FRAC Act Under Consideration to Protect U.S. Drinking Water

A September, 2009 letter was signed by 160 national, regional, state and local organizations, including conservation, faith, sportsmen and community organizations, urging members of Congress to co-sponsor S. 1215/ H.R. 2766, the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act.

This important legislation would repeal an exemption in the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for an oil and gas technique called hydraulic fracturing. It would also require public disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids.

Signatories to letter in support of the FRAC Act include (among others): American Rivers, Center for Food Safety, Earthjustice, Environmental Working Group, Food & Water Watch, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen’s Energy Program, and the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, Inc.

Oil and gas production is present in over 30 states, and a consistent national standard is needed for this practice. Hydraulic fracturing involves the injection of fluids into oil or gas wells at very high pressure in order to crack open the underground formation and allow oil or gas to flow out more easily. These fluids often contain toxic chemicals, some of which remain underground. The pressure places stress on the oil or gas well and can lead to unpredictable consequences.

Reports of drinking water contamination come from Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Wyoming.

While states regulate oil and gas production, state rules vary widely and a federal floor is needed. As stated in a study by the Hastings College of the Law, “many of the state regulatory schemes date from earlier waves of resource extraction, and have not kept pace with changed technologies, nor with a deepening concern for public health and the environment.” For example, a recent report issued by the Ground Water Protection Council found that some states do not require a well’s surface casing to be set through the deepest ground water zone.

Protection of drinking water is a national concern that should not be left to a patchwork of state regulations.

In 2005, Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from the SDWA to the benefit of Halliburton and other oil and gas companies. It is time to close the Halliburton Loophole and hold the oil and gas production industry to the same standards as any other industry.

Please support the efforts to keep our drinking water safe. For ideas on how to make a difference around the FRAC Act, visit Nuprana’s Advocacy section.

Click here to read the full letter in support of the FRAC Act.

Water Problems from Drilling are Widespread in Pennsylvania

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

When methane began bubbling out of kitchen taps near a gas drilling site in Pennsylvania last winter, a state regulator described the problem as “an anomaly.” But at the time he made that statement to ProPublica, that same official was investigating a similar case affecting more than a dozen homes near gas wells halfway across the state.

In fact, methane related to the natural gas industry has contaminated water wells in at least seven Pennsylvania counties since 2004 and is common enough that the state hired a full-time inspector dedicated to the issue in 2006. In one case, methane was detected in water sampled over 15 square miles. In another, a methane leak led to an explosion that killed a couple and their 17-month-old grandson.

Methane is the largest component of natural gas. Since it evaporates out of drinking water, it is not considered toxic, but in the air it can lead to explosions. When methane is found in water supplies, it can also signal that deeply drilled gas wells are linked with drinking water systems.

In many cases the methane seepage comes from thousands of old abandoned gas wells that riddle Pennsylvania’s geology, state inspectors say. But other cases, including several this year and the 2004 disaster that left three people dead, were linked to problems with newly drilled, active natural gas wells.

The issue came to the forefront in January when methane was found in the water at 16 homes in the small town of Dimock, in northeastern Pennsylvania. State officials cited Cabot Oil & Gas for several violations they say allowed the gas to seep out of the well structures and into water supplies there. The Department of Environmental Protection asked the company to encase its lower well pipes completely in concrete — a process known in the industry as “cementing” — and assured the public that the contamination in Dimock was rare.

But according to a department spokeswoman, there have been at least 52 separate cases of what the state calls “methane migration” in the past five years. In two of the 2009 cases, regulators responded to complaints from more than 32 households and asked gas companies to supply clean water to at least a dozen homes with contaminated wells.

An undated report from the Pittsburgh Geological Society posted to the DEP’s Web site makes it clear that old wells and new drilling can lead to stray gas problems. “Although it rarely makes headlines,” the report reads, “damage or threats caused by gas migration is a common problem in Western Pennsylvania.”

The case Lobins was investigating at the same time as the Dimock case concerned a string of problems in Bradford, a rural town 200 miles west of Dimock along the state’s northern border. Shortly after a contractor for Schreiner Oil and Gas drilled several dozen wells in the area last spring, residents began complaining of murky and foul-smelling tap water. When the DEP investigated, it found methane in three water wells and metals in six others. It asked Schreiner to supply water to eight homes, and the company has begun installing water treatment systems at each house. While no new gas wells have been drilled in the Bradford area, according to the DEP, the existing ones continue to operate.

Michael Schreiner, Schreiner’s president, declined to comment for this article.

Lobins said the problems in Bradford — as in many of the contamination cases across the state — stem from a bad cementing job around the core of the well. In most gas drilling, the well pipe is encased in layers of concrete to keep it isolated from surrounding groundwater. The concrete also contains the enormous pressure exerted on the system during the process of hydraulic fracturing, which pumps water, sand and chemicals to the well bottom to break up rock.

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Source: AlterNet

Oil vs. Water Causes Major Battle in the Rockies

SALT LAKE CITY – A titanic battle between the West’s two traditional power brokers – Big Oil and Big Water – has begun. At stake is one of the largest oil reserves in the world, a vast cache trapped beneath the Rocky Mountains containing an estimated 800 billion barrels – about three times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Extracting oil from rocky seams of underground shale is not only expensive, but also requires massive amounts of water, a precious resource critical to continued development in the nation’s fastest-growing region.

The conflict between oil and water interests has now come to a head. On Oct. 31, Congress allowed a moratorium on oil-shale leasing to expire. That paved the way for the Bush administration to finalize leasing rules in November that opened 2 million acres of federal land to exploration.

Oil companies say that at a time of increasing foreign oil dependence it would be unconscionable to forgo exploiting oil shale’s potential. “Considering the magnitude of this resource – it is so huge relative to other hydrocarbon resource around the world – it merits taking a look at trying any method we can, safely and responsibly, to get at it,” said Tracy C. Boyd, communications and sustainability manager for Shell Oil Co.

Oil shale companies acknowledge that the technology required to superheat shale to extract oil is unproven. They also concede that they are uncertain how much water would be needed in the process, although some experts calculate it would take 10 barrels of water to get one barrel of oil from shale.

That water-to-oil equation has inflamed officials in the upper Rockies, who are raising the alarm about the cumulative effect of energy projects on the region’s water supplies, which ultimately feed Southern California reservoirs via the Colorado River.

“There are estimates that oil shale could use all of the remaining water in upper Colorado River Basin,” said Susan Daggett, a commissioner on the Denver Water Board. “That essentially pits oil shale against people’s needs.”

Prospectors have known about the oil shale deposits in the Rockies for more than a century, but the technology to extract it has remained imperfect, expensive and polluting.

But for all the years of research into oil shale extraction, there is little hard information on exactly how much water would be drained from the region. In its recent environmental review of proposed oil shale projects, the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees energy leasing on public lands, was unable to estimate the industry’s region-wide water use.

“Can groundwater be protected?” asked Harris Sherman, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. “Areas where this technology will be used are all tributaries for the headwaters for all of the seven Colorado Basin states.”

Despite the objections, oil shale development has been pushed forward. In an effort to encourage the fledgling industry, officials said, new regulations allow oil shale operators to pay unusually low royalty rates. The system calls for producers to pay 5 percent for the first five years, increasing 1 percent each year until reaching 12.5 percent, the standard federal oil and gas royalty rate.

In recent weeks, the industry was included in the $700-billion government bailout package with investment and tax incentives to help oil shale producers build refineries and other expensive infrastructure.

While the region’s elected officials support efforts to discover new sources of domestic oil, they say that with so many unanswered water questions, public land managers should be slowing the pace of development, not speeding it up.

The renewed push for oil shale development comes at time when conventional energy companies are being blamed for squandering and fouling water across the West.

Wyoming and Montana are squabbling over water quality concerns about coal bed methane drilling. Colorado and New Mexico towns have discovered benzene and other dangerous chemicals in their wells, with energy projects the suspected culprits. Ranchers in the region say their crops and livestock suffer as oil and gas production drains underground aquifers. Sportsmen complain that rivers and streams are being compromised by the energy industry.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in official comments to the BLM, expressed concerns about the possibility that oil shale production would deposit, “salts, selenium, arsenic and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in groundwater.”

Craig Thompson found many of the same compounds when he studied groundwater pollution from an abandoned oil shale project in western Wyoming that began during the last oil shale boom in the 1970s. Despite 30 years of cleanup efforts, he said, the aquifer is still not free of chemicals. “Development of oil shale is a groundwater nightmare,” said Thompson, a chemist. “Oil shale serves as the floor for the aquifer. When you heat up the aquifer, it dissolves nasty stuff like fluoride and arsenic and selenium and cyanide . . . the list goes on.”

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Source: Nashua Telegraph

Everyone knows industry needs oil. Now people are worrying about water, too

NEW YORK-“WATER is the oil of the 21st century,” declares Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow, a chemical company. Like oil, water is a critical lubricant of the global economy. And as with oil, supplies of water—at least, the clean, easily accessible sort—are coming under enormous strain because of the growing global population and an emerging middle-class in Asia that hankers for the water-intensive life enjoyed by people in the West.

Oil prices have fallen from their recent peaks, but concerns about the availability of freshwater show no sign of abating. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, which it calls an “unsustainable” rate of growth. Water, unlike oil, has no substitute. Climate change is altering the patterns of freshwater availability in complex ways that can lead to more frequent and severe droughts.

Untrammelled industrialisation, particularly in poor countries, is contaminating rivers and aquifers. America’s generous subsidies for biofuel have increased the harvest of water-intensive crops that are now used for energy as well as food. And heavy subsidies for water in most parts of the world mean it is often grossly underpriced—and hence squandered.

All of this poses a problem, first and foremost, for human welfare. At the annual World Water Week conference in Stockholm this week, delegates focused on measures to extend access to clean water and sanitation to the world’s poor. But it also poses a problem for industry. “For businesses, water is not discretionary,” says Dominic Waughray of the World Economic Forum, a think-tank. “Without it, industry and the global economy falter.”

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Source: The Economist

For more information on water conservation, visit www.nuprana.com

Last century’s oil or this century’s water? We must make a choice.

ALBUQUERQUE- In the midst of the frenzy to find and exploit fossil fuels, we are sacrificing our most precious natural resource—WATER. 

Sure, oil is now priced at over US$110 a barrel (equal to 42 gallons), while in most parts of the US water only costs $0.51 per cubic meter (equal to 264.2 gallons).  That means that one gallon of crude oil is valued at $2.62 while one gallon of tap water is valued at $0.002 or one-fifth of one cent. 

But how reflective are these prices of the relative worth of these two commodities?  With countless alternative energy sources we can easily survive without oil, but we can’t survive without water.  It sustains all life on this planet and is vital to every aspect of our lives.

What would happen if water were publicly traded like oil is?  We’ve already seen what happens to the market price of water as soon as it is bottled and sold as a commodity—the price is suddenly equal to or greater than a soft drink.  That’s roughly 7000 times the $0.00025 a 16 oz. bottle of tap water should cost. 

We clearly take our water for granted.  And perhaps we take it more for granted in the U.S. than many other countries do.  Germany and France charge about 4 times what we do for water, and use about 40% less per person.

But what happens when our waterways and thus our drinking water become contaminated?  Our nation’s water sources are currently being polluted faster than at any time in the past.  In 2002, about 30% of U.S. waters were assessed by states for a report to Congress.  Results revealed that about 45% of assessed stream miles, 47% of assessed lake acres, and 32% of assessed bay and estuarine square miles were not clean enough to support uses such as fishing and swimming.  

Of perhaps even greater cause for concern is the fact that drinking water standards for levels of aluminum, foaming agents, fluoride, chloride, and a host of other viruses, bacterium, chemicals, radioactive materials and other contaminants, have not been established and are not regulated by the EPA.  So we simply don’t know how polluted our drinking water really is. 

And what will happen when our demand begins to outweigh our supply?  The EPA already estimates that 36 states will be facing local, regional, or statewide water shortages by the year 2013.   

Is our water (and our health) really worth a few days’ supply of oil?

Every barrel of oil produced requires a total of 1,851 gallons of water, according to the US Geological Survey.  This water is usually pumped out of underground aquifers that take decades to be replenished.  A process called “hydrofracking” is used in 90% of the drilling sites to get to the gas or oil, which involves shooting millions of gallons of water and drilling chemicals at explosive pressure deep underground to break up the rock.   Some chemical residue remains underground in the process.  The identity of the chemicals, which can be highly toxic, is protected as a “trade secret” thus making it difficult to know how to treat wastewater and what pollutants to look for in nearby drinking water supplies. 

The injection of fracturing fluids is not regulated by the EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act, thanks to an exemption for the Oil & Gas industry that was requested in 2001 by Vice President Dick Cheney.  In fact, the Oil & Gas industry is the only industry in America allowed to inject known hazardous materials into our underground drinking water supplies unchecked.   As if that is not enough, the Oil/Gas industry is also exempt from the four other key Federal Environmental regulatory act protections:  Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, CERCLA/Superfund law, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, in addition to the public right-to-know provisions under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.

Oil and gas drilling throughout the United States has resulted in thousands of wastewater spills, which have contaminated local drinking water sources.  In New Mexico alone, more than 700 cases of oil and gas companies polluting groundwater sources have been documented since 1990.  As per New Mexico’s antiquated mining laws, the maximum fine to be paid by the industry for groundwater contamination (or for any other violation of county or state laws) is $1000.

But the egregious assault on our water and our environment by Oil & Gas companies doesn’t stop there.  According to Friends of the Earth, oil companies are slated to receive more than $32.9 billion in handouts from U.S. taxpayers over the next five years.  So willingly or not, we’re participating in their plunder.  And with the world’s biggest oil companies reporting a combined $123 billion of record-breaking profits in 2007, it is hard to imagine how they have been able to continue to elude responsibility for their widespread contamination of our drinking water.

 

Last century’s oil or this century’s water?

Our most critical decision as we watch our natural resources become contaminated or destroyed is whether we will continue to cling to the last century’s antiquated fossil fuel dependence or whether we are ready to look and move forward. 

Will we continue to prioritize corporate profits over human health? 

Will we continue to compromise the health of our waterways—and the millions of life forms that depend on them to survive? 

Will we continue to burn fossil fuels, pollute the environment and exacerbate the global warming conditions that make our freshwater ever more scarce? 

Will we continue to take our limited clean water supplies for granted, overwatering our lawns, flushing clean drinking water down our toilets, and using many gallons more water than we truly need per day?

Or will we finally have the foresight to move toward the inevitable changes we must make, in hopes of sustaining the 7 billion people and counting on this planet? 

We need to finally shift to renewable energy sources that no longer pollute our air and our water.  We must begin to conserve the precious water we have left.  We should start paying a more appropriate price for our water, and demand that it be free of contaminants.  We need to hold our elected officials accountable for protecting our health, our environment, and our water.  

Ultimately we must look forward and begin making decisions based on the kind of world that we and our children will want to live in, in this century.

 

Elizabeth Beachy is co-founder of NUPRANA, a green business dedicated to making water conservation affordable and accessible to everyone.  Visit our site at www.nuprana.com to learn more.