B-CAUSE (Bucks Concerned About Unsafe Shale-gas Extraction)

Blog

  • Bad Water –

    Looks like the regulators and responsible party are dithering, while those whose wells were contaminated tough it out. One more example of the emptiness of claims that fracking can be done safely.

    WATER WAIT: Months after a frack out at a gas well in Greene County, residents in one community are still dependent on bottled water, some having to drive across the West Virginia border to find enough of it for their families, per PublicSource. The gas driller, EQT, and the state are still investigating, while testing by a Duquesne University professor found signs of significant water well contamination.

    Spotlight PA, 10/19/22

  • Spill Was Underestimated

    Spills

    The latest estimate from the Colonial Pipeline spill in August of 2020 in a nature preserve in North Carolina now puts the spilled amount of gasoline at 2 million gallons, up from the company’s original estimate of 63,000 gallons. The company claims that it’s managed to suck three-quarters of the spill out of the ground after what is now believed to be an 18-day spill. The pipeline delivers 100 million gallons of fuel each day, connecting Houston to New York. It’s one of the largest onshore fuel spills in American history, and larger than any other recorded gasoline leaks from a U.S. pipeline.

    Mike Soraghan, E&E News

    Reported in NumLockNews.com

    Uhh, ummm . . . maybe move the decimal point to the right one place, and then multiply by three? Their first guess was close enough for the public relations guys, I guess. Plus 3,000 percent as a recent correction? That was a mighty bad first guess. But then, when over a 100 gallons a second are ripping through the pipe. . . Well, kinda gets you thinking about how much bigger that leak could get, or maybe you don’t really WANT to think about how much bigger it could get. And you don’t want to think about sparks neither. Won’t think about what if a school, or a neighborhood, or a town, or a city were involved. Nope . . .

    So sixty-three thousand gallons starts to seem more, well, easy to wrap your mind around–not quite a full 5,000 gallon tanker truck a day being spilled for those 18 days till it got stopped. Yep, that’s a nice believable, manageable round number, a good guess until the news cycle moves on and the remediation can get done quietly with no drama.

    Who are we kidding?

  • Liquified Natural Gas Terminal

    Despite the fact that our climate verges on irreparable damage from atmospheric carbon, the fuel industry lumbers on to get more carbon out of the ground and into the environment.

    Could Delco get a major LNG export terminal? Facility being shopped for Chester
    Penn America Energy wants to construct a massive LNG export terminal in the city of Chester along the Delaware River. The plan faces an uphill battle.

    Let’s keep it in the ground folks!

  • $1.7 Billion Subsidy – With no limits??

    Pennsylvania will grant $1.7 billion in tax breaks to Shell for locating its new Plastics plan in Western PA. But the money isn’t all the legislature gave away. The plant will be permitted to spew pollutants into the air. All this so that the world can have more plastics. The upside? About 500 new jobs for Beaver County. That amounts to $135,000 a year for each of those new jobs for twenty-five years. And the subsidy is not limited to the $1.7 billion, there is no cap!

    Read the details in Spotlight PA’s excellent report

    Outlooks mixed as contested Pa. plant nears launch
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    Shell “Cracks” Pennsylvania’s Tax Code | Good Jobs First

  • DRBC to Vote Again

    Courier Times Article

  • Methane Update

    Fossil fuel apologists hasten to remind us that mother nature produces far more methane than oil and gas producers. But we don’t control the methane released by wetlands and thawing permafrost. Society does have the means to control its production of methane through fossil fuel production and agriculture. And, it is this production and burning that continues to wreck the environment. So the “what about mother nature?” question is a diversion from needed action.

    Here are a couple of articles that provide updates on how we are doing. Spoiler: not great.

    Methane Tracker 2020 – Analysis – IEA
    Methane Tracker 2020 – Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.
    Interactive country and regional estimates – Methane Tracker 2020 – Analysis – IEA
    Methane Tracker 2020 – Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.
    Methane emissions (kt of CO2 equivalent) | Data
    Methane emissions (kt of CO2 equivalent) from The World Bank: Data

  • Methane Tipping Point?

    Seven years. It has been seven years since I first wrote about this. The current episode of NOVA on PBS is now raising the same concern. Our lack of aggressive action to reduce carbon dioxide and methane produced by our civilization may have already launched an instability that can’t be reversed.

    Watch this:

    What to do? Write, vote, visit your representatives, stay engaged.

  • It All Comes to this…

    Celebrated naturalist and filmmaker Sir David Attenborough speaks at COP26 Climate Summit. Watch:

  • Smell a rat?

    Corporations are not people, contrary to popular belief. They are legal constructs designed to bundle up real and intangible property and the responsibilities that go with ownership of the bundle. This allows you and me to own a share of General Motors and not be responsible for its debts and liabilities if the enterprise fails.

    But what happens if someone games the system? The limitations on liability and the opportunity to escape from responsibility provide an opportunity that has value. Let’s say you own a fleet of taxi cabs. Insurance is expensive, and your drivers, good as they are, can’t avoid accidents with personal injury claims. So you incorporate each of your cabs, buy the minimum insurance that’s allowed, and if there’s an accident? Well, that cab is the only thing of value in the corporation after the insurance pays its limit. The corporate veil protects you as the shareowner.

    Now suppose a bunch of wealthy oil barons are worried about future liabilities of their depleted oil wells. Read this.

    Wells

    Diversified Energy Co. buys up oil wells that other companies no longer want any part of, holding 61,100 wells as of the end of 2020, the most in the country and considerably more than oil majors like Exxon Mobil (36,900 wells) and Chevron (25,800 wells). The rate at which the company is buying up wells is worrying regulators and industry groups because states require a company to plug a well with cement after it runs dry, and some think the rate that Diversified is paying out dividends and buying up wells means that it won’t have the funds to hold up its side of the bargain once bills come. That could leave states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia on the hook to clean up a mess that could cost billions. Many wells have methane leaks, a ton of which causes 80 times the warming over the next 20 years that a ton of carbon dioxide would.

    Zachary R. Mider and Rachel Adams-Heard, Bloomberg
    via NumLocknews

  • Believe the Scientists

    Methane and Health-Damaging Air Pollutants from the Oil and Gas Sector: Bridging 10 Years of Scientific Understanding | PSE | Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy

    Authors: Drew R. Michanowicz, DrPH, MPH, CPH, Eric D. Lebel, PhD, Jeremy K. Domen, MS, Lee Ann L. Hill, MPH, Jessie M. Jaeger, MPH, MCP, Jessica E. Schiff, SM, Elena M. Krieger, PhD, Zoya Banan, PhD, Jackson S.W. Goldman, BS, Curtis L. Nordgaard, MD, MSc, Seth B.C. Shonkoff, PhD, MPH.