DOES THIS LOOK "NATURAL"?

Not only is it well documented that fracking for "natural" gas (methane) poisons groundwater as it uses a mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of gallons of water per frack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBjSXWQRV8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEtgvwllNpg

but it also turns out they're only just discovering how polluting the Halliburton-owned method is to the air as well, completely offsetting any gains from the cleaner burn in the end use because "methane is 25 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over 100 year — but it is 100 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over two decades."

Modern natural gas extraction, aka "Fracking, it turns out, yields more global warming per unit of energy than coal — at least 20 percent more, and possibly up to twice as much" as a new "study estimates that natural-gas producers...are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system."
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421588/high-methane-emissions-measured-over-gas-field-offset-climate-benefits-of-natural-gasquot/?mobile=nc

and now they finally admit it causes earthquakes...

"A spate of earthquakes across the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly” man-made, and may be caused by wastewater from oil or gas drilling injected into the ground. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey said that for the three decades until 2000, seismic events in the nation’s midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-12/earthquake-outbreak-in-central-u-s-tied-to-drilling-wastewater.html

How long have Halliburton et al been sitting on this information as they expanded the number of frack sites by the thousands?

This is Christy Clark's big jobs plan for BC. this is another reason for her recent two week visit to China "so we can help to fuel their growth". this is another trojan horse they're slipping in here while we rightly pay attention to that ghastly Enbridge project in their unceasing assault on some of the last wild nature left on Earth.

A network of pipelines from the Peace River region in Northeast BC to Kitimat where one giant LNG storage facility and shipping terminal is already approved with another nearing approval and an application for a third terminal expected soon.

"Proponents of what could be Canada’s first liquefied natural gas export terminal have won an application to widen the pipeline feeding the proposed Kitimat, British Columbia facility."
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Kitimat+natural+pipeline+expansion+approved/6474618/story.html#ixzz1sM5ZWoGg

"You and I would directly subsidize the massive export of B.C. shale gas, for the purpose of generating colossal profits for Encana, Apache and EOG."
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/jim-quail/2011/12/site-c-and-kitimat-lng-export-terminal-christy-clark%E2%80%99s-program-inco

and in this case at least one First Nation is on the wrong side of history: the Haisla, so strong in their stance against Enbridge, are, by a vote of 93% in favour, leasing the site to the (largely foreign) energy giants for over 3 million dollars a year.
http://www.haislabusinessoperations.ca/lng/lng.html

"My journey to the Peace River Valley offered just a glimpse of the devastation that comes with fracking: huge clear-cuts, massive tailing ponds, toxic gas flaring, and pipeline after pipeline.
All over the world, governments are taking real action to address and curtail fracking. Quebec has brought in a moratorium. So have France, and US states like New Jersey. Even Texas legislators are talking about taking action. Shamefully, BC lags far behind, with fracking expanding at an alarming rate."  -- Tria Donaldson, Wilderness Committee

read their report:
http://wildernesscommittee.org/sven/stop_fracking_now

meanwhile, in the Maritimes...

"The Nova Scotia government is putting a two-year hold on hydraulic fracturing, saying it needs more time to study a controversial oil and gas industry practice that has raised concerns about contamination of drinking water."
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/greenpage/nova-scotia-government-extends-review-of-fracking-for-gas-to-2014-147624595.html

Finally while natural gas pipelines are less susceptible to dangerous accidents, when they do happen and conditions are just so they are especially catastrophic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecCnROSj70g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2ths0YAgZs
http://youtu.be/NyMbaZ9FVjA?t=1m8s

and the devastation caused by a successful terrorist attack on an LNG tanker would leave any survivors comparing the event to a nuclear explosion
http://www.cfr.org/port-security/liquefied-natural-gas-potential-terrorist-target/p9810

Watch the 2010 documentary Gasland online - and get ready for the next battle.
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/_rRxq7qrCpk/

pictured: Jonah Field, Green River Basin, Wyoming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Field

Fracking Tied to Unusual Earthquakes

A spate of earthquakes across the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly” man-made, and may be caused by wastewater from oil or gas drilling injected into the ground, U.S. government scientists said in a study.
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey said that for the three decades until 2000, seismic events in the nation’s midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011.

Enlarge image

Oil pipelines feed into storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma. Photographer: Shane Bevel/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

An energy plant along the southern San Andreas earthquake fault near Calipatria, California. In northern California, engineers are drilling to great depths to force water into bedrock, a process that causes slippage and small earthquakes. Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images

Those statistics, included in the abstract of a research paper to be discussed at the Seismological Society of America conference next week in San Diego, will add pressure on an energy industry already confronting more regulation of the process of hydraulic fracturing.
“Our scientists cite a series of examples for which an uptick in seismic activity is observed in areas where the disposal of wastewater through deep-well injection increased significantly,” David Hayes, the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, said in a blog post yesterday, describing research by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey.

‘Fairly Small’ Quakes

The earthquakes were “fairly small,” and rarely caused damage, Hayes said.
He said not all wastewater disposal wells induce earthquakes, and there is no way of knowing if a disposal well will cause a temblor.
Last month, Ohio officials concluded that earthquakes there last year probably were caused by wastewater from hydraulic fracturing for natural gas injected into a disposal well.
In hydraulic fracturing -- or fracking -- water, sand and chemicals are injected into deep shale formations to break apart underground rock and free natural gas trapped deep underground. Much of that water comes back up to the surface and must then be disposed of.
There’s “a difference between disposal injection wells and hydraulically fractured wells,” Daniel Whitten, a spokesman for the America’s Natural Gas Alliance, which represents companies such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) and Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. (COG), said in an e-mail. “There are over 140,000 disposal wells in America, with only a handful potentially linked to seismic activity.”

‘Committed to Monitoring’

“We are committed to monitoring the issue and working with authorities where there are concerns, but it should be noted that currently there is no scientific data associating hydraulic fracturing with earthquakes that would cause damage,” he said.
An abstract of the federal study, which was led by William Ellsworth, Earthquake Science Center staff director for the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, was published online earlier this month. A full version of the study wasn’t immediately available.
The area studied included a swath of the country running from Ohio to Colorado and Oklahoma, the study said.
“A naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region,” Ellsworth and his colleagues wrote.
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release rules on air pollution from gas wells and on the treatment of wastewater. Other state and federal rules could force more disclosure of the chemicals used by the drilling companies.
The Interior Department is considering rules to update well-design standards and require disclosure of the chemicals in fracking on public lands.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net

Frack Free New York – Frack Free Nation – Frack Free Mother Earth

FRACK FREE NATION – Beyond Dirty Energy – A Time To Break The Silence….and Ask For What We Want!!!     The Capitol Lawn,  Albany, NY  = 11 A.M.  4/4/201212  and again on 4/5/2012

www.April-4-2012Event.org             www.4-4-2012EVENT.info

FRACK FREE NATION – Beyond Dirty Energy – A Time To Break The Silence….and Ask For What We Want!!!     The Capitol Lawn,  Albany, NY  = 11 A.M.  4/4/201212  and again on 4/5/2012 

 www.crime2poison.us 

 www.frackingIsOver.org  

www.grassrootsEmPowered.org
www.frackfreemotherearth.org

JOIN US on the 45th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Beyond Viet Nam speech. (King was assassinated a year to the date after giving his April 4 1967, BEYOND VIETNAM – Time to Break Silence speech… We will take this message to Albany… To HONOR the Water of Life – To move toward Clean Energy NOW!!! …And to revive His Dream 44 years later on www.4-4-2012Event.info

HELP US tell Governor Cuomo to immediately withdraw the dsGEIS as we deliver 45 samples of pure NY state water from streams, ponds, rivers, and lakes endangered by the threat of fracking.

www.FrackFreeGrassroots.org people including OCCUPY participants from all around New York and elsewhere will join us in educating our leaders that there must be life on earth for the next seven generations. 

BUSES will carry us from Rochester, Syracuse,Utica/Rome, Sidney, Binghamton, Cortland, Ithaca, Oneonta, Middletown, Kingston, and Scranton, PA and possibly other locations. GO to link @ www.frackfreenation.org Email info@frackfreenation.org . . . 

REMIND Governor Cuomo and President Obama that the way to the White House in 2012 and 2016 will not be through the manic pipeline building currently underway even while the dsGEIS is still being ‘deliberated’–WE Will REMIND GOVERNOR CUOMO THAT FRACKING IS UNHEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING BEINGS. It is a www.crime2poison.us … www.FrackingIsOver.org

WE WILL FILL THE OUTDOOR AREAS AROUND THE CAPITOL FOR A GREAT MEDIA IMAGE OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TIRED OF WAITING FOR THE REJECTION OF THE FAILED ‘ENERGY’ AND ‘FINANCE’ SCHEMES SURROUNDING DIRTY ENERGY PONZI SCHEMES LIKE FRACKING. www.criminalizefracking.org

ENJOY FRACK-FREE POSITIVE MUSIC FROM A GROWING LINE UP TBA., including a wide variety and traditional indigenous drums.

First Nations people will create and close our sacred space for a joyous non-violent grassroots day in the NY State Capitol. This will bring the POWER of THE GOOD MIND into being, so that the GOOD HEART can operate in it’s most pure form = LOVE.

*FIDEL MORENO – Huichol & Mexican American www.healingwinds.net wiill inform and educate the public and society about the relationship we, as Native Americans and First Nations have with the Creator and all of Creation. This includes the elements of water, air, fire and earth. Fracking is an act of violence upon our Mother Earth… we will work toward a www.FrackFreeMotherEarth.org

*Former Veterans for Peace National President (Vietnam Veteran) (and former Sharon Springs NY Mayor) ELLIOTT ADAMS will make the tie between our failed transportation/energy policies and the endless wars and end-game fossil fuel extraction mania. 

*Philidelphia Retired Police Chief Captain RAY LEWIS from the OCCUPY movement, will be fully present and will speak…

*CLARK RHOADES, who has found faults in the dsGEIS maps that show direct feeds of water into the NTC watershed from, among other places, Greene, Otsego, and Schoharie Counties.

*C. ANN LAWRENCE, who ran as a Green Party Candidate in Tioga County, long time fractivist and currently with the Move to Amend movement.

*Kelly Brannigan, public health professional, and of Middlefield Grassroots will possibly be coming on 4/4 or 4/5 to speak of health effects of fracking, and healthier alternatives.

*TBA representatives from the SUCCESSFUL Allegany County portion of the grassroots Don’t Waste NY campaign, —-including a visit by long term peaceful direct action advocate SPIKE JONES, of My Name is Alegany. www.shaleshockmedia.org/2011/12/05/my-name-is-allegany-county/

*ABRAM LOEB, founding organizer of www.frackfreenewyork.org www.frackfreenation.org and www.frackfreeplanet.org will share from his personal experiences with community outreach campaigns in which he supervised 3 offices, employing 30 activists canvassing 9,000 people weekly during the “Don’t Waste NY” campaign to stop a nuclear waste dump.

* A memorial tribute to Abram’s father, lifetime activist work of a Veteran for Peace, Dr. Eric Loeb, psychologist, who was a bus captain on King’s March On Washington in 1963, was active in the Peace movement throughout his life, and worked with dozens of www.grassrootsempowered.org organizations on environmental, nuclear freeze, and social justice issues, will be shared, to inspire others of the dream we all want to bring into being.

- If you would like to be a bus captain, please contact Bram Loeb @ 607-343-9016 or email info@frackfreenation.org

More INFO to follow – The list of speakers will likely be updated daily.

FRACK FREE NY and FRACK FREE NATION will hold their first General Assembly and Speak Out….

Peaceful Direct Action Training Sessions will be held later in the afternoon, and during 4/5/12 as well.

A large variety of musical acts are signing up….

Housing may be arranged for the www.FrackFreeGrassroots.org who decide to continue their activism into the next day.

FAMILY FRIENDLY = DRUG AND ALCOHOL FREE EVENT

THE PEOPLE will be FED… NO FOOD SALES – NO WATER SALES

Performers and speakers may sell books and CD’s , but all other donations go to the Frack Free Nation/Frack Free New York, first to reimburse, and then to continue the mission statement for a truly www.frackfreenation.com

EPA Water Samples Contained 'Dangerous' Levels Of Methane

When the Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that tests showed the water is safe to drink in Dimock, Penn., a national hot spot for concerns about fracking, it seemed to vindicate the energy industry's insistence that drilling had not caused pollution in the area.

But what the agency didn't say -- at least, not publicly -- is that the water samples contained dangerous quantities of methane gas, a finding that confirmed some of the agency's initial concerns and the complaints raised by Dimock residents since 2009.

The test results also showed the group of wells contined dozens of other contaminants, including low levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and heavy metals that exceed the agency's "trigger level" and could lead to illness if consumed over an extended period of time. The EPA's assurances suggest that the substances detected do not violate specific drinking water standards, but no such standards exist for some of the contaminants and some experts said the agency should have acknowledged that they were detected at all.

"Any suggestion that water from these wells is safe for domestic use would be preliminary or inappropriate," said Ron Bishop, a chemist at the State University of New York's College at Oneonta, who has spoken out about environmental concerns from drilling.

Dimock residents are struggling to reconcile the EPA's public account with the results they have been given in private.

"I'm sitting here looking at the values I have on my sheet -- I'm over the thresholds -- and yet they are telling me my water is drinkable," said Scott Ely, a Dimock resident whose water contains methane at three times the state limit, as well as lithium, a substance that can cause kidney and thyroid disorders. "I'm confused about the whole thing... I'm flabbergasted."

The water in Dimock first became the focus of international attention after residents there alleged in 2009 that natural gas drilling, and fracking, had led to widespread contamination. That April, ProPublica reported that a woman's drinking water well blew up. Pennsylvania officials eventually determined that underground methane gas leaks had been caused by Cabot Oil and Gas, which was drilling wells nearby. Pennsylvania sanctioned Cabot, and for a short time the company provided drinking water to households in the Dimock area.

This January, the EPA announced it would take over the state's investigation, testing the water in more than 60 homes and agreeing to provide drinking water to several of families -- including the Elys -- in the meantime.

Then, last Thursday, the EPA released a brief statement saying that the first 11 samples to come back from the lab "did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern." The agency noted that some metals, methane, salt and bacteria had been detected, but at low levels that did not exceed federal thresholds. It said that arsenic exceeding federal water standards was detected in two samples.

But Dimock residents say the agency's description didn't jibe with the material in test packets distributed to them, and they voiced concerns about why the EPA had passed judgment before seeing results from nearly 50 homes. Several shared raw data and materials they were given by the EPA with Josh Fox, the director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "GasLand," who shared them with ProPublica.

EPA press secretary Betsaida Alcantara said the agency was trying to be forthcoming by giving the tests results to Dimock residents and is now considering whether to release more information to the public about the water samples. "We made a commitment to the residents that we would give them the information as soon as we had it," she said. "For the sake of transparency we felt it was the right thing to do."

However preliminary, the data is significant because it is the first EPA research into drilling-related concerned on the east coast, and the agency's first new information since it concluded that there was likely a link between fracking and water contamination in central Wyoming last December. The EPA is currently in the midst of a national investigation into the effects of fracking on groundwater, but that research is separate.
As the agency has elsewhere, the EPA began the testing in Dimock in search of methane and found it.

Methane is not considered poisonous to drink, and therefore is not a health threat in the same way as other pollutants. But the gas can collect in confined spaces and cause deadly explosions, or smother people if they breathe too much of it. Four of the five residential water results obtained by ProPublica show methane levels exceeding Pennsylvania standards; one as high as seven times the threshold and nearly twice the EPA's less stringent standard.

The methane detections were accompanied by ethane, another type of natural gas that experts say often signifies the methane came from deeply buried gas deposits similar to those being drilled for energy and not from natural sources near the surface.

Among the other substances detected at low levels in Dimock's water are a suite of chemicals known to come from some sort of hydrocarbon substance, such as diesel fuel or roofing tar. They include anthracene, fluoranthene, pyrene and benzo(a)pyrene -- all substances described by a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as cancer-causing even in very small amounts. Chromium, aluminum, lead and other metals were also detected, as were chlorides, salts, bromium and strontium, minerals that can occur naturally but are often associated with natural gas drilling.

It is unclear whether these contaminants have any connection to drilling activities near Dimock. The agency says it plans further testing and research.

Many of the compounds detected have not been evaluated for exposure risk by federal scientists or do not have an exposure limit assigned to them, making it difficult to know whether they present a risk to human health.

Inconsistencies in the EPA's sampling results also are raising concerns. EPA documents, for example, list two different thresholds for the detection of bromide, a naturally occurring substance sometimes used in drilling fluids, opening up the possibility that bromide may have been detected, but not reported, in some tests.

"The threshold that it is safe, that shouldn't be changing," said Susan Riha, director of the New York State Water Resources Group and a professor of earth sciences at Cornell University. "For some reason ... one was twice as sensitive as the other one."

The EPA did not respond to questions about the detection limits, or any other technical inquiries about the test data.

A spokesman for Cabot declined to comment on the water test results or their significance, saying that he had not yet seen the data.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/dimock-pa-fracking-epa-water_n_1368148.html

EVENT APRIL 4 2012

Frack Free Nation Join US in Albany - !!! Wednesday, April 4, 2012 11:00am until 4:00pm

On the 45th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's Beyond Viet Nam speech, the grassroots people from across the land will converge on The Capitol in Albany to make our voices heard. End Fracking Fossil Fuels - Freeze our fracking Fukushima's. End the Dirty Energy corporate backed policy that only leads to Death and Destruction.... Wake up from that nightmare, and Dream a dream of a world where we can all have health, life, freedom, peace, and justice.

We will call on Governor Cuomo to immediately withdraw the SGIES on HVHHF, and work to end our addiction to dirty fossil fuels and Nuclear power energy policy, and call on our national leaders as well to do the same: return the POWER to the PEOPLE.

There will be inspiring speakers, music, and fun while we commemorate our movement history, call out for an end to DIRTY ENERGY DEATHS, and move forward to the goal living in balance and harmony on a green sustainable planet where there is justice and freedom rings loudly. Where the common person's voice is heard.... Of the many, we are one.

That there may be life on our earth for the next Seven Generations: That the people will live. Our rally will open and close with the Native People's of this land, who will convey the message that we must heed, if we are to have life, health, harmony, peace, and balance.

Help deliver samples of pure NYH2O to Governor Cuomo from 45 New York State Ponds, Streams, Rivers, and Lakes, that could be affected by planned Fracking, Pipelines, Compressor Stations, and related dirty energy extraction activities.

More INFO to follow - The list of speakers will likely be updated daily... It is growing fast. Buses will be coming from Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca, Binghamton, and Oneonta... and possibly more.

- If you would like to be a bus captain, please contact Bram Loeb @ 607-343-9016 or email Abram @FrackFreeNewYork.org

More Info to follow.  Join us on our FaceBook Group: CLICK HERE

FaceBook Group = FRACK FREE NATION - Beyond Deaths For Dirty Energy!

What Is Fracking?

This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: there is no life without it. New York is what you might call a “water state.” Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George, and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks, and trout streams are fishermen’s lore.

Far below this rippling wealth there’s a vast, rocky netherworld called the Marcellus Shale. Stretching through southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, the shale contains bubbles of methane, the remains of life that died 400 million years ago. Gas corporations have lusted for the methane in the Marcellus since at least 1967 when one of them plotted with the Atomic Energy Agency to explode a nuclear bomb to unleash it. That idea died, but it’s been reborn in the form of a technology invented by Halliburton Corporation: high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing -- “fracking” for short.

Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale.

Up comes the methane -- along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the United States. Surrounded by rumbling machinery, serviced by tens of thousands of diesel trucks, this nightmare technology for energy release has turned rural areas in 34 U.S. states into toxic industrial zones.

Shale gas isn’t the conventional kind that lit your grandmother’s stove. It’s one of those “extreme energy” forms so difficult to produce that merely accessing them poses unprecedented dangers to the planet. In every fracking state but New York, where a moratorium against the process has been in effect since 2010, the gas industry has contaminated ground water, sickened people, poisoned livestock, and killed wildlife.

At a time when the International Energy Agency reports that we have five more years of fossil-fuel use at current levels before the planet goes into irreversible climate change, fracking has a greenhouse gas footprint larger than that of coal. And with the greatest water crisis in human history underway, fracking injects mind-numbing quantities of purposely-poisoned fresh water into the Earth. As for the trillions (repeat: trillions) of gallons of wastewater generated by the industry, getting rid of it is its own story. Fracking has also been linked to earthquakes: eleven in Ohio alone (normally not an earthquake zone) over the past year.

But for once, this story isn’t about tragedy. It’s about a resistance movement that has arisen to challenge some of the most powerful corporations in history. Here you will find no handsomely funded national environmental organizations: some of them in fact have had a cozy relationship with the gas industry, embracing the industry’s line that natural gas is a “bridge” to future alternative energies. (In fact, shale gas suppresses the development of renewable energies.)