"Frack Water" Is Greens Latest Desperate Attempt Against Fracking

I won't rehash the particulars of the national debate over "fracking", the technology behind the natural gas revolution here in the US (some background here). But for those who are well-versed in the industry and the relevant policy fights, a couple basic facts are more or less agreed upon. Fracking is more or less inevitable, for the following reasons:

1. the energy resources available to us by virtue of fracking are too big to ignore,
   
2. fracking is in the plus column in terms of environmental impact (gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel and it will largely displace coal, and then replace large chunks of oil).
   
3. in the end, the greens don't have very good arguments against fracking, there just isn't the evidence that fracking is dangerous.
4. fracking is bringing alot of jobs to previous depressed areas, which, even if fracking was marginally dangerous, are accepting fracking for the economic impact

Given these, especially #3, people in the industry have predicted that efforts to ban or slow fracking will ultimately fail, but that greens will throw everything they have at trying to stop fracking. After the "groundwater pollution" tack fails, which it has almost completely done, the next phase will be to attack the "frack water". We are now there.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will soon begin the process of developing "comprehensive" national standards for wastewater discharges produced by extracting natural gas from underground coalbed and shale formations.

In a written statement released by the agency, the EPA noted that proposed standard will include input from federal and state governments, industry and public health groups. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson contends this latest action is necessary "to make sure the needs of our energy future are met safely and responsibly."

Frack water disposal is probably the least problematic aspect of the entire technology, but that is not stopping Obama's EPA.

The Pittsburgh-based Marcellus Shale Coaltion, which in its three-year history has established itself as a key voice for developing the Marcellus Shale play in an environmentally responsible manner, expressed bewilderment at the EPA's regulatory plans.

"While we certainly appreciate that the EPA shares our concern in protecting the environment, especially water, it is baffling that the agency would move forward with such measures that completely disregard the facts on the ground," said Kathryn Klaber, the coalition's president. "This is yet another Washington solution in search of a problem, as treated Marcellus water in Pennsylvania is no longer discharged into surface waters."

The fight goes on.

Fracking? Bloody Right!

Kudos to the Brits for getting on with it and lifting the ban on fracking and opening the way for economic development, energy diversity, and a more efficient-lower emission future.

UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey announced Thursday that the government has allowed the resumption of exploratory hydraulic fracturing (fracking), but any fracking activities would be subject to new controls to mitigate the risks of seismic activity.

The news follows the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Autumn Statement on Dec.5 in which he announced plans to better exploit the UK's gas resources and that the Department of Energy and Climate Change would establish an Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil.

Exploratory fracking has been suspended in the UK since May 2011 after two small seismic tremors were detected neat the country's only fracking operation in the Bowland Basin to the east of Blackpool in Lancashire, northern England. On Monday this week, Rigzone reported that the British Geological Society believes shale deposits under Blackpool are 50-percent greater than previously thought at 300 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Why Europe Will Perish, Or Why It Can't Fix Itself

I have put forth the thesis that Europe is unable to slaughter its own sacred cows, and therefore it will go down in flames.  Today brings further evidence that I am on to something.

Spain teeters on the edge of insolvancy, it has unemployment of 22%, a youth unemployment rate in the 40s.  It needs economic growth and activity desperately.  So, of course, what does it do in the face of the chance to extract energy via fracking - the same fracking technology that has set the US off on a revolutionary boom in energy and provided a rare bright spot in an otherwise dismal jobs landscape?  They ban it. 

Spain is set to enact its first regional ban on producing natural gas using hydraulic fracturing, yielding to objections from environmental groups that so-called fracking risks polluting drinking water.

In the northern Cantabria region, where energy companies say much of Spain’s gas exists in shale rock, the Parliament plans to vote April 8 on suspending the contested drilling technique “as long as current doubts on the technology remain,” according to the bill on the government’s website. All political parties in the region supported the law in a March 21 debate.

BNK Petroleum Inc. (BKX) and R2 Energy Inc. of Canada are among companies hoping to use fracking to shatter shale in Spain and tap what their trade group last month said may be enough gas to meet 70 years of national demand. While environmental protests led to a fracking ban across the border in France, in Spain opponents have failed in provinces except for Cantabria, where an estimated $100 million of exploration projects are forecast.

One more piece of evidence that Europe cannot fix itself, it has to hit rock bottom, which given recent events looks like it may be closer than farther away.

Note: even irredeemably anti-development institutions - like this one - recognize the revolution in the making that is America's fracking boom.

New York Successfully Keeping Jobs At Bay

New York's laughable mediocrity of an Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, is working hard to keep jobs out of New York state. He's suing the feds because, he feels, they aren't doing enough to squash the natural gas exploration technology known as hydraulic fracturing. Trust me the EPA is doing plenty behind the scenes to restrict "fracking" but they can't do what they want, which is ban it, because there is no evidence that it poses severe environmental risks. EPA head Lisa Jackson has admitted that there is no evidence of water contamination caused by fracking. But people see fraudulent movies like Gasland by lying activist Josh Fox and believe this stuff, so there is a political constituency for railing against fracking, and it has grown into the latest trend in environmental activism. Naturally, you can count on politicians like Schneiderman to cotton on in due course.

Meanwhile Pennsylvania, West Virginia (and North Carolina soon) are establishing early footholds in the fracking-reliant natural gas exploration industry while New York declares themselves out of the game. Pennsylvania is already garnering the jobs and tax revenue that naturally flows from openness to energy development.

Here is my prediction, several years from now, New York will cease this silliness and declare that it is open to fracking and two things will happen. One, some companies will say, "No thanks, we have all the work we can handle here in PA and WV." Two, other companies will say OK and send in their PA-based crews and buy supplies from PA-based vendors to work NY wells, delivering only marginal economic gains to NY. Northeastern politicians don't seem to get the energy business. Oil and gas people travel. They're used to it. The industry doesn't setup shop in your state unless you are really friendly, otherwise they just travel in and out. New York is letting PA own the footprint of the industry and will have to be satisfied with the scraps when/if they come around.

What The Frack?

The EPA is ratcheting up its focus (attack) on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", arguably the single most important energy technology to emerge in decades. Without fracking, we as a nation, would be deprived of massive amounts of clean, domestic, affordable energy that would create tens of thousands of jobs and reduce our reliance on oil from Hugo Chavez, King Abdullah and Vlad Putin. Larry Kudlow had a segment on it last night. I wish Kilduff had mentioned that we've been fracking for many years now and it is only just now that the hyper-aggressive, anti-hydrocarbon EPA under the Obama administration is interested in the technical details. In fact, I guarantee that the EPA already knows what these chemicals are, but they are looking to bring this info into the public discourse to scare people with stories of horrible sounding chemicals being injected into the ground. It is no exaggeration to say that a war on fracking is a war on your kids' future standard of living - or rather, just another front in that war.

Anti-Fracker Takes the Money, Agrees to Drilling on Farm

Former anti-fracking activist leases her farm for drilling.

Two years ago, Denise Dennis delivered a dramatic denunciation of Marcellus Shale natural gas development at a Philadelphia City Council hearing. She equated drilling to the tobacco industry, and said that "Pennsylvanians are the lab rats" for a massive shale gas experiment.
The Philadelphia resident had a powerful story: Her family owned a historic 153-acre farm in Susquehanna County, where her ancestors were among the first freed African Americans to settle in Pennsylvania just after the Revolutionary War. She became a potent symbol in the shale gas wars.

"The process for extracting natural gas from shale is as dirty as coal mining," she testified to thunderous applause at the 2010 council meeting.

"Wow," said Councilman Curtis Jones Jr., who sponsored the hearing.
But Dennis' fervor has subsided in the last two years, undone by the financial need of preserving her family's deteriorating historic farm, and by the salesmanship of the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.

Last week Dennis signed a lease allowing the Houston company to extract the shale gas beneath her family's farm, which the National Trust for Historic Preservation has called a "rare and highly significant African American cultural landscape."

"I decided to stop demonizing the industry and to start negotiating with individuals," said Dennis. "I had to be realistic."

The reality was that most of the surrounding landowners had leased their mineral rights, and gas drilling was going to proceed with or without the Dennis farm.  "We were an island in a sea of leased land," she said. "As I saw it, the drilling companies were now my neighbors, and it was better to get along with them than to be antagonistic."

Hard to say whether she capitulated and just took the money or has had a change of heart about the risks of fracking the social cost/benefits.  Either way, there's one less anti-fracking voice out there - just in time for Matt Damon's anti-fracking agitprop movie to hit the screens.

Fracky Friday

The Department of Energy says that fracking did not contaminate drinking water in Pennsylvania.

A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press.

After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said. Although the results are preliminary — the study is still ongoing — they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous.

And the Brits, in a fit of good sense and economic logic, aim to encourage the revolutionary technology of fracking in their oil and gas sectors by lowering taxes on shale gas producers.

The UK government has announced large tax breaks for shale gas producers in the country, as part of a consultation on a proposed tax regime for shale gas.

HM Treasury stated Friday that companies will have to pay a profit of just 30 percent on any shale gas they produce in the UK, compared to the current 62 percent tax that is levied on hydrocarbons produced by conventional means on the UK Continental Shelf. This "pad" allowance for shale gas is based on existing field allowance for oil and gas production that are expected to help encourage nearly $21 billion of investment in 2013, according to the department.

Whoops! Germany's "Green" Plan Burns More Coal

#GreenFail: Germany's Green Policy Leads to More Burning of Coal

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government says RWE AG (RWE)’s new power plant that can supply 3.4 million homes aids her plan to exit nuclear energy and switch to cleaner forms of generation. It’s fired with coal.

The startup of the 2,200-megawatt station near Cologne last week shows how Europe’s largest economy is relying more on the most-polluting fuel. Coal consumption has risen 4.9 percent since Merkel announced a plan to start shutting the country’s atomic reactors after last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan.

and it's not a temporary thing:

“Angela Merkel’s policy has created an incentive structure which has the effect of partially replacing nuclear with coal, the dirtiest fuel that’s responsible for much of the growth in the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions since 1990,” Dieter Helm, an energy policy professor at the University of Oxford, said by phone Aug. 17. Building new coal stations means “locking them in for the next 30 years” as a type of generation, Helm said. 

and of course natgas is so expensive in Europe and the price ain't coming down because fracking is either banned outright or difficult

Much of Europe’s gas, however, lies under Poland, where Exxon Mobil said early results suggest extraction may be unprofitable, and France, which outlawed fracking in July after environmentalists and wine producers raised alarms about water pollution....

Not so in Europe, where environmental concerns about fracking persist even after a study commissioned by the EU concluded that current legislation is adequate to protect the environment. 

Oh well, enjoy that coal.

Will Lefties Now Love Fracking After Obama Blesses It?

The American energy industry is letting out a collective "Is he f**king kidding?" this morning after hearing Obama's taking credit for and ballyhooing progress in hydrocarbon development last night in the SOTU. There has been no US administration more hostile to the exploitation of our domestic hydrocarbon-based energy resources than that of Barack Obama. (Mark Perry has more on this.) So what to make of this:

President Barack Obama, in a State of the Union address delivered 11 months before election day, pushed drilling for natural gas in shale formations as a potential boost to the economy.

Hydraulic fracturing, which injects a mix of water, sand and chemicals underground to free gas trapped in rock, could create 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade, according to a White House document released before Obama’s speech. The process, called fracking, is among a list of energy policies Obama said would fuel economic growth.

First option of what to make of it is obvious - he's lying. The current Democratic Party has a few sacrosanct principles, one of which is that all hydrocarbon energy is bad. He could be using this as a talking point about jobs for campaign purposes but have no intention whatsoever to be amenable to fracking.

Second option, it is now an officially acceptable tenet of progressive orthodoxy to embrace the natural gas revolution brought about by the technology of hydraulic fracturing.

What's your guess?

Economic Reality Sinks In in Albany?

I said that New York state cannot thumb their nose at economic reality and keep fracking at bay forever

Meanwhile Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio (and North Carolina soon) are establishing early footholds in the fracking-reliant natural gas exploration industry while New York declares themselves out of the game. Pennsylvania is already garnering the jobs and tax revenue that naturally flows from openness to energy development.

Here is my prediction, several years from now, New York will cease this silliness and declare that it is open to fracking...

Now we have this:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is considering a plan that would allow high-volume hydraulic fracturing near the Pennsylvania border, according to a report in The New York Times.

After offering up two of the worst economic development ideas recently, might this be a bow to reality and a turn for Cuomo toward good sense?  We shall see.

Two New Yorks

Below is the updated map that I originally highlighted here.  We are approaching the point where the map will be complete, when no more resolutions will be acted upon, the county legislatures will have spoken or not. Essex, Broome, and Sullivan are sure to go green this week or next, Albany Co. is a toss up.  In the end there will be 52 or 53 of New York state's 62 counties voting their opposition to Cuomo's SAFE Act and 9 or 10 not expressing opposition.

Forget about the gun debate for now, this map is a classic example of the concept of the tyranny of the majority.  On a given issue, any governor of NYS need only - and clearly Cuomo only did - please the roughly 12 million residents of the 8 counties that constitute the state's portion of NYC metro area.  The remaining 8 million in the other 54 counties are effectively a political nullity.  On certain issues, the lines don't cut this way, but on many they do.  Clearly guns are one such issue, but "fracking" is another and education policy is another.  A moderate governing approach that understands the delicate balance may keep this entity we know as New York state viable, but ram-rodding too much progressive, leftist policy preferences onto the rest of the state is not healthy, and at some point dangerous.

UPDATE:  Map has been updated as Essex has gone green.  Broome and Sullivan will be green by Friday and we are largely done, at which point we can conclude that the notion, peddled relentlessly by the MSM, that Cuomo's anti-gun SAFE Act is broadly popular is, in fact, a steaming pile. 

Cuomo to "Red" New York: Drop Dead

In one day we get two news items that encapsulates Andy Cuomo's bankrupt and idiotic economic policy for the state of New York - energy no, casinos yes. 

By all means let's encourage the effective regressive taxation of poor and stupid people via gambling while we shut off the development of cheap and clean natural gas to fuel our economy and bring needed economic development to depressed rural New York (even though fracking is done safely nearly everywhere else in the USA, even in Jerry Brown's California).  Irony alert, the NY Department of Health was the ostensible authority that gave Cuomo the cover to carry out this liberal policy wish, but gambling has nothing to do with health...huh?

Residents of the Southern Tier are rightly pissed and this sentiment encapsulates the entire political dynamic of New York state.

When Conklin, N.Y., town supervisor Jim Finch heard the news, he began drawing up plans to secede from the state. “I’m serious,” said Mr. Finch, who oversees a town of some 5,000 people on the Susquehanna River just a few minutes’ drive from the Pennsylvania border. “New York City determines policy in the Southern Tier? That’s baloney.”

12 million liberal New York City area residents run the lives of 8 million mostly conservative upstaters, and it sucks for that later camp.  Non-NYC New York is a hollowed out shell of economic malaise and declining population thanks to elitist liberal policy emanating from the NYC political set.  If it weren't for NYC, Cuomo would have lost his re-election race this November.  Secession is one answer (not a good one, but one that I certainly understand), but one day upstaters are going to have to get off their butts and turnout at the polls in legendary numbers if they are ever going to throw the liberal NYC gorilla off their backs.

More here.

Pampered Elites vs. Working Poor

I've talked about New York state's awful anti-fracking stance before.  Check out this video of a new documentary highlighting the divide between rich, anti-development residents (often new residents enjoying a bucolic retirement) and hard-pressed locals.  Especially relish the what an arrogant sh*t this James Northrup is.  Parts one and three here plus much more.  I highly recommend these videos.

I have alot of sympathy for the pro-gas folks here, but ultimately you get what you vote for.  If you want change, you have to tackle the NY legislature in Albany and you've got to win the war versus the urban elites.  So long as the elites' politicians run the show, these poor people are cooked.  If they can't take back control, the only alternative is to leave and start over somewhere else.  You get the government you deserve.

H/T Mark Perry

Oil and Gas News

Production of shale oil out of the Eagle Ford shale play is rocking and natural gas production from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia is blowing away expectations.  More job-creating, wealth-creating, tax-paying, Saudi/Russia petro-tyrant annoying economic activity that is a blessed rare bright spot in the age of Obama.

And yet the anti-fracking activists are still at it, still lying to put a stop to a great advance in modern technology that will alter the US economic landscape and geo-political landscape for the better for ages to come.

California Will Drill, Baby, Drill

I have stated/predicted that California's finances are so parlous and its financial commitments so vast that the only way out is to embrace the economic development and tax dollars that come with aggressively pursuing hydrocarbon development.  Simply put, California will have to drill for oil on a massive scale, whether they like it or not, in order to save the utopian paradise they've built.

And it appears that even the Democrat supermajority gets it.

California Lawmakers Turn Down Moratorium on Fracking

And when the day comes, Sarah Palin will get no apologies from anyone on the anti-hydrocarbon left.

New York Continues to Miss the Fracking Boat

Mark Perry brings you up to date on economic development related to shale gas exploration in Pennsylvania.  Lots of good news there.  Of course, New York state is missing out on economic gains, and, frankly, they may have already missed the boat. 

While wells may still be drilled in New York someday, the economics of energy development retains a 'land rush' quality in that the ancillary services and indirect jobs that the industry supports get established early in the locales that encourage drilling first.  I've talked about it before.  The field offices, storage depots, processing facilities, disposal sites, equipment repair sites, and all the other things that go into supporting an actual drilled well are pretty much established now in western and northern Pennsylvania.  Should wells get drilled in New York, people and equipment will likely drive across the border from Pennsylvania, perform their work, and drive back across the border to Pennsylvania.  So, land money, royalties and some taxes will  flow to New Yorkers in the eventuality, but most of the ancillary development benefits have likely already been captured by Pennsylvania.

California's Only Way Out...Fracking

I have said that California would have to resort to the unthinkable - drilling for oil - to get them out of their fiscal mess.  Absolutely everything the lefties have built in California is destined for collapse unless they find a shitload of money between the seat cushions.  They need about 10 more Facebooks and a few more Apples.  Short of that, they're gonna have to drill for oil.  But it won't be an easy fight...

My vote, the greens will get rolled.  Who do you think the politicians side with, a few rich greens or hundreds of thousands of union workers whose pensions are drying up?

Romney Should Talk This Up

Back in January I said this:

Avoiding the devastation of those two last pillars of the original Obama agenda caused a huge sigh of relief in the business world and the economy surely benefited knowing these ideas were dead in the water. Republicans can and will make this very plausible argument. Furthermore, economic progress is not uniformly spread around the country. Some states are doing much better than others, and let's not forget that in November 2010 voters put some Republicans into Governor's mansions across the country. Let me ask you, do you think that Michiganders are going to credit the meager economic bright spots solely to Obama or perhaps give Rick Snyder some kudos? Are Pennsylvanians going to give all the credit to Obama or to Tom Corbett, who embraced the fracking boom to PA? Scott Walker sure is polarizing, but does anybody think that Walker can't plausibly be credited for whatever economic progress has been made in Wisconsin? Same with Kasich in Ohio. Florida is perking up under Rick Scott, but Illinois is mired in the dumps under Pat Quinn. How's California faring?

Well, check this out...and why don't we try it on a national scale???

Escape from the Dead End Job, A Marcellus Story

From delivering pizzas to meaningful pay and career prospects, but let's choke off fracking and send these guys back to the pizza parlor just like we're doing on the Gulf coast. So do you believe the President when he says he's open to any ideas that will get Americans working again?

Hydrocarbon Cornucopia

Major natural gas discovery off of Mozambique.

"We estimate this new complex, which is located entirely within the Offshore Area 1 block, holds 10 to 30-plus trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of incremental recoverable natural gas resources," said Daniels.

This is an absolute shitload of gas.  Couple finds like this with the fracking revolution going on here in the U.S. and the world is looking more and more awash in clean-burning natural gas.