EPA releases new rules on fracking emissions...

Responding to a court order, EPA has finalized and published new rules that require all drilling companies to use portable tanks called “green completions,” to capture harmful emissions as they come out of the ground. Approximately half of the natural gas wells in the U.S. already rely on green completions technology to capture natural gas that might otherwise escape the well. The captured gas can subsequently be sold to offset part of the cost of compliance.

Picture: Green completions equipment. Credit: Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission

The new rules provide no exemptions for smaller companies, requiring all to eventually use the process, but extended the final deadline until January 2015. Until then companies will be able to burn off the emissions in a process known as “flaring,” which reduces many emissions. The rules will cover the estimated 13,000 -20,000 U.S. wells that are hydraulically fractured or re-fractured each year.

According to the National Resources Defense Council (NDRC), "One of the biggest sources of dangerous air pollution from natural gas “fracking” is the whoosh of pollution that rushes from the well, like popping the top on a soda can, in the first few days after fracking is completed and the well is about to start production."

These initial releases can amount to hundreds of tons of include nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which can cause smog, benzene, a carcinogen, and methane, which contributes to global warming. Up to 95 percent of these emissions can be captured using the required equipment.

For more information:
EPA Issues Updated, Achievable Air Pollution Standards for Oil and Natural Gas - EPA News Release
Overview of Final Amendments to Air Regulations for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry 
"Leading Companies Already Meet EPA's "Fracking" Air Pollution Standards" - NDRC

The Fourth Alternative...

Crawford County Courthouse

We all get emails about political issues forwarded by well-intended friends. You know the type: long quotes or whole articles written by someone I don't normally read and little substance from the individual who forwards it. Most of the time I read them and only occasionally do I reply to them directly. Usually they have forwarded such political rhetoric only because they want to share their own political positions and have already made up their minds. If they've forwarded the email as a bad joke to see if I'll react, I don't want to encourage that sort of behavior. Besides, I've already served on active duty once to defend our freedom to speak our own minds, such as we might have remaining.

I received one of those “@#$& political emails” a few weeks ago. After reading the quoted portion of the email about the recent Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act I wasn't sure if the original author had complained because the law prevented protests and disruptions by the "Occupy Everything" organizations on the left or the Tea Party advocates on the right. Maybe it applies equally to both groups so as to preserve the right of any assembled audience to listen to the designated speaker without disruption. If it does, I'm sympathetic if not quite convinced.

Rather than repeat the article here, I'll summarize. The critical elements seem to be that both the Senate and House passed a security measure with no fanfare and little objection. It's not unusual for such bills to be signed without ceremony. With malefactors and politicians on radio and television every day using their free speech for fomenting violence, I suspect the protected area around elected officials has of necessity expanded. Would you want the job of opening envelopes or packages for a congressman or senator in our present political environment. I only need to look at Arizona where an elected member of Congress, an unarmed woman, was shot in the head while openly meeting with her constituents. Worse, several others – men, women and innocent children – were murdered where they stood or as they tried to hide. The shooter was tackled by several brave enough to act decisively, arrested, and after a year, his fate has still not been determined in a court of law.

In a day when some radicals join known terrorists who publicly advocate “chopping off their heads” and openly support and defend others who walk into federal offices or county courthouses to shoot judges and other elected officials, what would you do if you were an elected official and had the opportunity to vote for improved security?

Let me get even more personal. I personally think it's ridiculous that I can't even take a small pen knife/fingernail cleaner into a county courthouse in my own Crawford County, Arkansas. But also I don't want to see another county court clerk shot because some mental case can walk into local courthouse with a modified AR-15 and over a 100 rounds to spray into offices on two floors of the courthouse. He also shot at responding deputies and local police as he left the courthouse. That he got that far was from the lack of armed officers on duty within the courthouse itself while no court was in session. While responding officers of the law killed the assassin on the courthouse lawn, county employees and courthouse visitors were injured or endangered – some still have difficulties even months after the attack.

Neither a pacifist nor a fool, if I were a county judge or other elected official right now I'd also carry a loaded Glock under my judicial robe or sports jacket after having also spent sufficient time on the firing range to make sure I could use it effectively.

I don't blame the county or court administrators for the increased security. I blame the idiots who go on the radio or appear on television or the Internet or speak at political rallies for the purpose of fomenting violence and indeed, encouraging murder and rebellion every day. They even preach hate and intolerance from God's own pulpit. These people are not patriots. These false prophets hide behind a veneer of patriotism while they incite others with talk of war on this or a war on that and in those moments betray the constitution and their forefathers who died for the freedoms we used to enjoy..

There is a price to be paid for everything in this world. As a people, we have not yet made the final payment for our freedoms against those who would deny equal rights to others because of their race, religion, sex, economic status or any other category of freedom granted under a benevolent God's grace and our constitution. I once swore an oath to defend those rights against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and while at my advanced age, I might not last beyond the first volley, I would answer the call once again to defend my constitution and my duly elected President and other elected officials without any hesitation or thought of evasion. Furthermore, I expect nothing less from any citizen than their obligation to defend the rights of any individual as quickly as he or she would defend the rights of us all.

Should you ever ask, everyone has a right to be safe whether they are an elected official or an ordinary citizen walking down a neighborhood sidewalk. One is as important as the other. Either we all have equal protection under the law or none of us are guaranteed any rights at all.

Further, I believe our own American revolution and U. S. Constitution eventually improved on the French revolution. Both countries – indeed, all countries - evolve through periods of extreme violence until the forces of reason and logic again prevail. Just ask some of the descendants of the British loyalists who fled to Canada for their very lives in the 1770's. Or closer, ask about the family histories of descendants of the Grand Army of the Republic or the Sons of Confederate Veterans who participated in a most uncivil war. Ask the descendants of American slaves or those newer arrivals whose families survived any number of South American revolutions. They can all tell you about violence and some have experienced violence more recently than most of us really like to admit.

Most Americans who actually studied history will easily remember the first three goals of the French Revolution's rallying cry, “Liberty, equality, fraternity...” but Charles Dickens. writing A Tale of Two Cities, from a much closer point of view, explained a slightly different version, “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”

Working on the first three goals together is difficult enough. Helping govern a country or a community is hard work. France and the United States got the violence under control after the dust settled. But thanks to our own Constitution and the rule of law, we still have a chance to maintain the first three without ever again falling into the terrible trap offered by the fourth and most horrible alternative – if we reject all who advocate violence and start thinking of ways to help each other.

"The American people deserve a full investigation and public exposure of the conduct that got us into the economic quagmire we face today. We must ensure that it never happens again. And we must restore public confidence that ours is a nation committed to the goal of equal justice for all." - Eric Schneiderman, NY AG and Beau Biden, Del. AG, Joint Editorial, Politico, 11/6/11

Texas drillers to report on fracking chemicals and water use

According to The New York Times, as of February 1, 2012, Texas oil and gas drillers who use a process called fracking will be required to report many of the chemicals - acids, hydroxides and other compounds - used in a given well. In addition, drillers must report how much water was used to frack each well. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us/new-texas-rule-to-unlock-secrets-of-hydraulic-fracturing.html?_r=2&hp

Justin Furnace, president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association, estimates that most fracked wells use 1 million to 5 million gallons of water over a 3 to 5 day period. Environmentalists want to know both the amount of water used and if that water comes from the aquifer, reservoirs, or from water recycled from other fracking operations.

Texas officials, landowners and environmentalists will finally get a chance to learn more about the chemicals being used and the amount of water injected into the ground at each well site.

Have you seen the maps showing the fracking in Arkansas?

Wells-Western AR - 3/11 Credit: StopArkansasFracking.org

Have you seen the maps that show the number of natural gas wells using hydraulic fracking in central and western Arkansas? I certainly don't remember seeing them on front pages of the local papers or on the nightly news. As of May 2011, the Arkansas Oil & Gas Commission reported over 3,362 natural gas wells drilled in "The Natural State" and another 650 wells already permitted. The two maps of Central and Western Arkansas show the extent of hydraulic fracking  as of March 2011. (Click each map to enlarge) Each green dot shows an active well, already fracked and that may be fracked many times. The yellow dots are wells drilled but not yet fracked. The red dots are permitted well sites not yet drilled. The two maps show a lot of green dots that represent a lot of money and political influence.

Wells-Central AR - 3/11 Credit: StopArkansasFracking.org

Max Brantley, the Arkansas Times senior editor, has an cautionary post about natural gas fracking wells that suggests that Arkansas citizens should be more vigilant as more and more wells using hydraulic fracking spread across Arkansas. Brantley mentions Sam Lane of Greenbrier, AR, who has created a website with all sorts of information about fracking in central and western Arkansas. I followed the links to Lane's StopArkansasFracking.org.

Lane's home page contains a survey you can complete if you've experienced any water or other problems from the increased well drilling in your area. But the site also contains additional pages with common misconceptions about the industry, regulations,inspections, accidents and violations, drilling in Arkansas national forests, other reports,  videos and maps. Be prepared to spend a little time there. Curiosity may lead you from one link to another and Lane has gathered a number of examples and directions about how you can find even more information on the topic.

Old infantrymen tend to like maps so they can quickly get the lay of the land. I will freely admit that I had no idea of the extent of drilling being done north and south of I-40 in western Arkansas. A few friends who live to the east and south of us have reported feeling earthquakes, mostly slight tremors, in the past year. Then there was that earthquake over in Oklahoma earlier this year that was felt all the way into NW Arkansas and portions of the river valley near Fort Smith. You don't see many gas wells driving down I-40 and it's not like the old pictures of the oil boom when large numbers of oil wells were drilled side by side in great fields. Now drilling a well is much less visible unless you live close to one. 

Credit: FloridaMemory.com

As a young lad, I grew up around large corporate phosphate mining operations in Florida. I even worked to help build one or two of their plants during the summers while in college. When a friend asked his father, who was employed as a manager at one of the mines, about all the dust and air pollution, I heard him say, "Breathe deeply son, that's your source of income." So I know from personal experience what happened in the aftermath - after the companies have depleted the local resources and their profits decline and the cases of emphysema and lung cancer appeared years later, after the mines were closed.

Whether wide shallow hole or small deep hole, my concern, like Brantley's and Lane's, is what happens after the natural gas is again depleted and the web of corporations and their subsidiaries move on to more profitable areas. Who pays for the damage after they're gone. The answer is the people who breathed the polluted air or drank the contaminated water, or lost the use of their land. The same people who watched their friends get sick and die from the after-effects of polluted drinking water while their life savings were consumed by medical bills. Like the lessons learned in Florida 50 years ago and many other resource rich communities, the people in Arkansas will end up paying the major part of the bill for the corporations - the people in Arkansas who are left AFTER the corporations are long gone.

Draft EPA Report links contaminated groundwater to fracking operations...

Photo Credit: J. Schumacher

On December 8, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft report of an investigation near Pavillion, Wyoming, that provides a direct link between fracking and contamination of ground water. Ars Technica writer Scott Johnson provides the story behind the graphs and data tables in the EPA's technical report at: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/how-the-epa-linked-fracking-to-contaminated-well-water.ars/1   

Arkansas and Oklahoma are two of several states where companies currently drill for natural gas using a technique called hydraulic fracturing of rock layers deep in the ground to increase the release of natural gas. Both states have experienced an increased number of earthquakes and tremors in the last year or two, and residents in a growing number of locations in the U.S. where the fracking process is used have complained of contaminated ground water. Examples include flammable gas seeping into existing water wells or evidence of chemicals used during the injection process or held in waste fluid containment areas that seep into wells intended for drinking water. Drillers have maintained for years that there is no link between fracking operations and water contamination.

In Wyoming, the waste fluid pits were "clearly a source of shallow groundwater contamination. Benzene, for example, was detected in groundwater samples collected near the pits at concentrations 78 times the health standard." The EPA study also connected chemicals found in the deep monitoring wells, with those found in drinking water wells closer to the surface. In the end, more investigations are needed including the "collection of baseline data, greater transparency on chemical composition of hydraulic fracturing fluids, and greater emphasis on well construction and integrity requirements and testing."

However, the growing anecdotal and scientific evidence connecting fracking with drinking water contamination certainly calls into question the wisdom of exempting fracking fluids from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act and granting fracking operations as categorical exceptions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

All Americans want as much energy independence as we can safely obtain, but the good people of Wyoming or any other state shouldn't have to live with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry recommendation to use alternate or treated water supplies as their source of drinking water or opening windows and ventilating their bathrooms while showering to prevent any possibility of explosive hazards caused by accumulating methane. Who knows, safety in Wyoming may someday come down to no balsam scented candles while soaking in a hot tub, but nobody wants drilling companies messing with their drinking water! 

The 121 page EPA draft report, which will undergo peer review and a period of public comment, is available at: http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/wy/pavillion/

 FROM: Scott K. Johnson, "How the EPA linked "fracking" to contaminated well water," ArsTechnica.com, 12/09/11. Available online: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/how-the-epa-linked-fracking-to-contaminated-well-water.ars/1

For more information about Ars Technica, see: http://arstechnica.com/site/about-ars-technica.ars  RSS feeds and weekly newsletters available if you're interested.

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