New York Times: Op-Ed Columnist, Disaster in the Amazon

By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 4, 2010

BP’s calamitous behavior in the Gulf of Mexico is the big oil story of the moment. But for many years, indigenous people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged with Chevron), for what has been described as the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever.

“As horrible as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse,” said Jonathan Abady, a New York lawyer who is part of the legal team that is suing Chevron on behalf of the rainforest inhabitants.

It has been a long and ugly legal fight and the outcome is uncertain. But what has happened in the rainforest is heartbreaking, although it has not gotten nearly the coverage that the BP spill has.

What’s not in dispute is that Texaco operated more than 300 oil wells for the better part of three decades in a vast swath of Ecuador’s northern Amazon region, just south of the border with Colombia. Much of that area has been horribly polluted. The lives and culture of the local inhabitants, who fished in the intricate waterways and cultivated the land as their ancestors had done for generations, have been upended in ways that have led to widespread misery.

Texaco came barreling into this delicate ancient landscape in the early 1960s with all the subtlety and grace of an invading army. And when it left in 1992, it left behind, according to the lawsuit, widespread toxic contamination that devastated the livelihoods and traditions of the local people, and took a severe toll on their physical well-being.

A brief filed by the plaintiffs said: “It deliberately dumped many billions of gallons of waste byproduct from oil drilling directly into the rivers and streams of the rainforest covering an area the size of Rhode Island. It gouged more than 900 unlined waste pits out of the jungle floor — pits which to this day leach toxic waste into soils and groundwater. It burned hundreds of millions of cubic feet of gas and waste oil into the atmosphere, poisoning the air and creating ‘black rain’ which inundated the area during tropical thunderstorms.”

The quest for oil is, by its nature, colossally destructive. And the giant oil companies, when left to their own devices, will treat even the most magnificent of nature’s wonders like a sewer. But the riches to be made are so vastly corrupting that governments refuse to impose the kinds of rigid oversight and safeguards that would mitigate the damage to the environment and its human and animal inhabitants.

Pick your venue. The families whose lives and culture are dependent upon the intricate web of waterways along the Gulf Coast of the United States are in a fix similar to that of the indigenous people zapped by nonstop oil spills and the oil-related pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Each group is fearful about its future. Both have been treated contemptuously.

The oil companies don’t care. Shell can’t wait to begin drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska, an area that would pose monumental problems for anyone trying to deal with a catastrophic spill. The companies pretend that the spills won’t happen. They always say that their drilling operations are safe. They said that before drilling off Santa Barbara, and in the rainforest in Ecuador, and in the Gulf of Mexico, and everywhere else they drill.

Their assurances mean nothing.

President Obama has suspended Shell’s Arctic drilling permits and has temporarily halted the so-called Arctic oil rush. What we’ve learned from the BP debacle in the gulf, and from the rainforest, and so many other places, is just how reckless and inept the oil companies can be when it comes to safeguarding life, limb and the environment.

They’re dangerous. They need the most stringent kind of oversight, and swift and severe sanctions for serious wrongdoing. At the same time, we need to be searching with a much, much greater sense of urgency for viable energy alternatives. Treating the Amazon and the gulf and the Arctic as if they were nothing more than toxic waste sites is an affront to the planet and all life-forms that inhabit it.

Chevron doesn’t believe it should be called to account for any of the sins Texaco may have committed in the Amazon. A spokesman told me that the allegations of environmental damage were wildly overstated and that even if Texaco had caused some pollution, it had cleaned it up and reached an agreement with the Ecuadorian government that precluded further liability.

The indigenous residents may be suffering (they’re in much worse shape than the people on the gulf coast) but the Chevron-Texaco crowd feels real good about itself. The big money was made, and the trash was left behind.
Read source article here.

Gas Well Blowout In Clearfield County [PA]

The BP offshore oil rig blowout is a disaster of catastrophic proportions, it is obvious and impossible to ignore; however, accidents happen onshore with disturbing frequency and get very little attention.
There has been a gas well blowout in Clearfield County Pennsylvania. Officials say it took sixteen hours to get under control after spewing an approximate one million gallons of hydraulic fracturing fluid and unknown amounts of wet natural gas. An entire mile wide evacuation has been put in place for nearby residents. An EPA spokesperson stated that none of the polluted drilling water reached waterways in the area. Though who knows if that statement can be accurately made yet. One million gallons of fracturing fluid contains massive amounts of chemicals though. I expect that there will probably be more long-term environmental issues from this blowout than we will really hear about.
For more information, visit Bluedaze Drilling Reform for Texas.
Or The PittsburghChannel.com

Drilling Around the Law

Environmental Working Group
Executive Summary
Companies that drill for natural gas and oil are skirting federal law and injecting toxic petroleum distillates into thousands of wells, threatening drinking water supplies from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. Federal and state regulators, meanwhile, largely look the other way.

These distillates include kerosene, mineral spirits and a number of other petroleum products that often contain high levels of benzene, a known human carcinogen that is toxic in water at minuscule levels. Drillers inject these substances into rock under extremely high pressure in a process called hydraulic fracturing that energy companies use to extract natural gas and oil from underground formations. The process, known as “fracking,” fractures the rock to allow additional gas and oil to flow to the surface. Fracking is currently used in 90 percent of the nation’s oil and natural gas wells and has been instrumental in accessing huge new natural gas deposits trapped in shale formations (Carrillo 2005).

In a worst case scenario, the petroleum distillates used in a single well could contain enough benzene to contaminate more than 100 billion gallons of drinking water to unsafe levels, according to drilling company disclosures in New York State and published studies. (NYDEC DSGEIS 2009, Pagnotto 1961) That is more than 10 times as much water as the state of New York uses in a single day. (NYDEC DSGEIS 2009)

Fracking has already been linked to drinking water contamination and property damage in Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wyoming and other states. (Lustgarten 2008a, 2008b)

Despite the risks, Congress in 2005 exempted hydraulic fracturing, except fracturing with diesel fuel, from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). Diesel is the only substance for which drillers must seek a permit before it is injected underground. (SDWA 2009)

Based on a six-month investigation of chemical disclosure records filed by several of the largest drilling corporations and interviews with regulators in five states, Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that:

1.Companies are injecting natural gas wells with millions of gallons of fracking fluids laced with petroleum distillates that can be similar to diesel and represent an equal or greater threat to water supplies. The distillates typically contain the same highly toxic chemicals as diesel: benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene. Distillates disclosed in records analyzed by EWG have been found to contain up to 93 times more benzene than diesel but require no authorization prior to use. Although the companies disclosed the distillates in the context of natural gas drilling, at least several of the companies, including Halliburton, Schlumberger Ltd. and B.J. Services Co., also help drill and fracture oil wells, suggesting that at least some of the same distillates may be used in oil drilling, too. More>>>

Marcellus Shale: Spills of drilling chemicals worry experts

By Krisy Gashler
kgathler@gannett.com
Staff Writer

DRYDEN -- Two chemists and an endocrinologist spoke Tuesday night about the science and potential health effects of unconventional natural gas drilling to roughly 100 people at Tompkins Cortland Community College.

The lecture was sponsored by Shaleshock, a citizens' group that opposes hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale without greater study and more regulatory oversight.

Decisions about gas drilling will be guided by the state's experience with environmental cleanups such as Love Canal in Buffalo, but also by an understanding of how the country's current energy sources affect our foreign policy, said William Klepack, a Dryden physician and medical director for the Tompkins County Health Department.

Even with no additional chemicals added by gas companies, the water that flows back from hydro-fracked wells has enough heavy metals -- and often radioactivity -- to be classified as hazardous waste, said Ron Bishop, a biochemist at SUNY Oneonta who has also worked in construction with gas drillers.

But because of state and federal exemptions granted to the natural gas industry, the water does not have to be tested or handled as carefully as it would be if it were created by another industry, Bishop said. In some parts of the Marcellus Shale, radioactive materials occur naturally at levels 250 times the level normally regulated by environmental agencies -- but natural gas drillers aren't even required to test for radioactivity, he said.

"Call your legislators," he said.

The precautionary principle in science and medicine asserts that if an action could cause severe, irreversible harm, the burden of proof is on those who want to carry out the action, said Thomas Shelley, a chemist and chemical safety and hazardous materials specialist. Based on this principle, the European Union has banned use of hundreds of chemicals that are used across the U.S., Shelley said.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation's draft regulations on gas drilling list 257 distinct chemicals that could be used in hydraulic fracturing; compound-specific toxicity data on many of those chemicals and their effects on human health and the environment are "very limited," he said.

"We're looking at a vast unknown," Shelley said. "Remember the precautionary principle? We don't see any of it here."

Of the fluid used to fracture a natural gas well to release the gas, 99.5 percent is water and sand, Shelley said. However, because one well can require 3 to 5 million gallons of water, that equates to 10 to 30 tons of chemicals, Bishop said.

The risk with chemical use is not from the actual hydrofracking process but from transport and disposal, Bishop said. "Hydrofracturing is not the boogeyman under the bed; it is not going to hurt you," Bishop said. "You're more likely to have problems with transporting the 10 to 30 tons of chemicals to the drilling site." {I have to strongly disagree with this comment about hydraulic fracturing. While I think that we often overlook the outright hazards of these chemicals being transported, the fracturing process that happens in shale below the ground cannot be controlled and poses risks that no one fully understands.}

That kind of accident has occurred, Shelley said, citing an incident last March when a tanker truck filled with hydrofluoric acid overturned in Pennsylvania, requiring emergency crews to close the road and evacuate 5,000 residents. More>>>

ProPublica Article, Pennsylvania's Gas Wells Booming--But So Are Spills

by Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica - January 27, 2010 4:08 pm EST

As more gas wells are drilled in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale, more cases of toxic spills are being reported. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania's environmental officials fined Pennsylvania-based Atlas Resources after a series of violations at 13 wells, including spills of fracturing fluids and other contaminants onto the ground around the sites. And just last week the agency fined M.R. Dirt, a company that removes waste from drilling sites, $6,000 for spilling more than seven tons of drilling dirt along a public road.

The reports come on the heels of a string of other incidents that have killed fish in one of the state's most prized recreational lakes and released toxic chemicals into the environment.

The Atlas spills are significant because they are among the latest and because they happened repeatedly during the routine transfer of fluids. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection fined [1] Atlas Resources $85,000 for the offenses, which took place between May and December of 2009. Many of the spills were discovered by DEP inspectors.

The violations [2] (PDF) cited by the DEP include spills of fluids from the hydraulic fracturing [3] process at seven sites, and failure to report a spill at one of those sites. One spill was the result of a faulty pit liner, which is supposed to insulate the ground from hydraulic fracturing fluids after they are pumped out of a well.

Atlas Resources [4] controls more than half a million acres within the Marcellus Shale, the massive gas deposit that stretches from Tennessee to New York. The company, whose total revenue was $787.4 million in 2008, issued a statement acknowledging that it had entered a voluntary settlement with the DEP and saying that each of the incidents had been corrected. An Atlas spokesman declined a request to answer additional questions about the violations, or about the company's operations in Pennsylvania.

"If you look at this series of violations -- it's not only that there are multiple violations," said DEP spokeswoman Helen Humphreys, pointing to the fact that the same three violations were turning up at each site. "This is a pattern, and it's a problem."

The pattern, and the problem, extend beyond Atlas.

In December the DEP fined [5] Chesapeake and Schlumberger, two of the biggest operators in the Marcellus Shale and in gas development nationally, for spilling hydrochloric acid, which is used for hydraulic fracturing and is corrosive. Cabot Oil and Gas, a Houston-based energy company that lists T. Boone Pickens as one of its stockholders, was fined in November [6] for a series of spills, including a fracturing fluid spill by its contractor Halliburton. More>>>

Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own

The wastewater from hydraulic fracturing is getting more and more attention, both because more of it stays underground than previously thought, and there are very few facilities with the capability to properly dispose of it. As a result of this lack of treatment facilities, much of the wastewater from hydraulic fracturing simply ends up in rivers and streams.

Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own

by Joaquin Sapien and Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica - December 29, 2009 12:01 am EST
A version of this story is being published by the Albany Times-Union.

The site of one of Canada-based Gastem USA's wells in Otsego County, N.Y. The well produced far less wastewater than most Marcellus Shale wells will, but it still took the drillers more than a year to get permission to drill it, because they couldn't find a place to dispose of the water. (Joaquin Sapien/ProPublica)
Environmentalists, state regulators and even energy companies agree that the problem most likely to slow natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale in New York is safely disposing of the billions of gallons of contaminated wastewater the industry will produce.

At least 2,500 wells per year could eventually be drilled into the huge natural gas reserve, state regulators say. Other estimates run several times higher (PDF). Each well will produce about 1.2 million gallons of wastewater that can contain chemicals introduced during the drilling process and dredged up from deep within the earth. That means the industry will have to find a way to dispose of as much as 3 billion gallons a year, enough to fill 5,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

New York's Department of Environmental Conservation took a stab at addressing the wastewater problem in the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on gas drilling it released in September. The report said the DEC won't issue drilling permits until companies prove they can dispose of the water. The report also listed three disposal options: Injecting it into underground storage wells, trucking it to specialized treatment plants in nearby states, or having it processed at sewage plants in New York.

But ProPublica has found that none of these methods are realistic.
Full article>>>

In New Gas Wells, More Drilling Chemicals Remain Underground

Another article that illustrates what a fracking mistake it is to not push for regulations on the county level.

by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - December 27, 2009 8:12 am EST
This story was co-published with Politico [1].

For more than a decade the energy industry has steadfastly argued before courts, Congress and the public that the federal law protecting drinking water should not be applied to hydraulic fracturing [2], the industrial process that is essential to extracting the nation's vast natural gas reserves. In 2005 Congress, persuaded, passed a law prohibiting such regulation.

Now an important part of that argument -- that most of the millions of gallons of toxic chemicals that drillers inject underground are removed for safe disposal, and are not permanently discarded inside the earth -- does not apply to drilling in many of the nation's booming new gas fields.

Three company spokesmen and a regulatory official said in separate interviews with ProPublica that as much as 85 percent of the fluids used during hydraulic fracturing is being left underground after wells are drilled in the Marcellus Shale, the massive gas deposit that stretches from New York to Tennessee.

That means that for each modern gas well drilled in the Marcellus and places like it, more than three million gallons of chemically tainted wastewater could be left in the ground forever. Drilling companies say that chemicals make up less than 1 percent of that fluid. But by volume, those chemicals alone still amount to 34,000 gallons in a typical well.

These disclosures raise new questions about why the Safe Drinking Water Act, the federal law that regulates fluids injected underground so they don't contaminate drinking water aquifers, should not apply to hydraulic fracturing, and whether the thinking behind Congress' 2005 vote to shield drilling from regulation is still valid.

When lawmakers approved that exemption, it was generally accepted that only about 30 percent of the fluids stayed in the ground. At the time, fracturing was also used in far fewer wells than it is today and required far less fluid. Ninety percent of the nation's wells now rely on the process, which is widely credited for making it financially feasible to tap into the Marcellus Shale and other new gas deposits.

Congress is considering a bill that would repeal the exemption, and has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to undertake a fresh study of how hydraulic fracturing may affect drinking water supplies. But the government faces stiff pressure from the energy industry [3] to maintain the status quo -- in which gas drilling is regulated state by state -- as companies race to exploit the nation's vast shale deposits and meet the growing demand for cleaner fuel. Just this month, Exxon announced it would spend some $31 billion to buy XTO Energy, a company that controls substantial gas reserves in the Marcellus -- but only on the condition that Congress doesn't enact laws on fracturing that make drilling "commercially impracticable." More>>>