Environment Memo

Gasland, a new documentary, recently won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Move over, Michael Moore. The discuss the movie here on the Sundance website:

Reuters reports on a group of shareholders who ask companies to increase transparency about the effect of their drilling on the environment and encourage companies to switch to less-toxic hydraulic fracturing fluids … “There is real business risk here,” said Larisa Ruoff, an official with the $100 million Green Century Funds. “Companies and regulators must [...]

T. Boone Pickens’ new plan is to move big-time on natural gas to power trucks and buses and such, and help us get away from foreign oil. I’ll say one thing for Pickens, he knows how to get his ideas out there. Here are link to the Pickens Plan website (with a petition) and video:

It was disappointing to read the NY Times editorial on January 1 on drilling in the Marcellus shale. Their take is that the state should ban gas drilling in the New York City watershed, in agreement with a study (discussed here) put out by the City’s Department of Environmental Protection. That’s fine, as far as [...]

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection recently released an important impact assessment report on environmental consequences of Marcellus shale drilling activities. This report and the City’s comments on the State of New York’s dSGEIS are described in a press release by the NY City DEP, entitled “Department of Environmental Protection Calls for Prohibition [...]

New York’s 22nd District should be proud of their congressman, Maurice Hinchey.  He’s got a clear handle on the issues, and has submitted a nice set of comments to the NY Department of Environmental Conservation on their evaluation of permitting needs for drilling in the Marcellus shale in NY. His submittal is detailed at his [...]

Exxon’s purchase of natural gas firm XTO is in the news, and while they are currently removing gas from Texas shales, they may port their drills up to the Marcellus shale area, as well. As detailed here in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram: Exxon’s impending purchase of Fort Worth-based XTO — a leading U.S. gas [...]

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the national Sierra Club is one of natural gas’s biggest boosters. … Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director, has traveled the country promoting natural gas’s environmental benefits, sometimes alongside Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corp., one of the biggest U.S. gas companies by production. while [...]

As noted by Propublica on November 11, 2009  (here), Congress has asked EPA to revisit effects of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water supplies: As part of the $32 billion Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill recently signed by President Barack Obama, lawmakers asked the EPA to revisit hydraulic fracturing, the process where copious amounts of water [...]

ProPublica has a new article, “Underused Drilling Practices Could Avoid Pollution,” discussing possible best management practices and less use of hazardous (and unnecessary, as discussed here) materials for hydraulic fracturing. This article reflects a certain amount of gas industry PR, but it has useful information, as well.  We’ve seen PR in the recent past, such [...]

MarcellusEffect has a post on reusing hydaulic fracturing water. I’m skeptical that this idea is something that should make people less concerned about hydraulic fracturing fluids. First, there’s no free lunch.  Any treatment process of this type will produce residuals (i.e. waste solids, in the form of sludges). It will be expensive to dispose of [...]

More news on hydraulic fracturing with benign compounds (what could be more benign than H2O?): From the testimony of Amy Mall, of the NRDC, on  ”The applicability of federal requirements that protect public health and the environment to oil and gas development,” Presented to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform United States House of [...]

A number of people, including this writer (here and here, among other posts), have been advocating use of benign substances for hydraulic fracturing.  There are indications that such is possible. For example, in a recent article,  the Washingon Post noted that Oilfield services giant Schlumberger said it is developing “green” fracturing fluids. Range Resources said [...]

Some people (gas industry PR people, in particular) may say, “What a revoltin’ development this is!”as Chester A. Riley said on the old Life of Riley TV show. This is, or ought to be, a revolting development because it adds significantly to the argument for putting on hold the NY State draft Supplemental Generic Environmental [...]

Senators Landrieu and Chambliss were recently extolling their bi-partisan support for getting natural gas out of US shale, in an “opinion contributor” in Politico.com a couple of days ago, here. They don’t want to hamper this burgeoning industry, and so have formed the Senate Natural Gas Caucus, intended to … educate members of Congress and [...]

It was gratifying to see my letter in today’s Washington Post, referring to a previous WaPo article about environmental consequences of natural gas drilling. In the letter, I respond to arguments that, because hydrofracking fluids contain only a small quantity of chemicals (which is not always true, by the way), people ought not have concerns, [...]

At a certain point, it’s safe to say GE knew better, as did others who knew GE was sending large quantities of PCBs into the Hudson River (discussed previously here).  After all, they did it far into the 1970′s, long after the toxicity of PCBs was well known. Still, GE can argue, as they and [...]

In following-up on my previous post about how it seems very likely that hydrofracking in the Marcellus shale and other places can be done with non-toxic chemicals and substances,  I came up with a new hypothesis.  Call it Bierck’s Hypothesis (or not).  This is it: Hydrofracking can be done effectively and efficiently with benign, non-toxic [...]

There’s a big need to ask, in terms of plans to hydrofrack the Marcellus (and other) shales to get out the gas:  what fracking chemicals are really necessary to create the cracks, and then keep them open (proppants)? Why can’t things be accomplished solely with with non-toxic compounds? The list of chemicals for fracking is [...]

There’s a new Associated Press article called “Exploding wells: Colo. county sits atop natural gas bonanza, awaits outcome of methane mystery.”  It seems a family’s water well exploded and shot flames 30 feet into the air. The local gas drilling outfit says it’s not clear the drilling caused the methane leaks or prompted other area [...]

Shaleshock.org has a link to a nicely targeted letter by Wilma Subra, on proposed Marcellus shale hydraulic fracturing activity, to the New York State Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Conservation.   (Here is an interview with Ms. Subra, which gets into a her background and methods.  She won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship about 10 years [...]

There is an extremely important component of environmental regulations, which could well become significant as we unpack and dig into the Marcellus shale environmental issues, such as those under scrutiny by members of Shaleshock.org. The basic idea is that that effluent data (for discharges to aqueous environments), and emissions data (to air) usually cannot be [...]

We are starting to drill down now into the NY State draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on permits for drilling in the Marcellus shale.  The environmental consequences of this drilling are of concern to many, such that it is important to investigate both the legal/regulatory and the technical aspects of this permitting process. For [...]

As stated previously, these posts on environmental permitting have broad applicability.  In the present instance we are beginning a deep dive into a major permitting issue, that of drilling in the Marcellus shale.  The NY state’s Department of Environmental Conservation has released a draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on permits for drilling there, and comments [...]

I’ve pointed out in a previous post some of the reasons why environmental permitting processes include public comments (and public hearings).  It is important to understand a lot more about commenting on documents such as the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement developed by NY State for permitting drilling activities in the Marcellus Shale (the [...]