Jonathan Benson - Is natural gas 'fracking' responsible for the recent earthquake swarms in strange locations?

The natural gas industry and its advocates claim that hydraulic fracturing, the modern technique for extracting natural gas, also known as "fracking," is beneficial to the interests of American energy independence.

However, a simple report recently issued by KARK 4 News in Little Rock, Ark., suggests that fracking operations, which involve pumping large amounts of water and chemicals deep underground, may be responsible for triggering the mysterious earthquakes that have been striking in unusual locations across the nation in recent months.

One of at least 14 US states where fracking operations are currently active, Arkansas is not exactly the most seismically active region in the US. Though the state sits near the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), a fault that is considered to have the highest earthquake risk outside the West Coast, the area typically only experiences a few small shakes in an average month, with larger ones occurring on an even more sporadic basis.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/033677_fracking_earthquakes.html

Tara Green - EPA finally acknowledges fracking dangers

The Environmental Protection Agency on December 7 released its first report linking fracking to water contamination. The report identified fracking as the source of poisons, including the carcinogen benzene, in the groundwater of a central Wyoming community.

 Something in the water

Pavillion, Wyoming is a small community of 174 people located on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The town sits in the middle of the state's huge gas patch which companies such as Encana Oil & Gas, Noble Energy and ConocoPhillips have turned into drilling fields. Since the mid-90s, more than 200 gas wells have been drilled near the small town. Approximately ten years ago, members of the rural community also observed new illnesses in local livestock. Around the same time, they also noticed their well water had a strange smell and taste, "like a cross between something dead and diesel fuel" as one resident describes it.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/034401_EPA_fracking_well_water.html

Jonathan Benson - EPA report concludes that natural gas 'fracking' causes groundwater contamination

For the first time, a federal report has verified that chemicals used in natural gas hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking," can, and do, cause groundwater contamination. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a 121-page draft report on the issue that contain evidence linking water contamination in Pavillion, Wyo., to fracking chemicals from nearby gas wells.

For years, the natural gas industry has denied that fracking contaminates groundwater, insisting that hydraulic pressure forces fracking fluids so far down into the ground that they cannot travel back up into water supplies. The industry also claims that layers in the earth's crust prevent chemicals from moving towards the surface by acting as a watertight barrier.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/034470_natural_gas_fracking_groundwater.html

Ian Urbina and Jo Craven McGinty - Learning Too Late of the Perils in Gas Well Leases

After Scott Ely and his father talked with salesmen from an energy company about signing the lease allowing gas drilling on their land in northeastern Pennsylvania, he said he felt certain it required the company to leave the property as good as new.

So Mr. Ely said he was surprised several years later when the drilling company, Cabot Oil and Gas, informed them that rather than draining and hauling away the toxic drilling sludge stored in large waste ponds on the property, it would leave the waste, cover it with dirt and seed the area with grass. He knew that waste pond liners can leak, seeping contaminated waste. 

“I guess our terms should have been clearer” about requiring the company to remove the waste pits after drilling, said Mr. Ely, of Dimock, Pa., who sued Cabot after his drinking water from a separate property was contaminated. “We learned that the hard way.”

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/drilling-down-fighting-over-oil-and-gas-well-leases.html

Ian Urbina - Hunt for Gas Hits Fragile Soil, and South Africans Fear Risks

When a drought dried up their wells last year, hundreds of farmers and their families flocked to local fairgrounds here to pray for rain, and a call went out on the regional radio station imploring South Africans to donate bottled water.

Covering much of the roughly 800 miles between Johannesburg and Cape Town, this arid expanse — its name means “thirsty land” — sees less rain in some parts than the Mojave Desert.

Even so, Shell and several other large energy companies hope to drill thousands of natural gas wells in the region, using a new drilling technology that can require a million gallons of water or more for each well. Companies will also have to find a way to dispose of all the toxic wastewater or sludge that each well produces, since the closest landfill or industrial-waste facility that can handle the waste is hundreds of miles away.

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/world/south-african-farmers-see-threat-from-fracking.html?_r=1

David Holmes - My Water's On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)

"My Water's On Fire Tonight" is a product of Studio 20 NYU (http://bit.ly/hzGRYP) in collaboration with ProPublica.org (http://bit.ly/5tJN). The song is based on ProPublica's investigation on hydraulic fractured gas drilling (read the full investigation here: http://bit.ly/15sib6).

Music by David Holmes and Andrew Bean
Vocals and Lyrics by David Holmes and Niel Bekker
Animation by Adam Sakellarides and Lisa Rucker

Breaking Up with the Sierra Club

Orion‘s search for a more truthful relationship between humans and the natural world occasionally calls for the expression of outrage. The more we learn about a gas-drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking”—the more we see it as a zenith of violence and disconnect, impulses that seem to be gathering on the horizon like thunder clouds.

Long-time friend and Orion columnist Sandra Steingraber has been particularly vocal about the dangers of fracking. Her columns in recent issues of the magazine have frequently been dedicated to the issue; and last year, after receiving a Heinz Award for her work, Steingraber donated the cash prize to the fight against fracking in her home state of New York.

Read More:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/newsfrom187/entry/6799/

New report links an increased public cancer risk with fracking sites

Air pollution caused by hydraulic fracking has for the first time been linked to acute and chronic health problems for those living near the drilling sites, a new report has found. 

A three-year study by researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health has shown the process of hydraulic fracturing increases the levels of toxic gases in the local atmosphere, which include traces of cancer-causing chemicals. 

"Our data show that it is important to include air pollution in the national dialogue on natural gas development that has focused largely on water exposures to hydraulic fracturing," said Lisa McKenzie, PhD, MPH, lead author of the study and research associate at the Colorado School of Public Health.

Read More:

http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/data/123323-new-report-links-an-increased-public-cancer-risk-with-fracking-sites.html

Walter Brasch - Fracking: Pennsylvania Gags Physicians

A new Pennsylvania law [5] endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking.

Fracking is the controversial method of forcing water, gases, and chemicals at tremendouspressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch into a rock formation as much as 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels.

Advocates of fracking argue not only is natural gas “greener” than coal and oil energy, with significantly fewer carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur emissions, the mining of natural gas generates significant jobs in a depressed economy, and will help the U.S. reduce its oil dependence upon foreign nations. Geologists estimate there may be as much as 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas throughout the United States. If all of it is successfully mined, it could not only replace coal and oil but serve as a transition to wind, solar, and water as primary energy sources, releasing the United States from dependency upon fossil fuel energy and allowing it to be more self-sufficient.

Read More:

http://www.truth-out.org/fracking-pennsylvania-gags-physicians/1332078396

Confirmed: Fracking Caused Ohio Earthquakes

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has confirmed that a series of earthquakes in the state were caused by injecting leftover fracking fluids, "brine," deep into wells.

ODNR stated today:

Geologists believe induced seismic activity is extremely rare, but it can occur with the confluence of a series of specific circumstances. After investigating all available geological formation and well activity data, ODNR regulators and geologists found a number of co-occurring circumstances strongly indicating the Youngstown area earthquakes were induced. Specifically, evidence gathered by state officials suggests fluid from the Northstar 1 disposal well [a deep injection well primarily used for oil and gas fluid waste disposal] intersected an unmapped fault in a near-failure state of stress causing movement along that fault.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/09-1