Pavillion, Wyoming by the US Geological Survey, confirms evidence of contamination by methane, ethane, diesel compounds and phenol, which the EPA had also identified in its report last year

Carcinogens found in CSG project (Sydney Morning Herald, August 2011) The Queensland government is investigating a Arrow Energy coal seam gas (CSG) field west of Brisbane after the discovery of cancer-causing chemicals benzene, toluene and xylene in five boresholes during routine tests

Environmental Working Group Reveals EPA Knowledge of Water Contamination From Fracking (DeSmog Blog, August 2011) Fracking has been known by the US Environmental Protection Agency to contaminate underground sources of drinking water since 1987

EPA Finds Compound Used in Fracking in Wyoming Aquifer (Pro Publica, November 2010) A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., found high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, consistent with samples collected from at least 42 homes in the area since 2008

Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies? (Pro Publica, November 2008) More than 1,000 other cases of contamination have been documented by courts and state and local governments in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania

Air Pollution

$http://frack-off.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/IR_Emissions.jpg$

Infra-Red Image Of A Frack Pad In The Barnett Shale, Texas Showing Hydrocarbon Fumes (Invisible To Naked Eye) Boiling Off Condensate Tanks (Click To Enlarge)

Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Texas have all recorded massively increased air pollution as a result of fracking, including local concentrations of toxic hydrocarbons fumes as well as region-wide ozone pollution, with residents suffering headaches, sore throats, nosebleeds, dizziness and breathing difficulties

What’s Behind Surging Ozone Pollution in Texas? Study to Weigh Role of Fracking in Health Hazard (Inside Climate News, October 2013) In San Antonio, the steepest increase in ozone, a hazardous air pollutant that causes serious respiratory problems, coincides with the boom in the Eagle Ford shale

As air pollution from fracking rises, EPA to set rules (Lake Wylie Pilot, August 2013) Fracking has led to giant compressor stations, drilling rigs and huge flares in the middle of communities exposing people to variety of air pollution includes the fumes breathed in by people nearby, as well as smog spread over a wide region and emissions of the greenhouse gas methane

‘Let’s learn from the past’: Pam Judy speaks out on the health impacts of compressor stations (Protecting Our Waters, March 2013) Family in Green County, Pennsylvania who live 780 feet from a compressor station suffering headaches, sore throats, nosebleeds, vertigo, mouth blisters, some of which have landed them in the emergency room

Air emissions near natural gas drilling sites may contribute to health problems (Medical News, March 2012) Researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health have found a number of toxic, and carciogenic, petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near fracking wells including benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene, which cause acute and chronic health problems for those living nearby

First Study of Its Kind Detects 44 Hazardous Air Pollutants at Gas Drilling Sites (Inside Climate News, December 2012) A new study detected more than 50 chemicals, including 44 with reported health effects, in the air near fracking sites in Garfield County, Colorado, an area with little other industry aside from natural gas production

Like Wyoming, Utah finds high wintertime ozone pollution near oil, gas wells (Denver Post, February 2012) In 2010 and 2011, ozone air pollution which can impair breathing and has until recently been an urban issue, soared in the Uintah Basin, Utah where 10,000 wells have been drilled, with the phenomenon also seen in Wyoming, raising concerns that such pollution could become more widespread

Wyoming plagued by big-city problem: smog (Washington Post, March 2011) In western Wyoming, once famous for its crisp mountain air, people are now complaining of watery eyes, shortness of breath and bloody noses because of ozone levels that have exceeded Los Angeles on its worst pollution days, due to the expansion gas drilling in the region

Radioactive Contamination

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Radioactive Radium 226 And 228 In Pennsylvania Waterways Showing High Concentrations Downstream Of Fracking Wastewater Outfalls (Click To Enlarge)

Radioactive materials from shale formations are brought to the surface in huge quantities and are threatening to pollute drinking water supplies in Pennsylvania, while workers transporting frack waste are getting sick

Radiation in Pennsylvania Creek Seen as Legacy of Fracking (Bloomberg, October 2013) Radioactive radium brought to the surface by gas drillers has been detected at concentrations 200 times above background levels in a Blacklick Creek, Pennsylvania, illustrating the risks of wastewater disposal from the boom in hydraulic fracturing

Fracking Truck Sets Off Radiation Alarm At Landfill (Forbes, April 2013) A truck carrying drill cuttings from a hydraulic fracturing pad in the Marcellus Shale was rejected by a Pennsylvania landfill after it set off a radiation alarm, emitting gamma radiation from radium 226 at almost ten times the permitted level

Fracking Wastewater Can Be Highly Radioactive (Reader Supported News, January 2013) A U.S. Geological Survey report found that millions of barrels of wastewater from unconventional wells in Pennsylvania were up to 3,609 times more radioactive than the federal limit for drinking water and 300 times more radioactive than the limit for nuclear plant discharges, as the workers transporting wastewater are getting sick undiagnosed conditions

Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers (New York Times, February 2011) A fracking well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, with drilling waste a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania since radioactivity cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways

Is New York’s Marcellus Shale Too Hot to Handle? (Pro Publica, November 2009) New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation has found levels of radium-226 in frack wastewater, a derivative of uranium known to cause bone, liver and breast cancers, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink

Human Health

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Six Counties In Texas (Outlined In Black) Where Breast Cancer Rates Are Shooting Up, Whilst Declined In The Rest Of US, Compared To Locations Of Barnett Shale Gas Wells (Red Dots) (Click To Enlarge)

Wherever fracking is happening, including Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Queensland, people are getting sick as a result of the toxic, carcinogenic and hormone-disrupting chemicals they are exposed to via both air and water, with symptoms from headaches and breathing difficulties to neurological impairment and cancer

Study Shows Fracking Is Bad for Babies (Bloomberg, January 2014) A study of Pennsylvania birth records from 2004 to 2011, by researchers from Princeton University, Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has found that infants born within a 2.5-kilometer radius of fracking sites have increased likelihood of low birth weight and more health problems

Hormone-disrupting chemicals found in water at fracking sites (LA Times, December 2013) A study of hydraulic fracturing sites in Colorado finds substances that have been linked to infertility, birth defects and cancer

Air Pollution Destroys Health of Texas Fracking Communities (Environment News Service, September 2013) New study documents hazardous chemicals in the air and serious ailments reported by families living in close proximity to drilling operations of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas

Statement On Preliminary Findings From The Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project Study (Concerned Health Professionals of New York, August 2013) Early results from a public health assessment in Washington County, Pennsylvania, find that people are getting sick, with air pollution implicated in three-quarters of cases and elevated levels of fracking-related air pollutants were found in people’s homes

Fracking ourselves to death in Pennsylvania (Salon, May 2013) Serious health crisis unfolding as the fracking industry has spread through states like Texas, Colorado, and Pennsylvania where people’s symptoms are the same: rashes, nosebleeds, severe headaches, difficulty breathing, joint pain, intestinal illnesses, memory loss, and more

Report details health concerns for residents affected by CSG (Sunshine Coast Daily, March 2013) A report chronicling the possible health risks caused by the coal seam gas industry in Tara, Queensland has been compiled by general practitioner Dr Geralyn McCarron who is concerned children could be experiencing damage to their nervous system

Fracking’s most horrifying health risks (Salon, December 2012) The threat from fracking to human health includes air pollution, chemical contamination of drinking water, radioactive wastewater and radon gas, but the long latency of many illnesses, a lack of accurate health data gathering, and conflicts of interests affecting research means it may be a long time before the implications are fully understood

Marcellus Gas Wells Likely Harming Public Health: Survey (Bloomberg, October 2012) People living near natural gas wells in Pennsylvania, where more than 5,000 shale gas wells have been drilled since 2009, say drilling has triggered respiratory problems, fatigue, severe headaches and skin rashes, according to a survey of residents in 14 Pennsylvania counties, while air samples reveal 19 volatile organic compounds

Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields (Pro Publica, September 2011) Residents of communities across the US that have seen the most extensive natural gas drilling are reporting symptoms including respiratory infections, headaches, neurological impairment, nausea and skin rashes

Breast cancer rate climbs up (Denton Record-Chronicle, August 2011) According to a 2011 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, invasive breast cancer is on the rise in the six Texas counties with the Barnett Shale’s most intense gas drilling development, even as the incidence rate for the disease is falling across the rest of the nation

Agriculture & Animal Health

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Cows Tails Fell Off, Many Got Sick And 5 Died After 32 Wells Were Drilled Near A Ranch In The Bakken Shale, North Dakota (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking is threatening to compromise food supplies with animals and crops dying in Alberta, North Dakota, New Mexico, California and Pennsylvania as a result of exposure to chemicals from drilling operations

Home, Fracked Home: Lost Hair and Dead Cows (The Tyee, October 2013) Six cows wasted away and died, while four others were euthanized, on a cattle ranch in Alberta after a water well was contaminated with high levels of chlorides following the fracking of 70 tight (or shale) oil wells in the region

Fracking Our Food Supply (Nation, November 2012) Five cows dropped dead (with more getting sick and their tails falling off), in addition to several cats and two dogs, after fracking began on thirty-two Bakken Shale oil wells within three miles of a ranch in North Dakota

Study suggests hydrofracking is killing farm animals, pets (Cornell University, March 2012) A new report has found dozens of cases of illness, death and reproductive issues in cows, horses, goats, llamas, chickens, dogs, cats, fish which could be the result of exposure to gas drilling operations

An Inside Look at What Happens When Gas Drillers Are Exempt from Environmental Law (Alternet, May 2011) Cattle ranchers in the San Juan Basin of northern New Mexico, where coal bed methane development (CBM) has seen 23,000 wells and 3,000 compressor stations constructed, are being forced off the land as their cattle are poisoned with chemicals like methanol and ethylene glycol

Oil and Water Don’t Mix with California Agriculture (High Country News, December 2010) Oil industry produced water leaking from evaporation ponds contaminated groundwater with chloride and boron, along with detectable radiation, and killed almond trees in California’s Central Valley

Fracking With Food: How the Natural Gas Industry Poisons Cows and Crops (Alternet, July 2010) 28 cows quarantined at a farm in Shippen Township, Pennsylvania after a leak from a 650,000-gallon fracking disposal pit exposed them to water containing the heavy metal strontium

Wildlife

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Pronghorn Antelope In The Upper Green River Basin, Wyoming Which Are Threatened By Thousands Of Fracking Sites Fragmenting Their Habitat (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking requires thousands of miles of pipelines, roads, drilling pads and related infrastructure which is fragmenting ecosystems, while pollution and waste also pose a severe threat to wildlife

Study: Fracking Waste Poses Severe Threat To Wildlife (MintPress News, September 2013) According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fracking water “killed virtually all aquatic wildlife” at the site of one spill

Northeast drilling boom threatens forest wildlife (Associated Press, April 2013) Thousands of miles of new pipelines and related infrastructure are fragmenting ecosystems and threatening to wildlife in Pennsylvania

U.S. Geological Survey: Natural Gas Fracking Is Destroying Pennsylvania Forests (Natural Gas Watch, October 2012) Natural gas drilling activity is destroying thousands of acres of forest in Pennsylvania, with habitat fragmentation by roads, drilling pads, pipelines and other infrastructure development associated with fracking, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report

Fracking Away the Wildlife (Pacific Standard, August 2012) Gas fields in western Wyoming are fracturing of the habitat of the American pronghorn antelope, as thousands of fracking sites interfere with the pronghorn’s migration routes, forcing them to abandon up to 82 percent of their highest quality winter range

Methane Migration

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Concentration Of Methane In Water Wells As A Function Of Their Distance From Marcellus Shale Wells (Click To Enlarge)

Methane is migrating into groundwater from fracking wells causing explosions and fires where it builds up in buildings, and at least two rivers, the Condamine River in Queensland and the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, are bubbling methane

Government report points the finger at CSG as cause for bubbles in the Condamine River (Courier-Mail, August 2013) A Queensland government report has shown that methane bubbling along a 5km stretch of the Condamine River, in the Surat Basin, is consistent with being caused by coal seam gas (CSG) extraction and detected concentration in the air up to 300 ppm

Duke Study Links Fracking To Methane In Drinking Water (Environmental Working Group, June 2013) New Duke University study of 141 drinking water wells in the Marcellus Shale region finds much higher concentrations of methane, ethane and propane in wells within one kilometre of a natural gas operation

Three years after drilling, feds say natural gas in Medina County well water is potentially explosive (Akron Beacon Journal, January 2012) A federal health agency says explosive levels of mathane at two houses in eastern Medina County, Ohio are a public health threat, and has linked them to the drilling of two shale gas wells in 2008

Stray gas plagues NEPA Marcellus wells (Scranton Times-Tribune, July 2011) As shale gas drilling has increased in Pennsylvania, so has the prevalence of methane migrating into water supplies causing a blast in a Dimock water well, forced a family to evacuate a Terry Twp. home, bubbled up in the Susquehanna River and affecting 35 drinking-water wells in Bradford and Susquehanna counties according to state investigators

Attorney: Methane probed in NW Pa. house explosion (Charleston Daily Mail, March 2011) Methane gas from fracking operations migrating through homeowner’s water wells is being investigated as the cause of explosions and fires in two Pennsylvania homes over the last three months

Methane threat to drinking water (Nature, May 2011) Study by US environmental scientists at Duke University finds significantly increases methane concentrations in drinking water taken from wells within 1 km of one or more fracking operations in northeastern Pennsylvania and nearby areas of New York state

Water Problems From Drilling Are More Frequent Than PA Officials Said (Pro Publica, July 2009) Methane related to fracking has contaminated water wells in at least seven Pennsylvania counties and in one case was detected in water sampled over 15 square miles since 2004, when an explosion killed a couple and their 17-month-old grandson after gas seeped into their home

Climate Change

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Concentration Of Methane Upwind (Blue) And Downwind (Red) Of The Unita Basin Gasfields In Utah Showing That The Field Is Leaking Large Amounts Of Gas (Click To Enlarge)

Fugitive emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas leaking out of gas wells, pipelines and compressor stations, may total over 10 percent of production making fracking worse than burning coal in terms of climate change, over a 20 year time scale

U.S. Methane Study Says Emissions 50 Percent Higher Than EPA Estimates (Huffington Post, November 2013) US is spewing 50 percent more methane — a potent heat-trapping gas — than the federal government estimates, a new comprehensive scientific study says, much of it is coming from oil and gas drilling areas

New Study Finds High Methane Emissions from Gas Drilling (Allegheny Front, August 2013) A new study has found “alarmingly high” levels of methane – between 6.2 and 11.7 percent – leaking out of tight gas wells, pipelines and compressor stations in Utah, making it worse than coal in terms of global warming over a 20-year time span

Methane leaks erode green credentials of natural gas (Nature, January 2013) Results from a field study in the Uinta Basin, Utah, suggest an eye-popping 9% of the total methane production, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking, double the cumulative loss rates estimated from industry data

Australian scientists find excess greenhouse gas near fracking (LA Times, November 2012) Researchers from Southern Cross University have detected excess greenhouse gas levels near the site of Australia’s biggest coal seam gas field, even higher than in Russia’s massive Siberian gas fields, where environmental protection has been minimal

US Shale Gas Drives Up Coal Exports (Science Daily, October 2012) A report by researchers at the University of Manchester has concluded that whilst the US is burning less coal, often attributed to shale gas production, millions of tonnes of unused coal are being exported to the UK, Europe and Asia

Shale gas ‘worse than coal’ for climate (BBC News, April 2011) The first comprehensive analysis of the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas, from Cornell University, shows it is at least 20% greater and perhaps more than twice as great as coal on a 20-year horizon, and is comparable over 100 years

Climate Benefits of Natural Gas May Be Overstated (Pro Publica, January 2011) Environmental Protection Agency estimates methane gas leaks from the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas are 9,000 times higher than previously reported, making shale as bad for the climate as coal over a 20 year time scale

Fracking Waste

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Fracking Waste Pit On A Site In Pennsylvania Constructed To Hold Contaminated Flowback (Click To Enlarge)

The quantities of toxic and radioactive waste being produced by fracking, are overwhelming the limited capacity of treatment plants, which cannot remove all contaminants in any case, and combined with spilling and dumping is contaminating land, waterways and groundwater

Fracking produces annual toxic waste water enough to flood Washington DC (Guardian, October 2013) Waste water pits often fail, such as in New Mexico where there were more than 420 instances of contamination, and that treatment plants do not remove all contaminants

Sites sought for region’s fracking residue (Columbus Dispatch, September 2013) The two-year U.S. Department of Energy project to search for sites where companies can pump fracking waste underground, including saltwater that contains toxic metals and radium

As Fracking Proliferates, So Do Wastewater Wells (New York Times, March 2013) Most wastewater is trucked to disposal wells and injected thousands of feet underground resulting in truck traffic, accidents and the possibility for spills and groundwater contamination

Sewage Plants Struggle To Treat Wastewater Produced By Fracking Operations (Chemical & Engineering News, March 2013) Water used in fracking may still contain high levels of contaminants, even after going through wastewater treatment plants

Wastewater from fracking could be too much to handle, study says (NBC News, January 2013) The number of fracking operations in Pennsylvania has grown so rapidly that the wastewater being produced threatens to overwhelm the region’s capacity to properly treat it

North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity (Pro Publica, June 2012) Oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling salty, chemical-infused waste onto the Bakken Shale region’s land and into its waterways with increasing regularity, wiping out aquatic life in streams and wetlands and sterilized farmland, with over 1,000 spills in 2011

W.Va. study raises questions about fracking fluid (Businessweek, July 2011) A gas company that legally doused a patch of West Virginia forest with salty wastewater from a fracking operation killed ground vegetation within days and more than half the trees within two years

With Natural Gas Drilling Boom, Pennsylvania Faces an Onslaught of Wastewater (Pro Publica, October 2009) The Monongahela River, a drinking water source for 350,000 people, contaminated by chemically tainted fracking wastewater, making dishwashers malfunction, corroding the machinery of industrial users and probably responsible for death of 10,000 fish

Water Usage

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Fracking Trucks Line Up After Midnight To Collect Water From The Susquehanna River In Pennsylvania (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking requires vast quantities of water, millions of gallons per well, which is stressing local water resources in areas like Texas, Colorado, Michigan and North Dakota, where farmers have been outbid for irrigation water and in some cases whole towns running dry

North Dakota’s Salty Fracked Wells Drink More Water to Keep Oil Flowing (National Geographic, November 2013) Over the life of a Bakken Shale well more than three to four times the water required for the initial fracking will be used as ‘maintenance water’

A Texan tragedy: ample oil, no water (Guardian, August 2013) Fracking boom sucks away precious water from beneath the ground, leaving cattle dead, farms bone-dry and people thirsty

Fracking Creates Water Scarcity Issues in Michigan (EcoWatch, June 2013) The fracking operation for one well is using more water than the local town uses for all its needs over the same time period

Fracking Is Already Straining U.S. Water Supplies (Think Progress, June 2013) Fracking consumes between 70 billion and 140 billion gallons of water each year in the US, equal to the water use in 40 to 80 cities with populations of 50,000 people

Spread of Hydrofracking Could Strain Water Resources in West, Study Finds (New York Times, May 2013) The rapid expansion of fracking could put pressure on already-stressed water resources in Colorado, according to a new report

As Fracking Increases, So Do Fears About Water Supply (New York Times, March 2013) In some Texas counties the proportion of water used for fracking has reached the double digits and is growing along with the oil boom

Drought raising water costs, scarcity concerns for shale plays (Oil & Gas Journal, July 2012) The volume of water that the oil and gas industry uses for hydraulic fracturing in US shale plays, forcing drillers to pay higher prices and to seek alternate water sources

Fracking bidders top farmers at water auction (Denver Post, April 2012) At Colorado’s premier auction for unallocated water this spring, companies that provide water for hydraulic fracturing at well sites were top bidders on supplies once claimed exclusively by farmers

Earthquakes

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Cumulative Number Of Earthquakes Greater Than Magnitude 3 In The US Since 1967 Showing Large Increase Last Few Years During The Fracking Boom (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking, and particularly the injection of fracking waste into disposal wells, is resulting in a massive increase in earthquakes in the US, including swarms of hundreds or thousands around individual wells, with the largest earthquake a magnitude 5.7 in Oklahoma which caused significant damage and injuries

Groningen gas earthquakes damage listed buildings (Dutch News, November 2013) Earthquakes, caused by gas extraction in Groningen, have damaged 69 out of the 100 listed buildings in the northern part of the province, according to the cultural heritage service Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed

Arkansas lawsuits test fracking wastewater link to quakes (Reuters, August 2013) Over a dozen residents of Greenbrier, Arkansas, hit by a swarm of more than 1,000 earthquakes up to magnitude of 4.7, have filed five federal lawsuits against the drillers, marking the first legal attempt to link earthquakes to wastewater wells

South Texas earthquakes likely caused by shale boom, researchers say (FuelFix, August 2013) Earthquakes in the Eagle Ford Shale region — including a magnitude 4.8 quake in 2011 which would have caused severe damage in an urban area — are likely being triggered by increased oil extraction, according to research from the University of Texas at Austin

Fracking led to 109 earthquakes in Youngstown, Ohio, study finds (UPI, August 2013) Since records began Youngstown, Ohio has never had an earthquake, until the Northstar 1 injection well was built to dispose of frack wastewater in 2010, and in the year that followed 109 seismic events were recorded in the town, the strongest a magnitude 3.9

Pumping water underground could trigger major earthquake, say scientists (Guardian, July 2013) A University of California study finds pumping water underground – for example in shale gas fracking – can lead to dangerous earthquakes even in regions not prone to tremors, by weakening of pre-existing undergrounds faults and making them vulnerable to triggering by earthquakes thousands of miles away

United States Geological Survey: Man-Made Earthquakes Update (US Geological Survey, July 2013) The number of earthquakes has increased dramatically over the past few years within the central and eastern United States and USGS scientists have found that the increase coincides with the injection of fracking wastewater in deep disposal wells

Study links fracking wastewater to massive 2011 Oklahoma quake (Raw Story, March 2013) A study links the magnitude 5.6 earthquake that hit Oklahoma in November 2011, causing serious damage to homes and even buckling a highway, to injection of fracking wastewater into a disposal well

Fracking’s Latest Scandal? Earthquake Swarms (Mother Jones, March 2013) A magnitude 5.7 earthquake in Prague, Oklahoma which injured two people, destroyed 14 homes, toppled headstones, closed schools, and was felt in 17 states, is linked to fracking wastewater injection wells

Earthquakes Hit Gas-Rich Groningen Province in Netherlands (Bloomberg, February 2013) The strength of earthquakes triggered by gas production in the Dutch province of Groningen may rise to magnitude 5, according to a government study

Transport

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Accident Rates Involving Heavy Goods Vehicles In Pennsylvania Counties With (Dashed) And Without (Dotted) Significant Fracking (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking has massive tranport requirements, to and from thousands of dispersed sites, often along small rural roads, and this is driving a carnage of accidents, explosions, spills and deaths on the roads, railways, and potentially soon waterways, of the US, from Texas to Pennsylvania

North Dakota community evacuated after train collision and fire (LA Times, December 2013) Casselton, a city of 2,432 people in North Dakota was evacuated after a train carrying Bakken Shale crude oil collided with another train, setting off a large fire, explosions and huge clouds of toxic smoke, a symptom of the fact that U.S. railroads are moving 25 times more crude than they did in 2008

Coast Guard Moves to Approve Barging of Hazardous Fracking Waste on Major Rivers (Truthout, November 2013) US moving forward with a proposal that would allow barges to transport large amounts of hazardous and radioactive wastewater from fracking operations on America’s major rivers, raising possiblity of a leak or spill on a major waterway contaminating drinking water supplies for millions of people

Train carrying crude oil derails, cars ablaze in Alabama (Reuters, November 2013) A train carrying crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota derailed and exploded in a rural area of western Alabama as a result of increase in trafficking of crude by rail with growth of shale oil production

Shale gas development linked to traffic accidents in Pennsylvania (Common Resources, September 2013) Fracking requires more than a thousand trips per well, often along rural roads or through small towns, with rates of accidents involving a heavy truck shooting up in Pennsylvania counties where significant fracking has occured, resulting in an average of 2 extra fatalities per county per month

Focus of Lac-Mégantic probe turns to North Dakota oil fields (Globe & Mail, August 2013) A train carrying Bakken Shale crude oil, which is typically lighter and more flammable than conventional crude, crashed and erupted into a huge fireball, killing 47 residents and levelling the centre of the small Canadian town of Lac-Mégantic

Consequences of the boom: Road, rail deaths on rise (Bakken Today, January 2013) The Bakken Shale oil driven jump in traffic has led to a huge spike in highway and train accidents and deaths in North Dakota

Traffic deaths soar in Eagle Ford Shale areas (Houston Chronicle, July 2012) Karnes County, one of more than a dozen inundated with traffic from the Eagle Ford Shale, has seen an increase by 12 times in the number of fatalities on its roads, with the biggest jump involving commercial vehicles, as big trucks hauling heavy loads are constantly damaging the roads

Pipelines

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Barnett Shale Gas Pipeline In Cleburne, Texas Where A Massive Explosion Killed One Person (Click To Enlarge)

Long after the drilling rigs are gone a legacy of fracking is thousands of miles of pipelines, carving up the countryside, while the inevitable leaks and explosions provide a constant threat to the areas concerned

Gas Pipeline Boom Fragmenting Pennsylvania’s Forests (InsideClimate News, December 2013) Pipelines to serve fracking cut paths through pristine stretches of trees, fragment forests, decrease biodiversity and introduce invasive species and it is estimated that more than 400,000 new miles of gathering lines will be installed in the US by 2035, dwarfing all previous waves of resource extraction combined

Pipeline construction in shale boom alters countryside (Columbus Dispatch, May 2013) The landscape is changing in rural Harrison County, Ohio as companies build pipelines to connect shale wells to massive new gas processing plants transforming the countryside, with the industry planning to spend $1 billion in just three Ohio counties on such developments

Study Finds Flaws in Pipeline Leak Detection Systems (New York Times, December 2012) A forthcoming federal report on pipeline safety has found that members of the general public are more likely to identify oil and gas spills than the pipeline companies’ own leak detection systems, which work only 16-17 percent of the time

Down the Pipe (Fort Worth Weekly, November 2011) When the drilling rigs are long gone, the dangers of gas pipelines will be just beginning, with more than 115 serious pipeline incidents in Texas between 2000 and 2009, which caused death, serious injury, or major property damage

The Fire Down Below (Texas Observer, November 2010)^* Driven by the shale gas-drilling boom in North Texas high-pressure natural gas pipelines are spreading across the state, with 360,000 miles laid already and more planned, and a series of huge gas-pipeline explosions causing injuries, deaths and destruction are the inevitable result

The moment workmen accidentally blew up a Texas gas pipeline, leaving one dead and seven injured (Daily Mail, June 2010) One worker was killed and seven others injured when an underground gas pipeline exploded in rural Texas, sending a massive fireball into the air, while heat from the blast forced firefighters to stay about a half-mile away until the gas flow was shut off

Blowouts, Spills & Explosions

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A West Virgina Fracking Site Where An Explosion And Fire Killed 2 Workers And Injured 5 Others (Click To Enlarge)

Fatalities among oil and gas workers have climbed to the highest level since records began in the US, amid a catalogue of explosions, well blowouts and spills at fracking sites across the US, Canada and Australia

Greene County shale well continues burning (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 2014) An explosion on a Marcellus Shale site in Greene County, Pennsylvania while a well was being connected to a gas pipeline has left one worker injured and one missing feared dead, and the fire was still raging more than 12 hours later

On-The-Job Deaths Spiking As Oil Drilling Quickly Expands (National Public Radio, December 2013) Last year, 138 oil and gas industry workers were killed on the job, an increase of more than 100 percent since 2009, and the fatality rate among oil and gas workers is now nearly eight times higher the average for industrial jobs

Oil and gas fatalities spike with boom (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 2013) About every three days, an oil and gas worker in the US was killed on the job in 2012 – and in 2011 and 2010 – as fatalities in the booming industry have climbed to the highest level since records began

Investigation Continues Into Fatal Explosion at WV Fracking Site (EcoWatch, August 2013) Seven people were injured, and since two men have died due to injuries sustained in an explosion and fire at a fracking site in West Virginia, caused by a buildup of gas in tanks used to store flow back water

Explosion at CSG well probed (Byron Shire Echo, August 2013) A blowout at a coal seam gas in New South Wales shot 200 metres broken drill rods, a milling tool, methane and liquids into the air, and a NSW mine safety report noted the potential for the incident to have been far worse

Few answers in April gas well blowout (Denton Record-Chronicle, July 2013) A well blowout in the city of Denton, Texas went unreported by the company for 9 hours and spewed chemicals into the air for over 12 hours, including the carcinogens benzene and ethylene dibromide, eventually resulting in the evacuation of four nearby homes and the diversion of flights at the city airport

Wyoming County well malfunction causes spill, evacuation (Scranton Times-Tribune, March 2013) Three Pennsylvania families were evacuated from their homes for two days after a blowout during fracking operations at a Marcellus Shale well caused gas and thousands of gallons of fluid waste to escape from the well and spill off the pad, before crews could shut it down

Fracking blamed for well blowout near Innisfail (Calgary Herald, December 2012) A well blowout in Alberta that spewed oily liquid over a farm was caused by hydraulic fracturing of a neighbouring well and was not an isolated event, with 21 examples of “communication” between wells over the past year, of which five resulted in blowouts

Pennsylvania Fracking Accident: What Went Wrong (Popular Mechanics, April 2011) A Pennsylvania shale gas well operated by Chesapeake Energy erupted, sending thousands (and perhaps tens of thousands) of gallons of highly saline fluid laced with chemical, some carcinogenic or linked to birth defects, spilling from the fracking site, into a tributary of a popular trout-fishing stream and forcing seven families nearby to evacuate their homes

Exxon Subsidiary Investigated for 13,000 Gallon Fracking Fluid Spill Into Pennsylvania Waterways (Huffington Post, November 2010) 13,000 gallon fracking fluid spill an XTO Energy drilling site in Pennsylvania polluted an unnamed tributary to the Sugar Run river and a spring and threatening a nearby cattle herd that had to be fenced off from the contaminated pasture

Frack Sand

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Fracking Workers Often Exposed To Silica Dust Levels Which Can Cause Lung Disease And Cancer (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking’s demand for frack sand, a carcinogenic silica dust which can cause silicosis, an incurable lung disease, and lung cancer, is causing entire hills to be blasted away to extract the sand while workers and local residents are exposed to dangerous levels of silica in the air

The Mines That Fracking Built (Truth Out, May 2013) 70 active mines now operating in Wisconsin, producing “frack sand,” a carcinogenic silica dust which is a key ingredient in the hydraulic fracking process

Sand Land: Fracking Industry Mining Iowa’s Iconic Sand Bluffs in New Form of Mountaintop Removal (DeSmog Blog, April 2013) To extract the frac sand, mining corporations have adopted a method of newfangled mountaintop removal of sorts, blasting away entire hills

Like Working in a Refinery: Fracking’s New Chemical Hazards for Workers (State Impact, July 2012) In air samples taken at a fracking site in the Eagle Ford Shale, investigators found silica dust levels, which can cause silicosis, an incurable lung disease, and increases the risk of lung cancer, up to 10 times the safe limit, a dangerous level even when workers wear masks

Tiny Minnesota City Draws a Line in the Frac Sand Boom (Inside Climate News, November 2011) U.S. frac sand industry has ballooned from a dozen or so mines to hundreds in order to support growing demand but prior to this silica dust exposure already killed hundreds of industrial sand workers a year

Leaking Wells

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Percentage Of Leaking Wells As A Function Of Age In A Study By Oil Services Company Schlumberger (Click To Enlarge)

Leaking wells have been a persistent and chronic problem for the oil and gas industry, contaminating land and water with toxic and carcinogenic materials, with the fraction of leaking wells growing as they age, and the worst leakers being “deviated” wells commonly used for fracking

Alberta Landowners Dispute Energy Regulator over Polluted Well (The Tyee, October 2013) At least three dozen frack jobs in Alberta and British Columbia have migrated and “communicated” with other wells, spewing fluid and hydrocarbons onto fields and forests, while well casings of horizontal fracked wells tend to leak or break at much higher rates, with 70 per cent of “deviated wells” leaking

Shale Gas: How Often Do Fracked Wells Leak? (The Tyee, January 2013) Leaking wellbores have been a persistent and chronic problem for decades and industry studies clearly show that five to seven per cent of all new oil and gas wells leak, and this grows to over half as wells age, with the worst leakers being “deviated” or horizontal wells commonly used for fracking

Prize and poison (Montana Native News, 2011) A shallow aquifer that provides the town of Poplar, Montana with drinking water has been contaminated with brine, which also contains toxic compounds like benzene, a known carcinogen, leaking from a waste injection well, according to the Environmental Protection Agency

By challenge – well integrity (Archer, March 2011) A typical well is built from several thousand components and exposed to tortuous conditions, with integrity failures in 45%, 34% and 18% of wells in the Gulf of Mexico, UK North Sea and the Norwegian North Sea respectively

Leaks found in shale gas wells: Que. report (CBC News, January 2011) A report compiled for Quebec’s environmental protection agency has found that of 31 shale gas wells in the province inspected ‘more than half have problems’, leaking gas into the atmosphere

Orphaned Wells

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An Abandoned Well In Oneida County, New York Whose Discharges Have Killed An Acre Of Vegetation (Click To Enlarge)

Previous waves of drilling have already littered the world with millions of orphaned wells, abandoned by their original owners, with many spewing toxic pollutants into the environment, and massive clean up costs falling on taxpayers, a situation which fracking is making far worse

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead announces plan to plug 1,200 abandoned oil and gas wells (Casper Star-Tribune, December 2013) Wyoming has more than 1,200 orphaned oil and gas wells, an additional 912 wells likely to become orphaned from ongoing bankruptcy proceedings and another 2,300 wells of concern, many left over from declining coal-bed methane production in the Powder River Basin, which the state will need to pay to be plugged

Abandoned, Polluting, and Costly: Are the Gas Wells of New York’s Past a Glimpse into Its Future? (EarthDesk, September 2013) New York regulators estimate there are 57,000 abandoned and orphan oil and gas wells statewide – many of them leaking, risking explosions and providing conduits for water contamination, but lack the funding to plug them

Planet Sludge: Millions of Abandoned, Leaking Natural Gas and Oil Wells to Foul Our Future (EcoHearth, May 2013) Each day hundreds of thousands of abandoned leaking oil wells and natural-gas wells spew toxic pollutants into the environment — and tens of millions more will soon join them, a developing environmental calamity to which almost no one is paying attention

Orphans of the Oil Fields: The Cost of Abandoned Wells (State Impact, April 2012) Scattered across the oil and gas fields of Texas, there are at least 7,869 abandoned wells, and an additional 5,445 wells that are inactive and whose operators are delinquent in meeting regulations, and since 1984, Texas has spent over $247 million plugging orphaned wells

Deteriorating Oil and Gas Wells Threaten Drinking Water, Homes Across the Country (Pro Publica, April 2011) Abandoned wells can provide pathways for oil, gas or brine-laden water to contaminate groundwater supplies or to travel up to the surface and previous waves of drilling has littered the US with as many as a million orphan wells, which can cost $100,000 or more each to plug

What Lies Beneath (Alberta Views, March 2011)^* Almost 100,000 abandoned oil and gas wells litter Alberta, one quarter of all the wells ever drilled in the province, and the total cost to reclaim all existing wells, facilities and pipelines in the province is estimated at approximately $21 billion, with the government likely to foot most of the bill

Industrialisation

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Typical Dense Fracking Development In Western Pennsylvania With Three Wells, A Gas Processing Plant, A Waste Pit And A Compressor Station In This Small Area (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking takes rural communities and turns them into industrial zones, with an unprecedented industrialization of the countryside now under way in the US, where a million more wells are expected over the next few decades and in places fracking is now pushing into the suburbs once rural areas become fully exploited

Welcome to Gasland: Denton, Texas Residents Face Fracking Impacts From EagleRidge Energy (DeSmog Blog, December 2013) The city of Denton, Texas, is being turned into a gasland with fracking sites less than 200 feet away from people’s homes, residents complaining about toxic fumes, bright lights and noise, and fracking even taking place on the University of North Texas campus in the city

Energy Boom Puts Wells in America’s Backyards (Wall Street Journal, October 2013) More than 15 million Americans now live within one mile of a fracking well as parts of the U.S. face unprecedented industrialization with a million more wells expected over the next few decades

You Have to See It to Believe It: What It’s Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard (Alternet, April 2013) Fracking takes rural communities and turns them into industrial zones with thousands of wells, truck traffic, accidents and road damage now something residents endure daily while operations go on around the clock, with constant noise, light and air pollution and explosions sometimes occur at well sites and pipelines

When fracking came to suburban Texas (Guardian, December 2012) Residents of Gardendale, a suburb in Texas, face having up to 300 wells in their backyards, as fracking operations are now planned or under way in suburbs, mid-sized towns and large metropolitan areas across the US

Secrecy

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A Family, Including Two Children, Forbidden From Speaking About Fracking For The Rest Of Their Lives After Nearby Shale Gas Wells Made Them Sick (Click To Enlarge)

The fracking industry uses a wide variety of legal tricks, including trade-secret claims and non-disclosure agreements, to hide details of its activities, and particularly cases where it has harmed people, from regulators, the media, researchers and the general public

Judge defeats challenge to ‘medical gag order’ on health risks from fracking (Russia Today, November 2013) A doctor who recently treated a patient directly exposed to fracking fluid, suffering from “low platelets, anemia, rash and acute renal failure that required extensive hemodialysis” has been denied the right to challenge a “medical gag rule” which forbids doctors for disclosing the chemicals involved to anyone, including the patients themselves

Lifelong Gag Order Imposed on Two Kids in Fracking Case (State Impact, August 2013) Two young children are forbidden from speaking about the Marcellus Shale or fracking for the rest of their lives following a settlement in a high-profile Marcellus Shale lawsuit alleging the family became sick from the gas drilling activity in western Pennsylvania

Drillers Silence Fracking Claims With Sealed Settlements (Bloomberg, June 2013) In cases across the US fracking companies have agreed to cash settlements or property buyouts with people who say they have ruined their water, but in most cases homeowners must agree to keep quiet, with non-disclosure agreements hiding an unknown number of contamination cases from regulators, the media and health researchers

Colorado docs chafe at secrecy oath needed for access to chemical list (Denver Post, March 2013) Colorado doctors are challenging a confidentiality pledge they must sign to get information on chemicals used by the oil and gas industry — information they may need to treat patients and protect public health, which means they could be punished for sharing information about chemicals with other medical professionals and public health authorities

Fracking Secrets by Thousands Keep U.S. Clueless on Wells (Bloomberg, November 2012) The 19,000 trade-secret claims made in Texas in 2012 through August hid from regulators one out of every seven chemicals and concentrations of the chemicals used, to hydraulically fracture 3,639 wells

Oppression

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Royal Canadian Mounted Police Launch A Heavily Armed Dawn Assault On An Anti-Fracking Camp In New Brunswick

The fracking industry and governments in the US, Canada and Australia considers resistance by local people to be an “insurgency”, and anti-fracking groups, particularly in poorer or maginalised communities, are routinely labelled as terrorists, subjected to psychological warfare operations, intimidation and police violence

Fracking executive confirms: Homeland Security thinks fracktivists are terrorists (Daily Kos, November 2013) Chief Operating Officer of EagleRidge Energy turns up to a meeting with residents of Denton, Texas with an armed police escort and tells them that if they object to his company’s operations close to their homes, schools and parks, they are terrorists worthy of inclusion on the Department of Homeland Security’s watch list

Protests Sweep Canada Following Paramilitary Assault on Indigenous Fracking Blockade (Common Dreams, October 2013) Royal Canadian Mounted Police stormed the indigenous Elsipogtog Mi’kmaq First Nation anti-fracking protest, donning camouflage uniforms, wielding rifles, and brought police dogs to the site, tear gassed the crowd and violently arresting 40 people

Gas protestors stand their ground despite shots being fired (Sunshine Coast Daily, May 2013) Three shots were fired at a Tara protest against coal seam gas extraction outside a Queensland Gas Company camp near Chinchilla on the western Darling Downs

Hey CSIS, farmers are not terrorists (Tronoto Star, March 2013) People who are resisting fracking on their land and in their communities are being labelled a security threat by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the vast majority of whose spying is done within Canada under the guise of “domestic terrorism”

Fracking Insiders Admit To Employing Military ‘Psychological Operations’ On American Citizens (Business Insider, November 2011) Recordings from inside a fracking industry conference in Houston reveal that they have hired military veterans who served as psychological warfare specialists to counter the “insurgency” from local people opposed to fracking

Corruption

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Campaign Contributions From The Fracking Industry To Candidates For The US Senate Over The Last Decade (Click To Enlarge)

The fracking industry spends large amounts of money on influencing various parts of society, corrupting politicians, regulators, academics, media and governments, in order to advance its agenda

Fracking Industry Campaign Contributions At Record Levels, Report Shows (Huffington Post, November 2013) Fracking industry contributions to US congressional campaigns spiked 231 percent between 2004 and 2012 in districts and states with fracking activity, according to a report compiled by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics

Polish government accused of gagging anti-fracking groups (Responding to Climate Change, March 2013) Poland’s government is considering new legislation to limit the influence of campaign groups opposed to its fracking plans, by excluding community groups who have recently formed to oppose shale gas exploration from taking part in consultations

EPA changed course after oil company protested (Associated Press, January 2013) Environmental Protection Agency buries scientific evidence that fracking company, Range Resources, was to blame for the contamination of drinking water after the company threatened not to cooperate with a national study into fracking

Review of UT Fracking Study Finds Failure to Disclose Conflict of Interest (State Impact, December 2012) A review of a controversial University of Texas study which claimed no link between fracking and water contamination finds numerous flaws in the study and failures to disclose conflicts of interest, with the lead author sitting on the board of a drilling company for which he was paid $1.5 million

Economics

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Steep Production Decline Curve For A Typical Bakken Shale Oil Well In North Dakota (Click To Enlarge)

Fracking is expensive, extreme and risky and wells have massive production decline rates requiring constant drilling, offering dramatically lower energy returns and large environmental impacts. Sweet spots are often surrounded by vast zones of much less productive wells, which do not produce a large energy surplus

We’re fracking to stand still (Globe and Mail, December 2013) In the Bakken Shale output from wells that are over a month old is declining 6.3 per cent each month, for an annual rate of 53 per cent, requiring constant drilling and so much energy is needed to drill these wells that only the best produce a large energy surplus

Report: Industry-backed studies exaggerate fracking job estimates (Democrat & Chronicle, November 2013) A report casts doubt on industry funded estimates of jobs created through Marcellus Shale gas drilling, finding only one in 795 jobs is directly related to drilling, suggesting the jobs impact has been exaggerated in order to minimize or avoid altogether taxation, regulation, and even scrutiny of fracking

Long-Term Costs Of Fracking Are Staggering (Think Progress, March 2013) Report finds that unconventional fossil fuels all share a host of cruel and limiting traits, offering dramatically lower energy returns, consuming extreme and endless flows of capital, providing difficult or volatile rates of supply over time and have large environmental impacts in their extraction

Shale Gas Bubble: Insiders Suggest Fracking Boom Is a Bust (Huffington Post, January 2013) The economics of risky and expensive unconventional gas recovery simply don’t match up with claims of a “nearly limitless” supply and sweetspots are often surrounded by vast zones of less-productive wells that in some cases cost more to drill and operate than the gas they produce is worth

Summary

Below we document the impacts of fracking. Click on a link to jump to a particular section:

· UK Specific

· Water Contamination

· Air Pollution

· Radioactive Contamination

· Human Health

· Agriculture & Animal Health

· Wildlife

· Methane Migration

· Climate Change

· Fracking Waste

· Water Usage

· Earthquakes

· Transport

· Pipelines

· Blowouts, Spills & Explosions

· Frack Sand

· Leaking Wells

· Orphaned Wells

· Industrialisation

· Secrecy

· Oppression

· Corruption

· Economics

http://frack-off.org.uk/mounting-evidence-the-harm-caused-by-fracking/

BLOGGED:

FKING FRACKING killing our Planet- Say NO Nova Scotia, Canada = like France and other countries-NS Give Fracking Water back 2 the fking Frackers/ HORROR STORIES- Australia,Russia, UK, USA, China- POPE FRANCIS- WATER MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD- God is angry/FISH FARMS NOVA SCOTIA- GET SOME RULES2PROTECT ENVIRONMENT

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/11/canada-military-news-nov-14-fracking.html

BLOGGED

CANADA'S ENVIRONMENT BEING QUESTIONED BY UN?- seriously how about Golden Five - Russia, USA, China, Japan and India- who are pure toxic... and will never sign anything???- seriously u have audacity 2 approach Canada and NOT Golden Five?

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/11/canadas-environment-being-questioned-by.html

BLOGGED:

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Nov25- FISH FARMING KILLING our fish, water, soil- and cost NDP Nova Scotia an election http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/11/canada-military-news-nov25-fish-farming.html

BLOGGED:

NOVA SCOTIA- check out all the cool environment stuff going on in our communities- gittin r done- Annapolis Valley Regional Library- tutoring on line/WE DAY 4 r Youth Nov 27- From Martin Sheen, Martin Luther King III, Classified- Free the Children- come visit Nova Scotia baby

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/10/nova-scotia-check-out-all-cool.html

BLOGGED:

UNITED NATIONS:-Environment u????- 7 BILLION PEOPLE are destroying our planet- all nations must pay and $$$ participate not just country with 36 Million iddy biddy population- u can't even make women equal in 2013- seriously??

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/09/united-nations-7-billion-people-are.html

BLOGGED

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Sep 16-Canada right on Syria/ISRAEL/Feminists means all are equal- it's time UN Voted women equal/Bullycides-Bullying/News (FishFarmsFromHell)

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/09/canada-military-news-sep-16-canada.html

BLOGGED:

CANADA- US Activits rap Keyston BUT LEAVE DIRTY COAL BEHIND??? Canada is only No. 9 On energy out of 10 countries-what's up with that

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/07/canada-us-activits-rap-keyston-but.html

Royal Dutch Shell plc .com Rotating Header Image

Shell Causes Earthquakes in the Netherlands

Aug 30th, 2012

by John Donovan.

FROM OUR AUGUST 2005 SHELL NEWS ARCHIVE

BLOOMBERG: Shell Causes Earthquakes in the Netherlands

“Northern Netherlands Trembles as Gas Extraction Triggers Quakes: The entire area is sinking…”

Posted 30 August 2005
Northern Netherlands Trembles as Gas Extraction Triggers Quakes Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) — Arie de Langen says he never thought he’d have to worry about earthquakes in his northern Dutch village of Sappemeer.
Quakes were unheard of and homes in the dozens of towns and villages that dot the region were built with wooden frames and beamed roofs. Then a venture between Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s No. 2 oil company, and Exxon Mobil Corp. began extracting natural gas in the region, triggering land shifts.
Now de Langen and about 150,000 other people living atop the crumbling 900 square-kilometer (560 square-mile) gas field are concerned quakes could shake loose beams or bring down roofs. An Aug. 5 tremor was the nation’s second-strongest this year. The region had at least 30 quakes this year, putting it on course for the most tremors since records began in 1987.
“If they continue pumping gas, we’ll keep having these quakes,” said de Langen, who is retired. “All of this is a worry. I’m not happy.”
For the Netherlands, Western Europe’s third-largest producer of natural gas, ending the gas extraction may not be an option. About 60 percent of the power consumed in the country comes from gas-fueled generators, according to EnergieNed, the association of Dutch power companies.
“The gas is of enormous economic interest both nationally and in the North, which means the tremors are accepted by the local people,” said Hans Altevogt, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace in Amsterdam.
Gas receipts are expected to net the Dutch state about 7.6 billion euros
($9.4 billion) this year, according to Jan van Diepen, an Economic Affairs Ministry spokesman.
Exploit More
The Shell-Exxon venture Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij BV says it plans to exploit the gas fields in the region for at least another 25 years. The Slochteren field, the Netherlands’ largest, originally had 2,700 billion cubic meters (8,900 billion cubic feet) of natural gas. About 1,100 billion cubic meters are untapped.
The venture, based in the northern town of Assen, has had to reinforce canals and dikes, and compensates people for damage to their homes. It has paid about 1 million euros in claims.
Around Groningen, the largest city in the north and the most densely populated area above the gas field, there are about 40 tremors a year that are caused by gas exploitation, said Reinier Treur, a spokesman for Nederlandse Aardolie. Groningen, with 180,000 people, was founded as a settlement in 1040 and has buildings dating back more than 400 years.
Deep Fissures
Four decades of gas extraction at the northern Slochteren field have created fissures as deep as 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) underground, causing the collapse of hundreds of tons of rock and quakes that crack walls.
“I expect it to get worse,” said Cobie Ketelaar, a resident of Sappemeer, site of the Aug. 5 tremor. “When the ground keeps sinking, you’ll keep having quakes.”
The entire area is sinking, says Bernhard Dost, an official at the Dutch meteorological society.
“We have 20 or 30 centimeters’ subsidence from gas pumping,” Pieter van Geel, the Dutch deputy minister for the environment, spatial planning and housing, said in an interview. That equates to an 8-to-12 inch drop in the ground’s surface.
The intensity of earthquakes is “very difficult” to predict, Dost said. A quake measuring 5 on the Richter scale might break walls and beams at the epicenter. Dost doesn’t expect a tremor on a scale that would level buildings.
Thunder and Trembling
“The most typical effects are a sound like thunder, and the shaking of floors and roofs,” he said.
The Netherlands’ most powerful recorded natural earthquake was in 1992, in the southern town of Roermond. It measured 5.8 on the Richter scale. While property was damaged, there were no injuries to people.
Most of the quakes caused by the gas-field extraction measure between 2 and
2.8 on the Richter scale, with the strongest recorded at 3.5, said Nederlandse Aardolie spokesman Treur. The Aug. 5 quake measured 2.2, enough to rattle glass and frighten residents.
“It was short but intense,” said Tineke Damhoff, a shop assistant. She thought an airplane had crashed nearby.
There have been 372 tremors from unnatural causes in the Netherlands since 1987, according to the Dutch Meteorological Society’s Web site.
For Sappemeer resident de Langen, the quakes spell a troubled retirement.
“My house has many cracks in the walls already,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Dale Crofts in Amsterdam at dcrofts@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 28, 2005 19:10 EDT
COMMENT BY A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR, A FORMER SHELL EMPLOYEE
I read your article about the earthquakes in the Netherlands that were related to gas extraction.
Although the magnitude of these quakes is small in comparison to ‘natural’ quakes, the important thing to remember is that the damage done by an earthquake is very closely related to the depth at which the earthquake occurs. Shallow quakes, even if they are of low magnitude, can cause very serious damage. Very deep earthquakes, even if they are of high magnitude, often time cause little damage. The reason for this is that the ‘elastic’ energy released by the earthquake is naturally dissipated by rock through which it travels. The deeper the quake the greater the dissipation. Because this elastic energy travels as ‘waves’ this means that the great the dissipation the small the intensity (amplitude) of the wave. Big waves cause lots of shaking, little waves don’t shake all that much.
Because these gas fields in the Netherlands are very shallow even small magnitude earthquakes have the potential for causing damage. Like it or not, these quakes are caused by the withdrawal of the gas from thick rock reservoirs and as the gas pressure in these reservoirs is reduced the rock compresses. When it collapses suddenly the result is an earthquake. The consequence of reservior collapse is the subsidence and ground cracking and collapse seen at the surface.
Sometimes the ground around a gas or oil will collapse significantly, forming a large sinkhole. The term for this phenomenon is ‘cratering’.
Living near a large, shallow oil or gas field is no fun for property owners because the ground subsidence and attendant damage can cause property values to plummet. Of course, this results in economic hardship to the home or business owner. Sometimes it is possible to get compensation for these losses, sometimes not. Whatever the case may be the oil companies always make lots of money.

http://royaldutchshellplc.com/2012/08/30/shell-causes-earthquakes-in-the-netherlands-2/

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Fracking firms could drill under your home - and not even tell you: Companies will be able to bypass strict planning rules

Ministers plan to relax planning rules to make things easier for fracking firms
The wells sink deep and draw gas from an area spanning many miles
Communities that host them offered £100k payment plus 1% of revenues

By Ben Spencer

PUBLISHED: 00:51 GMT, 19 December 2013 | UPDATED: 00:51 GMT, 19 December 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2526145/Fracking-firms-drill-home-not-tell-Companies-able-bypass-strict-planning-rules.html

comment: If I do own all of the land under my house and the Water Company's are taking water from the water table beneath my property I think I should be paid compensation as well as the other land owners, after all we are told nothing comes free these days.

comment: All mineral rights under your house belong to the state.

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UK: Government Ministries Sinking in Sea of Incompetence

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Holed Below the Water Line

by Felicity Arbuthnot / December 2nd, 2013

Diplomacy: “Tact and skill in dealing with people. The art or practice of conducting international relations, alliances, treaties and agreements … relations between nations.”

As Ministers utter inane, ill-considered, uninformed statements, they also appear to compete as to who can construct the most idiotic policy.

The Minister for Health committed to Health Service of national pride, then shut down a swathe of practical, popular, walk-in health centres — open before and after working hours — with a great public satisfaction rating and which took the burden off overstretched hospital Accident and Emergency Units.

National Health Direct, an excellent medical help line, which advised the worried but not critical, rather than calling an ambulance (but recommended if they should) was another success. It hit the dust by Ministerial decree, to be replaced by a “Dial 111” service, staffed by majority non-medically trained personnel, a disastrous amateur shadow of its predecessor.

Environment Minister, Owen Paterson, charged with protection of the environment, favours fracking and killing wild animals. He also told the Tory Party Conference this year that there are advantages to climate change, in spite of — after fourteen months in office — never having been briefed on it by the UK’s Chief Scientist, according to material obtained by the Independent under the Freedom of Information Act, (Independent, October 30, 2013). He is the Minister in charge of climate change policy.

Last March, Paterson told Country Life magazine that no one wants to see the ban on hunting foxes repealed more than he does. Hunting involves men and women on horseback, dressed in silly clothes, chasing foxes with a pack of hounds, the highlight seeing the small, terrified animal chased to exhaustion and torn to bits.

Paterson decreed that shooting up to 70% of beautiful, timid, nocturnal badgers is the answer to TB in cattle. Vaccinating cattle, as happens in the Netherlands, is not an option. Two examples. Incidentally, it is not requisite that Ministers have any background in the area they oversee as ultimate arbitrator. Few do.

There may be a Ministry somewhere that is fit for purpose; if so, they are keeping a low profile. But for government watchers (whichever government is being watched) the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, seat of supposed diplomacy, has a special place in the annals of duplicity and ignorant, destructive intent.

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary under Tony Blair, enthusiast for the Iraq invasion, had:

… thought about war from an early age. My father (Walter Straw) had been a conscientious objector in World War II and had gone to prison for his beliefs. At school, I’d been the in-house socialist and pacifist.

Exempted from the Cadet Corps, I did first aid instead. (As) a member of the unilateralist Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in my youth and, like all of my generation, never forgot the frightening experience of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis … I was … aware of war’s realities.

Yet here I was … arguing the case for going to war, in the full knowledge that it would cost the lives of our soldiers as well as many innocent Iraqi civilians.

It was the most difficult and momentous decision I’ve ever made, or ever will make. After MPs gave their approval … Tony (Blair) thanked me. ’I couldn’t have done it without you’, he said. This was gracious of him … If I had argued publicly against the war, the UK would not have been involved.

The countless hours I’d spent in (Parliament), in Cabinet, and at meetings of Labour MPs, listening, explaining our position, meant that we’d secured both understanding and support for what we decided to do.” (Emphasis mine.)

All the Iraqi government had to do was make a full declaration of its WMD programmes and allow inspectors unrestricted access. All Saddam had to do was say ‘yes.’

Saddam Hussein had allowed the weapons inspectors unrestricted access — they were withdrawn under US pressure, in spite of asking for more time. The Iraqi government, of course, presented the United Nations with near 12,000 pages in “full declaration”, which was stolen by the US delegation to the UN.

Jack Straw’s memoirs, from which the above is taken, erases these facts of recent history as easily has he erased his earlier convictions of pacifism and disarmament. He could not have been more perfect material for a British Foreign Secretary, the country’s top diplomat — until the current incumbent, William Hague.

A careful search on how many languages are spoken by the Hague — whose Ministerial duties necessarily take him across the globe — drew a blank until Wiki Answers provided: “There is no record of William Hague being fluent in any language except English … However his Welsh- born wife taught him how to sing the Welsh national anthem.” Hardly much use in China, Russia, Europe, the Middle East, Far East or wherever the taxpayers’ money takes him. Clearly the colonial adage of shouting at the locals — or politicians and Heads of State — louder, in English, still rules.

Incredibly, the Foreign Office closed its language school in 2007. This year, with towering understatement, they acknowledged that, “For some posts, a lack of fluency in the local language will limit the credibility of the post holder.” (BBC, April 19, 2013.)

“Diplomat” Hague, who has never seen the bloody brain and body shattering tragedy wrought by a bullet, yet alone bomb or missile, is a war enthusiast. A Conservative Friend of Israel “since I was sixteen”, he voted “very strongly” for the illegal Iraq invasion.

However, in March this year, as the tenth anniversary of the US-UK declared Crusade loomed in all its tarnished, disgraced, discredited ignominy, it transpired he had “… provoked a bitter row” within the UK’s coalition government, “urging (Cabinet Ministers) not to discuss the case for, or the legality of, the Iraq war in the run-up to the (invasion anniversary) …”

“In a confidential letter, the Foreign Secretary told senior Members of the government they should not be drawn on the controversial issues that drew the UK into a politically divisive conflict …” It was “denied that it was intended as a way of gagging Ministers on what remains a toxic political issue.”

Heaven forbid! “Don’t mention the war”, comes to mind.

“The Foreign Secretary has written to colleagues to remind them that the agreed position of the coalition government is not to comment on the case or justification for the war until (The Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq) has reported”, said a source close to Hague.

“This is about allowing the Inquiry to reach its conclusion, not having the government prejudge them. In opposition, (Hague) strongly supported establishing an Inquiry, so it would be ridiculous to suggest he is trying to limit or stifle debate or discussion”, stated a spokesperson.

Another untruth. The British government has been actively obstructing the Chilcot Inquiry’s access to the most vital correspondence and records of George W. Bush and Tony Blair’s discussions. Yet under Blair’s Premiership, the “dodgy dossiers” and “forty five minutes” to destruction fairy stories, were dreamed up.

The linguistically challenged Hague, needless to say, was also an enthusiast for the searing destruction of Libya, and the overthrow of the country’s Leader, whose terrible end is US, UK, NATO responsibility, the carnage and chaos, as Iraq, ongoing. Near forgotten is a disastrous personal initiative of the Foreign Secretary, shortly after the start of the February 2011 externally fermented unrest — mirror image of the foreign backed insurgency in Syria.

By early March Hague was “mocked” in Parliament over a plan, expressed by former Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell as “ill conceived, poorly planned and embarrassingly executed.” An understatement:

William Hague’s decision to send in a heavily armed covert squad has turned Britain and its elite fighting force into an international laughing stock.

Six SAS soldiers and two MI6 agents, acting under his orders, were dispatched to the desert in eastern Libya in the middle of the night. They went to make contact with rebels opposed to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

“Their bizarre arrival” by helicopter, at a commercial farm, led to them being arrested and Hague’s “diplomatic team” of illegals of ill intent held for two days and finally dumped — by the “rebels” they had come to meet — on a British war ship lurking off the Libyan coast.

“Under fire” in Parliament, “Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander drew howls of laughter (asking) Mr Hague: “If some new neighbours moved into the Foreign Secretary’s street, would he introduce himself by ringing the doorbell or instead choose to climb over the fence in the middle of the night?’ “

Hague took “full Ministerial responsibility” and called it a “serious misunderstanding.” Illegal entry of a country by a bunch of alleged spies and men trained in murder is a plot. No “misunderstanding” is involved. “Shame”, as languages, being a foreign land, “he said a second unit would be sent to try again.”

When it comes to Syria, the Foreign Office website is a gem of pious mistruths. Under “Policy” it reads: “Working for peace and long term stability in the Middle East and North Africa.” Under “Worldwide priorities” is: “Providing humanitarian assistance in Syria.”

On November 19, 2013, in a written statement to Parliament, Hague commits to “the gifting of non-lethal equipment to the (self styled) Supreme Military Council of the Syrian National Coalition”, which includes the “rebel” Free Syrian Army (FSA.) As Libya, Britain aids the terrorists.

The “gift” includes: “ … communications equipment, such as laptops with satellite internet connection, mobile telephones and push-to-talk radios; commercially available vehicles, such as pick-up trucks; fuel; portable generators … logistics supplies …” The “gift” is to cost the un-consulted British taxpayer one million pounds sterling.

In a commitment of unparalleled naivety or duplicity, depending on your view, Hague adds: “Recipients have been carefully selected to prevent equipment being given to those involved in extremist activities or human rights violations.” Given that a recent British defense study estimated about 100,000 militants, comprising 1,000 splinter groups, fighting in Syria, “careful selection” is wishful thinking on steroids.

The self styled Supreme Military Council is headed by Turkey based General Salim Idris who defected from the Syrian Arab Army in July 2012. He was a Brigadier General then, but seemingly promoted himself to full General on the road from Damascus. Aid has already been received from the US and the “General” encourages international intervention and at the least, “game changing weapons.”

Hague’s “carefully selected” moderates in the FSA “… are seen as the ‘good guys’. Sadly, a little research (finds) the good guys are not so good, (being) accused of summarily executing prisoners, recruiting children as soldiers, kidnapping and executing pilgrims … throwing civilians off rooftops and cutting organs from the bodies of dead prisoners.” A regionally knowledgeable friend added: “An army of cannibals and beheaders — a ‘revolution’ or a horror story? When will Jack the Ripper take control of the ‘rebel’ armies?”

Further, Hague and his equally accident prone counterpart at the Home Office, Theresa May, have not even control of criminal elements at home, yet alone in Syria. Last month an officer with MI5 told a Parliamentary Committee: “We’ve seen low hundreds of people from this country go to Syria for periods and come back – some large numbers are still there …”

Syrian Christian MP, Maria Saadeh travelled to Rome last week to appraise the Pope of reality in Syria. The Foreign Secretary should invite her to London on the way back, but Whitehall doesn’t do injections of reality.

Ms Saadeh’s facts are stark. Some 11,000 children have already died in the conflict. Moreover, she states, they have now become a target for Al-Qaeda-linked and jihadist groups fighting to overthrow the Damascus government: ”There have been five attacks alone on Christian schools over the past few days, injuring and killing children”, she said, claiming that it is a strategy “to get Christians – who are secular and moderate – to flee the country.”

Some 450,000 of the just over two million Christians in Syria have left the country. MP Saadeh blames the media for the slanted take on Syria. “It is not a war against the regime, as the international media has long portrayed it to be, but a war to destroy the Syrian State by a group of extremists and criminals controlled by foreign powers.”

The top priority is to defend the State, she stressed: “If the Syrian State collapses, it will mean the total disintegration of the country”, leaving 23 million citizens without wages, pensions, schools or health care, in the hands of Al Qaeda-linked groups that are dreaming of a ‘’Sunni caliphate.’ “

The rebels are destroying “the country’s administrative facilities, factories, agro-food system, and archeological sites. How can the West think that the killings, the car bombs, the attacks on civilians and the beheadings are synonymous with democracy?”

She warns: “Al Qaeda is operating in Syria now, but jihadist Islam has spread to Europe as well. The top goal must therefore be to halt the violence and stop fundamentalist groups from getting weapons and money.”

If the Foreign Secretary is linguistically barren, it is to be hoped he can at least read.

Should anyone wonder whether criticisms of the Foreign Secretary’s fatally flawed judgment are harsh, here is his assessment of Syria’s neighbour, Iraq, on the BBC Politics Show in May this year. Iraq, he said, was ” … a better place and it was worth doing what we have done”. Further, “Now it is a democratic country.”

Reality is “centralisation of power, endemic torture, mass executions, unfair trials, mass arrests, the suppression of critical media outlets, persecution and intimidation …” and rampant sectarianism.

Further:

*51% of 12-17 year olds do not attend secondary school’.

*One in four children has stunted physical and intellectual development due to under-nutrition’.

*In 2011 a survey found up to 1 million children have lost one or both parents in the conflict’.

*In 2010, 7 years after the conflict began, it was estimated that over a quarter of Iraqi children, or 3 million, suffered varying degrees of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’.

*The life expectancy of ordinary Iraqis has gone down by two years in just over a decade. If you were born in 2000 instead of 2011 you could expect to live 2 years longer’.

*Between December 2012 and April 2013 “an estimated 692 children and young people have been killed’ in conflict related violence; more ‘than 1,976 children and young people have been injured’. These figures are almost certainly underestimates.”

Deaths to date in car bombings and violence are over eight thousand, with the total for November being 948 dead and 1,349 wounded, according to the Iraqi Health Ministry, leaving UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov also “… profoundly disturbed by the recent surge in execution-style killings that have been carried out in a particularly horrendous and unspeakable manner.” (Russia Today, December 1, 2013)

Advice for William Hague in a voice from the past, the lady selling birds in a Basra market, in the invasion’s ruins: “We don’t want your freedom, democracy, liberation – we just want peace.” She speaks for the region.

William Hague should listen to Deputy Saadeh, Mother Agnes Mariam two who know reality, then ditch his “gift”, say “Mea culpa” and butt out.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/uk-government-ministries-sinking-in-sea-of-incompetence/

The new gold rush that proves the anti-fracking fanatics have got it all wrong

Parts of North Dakota were dead on their feet a decade ago
Now parts of the area are thriving because of fracking for oil

By Tom Leonard

PUBLISHED: 23:35 GMT, 6 September 2013 | UPDATED: 08:30 GMT, 7 September 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2414529/The-new-gold-rush-proves-anti-fracking-fanatics-got-wrong.html#ixzz2tF15HuPl
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AUSTALIA...

Broome Say NO

For those who don’t know – In short - Fracking is the process of drilling then injecting fluid, much of it toxic, into the ground at high pressure, to fracture gas-bearing rocks to release natural gas.

During this process, methane gas and toxic chemicals can leak from wells and contaminate nearby groundwater. Broome draws its drinking water from the ground. Buru Energy have plans to frack the Kimberley. The US, there have been more than 1000 documented cases of water contamination near areas of gas drilling.

Some of the countries that have banned fracking are France, Bulgaria and Northern Ireland. The Australian state of Victoria currently has a moratorium on fracking.

Here in WA the state Government fully supports fracking.

This Australian Gas Conference on TUESDAY 25TH FEBRUARY will have state ministers from all across Australia.
If your fighting CSG in WA, QLD, NSW, SA, NT, VIC this is the event for you.

WE WILL SHOW THEM ALL, WE WILL NOT ALLOW DIRTY CSG/SHALE GAS TO DESTROY OUR LANDS...
Event Info;

https://www.facebook.com/events/561356663945925/

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Fracking In Central and South America

According to a 2011 estimate, the Central and South America hold about 269 trillion cubic feet (TCFG). [1] Venezuela hold the largest reserves at around 179 TCFG, but due to a lack of general infrastructure and development, they’re currently only producing 0.89 TCFG, annually.[2]

Mexico is currently a net importer of natural gas with increasing demand, and contains 17.3 TCFG of proven natural gas reserves. Analysts expect this to change with such proven reserves available. However, its production from unconventional resources is slow to develop and they’re unable to keep up with increasing demand as a result. Therefore, it is expected that Mexico will increase imports of pipeline gas from the United States and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from other countries[3].

Argentina is currently the largest producer of natural gas in Central & South America, accounting for more than 40% of the regions total production in 2008. It is also leading in the pursuit of tight and shale gas exploration, with the first horizontal well with multiple fracture stages drilled in 2010.

The Federal Government of Argentina owns all subsurface mineral rights within the country as well as control the split between the federal and provincial governments. As a result, the majority of the regulation of gas production resides within the power of the provinces. However, certain states are adopting federal legislation for their own benefit. The vast majority of the unconventional tight sand and shale gas development are occurring in Neuquén region.

In May 2012, the Argentine legislature passed the “YPF Expropriation Act”, which re-nationalized 51% of the shares of YPF from Repsol. The remaining 49% shares were left intact, some of which continue to be owned by Repsol. The YPF Expropriation Act also declared hydrocarbon self-sufficiency a national priority and established policy goals of promoting investment to maximize resources.

Natural gas production in Central & South America is expected to increase by 85% from 2008 to 2035. The largest portion of development is projected to take place in Brazil, where large new oil and gas reservoirs have recently been discovered, and will increase natural gas production once the infrastructure for extraction and transport is developed[4].

The embedded PDF below is a detailed analysis of undiscovered natural gas and oil in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America from the United States Geological Survey:http://frackingresource.org/what-is-fracking/fracking-impact/fracking-central-south-america/

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Fracking would ruin countryside for no gain’ Wales Green leader

3:12pm Wednesday 15th January 2014 in News

$South Wales Argus: PEN LETTER: Pippa Bartolotti has urged First Minister Carwyn Jones to reject the possibility of fracking sites in South Wales$ PEN LETTER: Pippa Bartolotti has urged First Minister Carwyn Jones to reject the possibility of fracking sites in South Wales

WALES Green Party leader Pippa Bartolotti has urged First Minister Carwyn Jones to reject the possibility that any fracking sites might be set up in South Wales.

In an open letter published on the Green Party’s website, she said any acceptance of British Government money to support fracking would be “a bribe” taken in return for damaging the Welsh countryside.

She said much of the South Wales countryside could be ruined because of the locations of shale gas reserves “from south Monmouthshire to Swansea Bay.”

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of drilling the ground and injecting fluid at a high pressure to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas contained inside.

Ms Bartolotti claimed there would be no savings for energy users in Wales if fracking got the go-ahead.

And she said any profits generated by the schemes would go to foreign multinationals like Total, the French energy firm, which might not even declare profits in the UK.

She said: “It will not augur well for the Wales Government to be seen taking bribes from a government consisting largely of the friends of multinationals, whether in banking, in retail, or in energy, and there’s a disturbing number of members of the Westminster government with close links to the fossil fuel industry, because that’s all fracking is – just another fossil fuel.”

· Hydraulic Fracturing Lies

Learn The Truth Behind America's #1 Industry And Start Profiting Today

energyandcapital.com/Fracturing

She raised the plight of some towns in Texas in the United States which have been extensively fracked.

The prime minister, David Cameron, announced on Monday that as part of the government providing its support for fracking and “going all out for shale,” English local authorities that allow drilling will receive 100 per cent of the business rates collected.

Councils had been previously been able to keep 50 per cent of the rates.

Earlier on Monday, Total had announced plans to invest £30million to drill two new exploratory wells in Lincolnshire.

It is the first time a major energy firm has said it will invest in fracking in the UK.

http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/10938713.___Fracking_would_ruin_countryside_for_no_gain____Wales_Green_leader/

CANADA: True Patriot Love Foundation launches Highway of Heroes concert tour

Friday, February 14, 2014

FRACKING- World running out of Fresh Water- Earthquakes Netherlands...O Canada - JUST THE FACTS MA'AM N GENTS

EU Fracking Regulations Blocked by UK

Hydraulic Fracturing In Kalahari, Botswana?

High Stakes: Fracking In South Africa

Purification Of Produced Water…On The Cheap?

New EPA Study On Fracking Effect On Drinking Water Resources

US Coast Guard Plans To Transport Fracking Wastewater Via Barge

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How Does Fracking Work?

Worldwide Impact

A new problem for fracking: Drillers are running out of water

A new problem for fracking: Drillers are running out of water

Texas towns run out of water due to fracking

Swarms of Earthquakes Shake Up Shale Gas Fields

· Fracking Shale Gas: Myths and Realities

· Home, Fracked Home: Lost Hair and Dead Cows

· Fracking and Quaking: They're Linked

CANADA'S ENVIRONMENT BEING QUESTIONED BY UN?- seriously how about Golden Five - Russia, USA, China, Japan and India- who are pure toxic... and will never sign anything???- seriously u have audacity 2 approach Canada and NOT Golden Five?

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/11/canadas-environment-being-questioned-by.html

NOVA SCOTIA- check out all the cool environment stuff going on in our communities- gittin r done- Annapolis Valley Regional Library- tutoring on line/WE DAY 4 r Youth Nov 27- From Martin Sheen, Martin Luther King III, Classified- Free the Children- come visit Nova Scotia baby

UNITED NATIONS:-Environment u????- 7 BILLION PEOPLE are destroying our planet- all nations must pay and $$$ participate not just country with 36 Million iddy biddy population- u can't even make women equal in 2013- seriously??

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Sep 16-Canada right on Syria/ISRAEL/Feminists means all are equal- it's time UN Voted women equal/Bullycides-Bullying/News (FishFarmsFromHell)

CANADA- US Activits rap Keyston BUT LEAVE DIRTY COAL BEHIND??? Canada is only No. 9 On energy out of 10 countries-what's up with that

Shell Causes Earthquakes in the Netherlands

FROM OUR AUGUST 2005 SHELL NEWS ARCHIVE

BLOOMBERG: Shell Causes Earthquakes in the Netherlands

“Northern Netherlands Trembles as Gas Extraction Triggers Quakes: The entire area is sinking…”

Fracking firms could drill under your home - and not even tell you: Companies will be able to bypass strict planning rules

UK: Government Ministries Sinking in Sea of Incompetence

The new gold rush that proves the anti-fracking fanatics have got it all wrong

Broome Say NO

Fracking In Central and South America

Fracking would ruin countryside for no gain’ Wales Green leader

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