Blasting shale rock with toxic fluid can release riches in natural gas, but threatens critical water supplies.

Huge Gas Plant Approved Despite Emissions Spike
It will boost BC's carbon output three per cent, but cap-and-trade can offset, says Premier.

The earth-shattering exploitation of deep deposits of shale rock for natural gas production has broken global records in northeast British Columbia and now threatens critical water supplies across the country, warns a new Munk School of Global Affairs report by award-winning B.C. journalist Ben Parfitt....continued....

NM Drill Down: From A to Z--Santa Fe Reporter

By Laura Paskus
10.06.10

Love it or hate it, the oil and gas industry is as much a part of modern New Mexico as red and green chile. But let’s be honest: Without strict regulation, it also coughs haze into once-blue skies, can contaminate groundwater and private wells, upsets landowners, and poses a threat to public health.

This week, SFR wades through the regulations and names, agencies and scandals, campaign contributions and connections so that you can educate yourself about the industry that brings billions in revenues to the state.

With all that cash, the industry also wields enormous political power. As a result, it continues to thwart progress on everything from federal climate change legislation to the state’s attempts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, wellheads and pipelines—which, if unchecked, could threaten future generations of New Mex-icans.

{A}

Activists
New Mexico has numerous environmental organizations, but these groups specifically tackle oil and gas issues:
• Drilling Mora County

.....continued.....

Wyoming Water Problems

WYOMING (wpr) - For years now, people living amid the natural gas fields east of town have complained about foul smelling and discolored water. They've also claimed to experience unexplained health problems, from respiratory difficulties to neurological issues. Late last month, federal officials said that residents shouldn't drink or cook with water from 41 area wells. Wyoming Public Radio's Molly Messick has this story about what's next for Pavillion.

Taos Threatened AGAIN by Military Training Route Overflights

EXCERPT:
"And by implication there is no human value assigned to our indigenous peoples nor natural wildlife populations or issues, not to mention our reliance on tourism and solar industries that are developing here...... We need to prepare a region-wide resistance to this attempt to turn our beautiful homeland into a practice zone for these colonial wars of aggression against people with whom we actually have a lot in common."

COMMENT:
In general, they do not take these flights to the cities, as the risks/costs if catastrophes happen are greater. Not to mention the number of people who would be terror-struck at the sight of fighter planes bearing down on them at 200 feet over metropolitan areas! Unfortunately, like with the hydraulic fracking, destruction is taken to the wild and the poor--read the Cerrell Report used to locate all destructive industry.

Drilling Mora County

EXCERPT:
The Universe
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
Martin Luther King Jr.

If the U.S. Air Force gets its way, some of Taos sacred places will become official Low Altitude Tactical Navigation areas. Training flights from Cannon Air Force Base are being planned to come roaring through the Sangre de Christo Mountains and throughout Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. The plan is to train pilots to operate at high speeds and very low altitudes an average of three times a day. The Air Force posted a relatively obscure notice on page B10 of last weeks Taos News indicating the comment period on the program will close October 4th .

A notice appeared in the Albuquerque Journal Friday, Sep. 3, 2010 that the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command wants to create a covert war training zone that stretches from Albuquerque, NM to Aspen, CO and Grand Junction, CO to Clovis, NM

go to LATN on the website www.cannon.af.mil ......continued....

Oil and gas industry writes its own standards

By Andrew Restuccia
8/13/10 5:31 PM Digg Tweet

This story is the third in a series on federal oversight of the nation’s 2.3 million miles of oil and natural gas pipelines. You can read the first story here and the second story here.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency that oversees the country’s 2.3 million miles of oil and natural gas pipelines, has adopted as part of its regulations all or parts of at least 29 standards written by the oil and natural gas industry.

The revelation, which comes to light as part of an investigation into pipeline safety by The Washington Independent, raises significant questions about the relationship between PHMSA and the industry that it regulates. It also feeds into comparisons between the agency and the now-defunct Minerals Management Service, which was in charge of permitting and licensing offshore drilling projects in the run-up to the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion and resulting oil spill....continued...

Encana Says Drilling Did Not Taint Wyoming Water-Reuters

EXCERPT:
"Contamination detected by U.S. regulators in some Wyoming water wells near natural gas sites was unrelated to oil and gas operations or showed hydrocarbon levels below official action
standards, an official for the company conducting the drilling said on Thursday."


"EnCana will pay for alternative sources of drinking water for affected residents; studying the integrity of its wells, including the casings that run through aquifers, and reassessing
the remediation of wastewater pits, Hock said."


COMMENT:
• EnCana says drilling did not taint Wyoming water, but will pay for the water anyway. Since when does industry do something they are not responsible for? Just look to the Gulf of Mexico and the finger pointing. In Pavillion it is easier for industry to come out as the "good-guy" rather than have testing continue that will link their natural gas field contamination to the drinking water.

• EPA has reached no conclusion (although a water well tested in 2008 found benzene at 1200 ppb in the water) in spite of knowing that benzene is a known occurring carcinogen from industry's fracking.

• Benzene levels do exceed "federal or state levels for hazardous concentrations" (according to ProPublica report 2008 where benzene was found at 1200 ppb in a 300 foot deep water well) although this report is stating none do.

• This is another attempt to cover-up facts so that industry can continue to pollute the water with impunity! The 2004 EPA study of hydraulic fracturing exposed hazardous chemicals being injected into the ground (such as benzene), but the conclusion was that no undue harm would occur. Whistle blower Weston Wilson, EPA environment engineer, reported this cover-up to Congress.....however, the next year the Bush Cheney Administration passed the 2005 Energy Bill EXEMPTING industry from all liabilities: "Clean Water Act", "Safe Drinking Water Act", "Clean Air Act" making them above the law.

Drilling Mora County



Wed, Sep 8 2010
By Jon Hurdle
PHILADELPHIA - Contamination detected by U.S. regulators in
some Wyoming water wells near natural gas sites was unrelated to oil and
gas operations or showed hydrocarbon levels below official action
standards, an official for the company conducting the drilling said on
Thursday.

Doug Hock, a spokesman for EnCana Corp., said government tests on 17
private water wells in the farming town of Pavillion, Wyoming, showed
low levels of petroleum hydrocarbons, and inorganic substances that
naturally occur.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report from August found a
"drinking water concern" on the basis of hydrocarbons and other
chemicals found in wells tested in January...continued...

COMMENT:


• 3 fighter jet per night from dusk to dawn flying as low as 200 feet Monday through Friday and possibly weekends over northern New Mexico rural areas

• These flights are simulated war missions. Simulating warring on our wild animals and human population in New Mexico

• A fighter jet bearing down at 200 feet overhead is an attack without bombs and bullets. The energy is the same as being under fire in war.

• What will happen to the welfare of the wildlife, the people, who are exposed to these daily attacks?

• One jet's emission is equivalent to the toxic chemical emissions of 10,000 cars (the toxic chemicals in jet fuels consists of the same basic chemicals as used in hydraulic fracturing fluids used for drilling gas wells!--benzene, toluene, xylene, etc....diesel fuel and many additional chemicals)


• No public meetings are currently scheduled. People's only access is by email, writing or calling. We understand the impact of public meetings.

• Air Force is seeking public input, however, will we have the right to stop this invasive activity by saying "No?"

• Call your state and federal representatives and tell them to help set up public comment meetings.

• Comment period ends October 4th, 2010

Drilling Mora County


Air Force proposes area training
Planes could fly low altitude
September 09, 2010
By Las Vegas Optic

The U.S. Air Force is interested in flying low over the region.

In an advertisement that ran in Friday’s Las Vegas Optic, the Air Force announced that it is seeking public input regarding a proposal to establish a low-altitude tactical navigation, or LATN, area over northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The Air Force wants to do an assessment of the proposal to determine possible environmental consequences should the plan go through.

Current missions require aircraft training in varied mountainous terrain and desert-like environments, the ad stated. The Air Force is interest in this region because of “the lack of large civilian populations, proximity to Cannon (Air Force Base)” and the varied topography and weather conditions. The idea is to train C-130 and CV-22 Osprey aircrews in the area.

The training would include about three flights a day, or about 688 per year, with aircraft flying between 200 and 3,000 feet above ground level, with most flights at about 500 feet. Airspeeds would be below 250 knots, or about 288 mph, with most flights on weeknights, according to the Air Force....continued....

Life vs. Productivity: "What Would You Live and Die to Protect?--Truthout

COMMENT:
What if Royal Dutch Shell subsidiaries began drilling and pumping 1000s of gallons of their toxic chemicals into your land and into your aquifers? What would you be willing to do to protect your family and water?

Drilling Mora County

EXCERPT:
"I say, do something," Jensen urges. "The big dividing line is not between those who advocate resistance through any means necessary and those who don't. It's not even between grassroots and mainstream. The big divide is between those who do something and those who don't."
Derrick Jensen

05 September 2010
by: Dahr Jamail
"If someone broke into your house, pinned down your loved ones and began pouring poison down their throats, would you stop that person? What if someone poured crude oil all over your crops and livestock? Wouldn't you try to stop them from doing it? Pointed questions like these come from a man named Derrick Jensen. They provide a lens through which to view the havoc that corporate capitalism is wreaking on our planet. They are meant to jolt us into the awareness that we are watching life on earth annihilated. They are also meant to challenge us into thinking about what form our resistance to this should take."

"It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself, when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks." -Malcolm X

If someone broke into your house, pinned down your loved ones and began pouring poison down their throats, would you stop that person?

What if someone poured crude oil all over your crops and livestock? Wouldn't you try to stop them from doing it?...continued....

Gulf Oil Platform Explodes, Burning Off LA. Coast--Associated Press

COMMENT:
How many more environmental disasters by the oil companies can this Earth take?

Drilling Mora County


By ALAN SAYRE
09/02/2010

NEW ORLEANS, La.‹An offshore petroleum platform exploded and was burning
Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles off the Louisiana coast, west
of the site where BP's undersea well spilled after a rig explosion.

The Coast Guard said no one was killed in the explosion, which was spotted
by a commercial helicopter flying over the site Thursday morning. All 13
people aboard the rig have been accounted for, with one injury. The extent
of the injury was not known.

They were rescued from the water by an offshore service vessel, the Crystal
Clear, said Coast Guard Cmdr. She said they were taken to a nearby platform.
All were being flown to the Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma to be
checked over.....continued...

Officials say they learned lessons

COMMENTS:
If we cannot ban an industry that pollutes our water, causes ill health (death), and depletes our most important resource (water), then we have no rights, we are not free, and we are not equal under the law of the land. We are mere captives of corporate industry and our governments.

EXCERPT: "I don’t think we can ban oil and gas exploration,” [Nicholas] Leger (San Miguel County Commissioner) said. “By the same token, I think it needs to be done in a cautious, careful manner.”

"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the
people fear the government, there is tyranny.".....Thomas Jefferson

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed,
or numbered. My life is my own."...........THE PRISONER

"No one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he's free."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Drilling Mora County

September 02, 2010
By David Giuliani

San Miguel County officials say they have learned some lessons from the task force that produced a proposed ordinance regulating wind farms.

They spoke during the first meeting of the oil and gas task force, which is expected to draft an ordinance for energy production in the county.

County Manager Les Montoya said he hopes the new task force will focus on its members.

“We got a little out of hand with the wind task force,” Montoya said. “We wanted to be open in that process. Maybe we were too open. We had a lot of different perspectives. We want to keep it focused on the people who are here.”...continued...

Feds Warn Residents Near Wyoming Gas Drilling Sites Not to Drink Their Water

COMMENTS:
We put a man on the moon in shorter time than the EPA can determine the cause of the contaminants in the ground and well water in Pavillion, WY. Just what is the delay in determining the link to gas well drilling and hydraulic fracturing and Pavillion's polluted water?

Could it be the conflict of interest our government plays with corporate oil companies? The loss of revenue if the EPA was actually permitted to put humans and ecosystems above industrial development?

Could acknowledging and addressing human rights over jobs and profit be such a gigantic step for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? Orwellian, perhaps. Certainly one small step for mankind was made going to the moon....perhaps we can witness one small step for mankind by connecting the dots in Pavillion with some haste and moral responsibility on the part of the EPA and our federal and state leaders.

It would be refreshing to see small,local, renewable energy development such as solar begin to be promoted so that our natural gas and oil dependency could be curbed. Jimmy Carter put in place solar tax credits that created new businesses and installations across the county. His leadership showed it could be done!

Drilling Mora County


By Abrahm Lustgarten

The federal government is warning residents in a small Wyoming town with extensive natural gas development not to drink their water, and to use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes in order to avoid the risk of an explosion.

The announcement accompanied results from a second round of testing and analysis in the town of Pavillion by Superfund investigators for the Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers found benzene, metals, naphthalene, phenols and methane in wells and in groundwater. They also confirmed the presence of other compounds that they had tentatively identified last summer and that may be linked to drilling activities...continued...

Samling Threatens Penan With Retaliations Over Rape Allegations

COMMENT:
Orchestrated and condoned by Empires, corporate plundering and raping of cultures and ecosystems throughout history by Spain, England, Japan, The Netherlands, Portugal, France and Russia, and today, China and the United States of America, seem of little consequence in our day-to-day lives.

However, today, the Samling Global (www.samling.com) corporation is conducting business with impunity as it rapes, harasses, abducts, and assaults the indigenous women of the Malaysian Penan communities. A United States corporation (http://www.samlingusa.com) is an LLC of Samling Global and profits from the actions of Samling Global in Malaysia. The criminal acts of Samling Global are the criminal acts of the US corporation.

Oil companies AND logging companies both have person-hood in the United States. They are "above the law" (permitted to do business in spite of the health-damaging impacts to people and the ecosystems) regarding human rights violations and crimes. They are in fact, sanctioned by the governments and the profits are shared by both industry and government. This blatant conflict of interest keeps governments protecting corporations over the people. One corporation's activities speaks for all corporations as seen in Nigeria and Royal Dutch Shell, and Samling Global in Malaysia. BP in the Gulf of Mexico brings an ever closer look at the devastation brought by corporate business.

If corporations can be granted rights as honourable as "person-hood", as decided by the US Supreme Court, then it is time that corporations acknowledge their blatant human rights and ecosystem violations. In the case of Samling Global, their business methods are outright criminal and should be tried for their barbaric actions. The US corporation should be stripped of their license to do business and the board and stock holders held accountable via prison sentences.

Offences:
• Crimes against the people by corporate industry--Samling Global
• Government collusion with corporate industry--Samling Global
• Denial of the people's abuses by government
• United States imports product from Samling Global thereby condoning these actions

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations;
entangling alliances with none.".........Thomas Jefferson

Drilling Mora County

Samling Threatens Penan With Retaliations Over Rape Allegations

Logging giant threatens to suspend all transport services for locals
unless Penan retract sexual abuse allegations

LONG AJENG, MALAYSIA, August 30, 2010, --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Malaysian
logging giant Samling has threatened the indigenous Penan communities
of Sarawak's Upper Baram region with the suspension of all transport
services provided for locals unless they retract sexual abuse and
rape allegations against the timber companies active in the region.
The new dispute between Samling and the Penan arose after the release
of a report by an international fact-finding mission

No Fracking Way--The Globe and Mail

COMMENT:
If our governments stand holding their hands over their eyes, ears and nose while industry tells them they are being "good neighbors" and not contaminating the ecosystem: the water, air, and land, do you think there is something wrong with the picture?

Our governments allow industry to continue fouling our lives with their health-damaging chemicals without consequences other than a meagre "cost of doing business" fine. In New Mexico industry is limited by the Oil Conservation Division (OCD) to a mere $10,000 fine. There are no o incentives nor accountability to "protect" when an oil company's annual PROFITS is upwards of $30 billion dollars ($30,000,000,000).

"You have to wonder why do we have money for propaganda and not for proper science?,"
Professor SCHINDLER QUOTE from Graham Thomson's article below

"It's not the role of Alberta Environment to advocate on behalf of the environment."
Rob Renner, Alberta Minister of Environment,

Do we have the foxes guarding the hen house? Are there any hens left?

Drilling Mora County


Globe and Mail
Aug. 31, 2010
Letters to the editor

Your article Quebec Moves to Develop Natural Gas Industry (front page, Aug. 30) should serve as a wake-up call.

The use of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," to break up underground geological formations and release trapped natural gas is proving to be an extremely controversial practice south of the border. Families there who find that their drinking water is now flammable because of the gas present in the water supply are justifiably outraged. Indeed, widespread claims of contaminated ground water have prompted the New York State Senate to halt such gas-extraction plans until much more is known about fracking.

Clearly, before much more independent research is done to analyze the safety of such methods of hydrocarbon extraction, the only sane reply to gas companies wishing to push ahead is "no fracking way!"

With Neighors Unaware, Toxic Spill at BP Plant

COMMENT:

The permits for BP to do business come from state government agencies. Who are the people in charge in these agencies that are issuing "permits" (legalizing) these industries that cause these criminal acts upon the people and ecosystems? The state of Texas government put industry above the law when they put the children, adults, animals and ecosystem in harms way so that profits can be made. They made all people, animals and the ecosystem "property" by taking away their rights of knowledge about the toxic chemicals released in their atmosphere by BP.

Is the "cost of doing business" (fine issued by the Attorney General at $600,000) that cheap and easy that the health or life of the child, adult or animals comes with but a nod and a handshake by our governments and corporations?

When is enough enough?

"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the
people fear the government, there is tyranny.".....Thomas Jefferson

Drilling Mora County

August 29, 2010
With Neighbors Unaware, Toxic Spill at a BP Plant
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
TEXAS CITY, Tex. — While the world was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery here released huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the air that went unnoticed by residents until many saw their children come down with respiratory problems.

For 40 days after a piece of equipment critical to the refinery’s operation broke down, a total of 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, poured out of the refinery.

Rather than taking the costly step of shutting down the refinery to make repairs, the engineers at the plant diverted gases to a smokestack and tried to burn them off, but hundreds of thousands of pounds still escaped into the air, according to state environmental officials.

Neither the state nor the oil company informed neighbors or local officials about the pollutants until two weeks after the release ended, and angry residents of Texas City have signed up in droves to join a $10 billion class-action lawsuit against BP. The state attorney general, Greg Abbott, has also sued the company, seeking fines of about $600,000....continued....

10 Reasons our Deep Water Supply is in Deep Trouble

Jeffrey Green
Activist Post

Fresh clean water is essential to all life forms. It seems that a resource so vital should not be corralled, controlled, or corrupted by any corporation or government. However, with fresh water supplies under assault on multiple fronts, governments seek to further clamp down on individual human usage, while doing very little to reduce the reasons for the contamination. At the same time, corporations that repackage water and sell it back to the public enjoy financial benefits from the scarcity of their "product."

Upon review, water scarcity is an alarming prospect indeed; especially in areas of the world where clean water was limited to begin with. The extended droughts caused by climate shifts, cumulative aspects of general human pollution, dirty industrial and agricultural practices, and blatant chemical contamination significantly reduce the supply of clean water. The more precious this resource becomes, the more our friendly multinational corporations profit from this new "commodity," and the more our governments seek to tax it.

Here are 10 reasons why our water supply is in deep trouble:
1. Fracture drilling for natural gas: Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act after it was considered safe since a 2004 study (PDF) by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. The evidence is now overwhelming that it does indeed contaminate the groundwater to where some residents can even light their tap water on fire. The new documentary Gasland does a great job educating the public about this method and its effects on the water supply.
CONTINUED

Elevated levels of toxins found in Athabasca River-Globe and Mail

COMMENTS:
For anyone who believes that the Canadian government is protecting the environment and the indigenous people downstream from toxic impacts of industry, read the article below. People and the environment are being sold out as profits and power are amassed.

The stream of revenue governments make via their partnership with corporations (whose sole focus is revenue production for their board of directors, shareholders and the aligned governments) represent an historical relationship between the colonial governments and industry.

This partnership aligns industry with governments around the globe. Willing governments sell out their people and the ecosystem with blatant lies and coverups (U.S. EPA hydraulic fracturing study 2004) and not so blatant (Brazil water privatization to Bechtell) as they issue permits to industry to rape and pillage land and sea at continued loss to human and animal life as well as total destruction to ecosystems. Read Vandana Shiva "Soil not Oil."

Those who reveal the lies are heroes and their courage and moral convictions give citizens the fortitude to forge ahead to continue to demand human and environmental rights and protections in spite of government's criminal actions. The people, whether those colonized, enslaved, or trampled, can still reach for the highest goals and set examples for our governments. Read Howard Zinn "Peoples' History of the United States."

While this will take an historical departure from the pillage and plunder pattern, there still is hope, and in the words of Martin Luther King, JR., "The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice."

"When a well packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to
the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly
preposterous and it's speaker a raving lunatic."........Anonymous

Drilling Mora County



Josh Wingrove
8/30/2010

A study set to be published on Monday has found elevated levels of mercury, lead and eleven other toxic elements in the oil sands' <#> main fresh water source, the Athabasca River, refuting long-standing government and industry claims that water quality there hasn't been affected by oil sands development.

The author of the study, University of Alberta biological scientist David Schindler, criticized the province and industry for an "absurd" system that obfuscates or fails to discover essential data about the river. "I think they [the findings] are significant enough that they should trigger some interest in a better monitoring program than we have," he said. [comment: ya, and send some of that better monitoring to the frac fields too!!]

The Athabasca has increasingly become a flashpoint for debate. Earlier this year, Environment Minister Jim Prentice dismissed Dr. Schindler's previous peer-reviewed work as "allegations."...continued....