Natural Cash - How the Fracking Industry Fuels Congress

The fracking boom isn't just good for the industry, but also for congressional candidates in fracking districts. Our analysis of federal campaign data found contributions from the industry to House and Senate candidates from districts and states home to fracking activity rose by 231 percent between the 2004 and 2012 election cycle

Where Oil Is King

Donald Trump has won the 2016 presidential election, and, based on his campaign rhetoric, it seems reasonable to anticipate that the next four years will see a rollback of federal rules and regulations originally intended to combat climate change and environmental pollution in favor of increased production of fossil fuels, including coal. This raises the question of where we can look for protection of environmental goals, if not to federal law or agencies. Unconventional solutions to energy and environmental issues may be the only way to move forward on environmental challenges in the near term. This Article suggests one such unconventional solution to the problems presented by the use of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). In response to the perceived environmental threats of fracking, many cities and towns have sought to limit it through local bans, moratoria, and regulation. However, in 2015, a number of states passed laws that forbid any city, town, or other municipal body from banning fracking or passing certain regulations on the practice. Further, the highest courts of several other states have ruled that state law preempts local restrictions on fracking. In many cases, this means that local governments must allow fracking, so the question arises as to how these governments can address environmental concerns. This Article is the first to propose that cities and towns where fracking is taking place could incorporate and enforce existing state environmental laws. By doing so, those municipalities may be able to minimize some of the environmental harms associated with fracking. Further, this Article explains why incorporation and enforcement of state-level environmental laws by cities and towns should not be expressly or impliedly preempted

Zoning’s Centennial: A Complete Account of the Evolution of Zoning into a Robust System of Land Use Law—1916-2016 (Part IV)

Fracking is happening and local governments are subjected to many of its associated risks. They either need to act, or know—clearly and convincingly—why they should not. The federal government has stopped far short of comprehensive regulation of fracking; the states’ regulations range from fair to poor, sometimes preempting local regulation but most often sharing regulatory authority over land use impacts

Anisotropy in Fracking: A Percolation Model for Observed Microseismicity

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) using high pressures and a low viscosity fluid allow the extraction of large quantiles of oil and gas from very low permeability shale formations. The initial production of oil and gas at depth leads to high pressures and an extensive distribution of natural fractures which reduce the pressures. With time these fractures heal, sealing the remaining oil and gas in place. High volume fracking opens the healed fractures allowing the oil and gas to flow the horizontal productions wells. We model the injection process using invasion percolation. We utilize a 2D square lattice of bonds to model the sealed natural fractures. The bonds are assigned random strengths and the fluid, injected at a point, opens the weakest bond adjacent to the growing cluster of opened bonds. Our model exhibits burst dynamics in which the clusters extends rapidly into regions with weak bonds. We associate these bursts with the microseismic activity generated by fracking injections. A principal object of this paper is to study the role of anisotropic stress distributions. Bonds in the $y$-direction are assigned higher random strengths than bonds in the $x$-direction. We illustrate the spatial distribution of clusters and the spatial distribution of bursts (small earthquakes) for several degrees of anisotropy. The results are compared with observed distributions of microseismicity in a fracking injection. Both our bursts and the observed microseismicity satisfy Gutenberg-Richter frequency-size statistics.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

How should fracking research be funded?

The use of hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) to extract oil or gas from shales is a subject of controversy. There are many scientific questions about the risks associated with the technique, and much research remains to be done. ReFINE (Researching Fracking In Europe) is a research consortium led by Newcastle University and Durham University in the UK, focusing on the environmental impacts of shale gas and oil exploitation using fracking methods. The project was established to answer questions raised by members of the public across Europe on the risks of fracking. It aims to inform the debate surrounding fracking by undertaking scientific research, which will be peer-reviewed and openly accessible. This case study discusses the structure of ReFINE and the issues associated with using funding from oil and gas companies to support the research

The Dirty Clean Fuel

Hydraulic fracking began nearly 80 years ago and was initially headlined as a brand new, fuel efficient alternative to coal and oil. Natural gas has been disguised as a clean fuel, when in reality it is just another dirty, polluting, environmentally harmful fossil fuel. The detriments of fracking heavily outweigh the benefits, and it needs to be banned on public and private lands. Natural gas has been viewed as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil, so immediately fossil fuel industries took advantage of that narrative. Consumers, eager for cleaner alternatives, have been tricked into buying into the fracking fad. Hydraulic fracking has provided substantial economic benefits to the US economy. Fracking has influenced a drop of natural gas prices by 47% ever since 2013 (Brookings 2015). According to the US Energy Information Administration, gas bills have dropped $13 billion per year from 2007 to 2013 since fracking was introduced. Alongside this, energy consumers have seen economic gains of$74 billion per year from increased fracking. Between 2005 and 2012, fracking has generated over 725,000 jobs (Vox 2015). Consumers are being manipulated by fossil fuel industries and are directly influenced by these cheaper prices. Modern fracking came onto the scene in American history, the 1990s. Al Gore was inventing the internet and we believed we were living in the end of history. It makes sense then, to understand fracking as an innovation of technology that lowers our bills and provides cleaner energy. Much like diet pills though, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Natural gas primarily produces methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas relative to carbon dioxide. Not only does burning natural gas emit methane into the atmosphere, the extraction process causes a great deal of methane to leak into the Earth’s core. Fracking operations require 5-10 acres of fields with high pressure gas wells and water tanks. According to the US Department of Energy, there are already over 500,000 natural gas wells spread across the country. Homeowners whom lease their land are not fully informed of the environmental consequences of fracking. Their local water sources and atmosphere often become contaminated. These consequences were revealed in the popular Gasland II film, which shows how the water grids of Pennsylvania communities became contaminated after fracking sites moved in. Even though an individual may not have leased their land, often neighbors leased their land which led to the entire communities’ water becoming contaminated despite not signing a contract. Beyond the effects on humans, fracking sites harm habitats and disturb ecosystems. They cause a great deal of erosion and inject pollutants into the ground. Many underground areas that become polluted have aquifers which become contaminated. Well areas are also experiencing large amounts of seismic activity connected to fracking. Fracking requires millions of gallons of water mixed with thousands of chemicals to be effective. Fracking is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act (NRDC 2013). Companies aren’t required to disclose the chemicals used in the process or be held responsible for water contamination. According to the FracFocus database, in the last decade fracking has used 5 billion pounds of hydrochloric acid, 1.2 billion pounds of petroleum distillates and 445 million pounds of methanol. These are only the ‘known’ chemicals, whereas a long list of chemicals used are kept secret. Fracking wells produced an estimated 15 billion gallons of wastewater in 2014 (Environment America Research & Policy Center 2016). While switching to natural gas may reduce emissions in the short run, it does not eliminate them. It simply further delays the climate crisis. The renewable energy era is approaching quickly, and natural gas will not win the sustainability race. We have a choice to make – will we be on the side of the planet or the stakeholders? What our country needs is pure, clean energy. Not dirty, clean fuel. If we ban fracking, millions of Americans will lose their jobs. There is no getting around that fact. Fracking is key to the economies of many communities, and proposals to ban it outright often don’t consider that human cost. Many of the presidential candidates in 2020 on the democratic side have more detailed plans than just banning fracking, fortunately. Bernie Sanders’ $16 trillion climate plan aims to create over 20 million jobs while providing 100% renewable energy by 2030. Sanders’ plan would be successful through imposing fees and taxes on the fossil fuel industry. This plan of course includes a ban of fracking on private and public land. This sort of climate plan directly takes job loss into account. Employees of the natural gas industry should not fear such a proposal when there is the potential replacement of millions of renewable energy jobs. “Under the plan, the federal government would also provide five years of unemployment insurance, a wage guarantee, housing assistance and job training to any displaced worker in the fossil fuel industry” (Friedman, NY Times). Workers should view this as an opportunity to explore clean energy jobs in a healthier environment, both for themselves and our planet. If we are truly serious about tackling the climate crisis, we must eliminate all harmful emissions. Despite the economic benefits natural gas provides, there are opportunities in the clean renewable energy industry knocking at the door. The US needs to take a closer look at fracking and realize sooner than later why a ban is necessary

Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields by Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin

Review of Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin\u27s Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Field

What’s Shakin’? Ladra v. New Dominion, LLC: A Case of Consequence for the Hydraulic Fracturing Industry and Those Affected by Induced Seismicity

This analysis is accompanied by a study of a 2015 ruling of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, Ladra v. New Dominion, LLC. The case considered the possibility of a private tort action by homeowners against the operators of injection wells proceeding within the state’s judicial system, rather than simply being subject to review by a state regulatory agency. The court ultimately decided that the case would be allowed to continue within the judicial system instead of in front of a regulatory agency. This case, while not providing a “silver bullet” precedent with which future claimants can automatically win their cases against parties involved in fracking and waste disposal, does demonstrate that these claims are viable and ought to be dealt with in proper courts of law, rather than through administrative agencies. Section II of this case note contains a brief overview of the hydraulic fracturing process and the state of fracking in Oklahoma, the site of this note’s principal case (Ladra v. New Dominion). Section III provides a history of the case and its central issues. Section IV discusses the ruling given, as well as the validity of the arguments made before the court. Section V examines the likelihood of success for the plaintiff Ladra and other homeowners seeking damages from the operators of injection wells due to earthquake-related harm done to their property or person. This section primarily assesses whether a preponderance of the evidence standard can be achieved when alleging that fracking activities caused earthquakes that resulted in property damage, and uses the arguments presented in the lower court during Ladra v. New Dominion as an example. Section VI considers the significance of the decision and what effect it may have on the hydraulic fracturing industry

Balancing Hydraulic Fracturing’s Environmental and Economic Impacts: The Need for a Comprehensive Federal Baseline and the Provision of Local Rights

Reliable evaluation methods is needed to ensure that investments in energy conservation measures (ECMs) and the construction of new energy efficient buildings lives up to the promised and expected performance. This thesis presents and evaluates a regression method for estimation of influential building parameters: transmission losses above ground (including air leakage), ground heat loss, and overall heat loss coefficient. The analysis is conducted with separately metered electricity, heating and weather data using linear regression models based on the simplified steady-state power balance for a whole building. The evaluation consists of analyzing the robustness of the extracted parameters, their suitability to be used as input values to building energy simulations (BES) tools. In addition, differences between uncalibrated and calibrated BES models are analyzed when they are used to calculate energy savings. Finally the suitability of using a buildings overall heat loss coefficient as a performance verification tool is studied. The presented regression method exhibits high robustness and good agreement with theory. Knowledge of these parameters also proved beneficial in BES calibration procedures as well as in performance verifications. Thus, the presented method shows promising features for reliable energy performance assessments of buildings