Fracking Company Made It Rain Toxic Water Upon New Mexico

Penny Aucoin, her husband Carl Dee George, their son Gideon and their daughter Skyler have had their lives devastated by the fracking industry.

There was no oil and gas infrastructure where they lived when they moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico. But six years ago, during a massive expansion of drilling across the Permian Basin that spans West Texas and southeastern New Mexico — one of the most prolific oil and gas basins in the United States — the drilling began.

It was so loud they had to provide hearing protection for Skyler. Then when the flaring commenced, dead birds began literally falling out of the sky right next to their home, and one of their chickens died.

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Trump’s Golden Era Of Energy Is Turning To Lead

It was just over a year ago that President Trump announced, “The golden era of American energy is now underway,” saying that his policies focused on exploiting oil, gas, and coal were “unleashing energy dominance.” 

What a difference a year makes. On July 10, the Financial Times ran an article with a headline that asked, “Is the party finally over for U.S. oil and gas?” And there is no doubt that it has been quite a party for the last decade. At least, for the fracking executives who have enriched themselves while losing hundreds of billions of dollars investors gave them to produce oil and gas.

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Biden Climate Plan Will ‘Double Down’ On Oil; Dakota Access Lives On

Presumptive Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden has released his climate plan, and it’s drawn mixed reviews on its ambitiousness and ability to combat the climate crisis. The plan is an endorsement of business as usual for the oil and gas industry in the United States—and then some.

Echoing the recent plans published by the Sanders-Biden Unity Committee and the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, Biden’s plan calls for the United States to meet “net-zero” on greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 without calling for a phaseout on fracking or other domestic fossil fuels production. Instead of calling for a fossil fuel phaseout, Biden has called for a “double down.”

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Atlantic Coast Pipeline Canceled Following Years Of Protests

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), which would have carried fracked natural gas through 600 miles of West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, will never be completed.

Pipeline owners Dominion and Duke Energy announced Sunday they were cancelling the fossil fuel project due to mounting delays and uncertainty. They said the many legal challenges to the project had driven up the projected costs by almost half, from $4.5 to $5 billion when it was first announced in 2014 to $8 billion according to the most recent estimate.

Environmental and community groups, who have long opposed the project on climate, conservation and racial justice grounds, welcomed the news.

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Gavin Newsom Hands Out Fracking Permits To Connected Driller

On June 1, in the midst of the turmoil created by the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration quietly issued 12 fracking permits to Aera Energy, a joint venture owned by ExxonMobil and Shell. The fracking permits are the latest example of California’s oil industry benefiting from regulatory or deregulatory action during the COVID-19 pandemic and came just months after the Newsom administration said it supported taking actions to “manage the decline of oil production and consumption in the state.” Aera, which also received 24 permits from the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) on April 3 during the early days of COVID-19, has well-connected lobbyists in its corner who work for the firm Axiom Advisors.

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Could COVID-19 Spell The End Of The Fracking Industry?

It has always been known that the oil and gas industry only survives by way of debt financing. Fracking is capital intensive, and very few companies involved ever actually even turn a profit in excess of the cost of capital.

Instead, they have always operated by dependency on cheap money from Wall Street banks to finance their drilling and operations.

Fred Nathan is the executive director of Think New Mexico, an independent nonpartisan statewide think tank whose mission is “to improve the quality of life for all New Mexicans, especially those who lack a strong voice in the political process.” Nathan said that the contraction of the oil and gas industry in New Mexico is a “cause for deep concern” for the state budget, because every time the price of a barrel of oil drops $1, the state’s general fund takes a $22 million hit.

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Rights Of Nature Law Forces Revocation Of Fracking Permit

Grant Township, Indiana County, Pennsylvania – In an extraordinary reversal, last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) revoked a permit for a frack waste injection well in Grant Township. DEP officials cited Grant Township’s Home Rule Charter banning injection wells as grounds for their reversal.

Injection wells are toxic sewers for the fracking industry that cause earthquakes, receive radioactive waste, and threaten drinking water and ecosystems. 

Township residents popularly adopted a Home Rule Charter (local constitution) in 2015 that contains a “Community Bill of Rights.” The Charter bans injection wells as a violation of the rights of those living in the township and recognizes rights of nature.

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Is The U.S. Fracking Boom Based On Fraud?

In a 2016 interview with Fraud Magazine, former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow explained what he thought made him so successful while at the former energy corporation that’s now infamous for financial scandal. “I think my ability to do structured financing, to finance things off-balance sheet and to find ways to manipulate financial statements — there’s no nice way to say it. Like I said at the conference, I was good at finding loopholes.”

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Canadian Doctors Demand Fracking Moratorium On Health & Climate Grounds

Within the report, concerns focus on negative health outcomes from environmental toxins such as naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs); the complex level of chemicals used in the fracking process, and the varying degree of toxicity these carry to impact to human health; water contamination through poor regulatory monitoring; psychological and mental impacts from living close to unconventional gas developments…

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After A Decade Of Fracking, Billions Of Dollars Lost And A Climate In Crisis

As 2020 begins, the impacts of climate change have become increasingly clear around the world. The new year started amid devastating wildfires, tied to the worst droughts Australia has experienced in hundreds of years, which encircled much of the continent. So far, 29 people have been reported dead. A University of Sydney professor estimated the number of animals killed likely tops one billion.

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This Problem With Fracked Oil And Gas Wells Is Occurring ‘At An Alarming Rate’

On February 15, 2018, a fracked natural gas well owned by ExxonMobil’s XTO Energy and located in southeast Ohio experienced a well blowout, causing it to gush the potent greenhouse gas methane for nearly three weeks. The obscure accident ultimately resulted in one of the biggest methane leaks in U.S. history. The New York Times reported in December that new satellite data revealed that this single gas well leaked more methane in 20 days than an entire year’s worth of methane released by the oil and gas industries in countries like Norway and France.

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Environmental Groups Sue Trump Administration Calling Plan To Open Millions Of Acres Of Public Land To Fracking ‘Illegal’

Environmental groups are pushing back on the Trump administration’s decision to expand fracking in California. A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday challenges the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to open more than a million acres of public lands in Central California to oil and gas leasing, Common Dreams reported. Calling BLM’s fracking plan “illegal” and a “disaster for Central Valley communities,” the Center for Biologocal Diversity is joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Central California Environmental Justice Network…

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Weymouth And Quincy Communities Assaulted By Enbridge’s Reckless Construction Practices

Construction of a fracked gas compressor station in Weymouth, MA, started after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a Notice to Proceed with Construction on November 27, the day before Thanksgiving. A spokesman for the energy company Enbridge at the time wrote in an email: “We remain committed to ensuring construction activities are conducted in compliance with all applicable requirements, with public health and safety as our priority.”

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As Fracking Companies Face Bankruptcy, US Regulators Enable Firms To Duck Cleanup Costs

In over their heads with debt, U.S. shale oil and gas firms are now moving from a boom in fracking to a boom in bankruptcies. This trend of failing finances has the potential for the U.S. public, both at the state and federal levels, to be left on the hook for paying to properly shut down and clean up even more drilling sites.

Expect these companies to try reducing their debt through the process of bankruptcy and, like the coal industry, attempting to get out of environmental and employee-related financial obligations. In October, EP Energy — one of the largest oil producers in the Eagle Ford Shale region in Texas — filed for bankruptcy because the firm couldn’t pay back almost $5 billion in debt, making it the largest oil and gas bankruptcy since 2016.

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