Railroad Commission Passes Fracking Disclosure Rules

Silkheat · Dec 14, 2011

RAILROAD COMMISSION PASSES FRACKING DISCLOSURE RULES

Colorado beats Texas to punch with tougher disclosure requirements
The Texas Railroad Commission approved “landmark” fracking disclosure rules Tuesday that would have been the most comprehensive in the nation had Colorado regulators not simultaneously passed even tougher chemical disclosure rules.
“We are requiring disclosure of concentrations for all chemicals, hazardous and non-hazardous,” David Neslin, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, told Texas Energy Report.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a process in which drillers blast sand, water and chemicals deep into the earth to break up shale formations and release oil and gas.
In Texas, starting Feb. 1, drillers must reveal the names of all chemicals they use during fracking. However, under House Bill 3328 passed by the Texas Legislature last spring, oil and gas operators must reveal concentrations only for chemicals deemed hazardous to human health. That means about half of the chemicals disclosed by Texas companies will not publically include concentrations as well.
Both states require drillers to make their public disclosures on a national website, fracfocus.org, also known as the FracFocus Chemical Registry.
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There you go guys! Now you can know exactly what chemicals they are using 6,000' below the surface here in Texas.

Will you understand what they do? No not really. Does this change the game at all? Nope not really.

However now you can't say you don't know exactly what they are doing.

There is no need for the EPA.

Margot · Dec 14, 2011

Silkheat said: ↑

RAILROAD COMMISSION PASSES FRACKING DISCLOSURE RULES

There you go guys! Now you can know exactly what chemicals they are using 6,000' below the surface here in Texas.

Will you understand what they do? No not really. Does this change the game at all? Nope not really.

However now you can't say you don't know exactly what they are doing.

There is no need for the EPA.
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Wow.. you know that the Texas Railroad Commission was the original OPEC.

markrc99 · Dec 14, 2011

Silkheat wrote: "Now you can know exactly what chemicals they are using 6,000' below the surface here in Texas. ... There is no need for the EPA."

Here's part of what of makes you so gleeful...

“We are requiring disclosure of concentrations for all chemicals, hazardous and non-hazardous,” David Neslin, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, told Texas Energy Report. ... In Texas, starting Feb. 1, drillers must reveal the names of all chemicals they use during fracking. However, under House Bill 3328 passed by the Texas Legislature last spring, oil and gas operators must reveal concentrations only for chemicals deemed hazardous to human health. That means about half of the chemicals disclosed by Texas companies will not publically include concentrations as well. Both states require drillers to make their public disclosures on a national website, fracfocus.org..."
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Texas uh? Without a doubt, the epicenter of social sophistication and industry oversight. I'm with the guy who says: "I'll recognize corporations as a person when Texas executes one." Has it ever occurred to you that the EPA is so pathetically late and if not for such public outcry, would still have not so much as raised a peep against such dreadful behavior? Behavior you trust to post the truth on a website. God help us all!`

Serfin' USA · Dec 14, 2011

I'm pretty sure that Silk was being sarcastic in his tone.

markrc99 · Dec 14, 2011

Serfin USA wrote: "I'm pretty sure that Silk was being sarcastic in his tone."

OMG, what's this $h!+ on my face?

Serfin' USA · Dec 14, 2011

I would agree with the notion that this regulation doesn't fully cover the issue at hand.

waltky · Jan 3, 2012

Fracking caused earthquakes...

Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes
Mon Jan 2,`12 A northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor quakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday.

Research is continuing on the now-shuttered injection well at Youngstown and seismic activity, but it might take a year for the wastewater-related rumblings in the earth to dissipate, said John Armbruster of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. Brine wastewater dumped in wells comes from drilling operations, including the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale that has been a source of concern among environmental groups and some property owners. Injection wells have also been suspected in quakes in Ashtabula in far northeast Ohio, and in Arkansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, Armbruster said. Thousands of gallons of brine were injected daily into the Youngstown well that opened in 2010 until its owner, Northstar Disposal Services LLC, agreed Friday to stop injecting the waste into the earth as a precaution while authorities assessed any potential links to the quakes.

After the latest and largest quake Saturday at 4.0 magnitude, state officials announced their beliefs that injecting wastewater near a fault line had created enough pressure to cause seismic activity. They said four inactive wells within a five-mile radius of the Youngstown well would remain closed. But they also stressed that injection wells are different from drilling wells that employ fracking. Armbruster said Monday he expects more quakes will occur despite the shutdown of the Youngstown well. "The earthquakes will trickle on as a kind of a cascading process once you've caused them to occur," he said. "This one year of pumping is a pulse that has been pushed into the ground, and it's going to be spreading out for at least a year." The quakes began last March with the most recent on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve each occurring within 100 meters of the injection well. The Saturday quake in McDonald, outside of Youngstown, caused no serious injuries or property damage.

Youngstown Democrat Rep. Robert Hagan on Monday renewed his call for a moratorium on fracking and well injection disposal to allow a review of safety issues. "If it's safe, I want to do it," he said in a telephone interview. "If it's not, I don't want to be part and parcel to destruction of the environment and the fake promise of jobs." He said a moratorium "really is what we should be doing, mostly toward the injection wells, but we should be asking questions on drilling itself." A spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, an outspoken supporter of the growing oil and natural gas industry in Ohio, said the shale industry shouldn't be punished for a fracking byproduct. "That would be the equivalent of shutting down the auto industry because a scrap tire dump caught fire somewhere," said Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols. He said 177 deep injection wells have operated without incident in Ohio for decades and the Youngstown well was closed within 24 hours of a study detailing how close a Christmas Eve quake was to the well.

The industry-supported Ohio Oil and Gas Association said the rash of quakes was "a rare and isolated event that should not cast doubt about the effectiveness" of injection wells. Such wells "have been used safely and reliably as a disposal method for wastewater from oil and gas operations in the U.S. since the 1930s," the association's executive vice president, Thomas E. Stewart, said in a statement Monday. Environmentalists are critical of the hydraulic fracturing process, called fracking, which utilizes chemical-laced water and sand to blast deep into the ground and free the shale gas. Critics fear the process itself or the drilling liquid, which can contain carcinogens, could contaminate water supplies, either below ground, by spills, or in disposed wastewater. Permits allowing hydraulic fracturing in Ohio's portion of the Marcellus and the deeper Utica Shale formations rose from one in 2006 to at least 32 in 2011.

Source
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Professor Peabody · Jan 3, 2012

I almost certainly caused an earthquake after eating that Navy Bean soup I made.

waltky · Jun 22, 2012

Granny says, "Mebbe dey should call `em earth-fracks...

Should companies get fined for causing man-made earthquakes?
June 22, 2012 - Companies can face stiff penalties for contaminating water or polluting the air, but should companies face similar penalties for causing man-made earthquakes?

Under current law, companies cant face any penalties for cause a man-made earthquake, which several studies have shown are a rare event. A recent study by the National Research Council found hydraulic fracking rarely cause earthquakes large enough to be felt, but the study found injection wells, which companies use to pump waste water underground, could be connected to increased seismic activity in parts of the country. The energy industry has fought off allegations that earthquakes can be tied to natural gas drilling, maintaining that the process is safe and earthquakes caused by fracturing are often times to minor to be felt. But studies have found injection wells are a different story.

An injection well outside of Youngstown, Ohio has been tied to more than a dozen of small earthquakes in the area. Those quakes have caused officials to change rules regarding injection wells in the state. In Lincoln County, Oklahoma, residents felt a 5.6 magnitude earthquake in November 2011. According to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency that oversees oil and gas production, the state saw more than a 1,000 earthquakes in 2010, up from the 50 yearly average two years prior. Matt Skinner, an official with OCC, said most of those earthquakes have happened in Lincoln County, which has more than 181 injection wells.

Companies are required under the Safe Drinking Water Act to test some proposed sites to see if injection wells could cause earthquakes, but as E&E writes, those regulations dont apply to wells connected to the nations onshore oil and natural gas fields. The recent NRC study stopped short of asking for federal guidelines on man-made earthquakes or injection wells. However, analysts say the report begs the question whether federal regulation is needed. It seems to lead to a call for some sort of federal intervention, analyst Kevin Book, managing director of the Washington D.C.-based consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, told E&E.

What do you think? Should companies with injection wells that cause man-made earthquakes face environmental penalties or should the federal government have some sort of regulation on injection wells?

Source & Poll
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See also:

EPA blasted for requiring oil refiners to add type of fuel that's merely hypothetical
June 21, 2012 - Federal regulations can be maddening, but none more so than a current one that demands oil refiners use millions of gallons of a substance, cellulosic ethanol, that does not exist.

"As ludicrous as that sounds, it's fact," says Charles Drevna, who represents refiners. "If it weren't so frustrating and infuriating, it would be comical." And Tom Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research says, "the cellulosic biofuel program is the embodiment of government gone wild." Refiners are at their wit's end because the government set out requirements to blend cellulosic ethanol back in 2005, assuming that someone would make it. Seven years later, no one has. "None, not one drop of cellulosic ethanol has been produced commercially. It's a phantom fuel," says Pyle. "It doesn't exist in the market place."

And Charles Drevna adds, "forcing us to use a product that doesn't exist, they might as well tell us to use unicorns." And yet, they still have to pay what amounts to fines: "Why would they ask them to blend any at all if it doesn't exist?" Pyle said. "Because they know that they can squeeze some extra dollars out of them." The EPA does have discretion to lower the annual requirement. And one supporter explains, that's what the agency is saying. "We are going to reduce your blending obligation by 98 percent because we feel that thats the right thing to do," says Brooke Coleman, the executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council of the Renewable Fuels Association. "We are going to maintain your blending obligation on the gallons that we think are going to emerge."

The EPA, which would not speak on camera, is still hoping production of cellulosic ethanol will emerge. A study by the Congressional Research Service, however, says the government "projects that cellulosic bio fuels are not expected to be commercially available on a large scale until at least 2015."

Drevna of the refiners association says they had no other choice left since EPA insisted they still had to blend some of the nonexistent cellulosic ethanol. "We've had to go to the courts and litigate this thing is because they just turned a blind eye to us," Drevna said. So the refiners are now suing the EPA, in part because the mandate gets larger and larger-- 500 million gallons this year, 3 billion in 2015 and 16 billion in 2022. And still, not a gallon of cellulosic ethanol in sight.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...llons-fuel-that-is-nonexistent/#ixzz1yY1o1LAS
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Railroad Commission Passes Fracking Disclosure Rules

Silkheat New Member

Margot Account closed, not banned

markrc99 Member

Serfin' USA Well-Known Member

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Railroad Commission Passes Fracking Disclosure Rules

Silkheat New Member

Margot Account closed, not banned

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Serfin' USA Well-Known Member

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Serfin' USA Well-Known Member

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Professor Peabody Well-Known Member Past Donor

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