ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT: Oscar-nominated documentary highlights the drawbacks to natural-gas drilling

Posted on February 26, 2011

Gasland, a documentary that tackles the environmental side effects associated with drilling for natural gas, is up for an Oscar for the best documentary feature at the Academy Awards ceremony tomorrow. Not surprisingly, the fossil-fuel industry attacked the claims that are made in the documentary. However, given the history of environmental litigation that’s associated with fossil-fuel companies and their wrongdoings, the efforts of fossil-fuel companies to circumvent and stifle environmental regulations, and the known environmental crimes that have been committed against the human environment by the fossil-fuel industry, I believe that claims made by the fossil-fuel industry should be taken with a grain of salt. Here is a review of Gasland via Scientific American (a comprehensive review of claims made in Gasland can be found at Greenwire):

Scientific American got its hands on a pre-release copy of the film months before it aired on HBO, and the movie convinced me to write a feature article investigating the claims of fracking critics and promoters. After doing my own research and interviews, it became apparent that, like most documentaries, Gasland revealed surprising facts, amplified a few, and chose to gloss over a couple others. What writer and producer Josh Fox did achieve, regardless, was to blow the lid off the secrecy that kept most local residents, not to mention scientists and regulators, in the dark about the chemicals used in fracking and their possible effects. And he certainly put me on the reporting trail.

You can see a trailer here. And do your own handicapping of Gasland‘s competitors for the Oscar.

And from New Scientist:

[Josh Fox] spends a lot of time on three Colorado households who can all set their water on fire. All three cases were investigated by Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, and while one was indeed traced to fracking, the other two apparently have nothing to do with it. One homeowner had inadvertently drilled his well through four coal beds, which contained natural gas.

Indeed, the film is at the centre of a row over its supposed inaccuracies. An organisation called Energy in Depth (EiD) has produced a lengthy list of criticisms. But it is worth noting that EiD is funded by a host of major oil and gas companies, and that Fox has produced an equally lengthy rebuttal of their comments.

Regardless of the arguments, will Gasland take home the Oscar? It seems unlikely that arguments about its accuracy will sway the Academy much. But for the record, my money’s on Banksy.

More via the Connecticut Post:

“Gasland” is up for best documentary at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony. Director Josh Fox’s dark portrayal of greedy energy companies, sickened homeowners and oblivious regulators has stirred heated debate among the various stakeholders in a natural gas boom that is sweeping parts of the U.S. The film has galvanized anti-drilling activists while drawing complaints about its accuracy and objectivity.

In a letter to the academy, Lee Fuller, the executive director of an industry-sponsored group named Energy In Depth, called “Gasland” an “expression of stylized fiction” with “errors, inconsistencies and outright falsehoods.”

He asked the academy to consider “remedial actions” against the film.

Davis, the executive director, wrote to Fuller that if the academy were to act on every complaint made about a nominated film, “it would not be possible even to have a documentary category.” He said the academy must “trust the intelligence of our members” to sort out fact from fiction.

. . .

Fox said the industry’s campaign against “Gasland” has backfired.

“What they’re doing is calling more attention to the film, so I think it works against them,” the director said from Los Angeles. “But I think it shows how aggressive they are, how bullying they are, and how willing they are to lie to promote the falsehood that it’s OK to live in a gas drilling area.”

The documentary category is no stranger to controversy. Michael Moore films like “Bowling for Columbine” and “Sicko,” as well as Al Gore’s 2006 global-warming tale, “An Inconvenient Truth,” have likewise been attacked as biased and inaccurate.

Interestingly, it appears that a quote from a fossil-fuel industry spokesman in a Wall Street Journal article by Ben Casselman was removed, because the quote was critical of the energy sector’s practices of removing minerals from the earth (see the screenshot at right for a copy of the original article that contains the missing quote). The quote that was removed stated, “We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror.” More via Alison Rose Levy for The Huffington Post:

When the article was published on Friday night, it was the first time an industry spokesperson deployed a shift in strategy from the industry’s standard denials and repeated assertions that fracking is safe, despite the numerous reports of problems, such as flammable water, contamination of drinking water, trucks leaking toxic and radioactive waste-water on public highways, the pollution of streams, as well as fires, and explosions in which people have been injured.

“We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror,” Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources Corp., was quoted as saying in WSJ.

However, if you go to the article, you won’t find Pitzarella’s statement because within the hour the quote disappeared, say citizen journalists, who screen captured it and posted it on Twitter. Gasland director Fox, in Los Angeles, awaiting Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony, has the screen shot of the original version. He also has questions:

“Why did this key quote disappear from the article? Why did the WSJ censor its own piece ? Does the Gas industry get to edit the Wall Street Journal?” Fox wondered. “Who pulled the quote?”

It’s more innocuous replacement from Tom Price, a Chesapeake Vice-President reads, “We need to be able to respond objectively and accurately.”

. . .

Although it’s unknown who ordered the yanking of the quote published in the Wall Street Journal, the appearance of censorship, whatever its source, does little to restore public confidence in either the industry reported on, or the media outlet doing the reporting.

Meanwhile citizens are rooting for Gasland to win the Oscar Sunday night at nationwide Gasland parties, and by writing letters to President Obama, asking for a nation-wide moratorium on fracking and safety studies. To learn more and participate, go here.

Despite what you believe about Gasland, here are some facts and observations about hydrofracking that are a cause for concern: (1) the evidence for groundwater contamination from hydrofracking is compelling; (2) the industry maintains that the complete list of chemicals used in hydrofracking are proprietary property, so the industry maintains that they shouldn’t be required to disclose their fracking recipes to government regulators or to the public; (3) in addition to a plethora of toxic chemicals, ”drilling service companies have injected at least 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground“; (4) like the production of corn ethanol, the energy input associated with hydrofracking might be excessively high and perhaps disproportionate to the actual energy returns that might be derived from the natural gas that’s actually extracted from the ground; (5) animals and people have become sick in areas where hydrofracking is conducted; and (6) hydrofracking is exempt from some major environmental regulations.

Given the large amount of water that must be used and transported during the hydrofracking process (“fracing a typical Chesapeake horizontal deep shale gas well requires an average of 4.5 million gallons per well“), the large amounts of chemicals that must be produced and used in hydrofracking, and the large amount of diesel fuel that is used in hydrofracking, I’m interested in seeing data that compares the energy input that’s required to extract natural gas during the hydrofracking process against the actual energy that’s extracted from the ground in the form of natural gas. Considering the likely high costs to the human environment and to human health, it seems to me, that if the energy return is slight or even in the negative, then why do politicians allow natural-gas drilling in such an extreme and gross negligent manner without reasonable precautions to protect the environment. Of course, the answer is money in the form of profits and subsidies. However, the price paid to land owners and the price paid for natural gas by consumers vastly undervalues and ignores the human and environmental impacts that occur during and after the drilling process.

Another problem with hydrofracking is wastewater treatment. Wastewater contains carcinogens and radioactive elements, and since “radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways,” it appears that wastewater from hydrofracking is a threat to drinking water supplies and to public health. Via the New York Times (emphasis added):

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.

The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.

But the E.P.A. has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008.

In other words, there is no way of guaranteeing that the drinking water taken in by all these plants is safe.

That has experts worried.

“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.”

On the Net & Resources:

VIDEO: 300 years of fossil fuels in 300 seconds

Posted on February 21, 2011

Via the Post Carbon Institute:

ENERGY: Used restaurant grease is a hot commodity and a target of thieves

Posted on October 9, 2010

Image via futurowoman on Flickr

Rising energy prices and demand have made restaurant grease a hot commodity. The opportunity to recycle grease into fuel has helped create so-called green jobs, but rising demand and price, coupled with an opportunity to make an easy profit, have resulted in thieves targeting restaurant grease tanks to make a quick profit. These tanks seem to be an easy target. Via USATODAY.com:

Two men pulled up behind Five Guys Burgers and Fries in North Bergen, N.J., last week, hooked a hose to a tank outside the restaurant and began stealthily siphoning 700 gallons of used cooking oil into a container in their van, police say.

The two suspects worked for a grease recycling company but were “freelancing” on two occasions in which they were charged with slurping up 1,400 gallons of the slippery stuff, according to Lt. Frank Cannella of the North Bergen Police.

In some parts of the country, the restaurant owner might thank them for taking the waste material off their hands without charging for the service. But in mostly urban areas where there’s more competition between companies seeking to pick up and resell used cooking oil for use in biofuels, the companies pay the restaurants for the oil, says Tom Cook, president of the National Renderers Association.

. . .

About 3 billion pounds of “yellow grease,” as the used oil is called, is produced in the USA each year, and traditionally, most of it has been mixed with livestock feed, he says. The value of the stuff fluctuates, but it hovers around $1.90 a gallon, he said.

Griffin Industries, an animal and bakery byproduct recycling company based in Cold Spring, Ky., “conservatively estimates” that it loses about 1 million pounds of spent cooking oil a week to theft, according to Christopher A. Griffin, director of legal affairs for the company.

The problem isn’t new. Via a May 30, 2008 NYTimes.com article:

“Fryer grease has become gold,” Mr. Damianidis said. “And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.”

Much to the surprise of Mr. Damianidis and many other people, processed fryer oil, which is called yellow grease, is actually not trash. The grease is traded on the booming commodities market. Its value has increased in recent months to historic highs, driven by the even higher prices of gas and ethanol, making it an ever more popular form of biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks.

In 2000, yellow grease was trading for 7.6 cents per pound. On Thursday, its price was about 33 cents a pound, or almost $2.50 a gallon. (That would make the 2,500-gallon haul in the Burger King case worth more than $6,000.)

Biodiesel is derived by processing vegetable oil or animal fat with alcohol. It is increasingly available around the country, but it is expensive. With the right kind of conversion kit (easily found on the Internet) anyone can turn discarded cooking oil into a usable engine fuel that can burn on its own, or as a cheap additive to regular diesel.

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ECONOMY: To spend or not to spend: That is the question

Posted on June 30, 2010

Certainly, the federal government must spend to maintain the general welfare of its citizens. However, prior policies, that have caused our current dire economic straits, are affecting the federal government’s ability to respond effectively to other burgeoning crises such as healthcare, rising unemployment, or even environmental issues such as the BP oil spill and climate change. Also, our country faces mounting energy issues, and the current energy policy does nothing to address our growing energy needs or challenges. Furthermore, I’m worried that the wrong kind of politics will do irreparable long-term damage to our nation’s ability to progress in a dynamic manner. Via Paul Krugman:

Why the wrong turn in policy? The hard-liners often invoke the troubles facing Greece and other nations around the edges of Europe to justify their actions. And it’s true that bond investors have turned on governments with intractable deficits. But there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors. On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain, which has been far more reluctant to take the hard-liners’ medicine.

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

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