COP 25 is over and the people have spoken – from Chile to Madrid, largely indigenous-led protests are highlighting the uselessness of these climate summits and the danger of falling for greenwashed false solutions in the age of climate chaos. Next, you’ve likely heard of fracking, but do you know about frac sand mining? Ted Auch from Frac Tracker takes us into this seldom-discussed world of environmental destruction.
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Wingdale, NY – Impacted residents and supporters from across the Northeast, including local farmers, used a tractor blockade and climbed a 275ft tall smokestack halting construction of the Cricket Valley fracked gas power plant for a day on November 6, 2019, citing the plant’s large contribution to climate change and local air pollution, they are calling on Governor Cuomo to shut down the fracked gas power plant for good.
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Last Friday, October 11, a “Virtual Pipeline” truck carrying compressed natural gas crashed on a highway in Orange, Massachusetts, killing the driver, leaking the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, and leading local authorities to evacuate nearby residents. “Let me put this in perspective, if one of these trucks blew up in the right conditions, it could destroy a neighborhood,” said Bill Huston, director of a research and advocacy program called Terra Vigilate, and one of a small group of advocates raising awareness about the extreme risks of fire and explosion of Virtual Pipeline trucks.
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Fracking bans have begun to sweep across the world, with Ireland, France, Germany and Bulgaria declaring a moratorium on the deadly fossil fuel process. While the U.S. is lagging behind in the effort to stop the ill effects of global climate crisis, states like Vermont, Washington, Maryland and New York have passed bans. Both Georgia and Florida have attempted these bans as well. Banning fracking isn’t enough, though. Fracking infrastructure is being built in states with bans and is continuing the fossil fuel industry’s race to drain the remaining dirty energy sources from the Earth.
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As methane concentrations increase in the Earth’s atmosphere, chemical fingerprints point to a probable source: shale oil and gas, according to new Cornell research published Aug. 14 in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union. The research suggests that this methane has less carbon-13 relative to carbon-12 (denoting the weight of the carbon atom at the center of the methane molecule) than does methane from conventional natural gas and other fossil fuels such as coal. This carbon-13 signature means that since the use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing – commonly called fracking…
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Science. Evidence. Facts. Do these even matter anymore in U.S. policy? They should — especially when it comes to issues that affect our health and environment, like fracking. Concerned Health Professionals of New York and my organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, recently released a remarkable compendium of research on the subject. It summarizes and links to over 1,500 articles and reports and has become the go-to source for activists, health professionals, and others seeking to understand fracking. The new studies we looked at expose serious threats to health, justice, and the climate.
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RICHMOND, Va. — Today, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a permit that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) needs to continue construction. A three-judge panel vacated the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) review of the ACP’s impacts related to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), ruling that the FWS “lost sight of its mandate” when rushing the review for the pipeline instead of protecting threatened wildlife.
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Over 30 water protectors from around communities around Virginia walked on to the MVP worksite at Cove Hollow just over the hill from the Yellow Finch blockade blocking work while singing and dancing as a community. Dozens of peaceful protesters walked on to a Mountain Valley Pipeline work site on Cove Hollow Road, stopping work for approximately an hour — they rallied, sang, and left around 10:45 am. After that action, the police swarmed to the nearby Yellow Finch tree-sit blockade en masse, immediately arresting 3 pipeline fighters.
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Oil wastewater disposal from oil and gas production may cause earthquakes for decades even after operations or are reduced, says new research published earlier this week.
Fracking, along with oil and gas production in general, in the United States is a booming industry. With this comes an increase in the rate of oilfield wastewater production. Fracking, the process of shooting water mixed with sand and chemicals into the earth to release the oil and natural gas from rock formations.
Fracking produces huge volumes of wastewater that contains cancer-causing chemicals, salts and naturally occurring radioactive material that can cause earthquakes and contaminate aquifers.
According to the United States Geological Survey, wastewater disposal from oil and gas production is the number one cause of human-induced earthquakes.
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Steve Schlotterbeck, who led drilling company EQT as it expanded to become the nation’s largest producer of natural gas in 2017, arrived at a petrochemical industry conference in Pittsburgh Friday morning with a blunt message about shale gas drilling and fracking. “The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster for any buy-and-hold investor in the shale gas industry with very few limited exceptions,” Schlotterbeck, who left the helm of EQT last year, continued. “In fact, I’m not aware of another case of a disruptive technological change that has done so much harm to the industry that created the change.”
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Tensions ran hot Wednesday night during a community meeting about proposed fracking at the site of U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Steel mill in Braddock, 10 miles east of downtown Pittsburgh. Approximately 200 residents jammed into the rowdy meeting, held in a fire hall bedecked with electronic bingo boards and folding chairs. Dozens lined up at a microphone to tell representatives from U.S. Steel, Merrion Oil and Gas, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection exactly what they thought of the fracking plan.
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Commentary: Crowds gathered today for a climate strike in front of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) state office in Santa Fe to protest the lease sale of 11,000 acres of public and ancestral tribal lands in Greater Chaco and Greater Carlsbad regions. The BLM is moving forward with this controversial lease sale despite having received over 33,000 protest comments from tribal leaders, environmental groups, and members of the public expressing concerns that the sale would have negative impacts on cultural resources, public health, and the climate.
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This is Dimitri Lascars reporting for The Real News Network. Media have descended on Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria devastated the island a year and a half ago, and many reported on its struggle to rebuild its energy grid. But behind the scenes, some policymakers and fossil fuel industry leaders are using the crisis to transform Puerto Rico into a hub for liquefied natural gas–gas obtained from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the mainland United States.
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In a landmark victory for climate, health, and public lands, a federal judge late yesterday rejected the sale of public lands for fracking and ordered a halt to drilling on more than 300,000 acres in Wyoming. “This ruling is a triumph for our climate,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program director. “To limit greenhouse gas emissions, we have to start keeping our fossil fuels in the ground and putting an end to selling public lands for fracking. This decision is a critical step toward making that happen.”
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While U.S. politicians from both parties have given standing ovations for the U.S. oil and gas industry, investors appear to be losing their enthusiasm. The so-called shale revolution, the fracking miracle, may have resulted in record oil and gas production in North America, but the real miracle — in which shale companies make money fracking that oil and gas — has yet to occur. The North American natural gas industry is facing a crisis with an oversupplied market and producers that are losing money.
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