Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst

Food and Water Watch recently demonstrated that the dominant narrative, "100 years" of unconventional oil and gas [1] in the United States, is false. At most, some 50 years of this dirty energy resource may exist beneath our feet.

Bill Powers [2], editor of Powers Energy Investor [3], has a new book set for publication in May 2013 titled, "Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth [4]."

Powers' book will reveal that production rates in all of the shale basins are far lower than the oil and gas industry is claiming and are actually in alarmingly steep decline. In short, the "shale gas bubble [5]" is about to burst.

 

In a recent interview [6], Powers said the "bubble" will end up looking a lot like the housing bubble that burst in 2008-2009 [7], and that U.S. shale gas will last no longer than ten years [6]. He told The Energy Report [6]:

 

My thesis is that the importance of shale gas has been grossly overstated; the U.S. has nowhere close to a 100-year supply. This myth has been perpetuated by self-interested industry, media and politicians...In the book, I take a very hard look at the facts. And I conclude that the U.S. has between a five- to seven-year supply of shale gas, and not 100 years.

 

The hotly-anticipated book may explain why shale gas industry giants like Chesapeake Energy have behaved more like real estate companies, making more money flipping over land leases [8] than they do producing actual gas. 

 

Powers told The Energy Report [6]:

 

Put simply: There is production decline in the Haynesville and Barnett shales. Output is declining in the Woodford Shale in Oklahoma. Some of the older shale plays, such as the Fayetteville Shale, are starting to roll over. As these shale plays reverse direction and the Marcellus Shale slows down its production growth, overall U.S. production will fall.

 

Powers believes we are quickly approaching a gas crisis akin to what occured in the 1970's [6] and because of that, prices will soon skyrocket.

 

Art Berman Also Sounds the "Shale Gas Bubble" Alarm 

Arthur Berman, another investment insider, echoed Powers in a recent interview with Oil Price [9], remarking that the decline rates in production in shale basins nationwide are "incredibly high."

 

Berman is a petroleum geologist, Associate Editor of the American Association of Petroleum Geolgists Bulletin and Director of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He maintains the blog Petroleum Truth Report [10].

 

"In the Eagleford shale, which is supposed to be the mother of all shale oil plays, the annual decline rate is higher than 42%," he stated [9]. "They're going to have to drill hundreds, almost 1000 wells in the Eagleford shale, every year, to keep production flat. Just for one play, we're talking about $10 or $12 billion a year just to replace supply."

 

Berman believes there's a possibility that this could lead to an economic crisis akin to which happened during the Big Bank bailouts of 2008 [11].

 

"I add all these things up and it starts to approach the amount of money needed to bail out the banking industry. Where is that money going to come from?," he asked the interviewee [9].

 

Who Will Be Left "Cold, Dark and Hungry" and Living in the "Dark Ages"?

It's a deep dive into shale gas production numbers that have led insiders like Powers, Berman and others to conclude that the behavior of the industry is akin to Enron's behavior in the 1990s [12], described by some as a "Ponzi Scheme [13]" in a June 2011 investigation by The New York Times. 

 

"What a glorious vision of the future: It's cold, it's dark and we're all hungry," Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon said of anti-fracking activists in Sept. 2011 [14]. "I have no interest in turning the clock back to the dark ages like our opponents do."

 

The reality, though, is far murkier. It appears the real culprit "turning the clock back to the dark ages" may actually be the unconventional oil and gas industry after all.

 

Fracking and a Radioactive Silvery-White Monster: Radium Must be Left in the Earth

Fracking for gas not only uses toxic chemicals that can contaminate drinking and groundwater -- it also releases substantial quantities of radioactive poison from the ground that will remain hot and deadly for thousands of years.

Issuing a report yesterday exposing major radioactive impacts of hydraulic fracturing known as fracking -- was Grassroots Environmental Education, an organization in New York, where extensive fracking is proposed.

The Marcellus Shale region which covers much of upstate New York is seen as loaded with gas that can be released through the fracking process. It involves injecting fluid and chemicals under high pressure to fracture shale formations and release the gas captured in them.

But also released, notes the report, is radioactive material in the shale including Radium-226 with a half-life of 1,600 years. A half-life is how long it takes for a radioactive substance to lose half its radiation. It is multiplied by between 10 and 20 to determine the “hazardous lifetime” of a radioactive material, how long it takes for it to lose its radioactivity. Thus Radium-226 remains radioactive for between 16,000 and 32,000 years.

“Horizontal hydrofracking for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region of New York State has the potential to result in the production of large amounts of waste materials containing Radium-226 and Radium-228 in both solid and liquid mediums,” states the report by E. Ivan White. For 30 years he was a staff scientist for the Congressionally-chartered National Council on Radiation Protection.

“Importantly, the type of radioactive material found in the Marcellus Shale and brought to the surface by horizontal hydrofracking is the type that is particularly long-lived, and could easily bio-accumulate over time and deliver a dangerous radiation dose to potentially millions of people long after the drilling is over,” the report goes on.

“Radioactivity in the environment, especially the presence of the known carcinogen radium, poses a potentially significant threat to human health,” it says. “Therefore, any activity that has the potential to increase that exposure must be carefully analyzed prior to its commencement so that the risks can be fully understood.”

The report lays out “potential pathways of the radiation” through the air, water and soil. Through soil it would get into crops and animals eaten by people.

Examined in the report are a 1999 study done by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation “assisted by representatives from 16 oil and gas companies” on hydrofracking and radioactivity and a 2011 Environmental Impact Statement the agency did on the issue. It says both present a “cavalier attitude toward human exposure to radioactive material.”

Radium causes cancer in people largely because it is treated as calcium by the body and becomes deposited in bones. It can mutate bones cells causing cancer and also impact on bone marrow. It can cause aplastic anemia an inability of bone marrow to produce sufficient new cells to replenish blood cells. Marie Curie, who discovered radium in 1893 and felt comfortable physically handling it, died of aplastic anemia.

Once radium was used in self-luminous paint for watch dials and even as an additive in products such as toothpaste and hair creams for purported “curative powers.”

There are “no specific treatments for radium poisoning,” advises the Delaware Health and Social Services Division of Public Health in its information sheet on radium. When first discovered, “no one knew that it was dangerous,” it mentions.

White’s report, entitled “Consideration of Radiation in Hazardous Waste Produced from Horizontal Hydrofracking,” notes that “radioactive materials and chemical wastes do not just go away when they are released into the environment. They remain active and potentially lethal, and can show up years later in unexpected places. They bio-accumulate in the food chain, eventually reaching humans.”

Under the fracking plan for New York State, “there are insufficient precautions for monitoring potential pathways or to even know what is being released into the environment,” it states.

The Department of Environmental Conservation “has not proposed sufficient regulations for tracking radioactive waste from horizontal hydrofracking,” it says. “Neither New York State nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would permit a nuclear power plant to handle radioactive material in this manner.”

Doug Wood, associate director of Grassroots Environmental Education, which is based in Port Washington, New York, and also editor of the report, commented as it was issued: “Once radioactive material comes out of the ground along with the gas, the problem is what to do with it. The radioactivity lasts for thousands of years, and it is virtually impossible to eliminate or mitigate. Sooner or later, it’s going to end up in our environment and eventually our food chain. It’s a problem with no good solution - and the DEC is unequipped to handle it.”

As for “various disposal methods…contemplated” by the agency “for the thousands of tons of radioactive waste expected to be produced by fracking,” Wood said that “none…adequately protect New Yorkers from eventual exposure to this radioactive material. Spread it on the ground and it will become airborne with dust or wash off into surface waters; dilute it before discharge into rivers and it will raise radiation levels in those rivers for everyone downstream; bury it underground and it will eventually find its way into someone’s drinking water. No matter how hard you try, you can’t put the radioactive genie back into the bottle.”

Furthermore, said Wood in an interview, in releasing radioactive radium from the ground, “a terrible burden would be placed on everybody that comes after us. As a moral issue, we must not burden future generations with this. We must say no to fracking -- and implement the use of sustainable forms of energy that don’t kill.”

The prospects of unleashing, through fracking, radium, a silvery-white metal, has a parallel in the mining of uranium on the Navajo Nation.

The mining began on the Navajo Nation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, during World War II as the Manhattan Project, the American crash program to build atomic weapons, sought uranium to fuel them. The Navajos weren’t told that mining the uranium, yellow in color, could lead to lung cancer. And lung cancer became epidemic among the miners and then spread across the Navajo Nation from piles of contaminated uranium tailings and other remnants of the mining.

The Navajos gave the uranium a name: Leetso or yellow monster.

Left in the ground, it would do no harm. But taken from the earth, it has caused disease. That is why the Navajo Nation outlawed uranium mining in 2005. “This legislation just chopped the legs off the uranium monster,” said Norman Brown, a Navajo leader.

Similarly, radium, a silvery-white monster, must be left in the earth, not unleashed, with fracking, to inflict disease on people today and many, many generations into the future.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/presidential-elections-powerful-special-interest-groups-won-again/5310972

Earthquake-Causing Fracking to Be Allowed within 500 Feet of Nuclear Plants

The American government has officially stated that fracking can cause earthquakes. Some fracking companies now admit this fact The scientific community agrees. See this, this, this, this and this.

Earthquakes can – of course – damage nuclear power plants. For example, even the operator of Fukushima and the Japanese government now admit that the nuclear cores might have started melting down before the tsuanmi ever hit. More here.

Indeed, the fuel pools and rods at Fukushima appear to have “boiled”, caught fire and/or exploded soon after the earthquake knocked out power systems. See this, this, this, this and this. And fuel pools in the United States store an average of ten times more radioactive fuel than stored at Fukushima, have virtually no safety features, and are vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks. And see this.

Indeed, American reactors may be even more vulnerable to earthquakes than Fukushima.

But American nuclear “regulators” have allowed numerous nuclear power plants to be built in earthquake zones:

Some plants are located in very high earthquake risk zones:

And they have covered up the risks from earthquakes for years … just like the Japanese regulators did. For example:

• The NRC won’t even begin conducting its earthquake study for Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York until after relicensing is complete in 2013, because the NRC doesn’t consider a big earthquake “a serious risk”

• Congressman Markey has said there is a cover up. Specifically, Markey alleges that the head of the NRC told everyone not to write down risks they find from an earthquake greater than 6.0 (the plant was only built to survive a 6.0 earthquake)

• We have 4 reactors in California – 2 at San Onofre 2 at San Luis Obisbo – which are vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis

For example, Diablo Canyon is located on numerous earthquake faults, and a state legislator and seismic expert says it could turn into California’s Fukushima:

On July 26th 2011 the California Energy Commission held hearings concerning the state’s nuclear safety. During those hearings, the Chairman of the Commission asked governments experts whether or not they felt the facilities could withstand the maximum credible quake. The response was that they did not know.This is similar to what happened at Fukushima: seismologists dire warnings were ignored (and see this.)

Yet the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t even take earthquake risk into account when deciding whether or not to relicense plants like Diablo Canyon.

Are They Fracking With Us?

American nuclear regulators are allowing earthquake-inducing fracking to be conducted mere feet from nuclear power plants.

As the Herald Standard reports:

Chesapeake Energy has a permit to frack just one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport. Whether that is cause for alarm, experts can’t say.

***

“Hydraulic fracturing near a nuclear plant is probably not a concern under normal circumstances,” [Richard Hammack, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory] said. “If there is a pre-stress fault that you happen to lubricate there (with fracking solution), that is the only thing that might result in something that is (seismically) measurable.”

That’s not very reassuring, given that “lubrication” of faults is the main mechanism by which fracking causes earthquakes. (Indeed,  the point is illustrated by the analogous fact that leading Japanese seismologists say that the Fukushima earthquake “lubricated” nearby faults, making a giant earthquake more likely than ever.)

And as Akron Beacon Journal notes, fracking is allowed with 500 feet of nuclear plants:

“We’re not aware of any potential impacts and don’t expect any,” said FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young today. “We see no reason to be particularly concerned.”

***

[But] experts can’t say if the proposed well so close to two nuclear power plants is cause for concern.

***

DEP spokesperson John Poister told the Shale Reporter that there are no required setbacks specifically relating to a required distance between such shale wells and nuclear facilities, just a blanket regulation requiring a 500-foot setback from any building to a natural gas well.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/earthquake-causing-fracking-to-be-allowed-within-500-feet-of-nuclear-plants/5309229

Fracking Poisoning Families at Alarming Rate: Report

Residents living near gas fracking sites suffer an increasingly high rate of health problems now linked to pollutants used in the gas extraction process, according to a new report released Thursday.

The study, conducted by Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project, pulled from a survey of 108 Pennsylvania residents in 14 counties, and a series of air and water tests. The results showed close to 70 percent of participants reported an increase in throat irritation and roughly 80 percent suffered from sinus problems after natural gas extraction companies moved to their areas. The symptoms intensify the closer the residents are to the fracking sites.

"We use water for nothing other than flushing the commode," said Janet McIntyre referring to the now toxic levels of water on her land, which neighbors a fracking site. McIntyre said her entire family, including their pets, suffered from a wide array of health problems including projectile vomiting and skin rashes, indicative of other families' symptoms in the areas surveyed. Other symptoms include sinus, respiratory, fatigue, and mood problems.

"Twenty-two households reported that pets and livestock began to have symptoms (such as seizures or losing hair) or suddenly fell ill and died after gas development began nearby,” the report finds.

After taking water and air samples, Earthworks detected chemicals that have been linked to oil and gas operations and also directly connected to many of the symptoms reported in the survey on the resident's properties. This study showed a higher concentration of ethylbenzene and xylene, volatile compounds found in petroleum hydrocarbons, at the households as compared to control sites.

“For too long, the oil and gas industry and state regulators have dismissed community members’ health complaints as ‘false’ or ‘anecdotal’,” said Nadia Steinzor, the project’s lead author. “With this research, they cannot credibly ignore communities any longer.”

According to a separate report released earlier this month, EPA regulators are having trouble keeping up with the "rapid pace" of shale oil and gas development, due to a lack in resources, staff, data and a number of legal loopholes.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/19-2

Why Scientists Are in Alarm Mode Over the Keystone XL Pipeline

Why are scientists in alarm mode over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700-mile long conduit that would transport a chemical-laden synthetic oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas? Scientists across specialized fields have joined forces to make public statements, penned a formal letter to President Obama, and have even committed acts of civil disobedience in front of the White House during the national Tar Sands Action [3].

What do they know that we don’t?

I sought out these questions, traveling to the furthest southern extent of Cape Cod to the township of Woods Hole; a place of world renown for its oceanic studies and a hub of scientific exploration since the late 1800s. I had come to meet with one of the signatories of the Obama letter [4], ecologist George M. Woodwell, at the Woods Hole Research Center.

While awaiting his arrival, I walked around the facility and its grounds. WHRC, also a campus, is ensconced in eight acres of oxygen-rich forest where burnt and downed tree trunks are left alone to decompose. The carpet of detritus underfoot was so dense and varied its components were indecipherable to the naked eye. The outdoor laboratory is a sliver of what they do on a global scale: WHRC is a preeminent collector of data on forests. They track and record the health of forests worldwide in tandem with cooperators in the Amazon, the Arctic, Africa, Russia, Alaska, Canada, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic.

Taiga Biome

Once the interview was underway, Woodwell, founder and director emeritus of WHRC, did not mince words about the Keystone XL project: “The tar sands is a complete scandal; it’s totally for profit—for Canadian profit, political profit, financial profit—and not for the public good because the oil poisons the world, and the methods of getting it poisons the world in more ways than anybody is admitting.”

Woodwell believes the role of government is to protect the public welfare, and that includes protection of the environment. For those who argue for less oversight, he presented an inventory of what a loosely regulated business world has produced in the past: slavery, the effluence of smelters that killed people and vegetation, silicosis in miners, and chemical and radiation poisoning of workers. For an example of a country in ecological collapse, he pointed to Haiti. “They don’t have a functioning environment, economy, or government. All must stand together. Take one away, or make one fail, and the others fail.”

He has been accused on more than one occasion of being political. Woodwell conducted the groundbreaking research on DDT that formed the basis for its eventual nationwide ban in 1972. He has a very short answer why such accusations exist: “Environmental science gets politicized because it has economic implications.”

Woodwell, who prefers the term “climate disruption” to climate change, is clear on what must be done to stabilize the already teetering-on-the-edge biosphere. The use of fossil fuels must be reduced and “we have to stop deforestation, all of it, all over the world because the carbon pool in the vegetation of the earth is connected to forests.”

The carbon storage capacity of forests is approximately three times as large as the pool of carbon in the atmosphere. If forests are changed, reduced, or eliminated, the pool, or captured carbon, goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). According to Woodwell, the carbon release from deforestation accounts for “25 to 30 percent of the four to five billion tons of carbon accumulating a year in the atmosphere from the total of all human activities.”

Listening to Woodwell explain the role of the tundra and forests in carbon sequestration, it became evident where his years of scientific research and the Keystone XL pipeline intersect. The tar sands are largely mined in northeastern Alberta in an area classified as boreal forest.

The boreal forest, or taiga, is the largest forest in the world. It is a circumpolar biome—a community of related plant and animal species fostered by a similar climate—occurring at high-altitudes across Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, and Russia. The boreal forest exists on 14.5 percent of the earth’s surface, but contains over 30 percent of the earth’s terrestrial carbon. The forest in its natural state is considered a sink: a repository for carbon. If disrupted, it becomes a source, releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.

Mining the Tar Sands

Techniques used to extract the tar sands are more akin to mining than drilling, both in the methods employed and amount of land destruction necessary for the removal of a tarry, viscous hydrocarbon called bitumen. Two techniques are used: in situ recovery and surface mining.

In situ recovery begins with drilling wells into bitumen deposits then injecting steam into the reservoir. The steam reduces viscosity and enables the bitumen to be pumped to the surface.

Surface mining, also referred to as strip mining, entails clearing large swaths of land. The forest is first cut down, followed by the removal of carbon-rich peat (the peat is put in storage for later usage in required remediation efforts). The bitumen and surrounding soils are then gouged out by heavy equipment. The usable hydrocarbon is separated on site using a caustic hot-water process, with the resultant wastewater sent to facilities for processing. The water is eventually stored in outdoor tailing ponds.

The tailing ponds, collectively covering more than 19 square miles, contain fine particulate matter and toxic chemicals (naphthenic acid and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). These open ponds, also a part of required reclamation, allow fine particles to settle. The estimated time for settlement varies from several decades to 150 years.

The total amount of energy used in tar sands extraction and production results in greater amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than from conventional sources of oil. The amount of increased emissions remains an issue of concern and calculation, though not all studies are equal.

The Department of Energy’s National Environmental Technology Lab estimated the GHG emissions of tar sands production to be “approximately 17 percent higher than gasoline from the 2005 average mix of crude oil consumed in the U.S.,” while a study conducted by TIAX, LLC, found emissions “only 2 percent higher when compared to gasoline from Venezuelan heavy crude.”

That’s a difference of 15 percent, though both reports used a “well-to-wheels” calculation. A well-to-wheels calculation factors in GHG emissions from extraction, processing, distribution, and combustion. But what about the additional emissions as a result of deforestation and the destabilization of associated soils—what scientists refer to as “land-use change”?

From Sink to Source

To some degree, this question is addressed in a paper by Yeh et al. (2010). In tar sands surface mining, by “removing the functional vegetation layer at the surface of a peatland, the disturbed ecosystem loses its ability to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere.” When peat is put into storage for later reclamation purposes, it decomposes, releasing CO2 and CH4 (commonly known as methane, one of six identified greenhouse gases). Over time, tailing ponds also produce CH4 emissions—a gas “25 times more potent than CO2.”

GHG emissions from land-use change factors in the loss of a sink (a natural system known to capture carbon), as well as the addition of sources (gases produced from stored peat and tailing ponds). I queried the State Department on whether these emissions had been considered in their estimates. The first spokesperson responded, “off the record, no.” The question was also submitted to the Clean Energy Branch of Alberta Environment, who quickly replied, “We have supported some scientific research in this respect; that work is currently in the peer review process so we cannot report on that work at this point in time.”

The area of boreal forest to be razed as part of tar sands extraction is small. So far, about 150 square miles of Canada’s two million square miles of boreal forest have been denuded for tar sands operations. If projected GHG emissions from land-use change were available, they would most likely be a fraction of the total. However, fractions add up and the exclusion of that data in final, official reports does say something about an approach to calculation that puts human activity at the top while neglecting to weigh long-term environmental outcomes.

Woodwell cautions it is time to consider environment and economy as mutually dependent: “We’re at a stage we can’t afford to lose any more forests in the world. The building up of carbon, year after the year, is the problem. We're pulling climate out from under all life including civilization, and the consequences of that are devastating."

http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-scientists-are-alarm-mode-over-keystone-xl-pipeline

Frackademia: Controversial SUNY Buffalo Shale Institute’s Reputation Unraveling

A storm is brewing in Buffalo and it's not the record snow storm typically associated with upstate New York. Rather, it's taking place in the ivory tower of academia and revolves around hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," for unconventional gas in the Marcellus Shale basin. 

Public funding has been cut to the tune of over $1.4 billion over the past five years in the State University of New York (SUNY) public university system under the watch of current Democratic Party governor and 2016 presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo and his predecessor, David Paterson.

These cuts have created new opportunities for the shale gas industry to fill a funding vacuum, with the SUNY system's coffers hollowed out and starved for cash. 

“It’s a growing problem across academia,” Mark Partridge, a professor of rural-urban policy at the Ohio State University, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Universities are so short of money, professors are under a lot of pressure to raise research funding in any manner possible.”

The oil industry's eagerness to fill the void for its personal gain can be seen through the case study of what we at DeSmog have coined the ongoing "Shill Gas" study scandal at the State University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo).

Among other findings, a DeSmog investigation reveals that one of the lesser-known offshoots of the Scaife family foundations, key bankrollers of the climate change denial machine, may potentially soothe SUNY Buffalo's budget woes with funding for the university-connected Shale Resources and Society Institute.

The Prelude to the Storm

A prelude for what's now transpiring occurred in Spring 2011, when SUNY Buffalo played host to the Marcellus Shale Lecture Series. Throughout the eight-part series, not a single speaker was a university-based scholar and all speakers but one were employed by some element of the oil and gas industry. The Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI) arose out of the series, as Daniel Robison of WBFO in Buffalo wrote in a recent article:

The decision to greenlight SRSI came after SUNY Buffalo hosted the Marcellus Shale Lecture Series in mid-2011...Last fall, enthusiasm stemming from the lecture series grew into informal discussions among the speakers, natural gas industry representatives and members of SUNY Buffalo’s geology department.

On Sept. 21, almost a year and a half after the completion of the Lecture Series, the UB Spectrum revealed the Series was also funded in large part by the gas industry, which gave SUNY Buffalo over $12,900 to host it. $5,000 of that cash came from the coffers of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York (IOGA).

 

"If the talk series is not part of the institute – if it’s just an independent talk series – then it is unlike any such series I have ever organized or attended in that it fails to acknowledge the moneys that paid for it," Jim Holstun, Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo and the Chair of SUNY Buffalo Coalition for Leading Ethically in Academic Research, told the UB Spectrum. 

Speaking at a gas industry public relations conference thought to be exclusively "among friends" in Houston on Oct 31-Nov. 1, 2011 - the same conference where it was revealed the gas industry is employing psychological warfare tactics on U.S. citizens - S. Dennis Holbrook of IOGA of NY confirmed the SUNY Buffalo relationship. Holbrook stated that it's crucial for industry to "seek out academic studies and champion with universities—because that again provides tremendous credibility to the overall process."

Explaining that the gas industry is viewed "very skeptically" by the public, Holbrook said that to gain credibility, IOGA of NY has "aligned with the University at Buffalo (aka SUNY Buffalo)—we’ve done a variety of other activities where we’ve gotten the academics to sponsor programs and bring in people for public sessions to educate them on a variety of different topics."

Shady SUNY Buffalo Study Opens Backlash Floodgates

SSRI produced a study in May 2012 titled, "Environmental Impacts During Shale Gas Drilling: Causes, Impacts and Remedies." Calling the final product a "study" is a generous way of putting it, as we reported: all four co-authors had ties to the oil and gas industry, as did four of five of its peer reviewers. The study didn't contain any acknowledgement of these ties.

John Martin, one of the study's co-authors and one of the speakers on the spring 2011 Marcellus Shale Lecture Series, serves as the Director of the SRSI, a quarter-time gig earning him $60,000/year. He also currently serves as a Consultant at JPMartin Energy Strategy LLC, where "he has spent decades working in various sectors of the oil and gas industry," and wrote one of the first scholarly papers on the drilling potential of Ohio's Utica Shale basin. The paper helped "stimulate significant industry investment in this resource," in its early days of production, according to his JPMartin bio page.

JPMartin recently served as the peer reviewer of the just released Inglewood, CA hydraulic fracturing study, which found "no harm from the method," paving the way for a forthcoming fracking boom in the Monterrey Shale basin.

In announcing the SRSI's launch, Martin told the Elmira Star Gazette, "We're really trying to provide fact-based, objective information. We're guided by science." 

Martin's "guided by science" myth was put to rest roughly a week after the SRSI's release of its premier study, when the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) released a report of its own. PAI's report pointed to seriously - and likely purposefully - flawed methodology, writing:

[We] conducted an analysis of the report and identified a number of problems that undermine its conclusion: data in the report shows that the likelihood of major environmental events has actually gone up, contradicting the report’s central claim; entire passages were lifted from an explicitly pro-fracking Manhattan Institute report; and report’s authors and reviewers have extensive ties to the natural gas industry.

What's followed the PAI report has been nothing short of a mainstream media monsoon of stories covering the influence the oil and gas industry has over academia - pejoratively referred to by some as "frackademia" - with stories published in outlets ranging from Bloomberg, the Associated Press, The New York Times, Wired, Inside Higher Education, the Texas Observer, and in many others.

SUNY Buffalo Professors, SUNY Board of Trustees Call for Probe of Institute's Origins

Fast-forward to August 23, 2012, when 83 SUNY Buffalo faculty and staff members signed a letter calling for an independent investigation delving into the origins of the SRSI. 

Weeks later, on September 12, 2012, the SUNY System's Board of Trustees backed up the demand of these 83 SUNY Buffalo faculty and staff members, passing a unanimous resolution of their own calling for SUNY Buffalo to look into all of the details of the origins of the SRSI. 

SUNY Buffalo's Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Charles Zukoski, offered a retort of both the SUNY Buffalo letter and the SUNY System resolution, stating, "No policies were broken in the establishment" of the SRSI and that SUNY Buffalo "received no industry funding" for the SRSI.

FOIL Documents Show Deep Ties to Oil and Gas Industry, Climate Change Deniers, Rebutting Zukoski 

Two key details raise serious immediate red flags about Zukoski's claims of recieving "no industry funding."

The first: in its initial call out for funding, the SRSI stated it was seeking three-year $1.14 million corporate memberships "to create a dynamic and impactful program." Corporate members also are given a spot on the SRSI's Advisory Board, "ensuring focused alignment of purpose and deliverables," according to the funding request form. Put another way, three-year corporate memberships would yield some sort of deliverable goods for oil and gas corporations - a quid pro quo, if you will.

The second: on Sept. 13, Buffalo's ArtVoice released the fruits of a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. One of the documents, dated Aug. 7, 2011, read that a "funding plan for alumni and large corporations has been in the works for two years. A pitch to alumni and corporate interests in Houston is planned for October, following on two earlier meetings there in Spring, 2011." Houston serves as the headquarters for numerous oil and gas corporations, and is a great place to go in search of funding for "frackademics."  

That same document also showed that the SRSI, as of Aug. 7, 2011, had already received money from IOGA of NY. It also states that SRSI has "good contacts with National Fuel, their wholly owned subsidiary Seneca Resources, and other resource companies involved in the [Marcellus Shale]." Beyond merely offering to fund the SRSI, IOGA of NY has also provided "organizational help," according to the document. 

IOGA's Board of Directors has representatives from Shell, Chesapeake Energy, and many other players in the unconventional gas sphere. National Fuel/Seneca "operates approximately 2,500 wells located in western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania...[and currently] owns approximately 730,000 acres of fee minerals, 260,000 acres of leased minerals and 100,000 acres of surface and timber rights throughout the region," according to its website. 

The document also reveals that the SRSI solicited funding from the Colcom Foundation, an outfit started in 1996 by Cordelia Scaife May, the late sister of Richard Mellon Scaife. She passed away in 2005 but the Foundation lives on.

The Scaife family foundations are major funders of the climate change denial machine, founded by Richard Mellon Scaife, whom the Washington Post dubbed the "funding father of the right" in a 1999 two-part investigative series.

Holstun, in an interview with DeSmogBlog, said of this set of circumstances:

In sending out the corporate appeal, the Institute promised industry contributors a helping hand in running the institute and defining its priorities, an egregious violation of academic integrity. The UB Administration are stewards of the university’s reputation. They must come clean immediately with full information about the founding, funding, and governance of the Institute. Otherwise, they are not doing their jobs, and our reputation will suffer even more.

High Stakes Game in Buffalo for Future of Integrity of Higher Education Research

The SUNY Buffalo tale is merely a sequel to the controversial 2009 Marcellus Shale Coalition-funded scientific study published by Penn State University, a relationship recently terminated by PSU. The Coalition's membership list includes nearly every company involved in the fracking process in the Marcellus Shale basin.

As budgets continue to be slashed by governors in statehouses nationwide for public higher education, we can expect to see more stories like SUNY Buffalo's unfold at increasingly privatized universities nationwide. PAI demonstrated as much in a follow-up report, revealing University of Texas-Austin also serves as a "frackademia" epicenter. Mother Jones similarly revealed that the gas industry has set up shop in Ohio's universities.

The original Aug. 23 letter penned by the 83 professors raised the key question cutting to the heart of this saga, closing where this article began: "Will cash-strapped public universities, eager to curry favor with potential corporate funders who may stand to gain from certain research, surrender their historic independence in return for possible corporate financial support?" 

Time will tell.

But as Jennifer Washburn, author of the book "University, Inc." stated in a Jan. 2011 article, today's "university looks and behaves more and more like a for-profit commercial entity." 

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/frackademia-controversial-suny-buffalo-shale-institutes-reputation-unraveling-1350096975

http://www.nationofchange.org/frackademia-controversial-suny-buffalo-shale-institutes-reputation-unraveling-1350096975

Action Alert: The Rockaway Pipeline

The Rockaway Lateral is yet another high-pressure, large-diameter gas pipeline, proposed to run across newly restoredwetlands in Jamaica Bay, under Riis Park beach, Floyd Bennett Field, all the way to Avenue U, near the always-crowded Kings Plaza shopping center in Brooklyn. 

All the same problems with fracking and radon that apply to the Spectra pipeline also apply to the Rockaway Lateral––and more: grave risks to delicate wetlands as well as risks from frequent brush fires at Floyd Bennett field. And the safety record of this pipeline builder (Williams Transco) is just as bad as Spectra's. In fact, since 2008, there's been only one month out of the past 45 in which they have not operated under a federal Corrective Action Order. Just this past March, they were fined $50,000 for failures related to corrosion control on pipes running through Staten Island.

Comments Due by Monday, 5pm, June 25, 2012!

Public comments are needed by 5pm June 25th. It's easy to e-comment on the FERC website. Reference Docket No. PF09-8-000. In a rush? Cut and paste from this sample comment.

A New York Strangled by Pipelines?

This pipeline is another piece of the pie in Mayor Bloomberg's plan to convert all of NYC to methane. Lawmakers are buying into the false promise of cleaner skies via boiler conversions, and ignoring the health risks from air pollution, water contamination and radon that come with use of fracked gas. Even uber-liberal Congressional leaders and Senators have been unabashedly supportive of this shale gas takeover.  Did you even HEAR about the Congressional ok for this pipeline? It snuck through Congress in February, and is now up for grabs in the Senate. Watch this clip from "Inside City Hall" for some background. Schumer and Gillibrand have been tough nuts to crack on this issue, but we urge you to communicate your opposition to this plan. We want a New York run on clean energy--wind, water and solar--not on polluting shale gas!

Read More:

http://saneenergyproject.org/events/

German Government to Oppose Fracking

Berlin is opposed to plans to use the controversial fracking process to extract natural gas in Germany, SPIEGEL has learned. Government ministers are "very skeptical" about the technology, which environmentalists claim can pollute groundwater.

Germany has put the brakes on plans to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to extract natural gas in places where it is difficult to access, such as shale or coal beds. Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler have agreed to oppose the controversial process for the time being, SPIEGEL has learned.

Sources in the German government said that the ministers were "very skeptical" about fracking, which injects chemicals as well as sand and water into the ground to release natural gas. "There are many open questions which we will first have to carefully examine," Rösler told close associates.

With their stance, the two ministers are opposing plans by energy companies to use the fracking process to tap into deposits of natural gas in shale, especially in northern and eastern Germany. In order to access the gas, the shale needs to be fractured using a mixture of hot water, sand and chemical additives, some of which are poisonous. Environmental groups reject the use of the technology, saying that the chemicals used can contaminate drinking water.

Read More:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-rejects-fracking-to-tap-natural-gas-a-831764.html

Neev M. Arnell - The truth about fracking and how it is harming our environment

Oil and gas companies are engaged in fracking, a gas drilling process hailed as an economy booster, job creator and greener energy source. However, fracking has propelled hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous, carcinogenic and radioactive chemicals into gas wells in 13 states, according to the new House and Energy Commerce Committee report covered in the New York Times (http://nyti.ms/lDzSYo).

The drilling method, also called hydraulic fracturing, uses a fluid consisting of water, sand and chemicals injected under high pressure to release oil and gas from cracks in shale rock 5,000 to 8,000 feet underground. The practice has been mired in controversy with claims that it is destroying the environment while some lawmakers work hand in hand with energy industry lobbyists.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/032358_fracking_gas_drilling.html

Mitchell J. Rabin - Is the natural gas industry fracking itself?

The number of social, political and economic problems we're facing today are nothing short of daunting. With the momentum of privatization of otherwise public works, and even subordinating elected officials to the whim of corporate profiteers as in Benton Harbor, MI, gives some indication of how powerful the corporatization of these United States of America is. On last week's front cover, Time Magazine pictured the Constitution with its ends being frayed with the query "Does it Matter?"

One is thrown to ask, what is becoming of the American Psyche? Has this robust nation been subterfuged by the torpedoes of reality TV and the myopia of texting? Are fast food, micro-waved cooking and the fast-paced, cell phone, SUV culture with nary a care in the world grinding to a half, coming home to roost empty-handed? Thoughtful individuals who really care about our country and its values are giving all of this a lot of thought. And so interestingly, is one of the most hyped and fast-paced, money-at-any-expense industries in our nation: the natural gas industry.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/032893_natural_gas_fracking.html