Marcellus Shale

---neglected?html fix 820 bak $23,730only one field profitable in future?  little guys bought out cheap? covid bailout $?!bak=see attack on gov cuomo, sandra steingraber<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">desmog on API</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 id="h-energy-citizens" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">Energy Citizens</h3>Starting in 2009, the API <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150811025505/http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/08/11/lobby-groups-to-use-town-hall-tactics-to-oppose-climate-bill/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">led a coalition</a> called “<a href="http://energycitizens.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Energy Citizens</a>” and held rallies opposing the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, targeting states “whose Democratic Senators aren’t strong supporters of a stringent bill, such as […] Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mark Begich of Alaska.” <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s25" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">[25]</a><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120115231953/http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/19/the-browning-of-grassroots.html" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">According to Newsweek</a>, API asked regional companies to urge their employees to participate in planned protests. A leaked memo revealed that “The objective of these rallies is to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy and to aim a loud message at [20 different] states.” <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s26" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">[26]</a><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/08/12/12greenwire-energy-citizens-take-aim-at-climate-legislatio-54732.html" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">“Energy Citizens” is also supported</a> by the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Association_of_Manufacturers" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Farm_Bureau_Federation" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">American Farm Bureau</a>, American Highway Users Alliance, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/national-black-chamber-commerce" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC)</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Small_Business_Survival_Committee" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council,</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=FreedomWorks" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">FreedomWorks</a>,[hot air tour?] <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Conservative_Union" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">American Conservative Union</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/americans-tax-reform" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Americans for Tax Reform</a>, and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Council_for_Citizens_Against_Government_Waste" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Council for Citizens Against Government Waste</a>. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s27" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">[27]</a>According to O’Dwyer’s Magazine, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150811032857/http://www.odwyerpr.com/editorial/0201the-politics-of-climate-change.html" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">in a February 2010 article titled “The Politics of Climate Change</a>,”“The group has loudly protested the EPA’s decision to have greenhouse gas emissions regulated under the Clean Air Act. API members include Chevron, ConocoPhillips,Exxon Mobil, GE, Halliburton and Shell.” <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s28" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">[28]</a>Template fliers for the “Energy Citizens” rallies warned that “Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain and produce little environmental gain.” They additionally claimed the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would “cost 2 million American jobs, raise gasoline and diesel prices up to $4.”<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150811033432/http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/08/11/lobby-groups-to-use-town-hall-tactics-to-oppose-climate-bill/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">The EPA estimated the bill would cost U.S. households “about a postage stamp a day,” </a>while the Energy Information Administration projected annual “energy bill costs could rise between $26 per household to $362 by 2020.” <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s29" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">[29]</a>The company Democracy, Data & Communications (DDC), <a href="https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/files/API%20Case%20Study%20-%20DDC%20Public%20Affairs.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">wrote in a case study</a> that it “has actively partnered with the American Petroleum Institute (API) for years, designing, executing, and managing all facets of their key national advocacy program” and was “asked with creating an on-the-ground campaign focused on raising the prole of Energy Citizens in support of natural gas production from the ‘Marcellus Shale’ formation in Pennsylvania.” <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s64" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">[64]</a>DDC said it helped to convene two roundtable meetings with local congressional representatives for the Energy Citizens campaign, as well as get 170 letters of support published and sent to Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Commission. According to IRS tax filings reviewed by DeSmog, API paid DDC $29.3 million for its work between 2011 and 2015, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/06/14/your-energy-america-ddc-advocacy-atlantic-coast-pipeline" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">DeSmog reported.</a> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s65" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">[65]</a>DDC has also worked with the tobacco company Phillip Morris on a website fighting against tobacco regulation. DDC is also an Associate Member of the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/edison-electric-institute" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">Edison Electric Institute (EEI), </a>which has also paid DDC at least $1.8 million since 2012 for PR work according to the IRS. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/#s65" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">[65]</a><h3 id="h-energytomorrow-org" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">EnergyTomorrow.org</h3></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div>=</div><div>mourned on twt by api meg bloomgren:</div><div>
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">PennEast Pipeline Cancelation Could Signal ‘End of an Era’ for Unnecessary Fossil Fuel Projects</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>The pipeline would have crossed more than 88 waterways, 44 wetlands, 30 parks, and 33 conservation easements. Experts say the cancelation demonstrates that federal regulators must stop approving gas pipelines that fail to show they are needed in the first place.</div><div>
</div><div>PennEast Pipeline Cancelation Could Signal ‘End of an Era’ for Unnecessary Fossil Fuel Projects</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Nick Cunningham on  Sep 30, 2021</div></div><div>a major natural gas pipeline in Pennsylvania was canceled this week in the face of a thicket of legal obstacles and intense local opposition. The cancelation may punctuate what could be the end of a decade-long pipeline building frenzy in the U.S. as federal regulators begin to heed calls from activists and local communities to increase scrutiny over unneeded pipelines crisscrossing the country. The PennEast pipeline would have carried Marcellus shale gas from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River and to Mercer County, New Jersey. But the developers of the project canceled it on September 27, citing its inability to obtain state-level water quality permits from New Jersey. The decision came three months after the company <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/01/supreme-court-fracked-gas-pipeline-penneast-eminent-domain/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">won a case</a> before the U.S. Supreme Court related to the corporation’s ability to seize state land using eminent domain authority.PennEast would have <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/new-jersey/penneast-pipeline" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">crossed</a> more than 88 waterways, 44 wetlands, 30 parks, and 33 conservation easements, according to the Sierra Club New Jersey Chapter. The state of New Jersey, including Governor Phil Murphy, has long opposed the project — and the threat the pipeline posed to water quality always meant that it faced a steep uphill climb in obtaining local approval.The cancelation highlights the obstacles that several other high-profile projects currently face. For instance, the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia and Virginia still needs state-level environmental permits, as does the Pacific Connector gas pipeline in Oregon, which would feed the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas export project. The Mountain Valley Pipeline is under construction but still faces <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/14/epa-mountain-valley-pipeline-water-permit/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">many more hurdles</a> standing in the way of its completion. Jordan Cove is all but dead.</div><div>=<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/18/epa-petition-ohio-fracking-waste-injection-well-primacy/">https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/18/epa-petition-ohio-fracking-waste-injection-well-primacy/</a></div><div>
</div><div>nick c</div><div><div class="elementor-element elementor-element-ef5f047 single-post-content elementor-widget elementor-widget-theme-post-content" data-id="ef5f047" data-element_type="widget" data-widget_type="theme-post-content.default" style="box-sizing: border-box; --flex-direction: initial; --flex-wrap: initial; --justify-content: initial; --align-items: initial; --align-content: initial; --gap: initial; --flex-basis: initial; --flex-grow: initial; --flex-shrink: initial; --order: initial; --align-self: initial; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: var(--flex-direction); flex-wrap: var(--flex-wrap); -webkit-box-pack: var(--justify-content); justify-content: var(--justify-content); -webkit-box-align: var(--align-items); align-items: var(--align-items); align-content: var(--align-content); gap: var(--gap); flex-basis: var(--flex-basis); -webkit-box-flex: var(--flex-grow); flex-grow: var(--flex-grow); flex-shrink: var(--flex-shrink); -webkit-box-ordinal-group: var(--order); order: var(--order); align-self: var(--align-self); position: relative; --widgets-spacing:20px; width: 860px; margin-bottom: 20px;"><div class="elementor-widget-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: background 0.3s ease 0s, border 0.3s ease 0s, border-radius 0.3s ease 0s, box-shadow 0.3s ease 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 0.3s ease 0s;"><div id="bsf_rt_marker" style="box-sizing: border-box;">on a January day in 2021, a fountain of fracking wastewater unexpectedly erupted from deep underground in Noble County, Ohio. Instead of remaining thousands of feet beneath the Earth’s surface, where the corrosive brine had been pumped for disposal, it had migrated into an idled oil and gas production well over two miles away. There, the liquid waste <a href="https://www.alleghenyfront.org/unused-gas-well-spews-whats-suspected-to-be-frack-waste-killing-fish/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">spewed</a> out of the ground for<a href="https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/02/04/thousands-gallons-flthousands-of-gallouid-spilled-oil-and-gas-well-noble-co-damage-and-cause-unclear/4397912001/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> four days</a>, releasing an estimated 40,000 barrels of toxic slurry into eastern Ohio streams and killing hundreds of fish.This incident represents the growing problem with fracking waste injection wells in Ohio, a state that has become a dumping ground for oil and gas industry waste.  But a coalition of more than two dozen frontline community groups and environmental justice organizations in Ohio are trying to change that. These groups are asking the federal government to take control of the state’s oil and gas wastewater injection well program, arguing that Ohio has failed to effectively protect underground sources of drinking water.The “culture of permissiveness” at the state regulator — Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) — has meant that the oil and gas industry’s handling of fracking waste has led to chronic violations with few meaningful consequences, according to a <a href="https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/class_ii_petition_2022oct11.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">petition</a> submitted in October to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The petition documents specific instances in which oil and gas wastewater may pose dangers to drinking water, including waste injected underground that migrated outside of its intended location, spills at the surface, and even fracking waste that seeped into oil and gas wells, impacting production.Oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing are riddled with <a href="https://concernedhealthny.org/compendium/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">environmental</a> and <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/08/17/children-fracking-sites-higher-risk-cancer-leukemia/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">public health</a> hazards. But after drilling, in addition to the fracking chemicals shot down the well with sand and water to release trapped oil and gas, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-gas-fracking-radioactive-investigation-937389/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">enormous volumes</a> of toxic and often <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/08/31/worker-radioactive-waste-austin-master-services-ohio/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">radioactive wastewater</a> also come up out of the well. Operators need to put this waste, a nasty substance called “brine,” somewhere, and either they or a contractor typically truck it to a separate location and pump it back underground in what are known as injection wells. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">
<figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;">A fracking well pad in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. September 2021. Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fractracker/51540328740/in/album-72157715920470247/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ted Auch. FracTracker Alliance.</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">(CC BY-NC 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>The Appalachian region encompassing the Utica and Marcellus oil and gas fields in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia <a href="https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">produces</a> more than 35 billion cubic feet of gas per day, doubling in less than a decade. As a result, the amount of fracking wastewater injected underground in Ohio has surged from 690 million gallons in 2013 to 12.7 billion gallons in 2020, according to <a href="https://psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/fracking-with-forever-chemicals-in-ohio.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Physicians for Social Responsibility</a> and FracTracker Alliance.Fracking waste is the unseen “connective tissue” that allows the industry to keep its costs low, Ted Auch, the Great Lakes program coordinator for FracTracker Alliance, a watchdog group, told DeSmog. Without cheap disposal, many small and medium-sized fracking companies would not be able to operate. Brine trucks will go to where disposal is cheapest, and Ohio has emerged as the de facto destination in the region, according to Auch. The petition filed by Earthjustice, representing 27 organizations including Buckeye Environmental Network, FracTracker, Sierra Club, Between the Waters, Ohio Brine Task Force, Ohio Poor Peoples Campaign, and many others, alleges that Ohio runs a habitually dysfunctional regulatory regime for these injection wells and asks the EPA to begin a rulemaking process to revoke the state’s ability to oversee its own injection well program.Their petition identifies a long list of deficiencies in Ohio’s program. First, ODNR, the agency regulating injection wells, consistently refuses to enforce violations. Second, even if it wanted to, the state regulator has no authority to enact penalties. Instead, it needs to go to the state attorney general to take action, a cumbersome process.“As you can imagine, that makes it basically impossible for ODNR to take any timely enforcement action,” Megan Hunter, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, who co-authored the petition, told DeSmog.Despite repeated and ongoing violations from waste operators, ODNR has only followed through on enforcement of penalties six times in its 39-year history, according to the document. In a statement to DeSmog, a spokesperson said the agency “disagrees” with that statistic, but didn’t offer any more detail and said it could not comment further because of ongoing litigation. Even in instances of egregious violations, ODNR cannot permanently suspend operations at an injection well. It can issue a temporary suspension, but once the company spells out how it will correct the issue, injection operations can proceed within days or weeks even if dangerous conditions are ongoing.Those shortcomings would be problems on their own, enough to hold back an earnest regulator. But, the petition suggests, ODNR largely acts as a rubber stamp for waste handling companies. State rules are “permissive,” and ODNR permits injection wells in places that are geologically “unsuitable,” according to the coalition petition. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;">Class II injection well. Morrow County, OH. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fractracker/49802748986/in/album-72157713930554732/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015</a>. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>The state agency has presided over an enormous increase in the number of injection wells. Ohio has an estimated 227 active injection wells, with most located in rural, lower-income Appalachian counties, raising environmental justice concerns. In fact, a 2018 peer-reviewed <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29957590/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">study</a> conducted by Yale researchers found that the number of injection wells in an area tended to rise as median income dropped, even after controlling for other variables. In other words, disposal companies put fracking waste in poor areas, and ODNR allows that dynamic to play out.Critics characterize the agency as “captured” by industry. “Most of [ODNR’s] money comes from the oil and gas industry,” Teresa Mills, executive director of Buckeye Environmental Network, and a signatory of the petition, told DeSmog. “They’re not going to cut off their nose to spite their face.” “There are flagrant violations. And with no enforcement mechanism, the companies are just flipping ODNR the bird. ‘You’re not going to do anything to us, so we’re not going to pay attention to you,’” Mills said of the industry’s relationship with its regulator.<h2 id="h-injecting-waste-in-geologically-unsuitable-locations" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">Injecting Waste in Geologically “Unsuitable” Locations </h2>The oil industry’s largest trade group, the <a href="https://desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute" data-wpel-link="internal" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">American Petroleum Institute</a>,<a href="https://www.api.org/oil-and-natural-gas/wells-to-consumer/exploration-and-production/hydraulic-fracturing/understanding-seismicity-saltwater" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> claims</a> that injection wells are<a href="https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/blog/2012/06/20/graphically-speaking-fracking-and-inject" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> safe</a> and environmentally reliable, in part because the waste is going so far beneath the ground and far below sources of groundwater. But that assertion assumes the wastewater stays put.In 2019, wastewater injected into the Redbird #4 <a href="https://www.coshoctontribune.com/story/news/2020/09/09/state-investigates-whether-injection-well-waste-affects-drinking-water/5756709002/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">well</a> in Washington County in southeast Ohio resurfaced through a couple of entirely separate oil and gas wells located five miles away, moving far outside of the permitted area. “We’ve seen an increase in incidents recently where oil and gas waste is migrating underground and returning to the surface,” Hunter, the Earthjustice attorney, said. “If you have something traveling that far underground and then coming back up, then the shallower [groundwater] aquifers can be at risk.”<figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;">Brine hauler and class II injection well. Morrow County, OH. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fractracker/49803128977/in/album-72157713930554732/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015</a>. </figcaption></figure>A technical <a href="https://benohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Exhibits-1-24-ISO-Class-II-Petition_2022Oct11.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">analysis</a>, commissioned by Earthjustice and conducted by Robert Rossi and Dominic DiGiulio, two research scientists with PSE Healthy Energy, a nonprofit energy science and policy research institute, documented a long list of problems with both the permitting and due diligence of ODNR regulators overseeing injection wells. The analysis looked at six injection wells, and the results of the study were submitted to the EPA along with the Earthjustice petition as evidence of ODNR’s failures. Wastewater is supposed to be injected beneath an impermeable layer of rock, which would seal it off from drinking water aquifers higher up in the subsurface. But the scientists found that ODNR was allowing injection wells in shale formations that had a fractured network of rock, which allows wastewater to find fissures and travel far away from its intended location. The geologic conditions were therefore “unsuitable” for wastewater disposal, the analysis concluded. Because the Redbird well’s wastewater traveled five miles laterally and almost 2,000 feet vertically, the report concluded, “it is exceedingly clear that the injection formation was not isolated and begs the question of if the geological suitability of this formation was even considered by the ODNR during permitting.”A second finding was that ODNR was allowing too many wells to be located near each other, resulting in “overpressurization” of the subsurface. “There’s so much injection occurring, that [the formation] just can’t support injection any longer and you’re seeing things rise to the surface as a result of that,” Hunter said. Instead of looking at the cumulative impact of so much high-pressure wastewater shoved underground, ODNR assesses permits individually. In a statement to DeSmog, Stephanie O’Grady, a spokesperson for ODNR, said that the U.S. EPA “has consistently reaffirmed that Ohio operates an effective regulatory program that meets federal standards and protects public health, safety, and the environment. The Division takes our responsibility to protect Ohio’s groundwater, surface water, and environment seriously, as demonstrated by our rigorous permitting process, regular inspections, and enforcement.” New rules issued by ODNR at the start of 2022 dial back the approved pressure and volumes allowed for injection wells. But they still permit injection in the exact same shale formation that saw wastewater escape and migrate long distances underground. If toxic waste is moving so far beyond its intended locations, then sources of drinking water could be at risk, the petition alleges.   <h2 id="h-how-is-it-affecting-us" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">“How is it affecting us?”</h2>Even when everything goes right, the day-to-day of living next to a wastewater injection well has its downsides.Michele Garman lives in a rural area north of Youngstown, Ohio, not far from the Pennsylvania border. About six years ago, with very little public notice and against community opposition, a local company called Kleese Development drilled an injection well adjacent to her property and visible from her house. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;">Class II injection well in Vienna, OH. Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fractracker/49835183597/in/album-72157713930554732/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2016</a>. Aerial support provided by LightHawk. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>She said trucks bringing the wastewater for disposal run frequently and sometimes at odd hours. “I notice them more at two or three in the morning,” Garman told DeSmog. And she recalls, at one Fourth of July party, “We watched the trucks come in and out all day.”In addition, Garman said that at times there are terrible oily odors wafting from the well pad. While she opposed the injection well when it went in, she has largely learned to live with the trucks and smells. But those aren’t her only concerns. “The worrisome part is what’s going on underneath us. The stuff you don’t see or hear,” she said.Very little public information exists revealing specifically what is in the waste destined for injection wells like the one next to Garman’s land, but what is known is concerning. “We know that the waste in the Marcellus/Utica region in particular is radioactive, highly radioactive,” Hunter said. “We know that it has PFAS in it. Of course, we already know that it is extremely salty and that it has heavy metals and other organics that are dangerous and harmful to human health and the environment.” (PFAS are also known as “forever chemicals” due to their long-lived nature and are linked to <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/index.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">various potential health impacts</a>.)But there is no requirement for operators to detail or disclose any specifics. Moreover, there are no studies on the human health impacts of wastewater injection wells, so the hazards are largely unknown.For Garman, all the uncertainty surrounding fracking wastewater is disconcerting. “Where is it all going? How is it affecting us?” she said.<figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;">A brine hauler in Ashtabula County, OH. Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fractracker/49802826401/in/album-72157713930554732/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2015</a>. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>Nearly a decade ago, eastern Ohio resident Tom McKnight said he saw people who were hauling brine bringing in paychecks that were “pretty doggone respectable.” With three kids to support, he decided to get into trucking as well. He worked as an oil and gas brine hauler in Ohio between 2014 and 2018, and in the first year made $70,000. However, McKnight believes he was exposed to radiation from his years trucking fracking waste. “The most dirty, dangerous water I think that I’ve ever been around is what they call the ‘flowback’ while they are bringing a new well online. That is some nasty, dirty stuff,” he said. Flowback is the water and chemical mixture that shoots up out of an oil and gas well after it has been fracked and the well is in the process of coming online. He recalled one time when he was sucking wastewater out of some tanks, and he opened up the manhole and stuck his head in. “At the end of the day, between my gloves and my shirt sleeves, and my face and my v-neck on the chest, I looked like I had been out in the sun all day,” he said, thinking that his reddened skin was the result of exposure to radiation. “So I’m pretty sure I got a pretty good dose that day.” McKnight no longer works because he has Thymoma, a form of cancer of the thymus, a gland in the chest. He had several operations to remove part of his liver and a six-pound tumor from his chest. He also had throat cancer. But it’s not easy to definitively link workplace exposures like McKnight’s, and the appearance of cancer. “It could have come from anything, or the accumulation of everything,” he said.<h2 id="h-it-was-going-in-whether-we-wanted-it-or-not" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">“It Was Going in Whether We Wanted it or Not”</h2>When Garman voiced <a href="https://www.wfmj.com/story/29806664/vienna-injection-well-site-targeted-by-protesters" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">opposition</a> to the project next to her home in 2015, she felt like neither the company nor the state cared. “It was going in, whether we wanted it or not. That’s my general feeling,” she said.When a waste company applies for an injection well permit, its approval is essentially a foregone conclusion, environmental experts say, and whatever public notice happens appears to be lacking.“Typically, communities wouldn’t even know they’re getting an injection well until a drilling rig shows up,” said Mills of the Buckeye Environmental Network. Even when communities are aware of a proposed project and push back, the state agency largely ignores the complaints.“The problem with the [public] hearing is that even though the public provides input on safety issues and concerns with injection wells, the ODNR director has no discretion. As long as the permit is correctly filled out, their permit gets granted,” Lenny Eliason, Athens County (Ohio) Commissioner,<a href="https://www.alleghenyfront.org/ohio-injection-wells-fracking-wastewater/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> said</a> on a call with reporters in October. “So why have a public hearing? Why involve the public in a sham process when you’re not going to do anything about acting on the information that’s provided during that public hearing?”In a statement to DeSmog, O’Grady, the ODNR spokesperson, said that the agency “does believe that its permitting process has adequate public notification and input.”DeSmog followed up with specific questions asking for documentation on how many times the agency has denied injection well applications and enforced violations. O’Grady said the agency has denied 12 applications this year, but when asked for documentation, she sent denials to only four applications, and said ODNR could not comment further. ODNR also did not respond to a request for documentation on its history of enforcement.<h2 id="h-epa-vs-state-primacy" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;">EPA vs. State “Primacy”</h2>The governance of wastewater injection wells falls under the Safe Drinking Water Act. While it is a federal law, it gives states leeway to apply for “primacy,” which is the ability for states to govern their own injection wells. Ohio successfully obtained primacy back in 1983, and as a result, has overseen the proliferation of injection wells over the past two decades with the boom in fracking.Pennsylvania, on the other hand, has federal EPA supervision over its injection well program. Both states have extensive fracking operations, but because it is much easier to dispose of fracking waste in Ohio, convoys of brine trucks often haul toxic and low-level radioactive waste from drill sites in Pennsylvania across the border to Ohio. McKnight trucked waste to and from well sites across much of eastern Ohio, as well as from oil and gas wells in southwest Pennsylvania to injection wells in Ohio. “It’s a big industry. It’s a big employer,” he said. In fact, more than 40 percent of the waste injected underground in Ohio actually comes from out of state, according to <a href="https://www.fractracker.org/2021/06/ohio-fracking-waste-the-case-for-better-waste-management/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">data </a>from FracTracker. “Our state legislators will stand at the state line and just wave them on in. ‘Come on in. We love ya,’” Mills said, characterizing Ohio’s willingness to take huge quantities of waste from Pennsylvania.<figure class="wp-block-image size-large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.4; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;">Class II injection well. Mahoning County, OH. Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fractracker/49834892851/in/album-72157713930554732/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019</a>. Aerial support provided by LightHawk. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>But geologically speaking, there’s no reason Pennsylvania can’t dispose of its own fracking wastewater, said Ted Auch of FracTracker. He said the industry doesn’t have much interest in applying for permits in Pennsylvania because “they can rely on Ohio to dispose of its waste.” That puts added pressure on Ohio regulators to deal with this flood of fracking wastewater and the injection wells needed for its disposal, and the environmental and community coalition filing the petition to the EPA thinks the state isn’t keeping up with that responsibility.The coalition is calling on the federal agency to initiate a rulemaking process that would eventually lead to Ohio losing its “primacy” and having regulatory oversight revert back to the federal government. The process is lengthy and could take several years, if it succeeds at all.Ohio is not necessarily unique in this regard. Other states, including Idaho, Michigan, and Oklahoma, have wrestled with whether or not the state or the federal government should have primacy over injection wells. But revoking state primacy due to poor regulatory oversight would be unprecedented.In the meantime, the army of brine trucks will continue hauling fracking waste to injection wells in Ohio.Auch says the petition for the EPA to take over is “kind of the last hope” for reforming the problems documented with Ohio’s injection wells.“We know that the state doesn’t collect good data. We know that the state rubber stamps injection wells,” he said. Looking at Pennsylvania, which has a more methodical permitting process due to EPA oversight, Auch said, “it’s like, maybe we should sign up for that.”</div></div></div><div class="elementor-element elementor-element-69e5002 elementor-widget elementor-widget-shortcode" data-id="69e5002" data-element_type="widget" data-widget_type="shortcode.default" style="box-sizing: border-box; --flex-direction: initial; --flex-wrap: initial; --justify-content: initial; --align-items: initial; --align-content: initial; --gap: initial; --flex-basis: initial; --flex-grow: initial; --flex-shrink: initial; --order: initial; --align-self: initial; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: var(--flex-direction); flex-wrap: var(--flex-wrap); -webkit-box-pack: var(--justify-content); justify-content: var(--justify-content); -webkit-box-align: var(--align-items); align-items: var(--align-items); align-content: var(--align-content); gap: var(--gap); flex-basis: var(--flex-basis); -webkit-box-flex: var(--flex-grow); flex-grow: var(--flex-grow); flex-shrink: var(--flex-shrink); -webkit-box-ordinal-group: var(--order); order: var(--order); align-self: var(--align-self); position: relative; --widgets-spacing:20px; width: 860px; margin-bottom: 20px;"><div class="elementor-widget-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: background 0.3s ease 0s, border 0.3s ease 0s, border-radius 0.3s ease 0s, box-shadow 0.3s ease 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 0.3s ease 0s;"><div class="elementor-shortcode" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="elementor-element elementor-element-1cb1728 elementor-widget elementor-widget-jet-listing-dynamic-terms" data-id="1cb1728" data-element_type="widget" data-widget_type="jet-listing-dynamic-terms.default" style="box-sizing: border-box; --flex-direction: initial; --flex-wrap: initial; --justify-content: initial; --align-items: initial; --align-content: initial; --gap: initial; --flex-basis: initial; --flex-grow: initial; --flex-shrink: initial; --order: initial; --align-self: initial; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: var(--flex-direction); flex-wrap: var(--flex-wrap); -webkit-box-pack: var(--justify-content); justify-content: var(--justify-content); -webkit-box-align: var(--align-items); align-items: var(--align-items); align-content: var(--align-content); gap: var(--gap); flex-basis: var(--flex-basis); -webkit-box-flex: var(--flex-grow); flex-grow: var(--flex-grow); flex-shrink: var(--flex-shrink); -webkit-box-ordinal-group: var(--order); order: var(--order); align-self: var(--align-self); position: relative; --widgets-spacing:20px; width: 860px; margin-bottom: 20px;"><div class="elementor-widget-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: background 0.3s ease 0s, border 0.3s ease 0s, border-radius 0.3s ease 0s, box-shadow 0.3s ease 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 0.3s ease 0s; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><div class="jet-listing jet-listing-dynamic-terms" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.desmog.com/topic/politics-and-policy/" class="jet-listing-dynamic-termslink" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; box-shadow: none; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 12px; letter-spacing: 0.02px; padding: 7px 9px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;">POLITICS AND POLICY</a><a href="https://www.desmog.com/topic/energy/" class="jet-listing-dynamic-termslink" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; box-shadow: none; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 12px; letter-spacing: 0.02px; padding: 7px 9px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;">ENERGY</a><a href="https://www.desmog.com/topic/social-justice/" class="jet-listing-dynamic-terms__link" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; box-shadow: none; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 12px; letter-spacing: 0.02px; padding: 7px 9px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;">SOCIAL JUSTICE</a></div></div></div></div><div>=</div></div></div></div></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="">INVISIBLE HAND is a “paradigm shifting” documentary about the creation of ‘Rights of Nature.’ The defining battle of our times where nature, democracy and capitalism face off in rural America.SHORT SYNOPSIS Produced by award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo, INVISIBLE HAND takes you behind the curtain of the global economy where ‘Rights of Nature’ becomes “capitalism’s one true opponent.”In the fall of 2014, for the first time in United States history, an ecosystem filed to defend itself in a lawsuit claiming its ‘right to exist' in Grant Township, Pennsylvania. For attempting such a radical act, Grant’s rural community of 700 people were sued by a corporation, then by the state government, and are now locked in a battle to defend the watershed they call home through civil disobedience. The water they drink, the Rights to Nature laws they've passed are all on the line in this exclusive story.In Toledo, Ohio an earth-shattering vote was passed to enact the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR), granting personhood to international waters.Half a continent away in Standing Rock, North Dakota, the same industry threatening Grant Twp. is using militarized force against indigenous tribes and allies fighting to protect Mother Earth.Activists leaving Standing Rock are rejoined on the Pennsylvania and New York border where the Seneca Nation of Indians aligns with communities in the Triple Divide to stop radioactive fracking waste from entering Ohi:yo’ waters. Terry Pegula, [East Resources, new co] owner of Buffalo Bills and Sabres, threatens to sue INVISIBLE HAND filmmakers and whoever continues to speak out about his oil and gas company and their efforts.The four, Grant Township, Lake Erie Bill of Rights, Defend Oh:yo’ and Standing Rock, are joined in an international fight to protect more than just water. They fight for their community, democracy, and for Nature as a living entity unto itself.In the end, "Who will speak for Nature?"</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.investigativepost.org/2018/05/08/pegula-back-fracking-and-violating-regulations/">https://www.investigativepost.org/2018/05/08/pegula-back-fracking-and-violating-regulations/</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div>Pegula back fracking – and violating regulations</div><div>By Jim Heaney</div></div><a href="https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/stratfor_provided_energy_industry_with_intel_on_environmental_groups/">https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/stratfor_provided_energy_industry_with_intel_on_environmental_groups/</a>The <h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 0.75em; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Fracking Files: Stratfor Provided Energy Industry with Intel on ProPublica, Environmental Groups</h1><div class="subhead" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Industry’s 2009 fears of a muscular fracking opposition have come to pass</div><div class="article-info article-info-head" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 2em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ADAM FEDERMAN<div class="publish-date" style="box-sizing: border-box;">DECEMBER 10, 2013</div></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: -0.75em 0px 0.75em;"><a href="mailto:?subject=The%20Fracking%20Files:%20Stratfor%20Provided%20Energy%20Industry%20with%20Intel%20on%20ProPublica,%20Environmental%20Groups&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.earthisland.org%2Fjournal%2Findex.php%2Farticles%2Fentry%2Fstratfor_provided_energy_industry_with_intel_on_environmental_groups%2F" title="mail this article to someone" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; transition: all 200ms ease 0s; padding-left: 1.25em;"><span class="fa fa-envelope" aria-hidden="true" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1; text-rendering: auto; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;" /></a></div>Long before the first anti-fracking bans were passed in North America, the oil and gas industry was taking stock of its adversaries through profiles and briefings produced by <a href="http://www.stratfor.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">Stratfor</a>, the Austin-based global intelligence company. The company is known for its investigations into activist groups on behalf of some of the world’s largest corporations and government agencies. The documents – part of a massive cache of emails, reports, and communiques published by <a href="http://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=85474" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">Wikileaks</a> beginning in early 2012 – reveal an industry concerned about an impending grassroots backlash to the fracking boom. In hindsight, it appears the industry was right to be worried: Today, opposition to oil and gas fracking is one of the most vigorous strands of the larger environmental movement.
proPublica – which was launched in 2008, just as fracking was becoming a public health issue – led the way on the first reporting about the environmental impacts of gas drilling. In 2009 its leading energy reporter, <a href="https://twitter.com/AbrahmL" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">Abrahm Lustgarten</a>, won a Polk Award for his work “documenting the deadly side effects of hydraulic fracturing.” To date the website has published more than 150 fracking-related articles.The Wikileaks revelations show that the oil and gas industry was especially worried about the first hints of negative publicity. In December 2009 Stratfor drafted a <a href="http://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=397459" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">profile</a> of ProPublica, detailing its organizational structure, partnerships with other well-established media outlets like <cite style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Washington Post</cite> and <cite style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</cite>, and sources of funding. Stratfor argues that ProPublica’s work has helped to galvanize public opposition to drilling in the Marcellus Shale. “The growth of the Marcellus shale was not a controversial issue until ProPublica stories given to the <cite style="box-sizing: border-box;">Albany Times-Union</cite> carried the message that, according to ProPublica’s editor in chief, New York was about to ‘put legislative and regulatory protocols into place to give the industry carte blanche to drill wherever it chose.’ Out of this series of articles came the backlash and delays that continue to beset operations in the region."The Stratfor document, which was sent to at least one corporate client, The American Petroleum Institute (API), describes ProPublica as a “realist organization,” but one that is “reflexively anti-corporate.” The authors write: “ProPublica appears to view major corporations and much of government as decidedly opposed to the ‘public interest.’” They also describe the website’s model of partnering with larger media outlets and distributing stories free of charge. Because of the organization’s critical view of corporations, the Stratfor analysts write, “the net effect of these free stories is to tilt coverage of certain issues, especially in local newspapers.” [// berman/bradley? API?!](The document goes on to explain that ProPublica has covered natural gas drilling more closely than just about any other issue, with the possible exception of the financial crisis. Of Lustgarten they write, “Each of the stories he writes contends that the practice [fracking] is far more dangerous to neighbors and the environment than both corporations and government admit. Lustgarten portrays the industry as knowingly misleading the public and using political influence to win beneficial responses from regulators.”)The impetus for the report appears to have come from Walt Retzsch, a senior policy advisor with API. In an internal email, Bart Mongoven, Stratfor’s then-vice president, wrote: “Walt needs to know about ProPublica. He needs whatever we can put together by 5:00. Then by COB Friday, he needs another profile in line with other profiles we have done. I have no context as to why this is coming up now.” In another <a href="http://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=414076" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">email</a> Mongoven describes the American Petroleum Institute as “our biggest client.”Around the same time that the ProPublica profile was written, Stratfor also prepared a <a href="http://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=409509" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">background brief</a> on shale gas activism for ExxonMobil. Dated December 15, 2009 it warns that shale gas activism is “likely to soon become an important element of the no Dirty Energy Campaign.” Several months later ExxonMobil announced its acquisition of XTO Energy, which had obtained millions of acres of lease holdings in the Marcellus Shale. As if unsure of its own decision – a $40 billion investment – ExxonMobil demanded the inclusion of an unusual escape clause that allows the company to back out of the deal if Congress regulates hydraulic fracturing to the point that it becomes “illegal or commercially impracticable.”According to Stratfor, however, such an outcome would be unlikely because environmental organizations were divided over the potential benefits of natural gas. At the time, the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope was working with Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest natural gas producers in the US, on a “Clean Skies” initiative. A Stratfor analyst wrote: “Some environmental groups feel pressed to find a way to accept (albeit tacitly) hydraulic fracturing and new shale gas projects generally.” But most local chapters of the Sierra Club and smaller grassroots organizations were opposed. Stratfor picked up on this nascent rift within the environmental community between those who view natural gas as a clean alternative to coal and oil and those who see it as just another dirty fossil fuel. Stratfor underlined the potential for driving a wedge between moderates and radicals within the environmental movement.[//COINTELPRO?] (The Sierra Club has since reversed its policy on natural gas and now has a <a href="http://content.sierraclub.org/naturalgas/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">Beyond Gas</a> campaign, but the issue of gas extraction <a href="http://prospect.org/article/its-not-easy-being-green-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">continues to divide environmentalists</a>.)A similar strategy was outlined in a 2010 presentation on tar sands activism. Titled “Oil Sands Market Campaigns,” the document, first reported by Steve Horn at <a href="http://www.mintpressnews.com/stratfor-strategies-how-to-win-the-media-war-against-grassroots-activists/166078/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 200ms ease 0s;">Mint Press News</a>, divides tar sands activists into four categories–radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists. It essentially offers a blueprint on how to neutralize the opposition.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/west-virginia-bets-big-on-plastics-and-the-backing-of-trumps-administration/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/west-virginia-bets-big-on-plastics-and-the-backing-of-trumps-administration/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">West Virginia’s industrial might has faded, but as 2020 approaches, the state has two resources that could be crucial to President Donald Trump as he seeks reelection and tries to make good on his pledge of “American energy dominance” — Republican votes and abundant natural gas.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It was a stretch of rural counties along the Ohio River in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania that form the largest natural gas field in the world and helped Trump win the states in 2016.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">West Virginia’s elected leaders see the vast reserves as a path to renewed political and economic relevance for the Mountain State, which they envision rivaling the Gulf Coast as a center for processing natural gas and producing plastics.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And to make that a reality, the state’s top officials have lined up behind a plan to spend as much as $10 billion to build a mammoth underground storage facility — big enough to hold the U.S. Capitol complex, or 10 million barrels of the liquid byproducts used in plastics manufacturing.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By providing a sizable and stable storehouse for ethane and other so-called gas liquids, the facility would, its proponents say, encourage the expansion of a chemical production corridor that is emerging along the upper Ohio River and would help bring thousands of jobs to a region that has seen its industrial moorings slip away over the past two generations.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The prospect of an energy jobs bonanza in a politically vital state stirred the interest of the White House. A senior Energy Department manager has been assigned to work on the project, known as the Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub. In April, the president issued an executive order on energy that encouraged “opportunities, through the federal government or otherwise, to promote economic growth of the Appalachian region, including growth of petrochemical and other industries.” And the president’s newest budget proposal includes funds to study the region’s gas-related industrial potential.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But a ProPublica examination has found that the proposed storage facility would be far larger than the region could support and that questions about its cost, its viability and its environmental risks have been overshadowed by a public relations strategy heavy on the politics of jobs and light on the economics of energy policy.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The scale of the Appalachian hub is out of line with what industry needs or will require in the region,” said Michael Tritt, president of Lane Power and Energy Solutions, a Houston-based construction company that designs and builds energy storage caverns.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">The Trump administration’s relations with China and Russia are adding to the questions about the hub. China had agreed to invest tens of billions of dollars in West Virginia’s natural gas industry but now is embroiled in a trade war with Trump. And American Ethane, a Houston-based company financed by three Russian businessmen, has signed 20-year contracts to send ethane produced in the United States to China, which could raise prices and weaken demand for the facility proposed for West Virginia.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Far from being dissuaded, state leaders, led by Sen. Joe Manchin III, are pressing forward, talking up the project and perhaps most significantly trying to secure a $1.9 billion federal loan guarantee that could attract billions of dollars in private investment.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">If the hub’s developers succeed, taxpayers could be on the hook for a big piece of any failure. The federal loan guarantee sought for the hub is nearly four times as large as a guarantee awarded more than a decade ago to Solyndra, the California solar firm that collapsed in 2011. “This whole project is a gamble,” said Dustin White, project coordinator with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, an environmental group in Huntington, West Virginia. “Billions of dollars could go up in smoke. We just need to stop it now.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Banks, though, would be in line for tens of millions of dollars in finance fees. “If that project gets a federal loan guarantee, banks will be lining up 10 deep,” said James Cutler, an energy industry investor and veteran chemical plant builder from Houston. “Anybody who gets involved gets 1.5 to 2% in fees just for getting the deals together. If you have a $4 billion, $5 billion project, that’s $80 million, $100 million.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Other big winners could be Manchin, a Democrat, and Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican. The energy, construction and labor sectors contributed $841,591 to Manchin’s 2018 election campaign. Energy, finance, construction and labor contributed $169,600 to Justice’s 2016 campaign, according to Vote Smart, which tracks election campaign financing.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">In an interview, Manchin said that he is looking to Energy Secretary Rick Perry for help in “streamlining” the loan review and that he is urging the Treasury Department to invoke national security concerns to halt American Ethane’s export plans.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...</div></div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/02/suing-spree-oil-and-gas-industry-risks-speech-chilling-precedents">https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/02/suing-spree-oil-and-gas-industry-risks-speech-chilling-precedents</a></div><div>
</div><div>In 2017, while the Trump administration absorbed media attention with its cries of “fake news,” the oil and gas industry was busy launching private legal actions across the U.S., attacking critics who presented information and opinions to the public.Those lesser-noticed legal maneuvers, if successful in 2018, could create chilling new precedents, keeping important facts away from the public eye and making it more expensive and risky to talk about the fossil fuel industry's real and potential impacts on human health and the air, land, and water.The past year brought some of the most aggressive lawsuits by the oil and gas industry against environmentalists in recent decades. They included legal moves aimed at preventing researchers from discussing their findings, motions painting political movements as for-profit conspiracies, and even a $5 million dollar lawsuit brought against a cancer patient whose tap water, state investigators <a href="http://files.dep.state.pa.us/OilGas/OilGasLandingPageFiles/FinalCO&A121510.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">determined</a> years ago, was contaminated by gas drilling — by the company that is now suing him.That lawsuit, filed by a shale gas drilling company, claims that a Pennsylvania landowner violated a non-disclosure agreement by talking to the press about his fouled drinking water, his home's plummeting property value, the impacts of truck traffic on his community, the poor air quality around his home since drilling and fracking began in the area, or other problems he believes the company itself caused.These oil and gas industry cases — involving novel uses of conspiracy, defamation, and even wire fraud laws — represent new and concerted efforts by large corporations to make individuals and groups pay for presenting information and opinions to the public.<h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Cancer Patient Gagged</h3>Dimock, Pennsylvania, landowner Ray Kemble, who was diagnosed with bladder cancer in March 2017, was sued in August by Cabot Oil and Gas, which drilled a series of Marcellus shale wells in Kemble's hometown.Back in 2010 state environmental regulators <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/04/11/dimock-pennsylvania-families-cabot-fracking-drilling-judge-scraps-water-pollution-verdict" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">concluded</a> that Cabot Oil and Gas's drilling operations had contaminated the area's groundwater and ordered the company to cough up $4.6 million. In May 2016, federal health officials <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060037920" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">concluded</a> that the drinking water in Dimock was indeed unsafe, and in December 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) long-awaited national study warned that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has contaminated drinking water supplies across the U.S. (without directly commenting on Kemble's situation).Cabot signed settlements with virtually all of the families drawing water from the contaminated Pennsylvania aquifer, though the precise terms of those agreements remain secret. A separate federal lawsuit, brought by two families down the road from Kemble, the Elys and the Huberts, was <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/09/26/last-two-dimock-families-settle-lawsuit-with-cabot-over-water/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">settled in September</a> for an undisclosed amount, a sign that the Ely and Hubert settlement also includes a non-disclosure clause.Cabot's new lawsuit argues that a 2012 settlement bars Kemble from “disparaging” the company by discussing any harm he believes the company caused him — or even talking about things the company did after the settlement was reached.But good luck finding out what exactly a settlement agreement between Kemble and the company might have said: In December, Cabot <a href="http://www.susqcoindy.com/PS/2017/12/21/in-court-cabot-kemble-argue-case/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">argued in court</a> that it didn't need to provide the document at the heart of the case to the attorneys representing Kemble's co-defendents, nevermind the public.Non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements have been in the public spotlight lately amid the #MeToo scandals, after it came to light that powerful sexual harassers and assaulters frequently <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/12/10/how-non-disclosure-agreements-silence-victims/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">used the clauses</a> to prevent those they assaulted from talking publicly.Critics argue that non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements (NDAs) should also not be used in cases where the public health could be at risk, warning that NDAs could, for example, keep someone sickened after drinking bad water from warning their neighbors about the danger.Legal experts <a href="https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1914&context=wmlr" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">have questioned</a> whether courts would ever actually enforce such an order — so the case brought by Cabot against Kemble could set a significant precedent.Cabot also sued Kemble's attorneys and the law firms where they work for representing Kemble in his earlier lawsuit against Cabot, which Kemble withdrew a few months after his cancer diagnosis (Kemble's attorneys <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/08/13/cabot-fracking-5-million-lawsuit-water-contamination-ray-kemble-dimock" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">have cited</a> unspecified “new information” in explaining the decision to drop the case). Kemble's supporters say they fear that by including Kemble's attorneys in the lawsuit, Cabot is trying to make it harder for those harmed by powerful companies to find representation.On December 21, 2017, Susquehanna County Judge Jason J. Legg <a href="http://www.susqcoindy.com/PS/2017/12/21/preliminary-orders-issued-in-cabot-kemble-case/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">allowed</a> Cabot's claims against the attorneys to go forward, while admonishing Cabot for breaking Pennsylvania's Rules of Civil Procedure by claiming $5 million in damages, even though the rules forbade Cabot to name a specific figure higher than $50,000 in their complaint. The judge noted that the claiming damages of $5 million “may have been designed to attract media attention” and “likely” served no legitimate legal purpose.To Kemble, the lesson is clear. “This is just a way to shut the people up of the county and of the state, and I just don’t think it’s right,” Kemble said, <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/12/12/cabot-oil-wants-money-from-homeowner-for-critical-claims-following-settled-lawsuit/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to NPR's State Impact</a>. “We the people have the right to talk.”<h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Stop Citing Working Paper, Gas Supplier Demands</h3>In a December 11, 2017 letter, natural gas supplier Eversource Energy demanded that environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) stop citing <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3072237" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a study that found evidence</a> that Eversource and another utility legally manipulated natural gas pipeline markets in ways that caused astronomical gas price spikes during cold snaps from mid-2013 to mid-2016.That analysis found that Eversource and Avangrid booked pipeline capacity and then left it unused, driving down New England's natural gas supplies while demand was high, costing New England's power customers over $3.6 billion. This working paper, prepared by a group of researchers including an EDF economist, emphasized that researchers hadn't found that anything the company's did was illegal, but suggested that the laws might need reform.Those price spikes have been heavily touted by pipeline builders, who say they prove that New England needs to build more pipelines to carry fracked natural gas to the northern states in winter. The new study calls into question whether gas shortages were caused by a lack of pipelines or a failure to fully use the ones already built.“Limited pipeline capacity is indeed partly responsible for these extreme prices,” the researchers wrote. “But we also find strong evidence that two firms that held significant shares of the contracts to flow gas on the Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline — one of the two major pipelines serving New England — regularly restricted capacity to the region by scheduling deliveries without actually flowing gas.”The cease and desist letter warns EDF that Eversource could sue the environmental group if it continues to cite claims the company describes as “unsupported by fact.”EDF told DeSmog that the study has been presented for peer review, the method the scientific and academic communities use to ensure research is rigorous. “The Working Paper is going through the process for academic publication in a peer-review journal,” EDF spokesperson Jon Coifman told DeSmog. “Versions have been presented at several academic conferences and workshops.”Cease and desist letters are often sought in defamation cases, which allow people and companies to sue when someone harms their reputation by deliberately spreading false factual claims — which means it's unusual to see a cease and desist letter sent over scientific analysis.The study was authored by Levi Marks, PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Charles Mason, Chair in Petroleum and Natural Gas Economics at the University of Wyoming, along with EDF researcher Kristina Mohlin, and Matthew Zaragoza-Watkins, Assistant Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt.In November, Eversource and Avangrid were hit with a class action lawsuit over the same general allegations made in the study. The class action argues that the companies violated consumer protection and anti-trust laws, and unjustly enriched themselves by driving up power prices by 20 percent.EDF has rebuffed the cease and desist demand. “We stand by the analysis and reject this obvious attempt to intimidate and chill legitimate public inquiry,” Coifman <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/eversource-threatens-edf-with-cease-and-desist-over-report-on-gas-capacity/512826/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">told UtilityDive</a> shortly after receiving Eversource's letter.<h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Suing the Grassroots</h3>In August, <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/energy-transfer-partners-bakken-oil-pipeline-through-iowa" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Dakota Access pipeline</a> builder Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) filed a major lawsuit alleging racketeering and conspiracy by the grassroots environmental movement Earth First!, along with environmental groups Greenpeace and Banktrack.The lawsuit accuses the non-profits of seeking to profit through environmental activism. “Maximizing donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace's true objective,” <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3229327-Complaint.html#document/p2/a379916" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ETP's complaint alleges</a>, while accusing pipeline opponents of violating anti-racketeering laws (meant to protect against mafia-style organized crime) and characterizing emails and tweets sent by Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) critics as wire fraud.The lawsuit claims that ETP suffered nearly a billion dollars in damages and seeks to legally bar defendants from engaging in political protests. But civil rights advocates have taken issue with the coporation's approach.“Defendants employed time-honored, lawful means to advance their views, protected by core constitutional rights of free speech and association,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a friend-of-the-court <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/etp-v-greenpeace-amicus-brief" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">brief</a> objecting to ETP's claims of racketeering, defamation, and conspiracy. “Under ETP’s theories, ordinary political speech that runs counter to a corporation’s business interests could expose the speaker to enormous, unwarranted liability.”In December, attorneys for Earth First Journal, a publication whose name echoes the name of the activist group Earth First!, arrived in federal court to argue that Earth First! is a social movement based on a shared set of ideas, and not a legal entity like a corporation, and therefore isn't a thing that you can sue.Earth First!, the journal's attorney said, lacks the sorts of characteristics you'd find at something like a corporation, like a leadership structure, employees, or even members.Even if the oil industry's 2017 lawsuits don't make it very far, the specter of defending multi-million dollar legal claims could make non-profits and social movements nervous about publicly criticizing powerful corporations.And that, opponents say, is exactly the point.“Defending major lawsuits like these against deep-pocketed corporations is extremely expensive, time consuming, and stressful, particularly for cash strapped non-profits,” ACLU staff attorney Brian Hauss wrote in a December 6, 2017 <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights-protesters/standing-rock-protest-groups-sued-dakota-access-pipeline-company?page=1&platform=hootsuite" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">post</a>about ETP's 231-page lawsuit. “If the courts have any sense, this case won’t get to trial. But ETP doesn’t need to win in court to do major damage.”</div><div>
</div><div>=</div>=<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/02/06/fracking-appalachian-storage-hub-china" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/02/06/fracking-appalachian-storage-hub-china</a>no many link
China Is Financing a Petrochemical Hub in Appalachia. Meet its Powerful Backers.By Steve Horn • Tuesday, February 6, 2018 -
U.S. President Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and West Virginia Commerce Sec. Thrasher join in the Great Hall in Beijing for MOU signing for the Appalachian Development Hub  in November 2017Over the past year, oil and gas industry plans to build a petrochemical refining and storage hub along the Ohio River have steadily gained traction. Proponents hope this potential hub, which would straddle Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky, could someday rival the industrial corridor found along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana.Those plans center around creating what is known as the Appalachian Storage Hub, which received a major boost on November 9 during a trade mission to China attended by President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. At that trade mission, also attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the China Energy Investment Corp. announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to invest $83.7 billion into the planned storage hub over 20 years. For comparison, West Virginia's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016 was $72.9 billion.Though called the Appalachian Storage Hub as a broad-sweeping term, in practice the hub could encompass natural gas liquids storage, a market trading index center, a key pipeline feeding epicenter, and a petrochemical refinery row. Its prospective development has been spurred by the current construction of a $6 billion petrochemical refining facility in Pennsylvania owned by Shell Oil.The proposed hub has come under fire from grassroots groups. But this proposal also has a powerful set of backers, including West Virginia's five-member congressional delegation, the state's Governor and Secretary of Commerce, West Virginia University, the chemical industry's trade association, Shell Oil, and the Trump administration, among others.Detractors of the planned petrochemical hub believe that its construction would buoy the oil and gas industry in its efforts to further develop drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) projects in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale and Ohio's Utica Shale basins.
A “major concern we have about the whole complex is that it will encourage a second or third wave of gas fracking in our region, from the Marcellus, the Utica, and the Rogersville field, which is a much deeper layer of shale gas and oil and has been recently tested and a few commercial wells have been built into it,” Robin Blakeman, project coordinator with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, recently told the radio show Between the Lines. “It’s not commercially viable yet, but we think this complex will make it commercially viable.”...

http://www.ecowatch.com/donald-trump-fracking-2012606194.html<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/" target="_blank" style="outline: 0px;">Greenpeace</a> USA spokesperson Cassady Sharp agrees. "Donald Trump proved again that he is an unfit leader with no grasp on reality," she said."Trump pandered to the Marcellus Shale industry today, singing the praises of a dangerous energy extraction process that threatens the health and safety of families and communities all over this country, and promising to slash critical regulations and the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency]. This man has no business dealing with America's energy policy, and he would be a belligerent catalyst of catastrophic <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration: none;">climate change</a> if he were elected president."

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<div class="medtext longop">I think that part of the reason was to stage a pre-emptive strike against "Gasland" since they knew that it would be airing on HBO.

It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out in this area since I live in the Marcellus region.

From SourceWatch:

Industry groups and companies promoting the exploitation of the Marcellus Shale deposits

Marcellus Shale Committee 

Allis-Chalmers Energy, Inc. 

Alpha Natural Resources 

AMEC 

Alta Resources, LLC 

American Petroleum Institute 

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation 

AOP Clearwater 

Aquatech 

ARM Oil & Gas Solutions 

Atlas Energy Resources, LLC 

Babst Calland Clements & Zomnir 

Borton-Lawson 

Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney, PC 

Buchart Horn, Inc. 

Burnett Oil Company 

Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. 

Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc. 

Chesapeake Energy Corporation 

Chief Oil and Gas LLC 

CNX Gas Corporation 

Columbia Gas Transmission 

Complete Production Services 

Crescent Directional Drilling, LP 

Cummings/Riter Consultants, Inc. 

Devon Energy Company 

Dominion Exploration & Production, Inc. 

EADS 

East Resources, Inc. 

Encana 

Energy Corporation of America 

Energy Transfer 

Enterplus Resources USA 

Environmental Resources Management, Inc. 

EOG Resources, Inc. 

EQT Production Company 

Epic Energy Resources 

EXCO- North Coast Energy, Inc. 

EXCO Resources 

Exterran Energy Solutions, L.P. 

Exxon Mobil 

Fluids Management 

Fortuna Energy Inc. 

Frac Tech Services, Ltd. 

GAI Consultants, Inc. 

Gas Technology Institute 

Halliburton Energy Services 

Ground Water Protection Council 

J-W Operating Company 

Marathon Oil 

Marcellus Shale Coalition 

MarkWest Energy Partners, L.P. 

General Energy Company, LLC 

Hart Resource Technologies, Inc. & PA Brine Treatment, Inc. 

Hess, Inc. 

Holloman 

Hull & Associates, Inc. 

Hunt Oil Company 

Jackson Kelly, PLLC 

Jones Day 

J-W Operating Company 

K&L Gates 

Key Energy Services, Inc. 

L. Robert Kimball & Associates, Inc. 

Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox, LLP 

Marathon Oil Company 

MarkWest Energy Partners, L.P. 

M-I Swaco 

Newfield Exploration Company 

New Tech Engineering 

Novus Operating, LLC 

Packers Plus 

Penn Virginia 

Pennsylvania General Energy Company, LLC 

Pennsylvania Independent Oil & gas Association 

Petroleum Development Corporation 

PDC Mountaineer, LLC 

Phillips Production Company 

Quest Resource Corporation 

Range Resources 

Reed Smith, LLP 

RETTEW 

Rex Energy Corporation 

Royal Dutch Shell 

Samson Resources Company 

Saul Ewing 

Schlumberger 

Select Energy Services, LLC 

Seneca Resources Corp.]] 

Southwestern Energy Company 

StatoilHydro 

Steptoe & Johnson 

Sunoco Logistics Partners LP 

Superior Well Services, Ltd. 

Talisman Energy USA, Inc.' 

TeraAqua Resource Management 

Tetra Tech 

Thorp, Reed and Armstrong 

Triana Energy 

Turm Oil, Inc. 

UGI Energy Services, Inc 

United States Steel Corporation 

Universal Well Services, Inc. 

URS Corporation 

Weatherford International Ltd. 

Weavertown 

Weston Solutions, Inc. 

Williams Production Company 

XTO Energy, Inc. 

Rest of informative Sourcewatch link to the Marcellus region.

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marcellus_Shale" target="_blank">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marcellus_Sh...</a></div>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

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3/15

In August 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit distributed <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/fbiBulletin.pdf" rel="shadowbox" style="">an intelligence bulletin</a> [3] to all field offices warning that environmental extremism would likely become an increasing threat to the energy industry. The eight-page document argued that, even though the industry had encountered only low-level vandalism and trespassing, recent “criminal incidents” suggested that environmental extremism was on the rise. The FBI concluded: “Environmental extremism will become a greater threat to the energy industry owing to our historical understanding that some environmental extremists have progressed from committing low-level crimes against targets to more significant crimes over time in an effort to further the environmental extremism cause.”

Not long after the bulletin was distributed, a private security firm providing intelligence reports to the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security cited the FBI document in order to justify the surveillance of anti-fracking groups. The same security firm concluded that the “escalating conflict over natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania” could lead to an increase in “environmentalist activity or eco-terrorism.”

Since the 2010 FBI assessment was written, the specter of environmental extremism has been trotted out by both law enforcement and energy-industry security teams to describe a wide variety of grassroots groups opposed to the continued extraction of fossil fuels. In 2011, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP ) <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/RCMP.pdf" rel="shadowbox" style="">published a report</a> [4] titled, “Environmental Criminal Extremism and Canada’s Energy Sector.” The RCMP warned that environmental extremism posed a “clear and present criminal threat” to the energy industry. While both the FBI and RCMP reports make an effort to distinguish between lawful protest and criminal activity, they often conflate the two – in the RCMP report the terms “violence” and “direct action” are used interchangeably – and suggest opposition to the energy industry will lead to extremism. (The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division declined to answer questions about the 2010 bulletin.)

Yet even as the resistance to “extreme energy projects” has grown in size and scope, there is little evidence to support the breathless warnings about “eco-terrorism.” There has been no upward spiral in criminality among environmental activists. To the contrary, arson, property destruction, and other acts of violence most closely associated with the radical animal rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s have become all but nonexistent. According to figures compiled by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) at the University of Maryland, there has been only a handful of incidents defined as eco-terrorism since 2010. In fact, between 2010 and 2013, the latest year for which the GTD has published figures, out of a total of 54 terror incidents in the United States, five were attributed to the Animal Liberation Front. The last recorded incident carried out by the Earth Liberation Front – the bulldozing of two radio transmission towers in Washington – was in 2009. Earth First! hasn’t appeared in the database since 1994.

Instead, environmentalists have largely relied on classic social change strategies such as choreographed nonviolent civil disobedience, carefully planned protests, and divestment from the fossil fuel industry. “Overall we’ve seen a decline in activity, in terms of violent criminal activity” among environmentalists, an FBI intelligence analyst told <cite>The Washington Post</cite> in 2012.

Nevertheless, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and many state law enforcement agencies continue to promote the idea that environmental extremism is on the rise. The oil and gas industry is spending more on security than it ever has. According to a 2013 report by Frost & Sullivan, a marketing research and consulting company, annual spending on global oil and gas infrastructure security is expected to top $30 billion in just a few years. (In comparison, $30 billion is roughly what South Korea spends on defense annually.) “Surveillance will continue to dominate the oil and gas infrastructure security market,” a summary of the report states.

At the same time, numerous intelligence-sharing networks between the private sector and law enforcement have been established at every level of government, giving rise to an unprecedented energy-intelligence complex. They range from project-specific and regional networks like the Nebraska Information Analysis Center’s Keystone Pipeline Portal community and the Marcellus Shale Operators’ Crime Committee, to federal programs like the FBI’s Oil and Natural Gas Crime Issues Special Interest Group and the Department of Homeland Security’s Oil and Natural Gas Sector Coordinating Council. These public-private partnerships, coupled with a revolving door between intelligence agencies and the more lucrative energy industry, have created a new kind of foe for the environmental movement. The fossil fuel industry is now an economic behemoth firmly hitched to the national security state.

It is true that environmentalists pose a threat to the energy industry – just not in the way the FBI or RCMP believe. The threat to the industry is existential and economic, not extremist. If the movement to end our reliance on fossil fuels prevails, the oil and gas industry will lose trillions of dollars in forecast profits. According to an estimate by the <a href="http://www.carbontracker.org/" target="blank" style="">Carbon Tracker Initiative</a> [5], if we hope to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the energy sector would have to leave more than $20 trillion worth of fossil fuels in the ground. “The oil and gas industry is doing everything they can to ensure they’re in business for the next 30 to 50 years and doing so at a time when we should be, as a nation, collectively figuring out how to stop using those same fossil fuels over the next ten years,” says Wes Gillingham, program director of <a href="http://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/" target="blank" style="">Catskill Mountainkeeper</a> [6].

Conflict between fossil fuel interests and environmentalists is inevitable. But as the contest becomes ever more stark, there seems to be little effort to distinguish between lawful political activism and illegal activities. The fossil fuel industry’s reasonable concerns about the strength of its political opponents have morphed into a kind of paranoia, one that threatens to criminalize constitutionally protected dissent.

In the years since the FBI and RCMP reports, unconventional oil and gas development has been met with sustained protest, from small scale tree sits and encampments to massive nationwide demonstrations. The opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is only the most high-profile example of resistance to the fossil fuel industry. The term “Blockadia” has been used to describe the loose network of citizens seeking to disrupt the continued exploitation of fossil fuels. Tactics vary depending on the region and political backdrop, but the emphasis has been on nonviolent civil disobedience, legal action, and ballot measures to hamper pipeline projects, ban fracking, and prevent or slow down tar sands extraction. A handful of pipeline projects – including Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain and Williams Companies’ Constitution pipelines – have been stymied. In mid-December, after several years of intense organizing, lobbying, and direct action campaigns, New York became the first state with substantial shale gas reserves to ban fracking. Towns in Colorado, Texas, and Ohio have passed restrictions that limit oil and gas drilling.

Such successes have emboldened these groups and inspired action elsewhere. (Of course it should be noted that oil and gas development has hardly been halted; it continues apace throughout North America.) Rather than lead to an increase in criminal activity, as the FBI predicted, opposition to the oil and gas industry has, in some ways, become more mainstream. “Five years ago you would have never seen the faces of rural farmers and ranchers and tribal leaders on the front lines of climate actions,” says Jane Kleeb, director of <a href="http://boldnebraska.org/" target="_blank" style="">Bold Nebraska</a> [7], an environmental group opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline. “This unlikely Cowboy and Indian Alliance that is also working shoulder to shoulder with big green groups is changing the way America looks at the issue of land, water, and climate change.”

But the new face of the environmental movement seems not to have registered with an industry intent on steamrolling its critics. In 2011, in comments that have been widely cited, a spokesman for Anadarko Petroleum described the anti-fracking movement as an “insurgency” and suggested that industry insiders download the US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual as a guide to dealing with it. Less well known is the fact that Anadarko has built up a team of former intelligence operatives to combat what it views as an insurrection. The company’s southwest regional security manager was an officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he was involved in undercover work. Another Anadarko security manager, LC Wilson, was regional commander of the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2009 to 2011 and oversaw law enforcement statewide. Anadarko has also been involved in the creation of at least two Oilfield Crime Committees, one in Texas and one in Pennsylvania, both of which are headed by former law enforcement officials. The South Texas Oilfield Crime Committee and the Marcellus Shale Operators’ Crime Committee have gathered intelligence on environmental activists and routinely exchange information with law enforcement.

Anadarko is not alone. Most large energy companies have security teams run by former FBI, Secret Service, or law enforcement personnel. The director of corporate security at Devon Energy, for example, was a special agent with the Secret Service for 14 years. Chevron’s chief security officer was the former head of the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service. And BP’s head of Government and Political Affairs from 2007 to 2012 worked for MI6, Britain’s top spy agency.

In most cases these security teams have been deployed to manage crises overseas. In Indonesia, for example, ExxonMobil ran its own intelligence operations and consulted regularly with the country’s military leaders as it sought to protect its assets amid destabilizing political conditions. In 2012 <cite>The Guardian</cite> reported that Shell Oil maintained a 1,200-person police force plus a network of undercover informants in Nigeria and spent tens of millions of dollars on security in the region.

As shale oil and gas development has expanded in North America, the frontlines of the energy wars are no longer overseas, but rather in places like Nebraska, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Range Resources, one of the largest drillers in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, has admitted to hiring veterans of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with experience in psychological warfare – or Psyops – to engage with local communities.

Neither Anadarko nor ExxonMobil nor Range Resources responded to requests for comment.

Even as the energy industry has beefed up its own in-house intelligence operations, it has established increasingly close ties with law enforcement agencies. This is partly a result of the post-9/11 national security state and the premium placed on information sharing. The Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC), established by the Department of Homeland Security in 2006, holds quarterly meetings to facilitate information sharing between the private sector and government agencies. (Meetings are exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which means there is no public oversight. Indeed, the Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002 stipulates that information voluntarily submitted by industry to the DHS or DOE is protected from public disclosure.) Within CIPAC there is an Oil and Natural Gas Sector Coordinating Council and an Energy Government Coordinating Council. According to minutes from an August 2013 CIPAC meeting, the DHS has been working to provide more security clearances to the energy industry. “Currently DHS is working to enhance policies to share more classified information both cyber and non-cyber related,” the document states. Anadarko, Kinder Morgan, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute are frequent participants and sponsors of CIPAC meetings.

In addition to CIPAC there is a Homeland Security Information Sharing Network for the Oil and Gas Industry (HSIN-ONG), a web-based platform that allows companies to communicate with each other and with law enforcement. It also gives them access to Suspicious Activity Reports and other intelligence related information. Around the same time that the information-sharing network was being created, the Department of Justice launched its National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative to “improve the sharing of suspicious activity reports among state, local, tribal, and federal law-enforcement organizations, as well as private sector entities.”

Intelligence-sharing systems also have been developed at the state level. The Nebraska Information Analysis Center (one of more than 70 Homeland Security “fusion centers”) has its own network that focuses on “possible unlawful tactics and techniques of individuals/groups opposed to Keystone XL pipeline.” According to documents obtained by <cite>Earth Island Journal</cite> through a public records request, oil infrastructure company TransCanada has its own page in the HSIN portal where suspicious activity reports can be posted. TransCanada representatives, FBI agents, county attorneys, local sheriffs, and the US assistant attorney general all have access to the Keystone pipeline network.

Despite the numerous federal, state, and regional information-sharing networks established during the past decade, the industry has been reluctant to participate in programs that might be subject to public oversight. Thus last summer the oil and gas industry announced the creation of its own information sharing and analysis center, or ISAC, which allows member companies to submit intelligence anonymously and is exempt from public disclosure.

The industry’s fear of transparency is part of a larger pattern. Oil and gas firms often express alarm about having their facilities photographed or filmed by citizen watchdogs, which can lead to official investigations. For example, in 2011 the Rocky Mountain Energy Security Group (yet another regional intelligence sharing network) issued a security report that described activists in Pavillion, Wyoming who had photographed a natural gas processing facility. The report, which was disseminated to law enforcement and security professionals in the industry, defined the behavior as “suspicious activity” and said that the information was being circulated in order to determine “whether the activity has any underlying criminal or terrorism nexus (or intent).”

In recent years the FBI has pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho for little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations. In 2011, after receiving an anonymous tip, the FBI went after Texas activist Ben Kessler, a member of the direct action environmental group <a href="http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/" target="_blank" style="">Rising Tide North America</a> [8]. In November 2013 and February 2014, a Pennsylvania state trooper and member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force visited anti-fracking activists at their homes in New York and Pennsylvania under the pretext that they had trespassed while taking photos of a gas compressor station. More recently, members of Rising Tide in the Pacific Northwest have been contacted or visited by FBI agents. (The energy companies’ fear of transparency is in some ways similar to the livestock industry’s exposé anxiety, which has led to the passage of so-called ag-gag laws that prohibit the filming of farms and ranches.)

The frontlines of the energy wars are no longer overseas, but rather in places like Nebraska, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

But what happens when the private sector’s assumptions about criminal activity are wrong or misleading? In Pennsylvania the oil and gas industry has driven speculation that environmental organizations were behind several acts of vandalism at or near drilling sites, even though there’s no evidence of any link whatsoever. The unfounded assertion has spilled into the local press. In February 2014, The <cite>Williamsport Sun-Gazette</cite> in northeast Pennsylvania ran a story about the crimes headlined, “Ecoterror Target: Gas companies bolster security in response to threats.”

Jeff Monaghan, a PhD candidate in Sociology at Queen’s University in Ontario who writes on issues of surveillance, says the RCMP document reflects how deeply intertwined the suspicions of energy companies and intelligence agencies have become. “The broader context of this document is a very, very close working relationship between the Critical Infrastructure Protection team and the energy corporations. As the relationship develops the underlying belief is that environmentalists are first-and-foremost a threat to the economy. It’s really about protecting shared values of economic growth.”

Or, as the RCMP report put it, “Canada’s economic growth … and the objectives of environmentalists are in direct conflict.” Environmental activists wouldn’t disagree with that, especially given the aggressive pro-energy policies of the Harper government. What they take issue with is the highly provocative claim that their opposition to the energy industry will likely lead to criminal activity. As the interests of the state and energy sector become increasingly close, however, this perception is taking hold. Activists worry that it is shaping law enforcement’s approach to the movement and could lead to a crackdown on legal protest.

“It doesn’t surprise me that the industry is trying really hard to paint the environmental movement as fringe or dangerous, because it’s their last resort,” says Catskill Mountainkeeper’s Gillingham. “It’s behavior based on a losing argument.”

The conflict over the Keystone XL pipeline has reinforced the narrative that economic prosperity and environmental protection are mutually exclusive. Pipeline proponents like to paint the opposition as job killers and, yes, extremists. In April 2014, Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, described the pipeline as “a project that is being blocked purely by environmental extremism.” More recently, US Senator Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, called anti-fracking activists campaigning for a moratorium “radical environmentalists.” A major Washington PR firm, Berman and Co., has launched an ad campaign bankrolled by the energy industry called “Big Green Radicals” that seeks to smear high-profile activists.

But the demonization of environmental advocates goes far beyond mere polemics. TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, has worked closely with law enforcement along the proposed pipeline route from the very early stages of its development. A certain amount of collaboration with law enforcement is to be expected with any major infrastructure project. But TransCanada has gone further. The company has pressured attorneys general to prosecute environmental activists under terrorism statutes. It has given local law enforcement advance notice of meetings with landowners whom the company describes as hostile. And the company has held workshops with local law enforcement and the FBI, including a daylong “strategy meeting” in Oklahoma with the FBI in 2012.

According to documents obtained by <cite>Earth Island Journal</cite>, the FBI distributed a bulletin in early 2013 “regarding threat concerns by environmental extremists against the Keystone Pipeline expansion project” to law enforcement across Nebraska. In its strategic plan for 2014-2017, South Dakota Homeland Security identifies what it considers to be extremist enclaves in the state, through which Keystone is proposed to pass. According to the document, “Uranium mining in the southwest part of the state and a proposed oil pipeline in the western part of the state garnered the attention of extremist environmental groups.” The report does not describe or name the groups, their intentions, or tactics. A public records request for additional documents or communication regarding “extremist environmental groups” in South Dakota was denied.

(Read the FBI bulletin <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/fbiBulletin.pdf" style="">here</a> [3].)

In 2013 <cite>Earth Island Journal</cite> <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/undercover_agents_infiltrated_tar_sands_resistance_camp_to_break_up_planned/" style="">reported on the infiltration of a Tar Sands Resistance training camp</a> [9] in Oklahoma. Two undercover officers from the Bryan County Sheriff’s office attended the weeklong event and shared intelligence with the Oklahoma Department of Homeland Security Fusion Center. Law enforcement was tipped off and a planned act of civil disobedience was preempted. During that same week TransCanada’s corporate security advisor was in frequent contact with the Oklahoma Fusion Center and made comments on a classified situational awareness bulletin.

In many ways Texas, where the Keystone pipeilne would terminate, is the heart of the American oil and gas industry. Not surprisingly, activists there are routinely harassed by law enforcement and corporate security for nothing more than keeping tabs on the industry. In East Houston, the city’s industrial hub and most polluted neighborhood (Houston itself is one of the most polluted cities in the country), environmental activist and community organizer Bryan Parras has been questioned by the police on several occasions and once was contacted by a Coast Guard special agent assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Houston. The organization he helps run with his father, <a href="http://tejasbarrios.org/" target="_blank" style="">Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services</a> [10] (or TEJAS), has been closely watched. Parras frequently takes activists and journalists on what he calls “toxic tours” – a survey of the neighborhood’s refineries, chemical plants, and shipping ports. He’s made a point of documenting the air pollution caused by the flaring at the refineries that flank the neighborhood. He says the images “compel people to action.”

They’ve also made Parras a subject of interest for industry and law enforcement. He is routinely questioned by the police or harassed by security representatives from Valero Energy, a major refining company and one of the industries Parras monitors. In 2013 Parras got a text from a friend, Tish Stringer, saying that an agent had visited her home and wanted to know about her relationship with him. The Coast Guard special agent, David Pileggi, told Stringer he’d been tipped off by Valero.

“It’s nothing new,” Parras says. “Since 9/11 we’ve been harassed repeatedly and pulled over for taking pictures or video of the facilities.”

In an emailed statement, Bill Day, vice president of communications at Valero, said the Houston refinery is designated by Homeland Security as “critical infrastructure” and therefore must meet enhanced security requirements. “One of those requirements,” he wrote, “is that when we see people taking photos or video of our facilities, we ascertain the purpose of that activity and then report it to DHS.” According to Shauna Dunlap, media coordinator for the FBI’s Houston Division, photographing and videotaping of critical infrastructures “can be a precursor of potential criminal activity.” The Joint Terrorism Task Force, she says, is “obligated to look into each and every suspicious activity report.”

This kind of surveillance and intimidation, Parras says, is particularly chilling in an area with a large number of undocumented residents. Not only are they vulnerable to threats of deportation, but also they’re quite literally at the crossroads of environmental destruction and the risks associated with climate change. East Houston is home to a disproportionate number of the city’s largest sources of industrial pollution, four major highways, and the shipping channel that feeds into the Port of Houston. If built, the Keystone XL pipeline would terminate in East Houston; Valero has a contract with TransCanada to receive most of the oil. “On the basis of location alone these neighborhoods appear far more vulnerable to health risks than others in Greater Houston,” a 2006 study commissioned by the mayor’s office concluded. In addition, rising sea levels threaten to inundate the heavily industrialized shoreline. “It puts us at even higher risk because we’re on the coast,” says Parras. “All these facilities are right on the water.”

In many ways, for activists like Parras the last line of defense lies in taking photos, documenting the impacts of industrial pollution, and simply bearing witness. TEJAS hasn’t even engaged in civil disobedience or direct action, he says. Still, his organization is on Valero’s watch list. TEJAS organizers have been followed and photographed or videoed by Valero security personnel. Local teachers who joined Parras on one of his toxic tours were bullied into deleting photos and video they had taken of the refinery. Journalists he has shown around have been threatened by Valero that they’ll be reported to the FBI

In the eyes of the oil and gas industry this is the new environmental extremism. And that view is being shared with law enforcement at every level.

The intimidation and surveillance have had an impact. Parras says his advocacy has been compromised by Valero’s scrutiny of his organization and the refinery’s close relationship with law enforcement. “It’s difficult to get neighbors to want to engage and speak out,” he says.Adam Federman, recipient of a Polk Grant for Investigative Reporting, is a contributing writer to Earth Island Journal. His work has appeared in Salon, among other outlets.

http://www.alternet.org/fracking/inside-big-energys-alliance-intelligence-clamp-down-fracking-opponents" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">http://www.alternet.org/fracking/inside-big-energys-alliance-intelligence-clamp-down-fracking-opponents</div>

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/adam-federman

[2] http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/issues/current/

[3] http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/fbiBulletin.pdf

[4] http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring2015/assets/RCMP.pdf

[5] http://www.carbontracker.org/

[6] http://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/

[7] http://boldnebraska.org/

[8] http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/

[9] http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/undercover_agents_infiltrated_tar_sands_resistance_camp_to_break_up_planned/

[10] http://tejasbarrios.org/

[11] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Inside Big Energy's Alliance With Intelligence to Clamp Down on Fracking Opponents

[12] http://www.alternet.org/

[13] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

</div>

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<h1 class="entry-title" style=" margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline;">Range Resources Uses Military “Psy-Ops” to Counter Pennsylvania Drilling Opponents</h1><div>
</div><div>http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2011/11/08/range-resources-uses-military-psy-ops-to-counter-pennsylvania-drilling-opponents</div>

The town of Sanford sits in what is called New York’s Southern Tier, on the Pennsylvania border. More importantly, it’s in the heart of Marcellus Shale country.

March 5, 2013  |

<a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2011/11/08/range-resources-uses-military-psy-ops-to-counter-pennsylvania-drilling-opponents/">This </a><a href="http://www.onearth.org/blog/town-board-to-residents-shut-up-about-fracking" style="">story</a> [3] originally appeared at <a href="http://www.onearth.org/" style="">OnEarth.org</a> [4].

During my 12-year career as a newspaper reporter, I spent thousands of hours sitting through city council meetings, zoning board hearings, property tax appeals, school board work sessions, and just about every other kind of attention-sapping municipal meeting you could possibly imagine. (It wasn’t all bad: I met my wife at one.) At these meetings, it wasn’t uncommon for the same topics to come up over and over again, frequently with the same people making the same points about the same issues that everyone in attendance has heard a million times before. (Think “<a href="mailto:http://www.nbc.com/parks-and-recreation/" target="_blank">Parks and Rec</a> [5]” without any laughs.) So I sympathize, perhaps more than I should, with elected officials and public servants who would like to find a way to make topics they’ve heard about and debated endlessly just … go ... away.

Still, I had never heard of a town that actually imposed a gag order on its own citizens, until the Natural Resources Defense Council (which publishes OnEarth) received complaints about a town board in Sanford, New York (population: 2,400), that told its residents they could no longer bring up concerns about fracking at town meetings.

NRDC and a local partner, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ksinding/youre_silencing_us-protectin.html" target="blank">sued the Sanford town board</a> [6] last month, claiming that the ban on fracking discussions violates the First Amendment rights of the town’s residents, some of whom are NRDC members. In a complaint to the U.S. District Court, the organizations say the town violated the U.S. and New York State constitutions by restricting residents’ right to free speech during the public participation portion of town meetings, which remains open to all other topics -- just not fracking. (Below is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0IVHa2IASE" target="blank">a video of the September 11 meeting</a> [7] at which the gag order was adopted.)

Sanford sits in what is called New York’s Southern Tier, on the Pennsylvania border. More importantly for this discussion, it’s in the heart of Marcellus Shale country, where a deep-rock formation contains large natural gas reserves that can only be reached through a controversial and disruptive process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. South of the border, Pennsylvania communities are being swarmed by natural gas drillers who are driving a boom in U.S. energy development -- along with concerns about air and water pollution, health impacts, community division, and declining property values. (For an account of how one Pennsylvania community is being affected, see “<a href="http://www.onearth.org/article/fracking-the-amish">Fracking the Amish</a> [8].”) North of the border, though, a moratorium prevents fracking while New York State regulators study whether it can be done safely, and what rules are needed to protect residents. [UPDATE: State Health Department Commissioner Nirav Shah said that <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Health-Dept-Fracking-review-needs-more-time-4272342.php#ixzz2KiqmBxD6" target="_blank">a key health review on fracking</a> [9] is going to take more time, likely pushing back a decision that had been expected by the end of this month.]

Communities that stand to be affected by fracking have taken positions on both sides of the debate, with some expressing support for the economic benefits and others enacting rules to forbid natural gas drilling inside their borders. Sanford’s town board has come down largely on the pro-fracking side, even leasing land to a natural gas company for drilling within the town and passing a resolution urging state lawmakers to allow fracking to proceed. A week before the gag order was imposed, Town Supervisor Dewey Decker signed a letter to Governor Cuomo asserting that a delay was “only empowering opponents” -- including, presumably, the opponents in his own community.

Naturally, those fracking opponents weren’t too happy about the board’s pro-drilling actions, and they were vocal about it during the board’s public comment sessions, leading to the gag order. Herbert Kline, an attorney who represents Sanford, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hBWjkUEABp-Pu8Fb3sAUA9bgfiPA?docId=f3c091db1a6f4bf5b1b3a8d2f07b2b91" target="_blank">told the Associated Press,</a> [10] "People who were against fracking had, in the minds of the town board, monopolized discussion in the public participation portion of prior meetings to the extent that very little other business could be accomplished.”

You know what? Tough. Again speaking as someone who has spent thousands of hours in public meetings, that’s what happens when people have strong opinions about issues that matter to their lives, their families, and their community: they want to talk about them, and they want their elected decision makers to listen. And for people who live in the Marcellus Shale region, it’s hard to imagine an issue more vital to their health and homes than fracking. Mike Mustante, one of the Sanford residents prevented from speaking out, told NRDC that by gagging him, the town board “ended any chance that I might have to affect the future value of my home, or the quality of the air I breathe, or the water I drink.” That’s the kind of thing a guy won't shut up about.

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<div class="tags">See more stories tagged with:

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/fracking-0">fracking</a> [11]</div>

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<div class="print-source_url">Source URL: <a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/gag-order-town-board-decides-community-can-no-longer-discuss-fracking-town-meetings">http://www.alternet.org/environment/gag-order-town-board-decides-community-can-no-longer-discuss-fracking-town-meetings</a></div>

Links:

[1] http://www.nrdc.org/onearth

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/scott-dodd

[3] http://www.onearth.org/blog/town-board-to-residents-shut-up-about-fracking

[4] http://www.onearth.org/

[5] mailto:http://www.nbc.com/parks-and-recreation/

[6] http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ksinding/youre_silencing_us_-_protectin.html

[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0IVHa2IASE

[8] http://www.onearth.org/article/fracking-the-amish

[9] http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Health-Dept-Fracking-review-needs-more-time-4272342.php#ixzz2KiqmBxD6

[10] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hBWjkUEABp-Pu8Fb3sAUA9bgfiPA?docId=f3c091db1a6f4bf5b1b3a8d2f07b2b91

[11] http://www.alternet.org/tags/fracking-0

[12] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

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potter: Pennyslvania’s Department of Homeland Security is in hot water after an<a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/pennsylvania-homeland-security-eco-terror-bulletin/3145/"> intelligence bulletin shows the agency has been monitoring non-violent activists</a>, including a film screening of <a href="http://gaslandthemovie.com/">Gasland</a>, and labeling them “environmental extremists.”

Governor Ed Rendell has said he is “appalled.” But he has said he will not fire the state director of homeland security, James Powers.

As I discussed on <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/eco-terrorists-the-new-boogeyman-alyona-show/3134/">the Alyona Show recently</a>, this intelligence memo represents a national problem. Local, state and federal “domestic terrorism” priorities are completely out of line with what most reasonable people would agree are true threats. They are completely detached from any rational definition of terrorism. Perhaps the best example of that is James Powers himself.

As director of homeland security, Powers is responsible for the controversial intelligence bulletins. <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/james-powers-environmentalists-timothy-mcveigh/3144/">James Powers wrote in an email </a>that he intended for pro-drilling industry groups, “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.” The department chose to focus its resources on non-violent environmental groups such as <a href="http://climategroundzero.net/">Climate Ground Zero</a>. But do you know who James Powers does NOT think is a “terrorist”?

Timothy McVeigh.

As I reported here previously, <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/homeland-security-says-timothy-mcveigh-isnt-a-terrorist-but-peace-activists-are/701/">Powers does not think McVeigh is a terrorist, “just a person very angry with the U.S. government.”</a> McVeigh is responsible for the most destructive act of terrorism on U.S. soil prior to 9/11.

Unfortunately, James Powers is indicative of a broader problem. For instance, check out what the head of <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/jihad-crips-extreme-animal-rights-activists-all-the-same/2984/">New Jersey’s homeland security office, Charles McKenna, had to say</a> about his priorities:

“Jihad, Crips, extreme animal-rights activists, it’s all the same: people trying damage the system…”

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<h1 class="entry-title" style=" text-align: left;">Pennsylvania “Eco-Terror” Bulletin is Not an Isolated Case: It’s a National Problem</h1>

by Will Potter on <abbr class="published" title="2010-09-16">September 16, 2010</abbr>

in <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/category/surveillance/" title="View all posts in Surveillance" rel="category tag">Surveillance</a>

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Pennsylvania’s Department of Homeland Security has distributed intelligence bulletins about non-violent environmental groups, such as Climate Ground Zero, and labeled activists as “environmental extremists.” In response to public outrage, the state’s contract with a private firm called the Institute of Terrorism Research & Response has been terminated; Governor <a href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_region/20100915_Rendellappalledby_state_s_tracking_of_activists.html">Ed Rendell said he’s “appalled.”</a> But this was no fluke, no error, no isolated instance. The same policies that have come to light in Pennsylvania have been exposed across the country, and up to top levels of the federal government.

After <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/do-environmental-extremists-pose-criminal-threat-to-gas-drilling">Abrahm Lustgarten at Pro Publica</a> broke the story, the mainstream press and many bloggers have been treating this story as a “news of the weird,” a strange case of a bizarre intelligence bulletin that, if you buy the governor’s rhetoric, was simply a mistake. In reality, this intelligence bulletin is nearly identical to countless others that have been exposed around the country, and it is representative of federal terrorism priorities.

For instance:

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<li>In Georgia, local homeland security officials were exposed <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/cops-spying-on-honeybaked-ham-protestors-and-peace-activists/524/">spying on animal rights activists distributing leaflets at a HoneyBaked Ham store</a>. The vegans prevailed in a lawsuit.</li>

<li>In Maryland, <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/i-spy-something-green/">police labeled environmental activists as “eco-terrorists” and “environmental extremists,” </a>monitored group meetings, maintained databases, and shared those files with the FBI and NSA.</li>

<li>In Minnesota, FBI agents approached a local activist with hopes of <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/fbi-informant-vegan-potluck/437/">infiltrating vegan potlucks.</a></li>

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The list goes on. And on. And on.

These are not the goofy exploits of Keystone Kops. These misplaced priorities come from the top levels of government. The animal rights and environmental movements have repeatedly been labeled the <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/green-scare">“number one domestic terrorism threat.”</a>

If you read the Pennsylvania intelligence bulletin closely, you can see that the reference to activists as “environmental extremists” actually cites an FBI memo as its source for that claim (on page 8).

This is not the work of a few rogue homeland security officials, it is the work of multiple local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. Until we demand a fundamental restructuring of domestic terrorism operations in this country, and demand true checks and balances on local homeland security cops and, more importantly, the FBI, there will be many more Pennsylvanias.

UPDATE: There has been some great coverage of this issue elsewhere. Please check out <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/what-is-the-difference-be_1_b_720012.html">John Robbins’ piece on Huffington Post</a>, <a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/09/enviros-or-tea-partiers-whos-more-threat?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+%7C+MoJoBlog%29">Jen Phillips’ column in Mother Jones</a>, and the post on <a href="http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/09/15/when-political-activism-gets-treated-as-potential-terrorism/">Empty Wheel</a>, to name a few.  <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/pennsylvania-homeland-security-eco-terror-bulletin/3145/">http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/pennsylvania-homeland-security-eco-terror-bulletin/3145/</a>

If you went to see <a href="http://gaslandthemovie.com/">Gasland</a> in Pennsylvania, your name might now be on a watchlist compiled by the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security. The agency has reportedly been tracking people who are protesting drilling for natural gas -- or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing">fracking</a> -- in the giant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Formation">Marcellus Shale</a> formation. From the <a href="http://www.centredaily.com/2010/09/14/2206710/documents-show-homeland-security.html">Centre Daily</a>:

According to recently leaked documents, the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security has been tracking anti-gas drilling groups and their meetings — including a public screening of the film "Gasland," a documentary about the environmental hazards of natural gas drilling.

The office has included the information in its weekly intelligence bulletins sent to law enforcement agencies.

The bulletins are also sent to gas companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

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State Homeland Security Director James Powers says he's worried about vandalism. Pennsylvania Gov. <a href="http://cbs3.com/wireapnewspa/Rendell.looking.into.2.1912163.html">Ed Rendell</a> says he's looking into it. Pro Publica posted the state's <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/pennsylvania-intelligence-bulletin-no.-131-aug.-30-2010">intelligence bulletin</a> last week. Now the story's finally getting some <a href="http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/09/post_122.html">legs</a>.

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<a href="http://wallaby.telicon.com/PA/library/2010/2010113079.HTM">ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE</a> (EEC)

Chair – David Kleppinger of McNees, Wallace & Nurick

Members – Richard Allan, Principal, RJ Allan Consulting; Scott Baker, Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney PC; Cynthia Carrow, VP, Government & Community Relations, Western PA Conservancy;  Rosemary Chiavetta of the Public Utility Commission; Thomas Chiomento, Director of Government at Exelon Generation; Brian Clark, Shareholder, Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney PC; Nick DeBenedictus, Chairman, Aqua America;  George Ellis, President, PA Coal Association; Ellen Ferretti, VP, PA Environmental Council ; Josh First, President , Appalachian Land & Conservation Services Co., LLC;  John Giordano, Chief Legal, Philadelphia Works;  Pete Gleason, Partner, K&L Gates; Grant Gulibon, Regional Specialist, PA Builders Association;  Dave Hess, Former Secretary, Department of Environmental Protection; John Hohenwarter, National Rifle Association; Charlie Kirkwood, President, Shawnee Insurance;  Mike Krancer; John Oliver, Oliver Brothers; Stan Rapp, Senior Partner, Greenlee Partners; John Rich, Ultra Clean Fuels; Todd Rucci; Hasu Shah; John Skoutelas, VP of Governmental Affairs, Waste Management; Pat Solano; Glen Thomas, GT Power Group; Eric Thumma, Director of Institutional Relations, Iberdrola Renewables; Don Welsh, Former President, Pennsylvania Environmental Council;  Pam Witmer, Energy & Environmental Practice Lead, Bravo Group; and PA State Senator Mary Jo White.

To better understand who is who on the EEC, see the chart below:

By sector, the EEC is 30% lobbying, 20% energy, 20% government, 13% environment and 4% other.

<h4>Lobbying at the EEC Table</h4>

The four largest lobbying firms with seats on EEC are Bravo Group Buchanon, Ingersoll & Rooney, Greenlee Partners, and K&L Gates.  On the surface the presence of lobbyists may not have caused any undue concern. However, when you consider WHO are the lobbyists representing, well, more than a few caution lights should  have been blinking.  A partial list of clients shows these four lobbying firms represent 29 different parties with interest in the fracking of the Marcellus Shale.

Interesting side note:

<a href="http://www.klgates.com/about/" style=""> “Corporate Board Member Magazine</a>, in association with FTI Consulting, Inc., ranked K&L Gates as one of the top 25 law firms in its 2012 list of “America’s Best Corporate Law Firms.” Based on a survey of nearly 2,000 general counsel of U.S. publicly held companies, the rankings focused on those law firms that survey respondents said they would engage in a variety of important legal subject matters.”

FTI Consulting, Inc. is the Public Relations Firm for  Energy-in-Depth, an industry front group noted for its hit piece on Josh Fox’s documentary, Gasland.  (see: <a href="http://commonsense2.com/2012/07/naturalgasdrilling/2012/02/naturalgasdrilling/connecting-the-dots-the-marcellus-natural-gas-play-players-part-3/">Energy-in-Depth (EID):  The “GAS”roots</a>)

<h4>EEC and the Marcellus Shale Coalition</h4>

Corporations and lobbying firms represented on the EEC are also listed as members of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

Lobbyists:  K&L Gates, Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney PC, and McNees Wallace & Nurick, LLC

Corporations:  Chief Oil & Gas,  Aqua America, CNX Gas, Range Resources Corp, Williams, Energy Transfer Partners, LP, UGI, Reserved Environmental Services, and Talisman.

<h4>The Money</h4>

Members or people related to members of the EEC enriched Corbett’s 2010 campaign by $918,165.  The highest donors are Ronald Krancer, father of Michael Krancer (now PA Department of Environmental Protection DEP) with $230,000.  He was followed with $190,000 from the lobbying firm of Greenlee Partners, and $100,000 from Trevor Rees-Jones the CEO of Chief Oil and Gas.

With 29 members on the committee, it averages $23,730 per seat,...

<a href="http://commonsense2.com/2012/07/naturalgasdrilling/marcellus-shale-advisory-commission%E2%80%99s-swivel-chairs/">http://commonsense2.com/2012/07/naturalgasdrilling/marcellus-shale-advisory-commission%E2%80%99s-swivel-chairs/</a>

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