Don’t get me started on “fracking,” - hydraulic fracturing –
where an average of 5.6 million gallons of fresh water (while Texas is in the
fourth year of an extreme drought) is removed from local streams, lakes, and
aquifers. This is then used to inject an average of 4 million pounds of toxic
and hazardous chemicals under pressure into an older oil or gas well that has ceased
to be productive. This “loosens” up the shale and allows access to previously
unavailable oil and gas.
The fracking fluid formulas are proprietary trademarks and kept
secret. Even OSHA doesn’t know their composition, except that it could contain
any of around 700 different chemicals, many of these are listed OSHA as
“Hazardous” and “Carcinogenic” (cancer causing). The amount of fracking fluid
required for a typical 7-well site requires 13,000 round-trip tanker truck trips
on local highways. The drivers can work up to 20 hours per shift because they
are exempt from the labor laws regulating work hours. It should come as no
surprise that the most common way for workers in the fracking industry to be
injured on the job is by being involved in a motor vehicle accident. According
to OSHA, these drivers are killed in accidents at a rate eight times higher
than the general population. I don’t know how many innocent lives they take
with them. Then there are the 3,600 gallons of poison that might spill from a
truck involved in an accident.
As of February of this year there were 1.1 million active
oil and gas wells in the US, more than 300,000 of them in Texas alone. How many
Texas wells are actually being fracked is unknown because Texas is the only
state that charges a fee for researchers to obtain location data for its wells.
Even when the fee is paid, Texas does not allow the data to be redistributed
(trying to keep it a secret?).
One of the fracking pollutants is methane gas. It can seep
from the fracked wells and dissolve in the groundwater. This causes a very
interesting phenomenon. Water from many rural water wells in fracking areas will
burn when a flame is introduced. That’s right. The water is flammable. Although
they deny that fracking has anything to do with it, the frackers have
recommended that folks install vents on their water wells to help lower the
methane concentration in the water.
In addition to the flammable water there is now an
earthquake problem in Texas and Oklahoma. By injecting the fracking fluids so
deep into the earth, the fluid lubricates the continent’s tectonic plates and
causes them to slip and slide more easily over one another. Of course, the end
result has been a rash of earthquakes in the fracking areas. Although this
explanation is supported by evidence from scientific studies the energy
companies deny that fracking has anything to do with the earthquakes. There are
billions, maybe trillions, of dollars to be made and money – or enough of it – trumps
scientific proof any day.
One industry that obviously believes fracking pollutes and
leads to accidents is the insurance industry. Insurers are now writing
homeowner’s policies that do not cover harm from fracking. Nationwide announced
that it would not cover fracking risks because they “are too great to ignore.”
They are not going to accept the liability.
How do the frackers get away with all of this? Because they
are exempt from many of the EPA and Clean Water Act regulations. That’s what an
enormous amount of lobbying money can buy. A license to pollute.
Fracking is also used in Canada to access the shale oil, or ”
tar sands.” This type of oil is more difficult to refine than “regular” oil and
Canada doesn’t have the refining capacity to handle it. The Keystone XL (KXL)
Pipeline is being built from Canada to refineries in Texas and Louisiana to
solve this problem. In planning the route for the pipeline, the Canadian
company, TransCanada, hasn’t been letting private property get in their way. They
have been using the law of eminent domain and the threat of exorbitant
litigation costs to bully landowners into accepting TransCanada’s “fair” offer.
The property owner can take it or leave it. This could change as it is now
being challenged in the courts.
Once (or if) the pipeline is finished it will take the oil
straight to the Gulf coast refineries, which just happen to be America’s
leading export refineries. It seems that after all of the damage that could be done
by the pipeline we won’t even get to use the end product. It will be for
export.
So what’s one more pipeline? It will only add about a
thousand miles to the 2.6 million miles of propane, gas, and oil pipelines
already crisscrossing the US – of which only about twenty per cent have been
inspected by federal or state regulators (too few inspectors for too many miles
of pipeline). There are about 250 significant pipeline “incidents” (the pipeline
companies don’t call them “accidents”) a year that cause explosions, pollution,
property damage, injury, and death in the US. These are the reported incidents.
In September of last year a North Dakota farmer discovered
what turned out to be the largest onshore oil spill in US history. The six-inch
diameter pipeline owned by the Tesaro pipeline company had been leaking from a
quarter-inch hole for eleven days when found by the farmer. An area the size of
seven football fields had been inundated with 865,000 gallons of fracked oil.
The Keystone XL pipeline will be thirty-six inches in
diameter. What will happen when (not if) it springs a leak? The company has
been accused of shoddy work in Oklahoma as evidenced by the high number of weld
rejection rates and the shocking number of excavations/repairs needed to fix
the many dents, sags, and damaged pipe coating. This has stimulated federal Pipeline
and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to add two new special
safety requirements to the 57 agreed to by TransCanada 3 years ago. The 2 new
ones involve a stricter Quality Management system and the hiring of an
independent third party inspection company to monitor the construction of the
Keystone XL pipeline.
Many “oil field incidents” go unreported each year. An
Associated Press investigation into the Tesaro pipeline disaster in ND found
that nearly 300 oil spills and 750 “oil field incidents” had gone unreported
from January 2012 until September 2013 in that one state alone. EnergyWire reported
last month that the US oil and gas industry was responsible for at least 7,662
spills, blowouts, and leaks in 2013 – or about twenty a day.
I’ve already ranted far too long and have only scratched the
surface of fracking. I haven’t gotten to Wall Street and the “distribution of
wealth,” which is turning this country into an oligarchy ruled by the
wealthiest of the wealthy. Then there is texting while driving, global warming,
immigration, gun violence, and gun control. In the coming weeks and months I hope
to individually address each of these issues along with others that strike my
fancy. It is truly amazing the amount of information we now have at our
disposal.
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