Sunday, January 08, 2012

Earthquakes Shake Public's Faith in Natural Gas Industry

By Press Action

Imagine if saboteurs, with an expertise in geology, intentionally drilled wells thousands of feet underground and then filled these wells with water. Imagine if the depth of the wells and the pressure created by the injected water began causing hundreds of earthquakes in assorted regions of the United States.

Such activity certainly would terrify the public. And, given the gravity of the crimes, it certainly would prompt seismologists and geologists to urge public safety officials to take whatever measures necessary to find the perpetrators and stop them from drilling any new wells. If this were to happen, the notion that someone could intentionally cause an earthquake would be unfathomable to most people. You must be reading too much science fiction or listening to Alex Jones, they’d say. But once they got over the initial shock that it indeed is happening, such unconscionable activity would create a massive public uproar.

Unfortunately, you do not have to imagine people intentionally engaging in activity that they know causes earthquakes. It is actually happening today. But if you thought public officials would be using every means possible to stop such activity, you would be wrong. And if you thought major news media outlets would be beating the drum for public safety officials to stop the perpetrators, you would be wrong again.

In fact, one of the most prominent newspapers in the country, the Washington Post, believes the people who are engaging in activity that is indeed causing the earthquakes should be allowed to continue as long as they are more closely monitored.

Insane, you say. No possible way—that can’t be happening, you’re thinking. Sorry, but it’s all true.

How can a public official or major news media outlet defend the actions of people who are engaging in activity that causes earthquakes? Any rational person would say it’s indefensible. Earthquakes are one of the most dangerous “natural” disasters faced by modern society. Even earthquakes of lower magnitudes can damage industrial infrastructure and buildings, including the foundations and walls of homes inhabited by people who the public safety officials are theoretically paid to protect.

But when it comes to the business of big business, anything goes. And if the activities of big business happen to cause earthquakes, so be it. Sustaining profits and greed apparently trumps preventing “natural” disasters.

In an editorial published in its Jan. 8 issue, the Post explains that seismologists in Ohio have implicated the disposal of “waste water” created by the use of hydraulic fracturing—a process used to extract natural gas from underground shale rock formations—in a series of earthquakes that recently struck Ohio, including a magnitude-4.0 quake that shook Youngstown, Ohio, on New Year’s Eve.

But, according to the Post, we mustn’t let a few hundred earthquakes ruin the party. In the editorial, the newspaper reminds its readers that the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in shale gas plays across the United States, particularly the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian region, is extremely important to the U.S. economy.

Allowing fracking to continue, despite the earthquakes caused by the waste water disposal wells, provides jobs, the Post says. For example, Ohio steel mills are creating jobs by producing heavy-duty pipe for fracking operations, the newspaper says.

“Inevitably, extracting unconventional natural gas will have unexpected and possibly unattractive consequences,” the Post‘s editorial writers explain. “The business is scaling up so quickly that state and federal regulators are only now catching up. More study and probably more regulation will be needed.”

Can you feel the great sense of urgency in the Post editorial for stopping these natural gas companies from causing earthquakes? Me neither.

Fracking is going to produce waste water, the Post blithely says. What’s the newspaper’s solution? “Energy companies can dispose of it more carefully.”

The Post endorses seismic monitoring at active well sites, so that operators can shut down operations “at the first sign of trouble,” and storing waste water farther from population centers.

But let’s not get too hysterical about natural gas companies intentionally causing earthquakes. Let’s not forget that these poor, little gas companies might not be able to afford to stop the earthquakes. “Reuters reports that one idea—requiring a full seismic study of disposal sites before pumping waste water into them—is extremely expensive. But regulators might not need to go that far,” the Post tells us.

The natural gas industry is engaging in activities that it knows are causing earthquakes. Yes, earthquakes, and earthquakes that are actually felt by average people in their homes, not just the experts who track seismic activity using expensive equipment. And yet the Washington Post is more alarmed about the potential cost incurred by natural gas companies to stop or limit the earthquake activity than it is about the earthquakes themselves.

The Post‘s main concern is ensuring the natural gas industry is not burdened with costly regulations in response to the earthquakes. Pure insanity. Another ugly example of why the Post and the other major news media outlets are shills for Corporate America.

Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On

Now that we’ve stopped laughing (or crying) after reading the ravings of the lunatics on the Washington Post‘s editorial page, let’s examine what’s really going on.

In Ohio, the state’s Department of Natural Resources confirmed that two recent earthquakes in Youngstown were centered within hundreds of feet of each other and near a waste water injection well. The New Year’s Eve earthquake was centered within 330 feet of an earthquake Christmas Eve, and both were at a similar depth of about 12,000 feet. The agency said the magnitude-4.0 earthquake, as the Dec. 31, 2011, event was confirmed to be, could cause surface damage.

The DNR said Jan. 3 that it shut down operations at an injection well owned by Northstar Disposal Services LLC, an affiliate of D&L Energy Group. The agency said the area surrounding the Youngstown injection well had experienced a series of seismic events over the past eight months.

Dramatically higher seismic activity also has been occurring over the past couple of years in regions of Oklahoma where fracking is being used to extract natural gas. The same is true in the Barnett Shale and Eagle Ford Shale regions of Texas.

More than 700 earthquakes have shaken an area of north-central Arkansas where companies have been using fracking for several years. The Arkansas Geological Survey does not see a correlation between production wells and the quakes. Its the injection wells, the ones used for long-term storage of the wastewater generated by the fracking process, that are causing the earthquakes.

In response to the earthquakes, natural gas operators in parts of the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas, where the seismic activity is occurring, are no longer permitted to use injection wells to dispose of fracking’s waste water. The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission in 2011 banned the practice in the region after geological studies linked seismic activity on a previously unidentified fault line to the injection wells.

Many of these earthquakes are “small” earthquakes. But as the seismic activity in Ohio and Oklahoma is showing, it is possible that even very small earthquakes can eventually “unlatch” a seismic fault and cause larger quakes.

Faulty Operations

The natural gas industry has been facing growing public resistance since the shale gas revolution began about six years ago. The outrage over the environmental impact of the industry’s activities has reached a level so strong that gas companies are using psyops techniques and even former military personnel to break the “insurgency” of community activism opposing domestic drilling. State governments, worried about the intensifying opposition to gas drilling, are labeling anti-industry activists “terrorists.” Pennsylvania government officials worked with an entity called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Resources to help “Marcellus Shale gas companies learn about the actions of environmental activists who oppose deep underground drilling for gas.”

The Washington Post writes that “fracking in America’s massive Marcellus Shale formation could provide a large, domestic source of energy with fewer harmful emissions and half of coal’s carbon output.” What the Post doesn’t mention is the terrible environmental impact caused by the natural gas industry’s activities before natural gas is piped to power plants and burned to produce electricity.

The shale gas revolution has resulted in the rapid industrialization of the land that sits atop the Marcellus Shale and other shale plays. For the hydraulic fracturing process, huge amounts of water are used. Waste pits are rampant near drilling sites. New roads are being built to provide access to the drilling sites. New pipelines and compressor stations are being built, destroying forests and animal habitats. Each phase of the natural gas production and gathering process requires the use of products, such as concrete, steel and asphalt, that use tremendous amounts of oil-based products and coal during a very energy-intensive manufacturing process.

All of this is bad news for the health of the environment. And that’s why opposition to gas drilling is intense now. And the magnitude of the public’s outrage will grow exponentially if gas companies are permitted to continue with their operations even when their activities are causing earthquakes.

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