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Wernothelpless

(410 posts)
Fri May 24, 2013, 12:28 PM May 2013

New Fracking Rules Leave Drought-Ridden States High And Dry

Source: EcoWatch

Proposed standards that the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) announced last week for hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands are hugely important, especially in the arid West where water is gold. Unfortunately, water protection gets short shrift in the rules that, once finalized, will apply to 750 million acres of public lands.

To provide a bit of context, oil and gas wells on public lands account for about 13 percent of the nation’s natural gas production and five percent of its oil production. An estimated 3,100 wells are fracked on federal lands each year.

Disclosure of chemicals and enforcement are key issues in these rules, and I’m disappointed DOI’s Bureau of Land Management backed down from its initial push to require full disclosure of all chemicals used in fracking operations. The newer language requires companies only to disclose chemicals that won’t compromise their proprietary chemical blends.

Read more: http://ecowatch.com/2013/fracking-rules-leave-drought-ridden-states-dry/



As the world looks at the beginning of the end of water, the pro-fracking, pro-unranium mining, pro-toxic water destroying energy policies in the US and around the globe are impossible to explain. There is no logical excuse. This is just pandering to business interests at the cost of everyone else.
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AndyA

(16,993 posts)
3. That's not to mention the possible link to earthquakes caused by fracking
Fri May 24, 2013, 01:00 PM
May 2013

The oil companies deny it, but some experts believe there is definitely a connection. Also, the improper use of water for other corporate reasons, such as irrigation, that lead to sinkholes in some parts of the country.

It's insane that toxic chemicals are being injected into the soil all over the country, yet for proprietary reasons those chemicals don't have to be revealed to anyone. Who the hell really knows what they're injecting, and who the hell knows what the side effects will be down the road. The safety and health of the public should come first before all else, but that sure isn't the way it works today.

 

Politicalboi

(15,189 posts)
4. Oh but it's clean and done safer
Fri May 24, 2013, 01:01 PM
May 2013

And you will have lighting even when you die of thirst. So you can't beat fracking, no sireeeeee!

 

Hulk

(6,699 posts)
5. This is what gets me the most...
Fri May 24, 2013, 01:05 PM
May 2013

"clean energy". As though it pops out of the earth and into our bottles without polluting air, water or land. Right. And just how ignorant, lazy and apathetic are we in this country? One day, mark my word, the "reich wingers" will come calling for Obama's head on a platter for what is being done to this country in the name of energy profit. Shame on us all.

 

Politicalboi

(15,189 posts)
6. To me, the only clean energy
Fri May 24, 2013, 02:12 PM
May 2013

Is sun and wind, and we have a lot of both. It makes me sick when I hear Obama talk about "clean coal" and "safe fracking". It doesn't exist.

Dragonfli

(10,622 posts)
8. Luckily we have such a pro "clean energy" Energy Secretary, really, I can't praise this guy enough.
Sat May 25, 2013, 05:35 AM
May 2013

Ernest Moniz, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former undersecretary at the department, during his confirmation, praised the U.S. natural gas “revolution” brought about by widespread use of fracking and said it must continue. The Republicans loved the guy and he sailed through senate confirmations with something for every industry. The vote was 97-0

Mr. Moniz even had kind words for coal, saying the fuel — public enemy No. 1 in the environmental community and among many liberals in Congress — is likely to remain a part of the American energy portfolio, though he stipulated that clean coal technologies are an essential part of that equation.



Mr. Moniz reassured coal-state senators that he believes the fuel won’t be shoved aside.
“We see coal as being a continuing, major part of the energy supply in the U.S., and certainly in the world,”

That professor, nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz, was director of the MIT Energy Initiative, a research arm that had received more than $125 million in pledges from the oil and gas industry since 2006, according to the Public Accountability Initiative, a non-profit that blew the whistle on UBuffalo.
The four “founding members” of MITEI — BP, Shell, Italy’s ENI and Saudi Aramco — each agreed to pay $25 million over five years for the right to help manage research projects, maintain an office at MITEI headquarters and “place a researcher in a participating MIT faculty member’s lab,” according to the MITEI website. Ten “sustaining members” commit $5 million each for fewer rights, but still get seats on MITEI’s executive committee and governing board.

The Republicans and Democrats, judging by his confirmation votes, are rabidly into "clean energy" Yippii! Coal clean skies and pristine fractured ground are all that lie ahead, blue skies, nothing but blue skies and fountain fresh proprietary fracking fluid in every glass!

Sunlei

(22,651 posts)
9. I have to say, this area is my largest disapointment /w 'greenhorn' Obama.
Sat May 25, 2013, 08:22 AM
May 2013

He has been totally snookered by the 'good old boys' who have used, abused(prerry much raped) OUR public lands to their benefit for decades.

Look at that map..much of that land is so fragile it still shows the tracks from wagon trains. The lands used to be pristine covered with millions of grazing animals, who by their gentle to the land pattern of movement, replenished the grasses and kept the brush from growing over. springs, seeps , plenty of water for all were everywhere.

Our DOI removed most of the native wild life, killed off/fenced in the buffalo, took away the native wild horses and brought in miles of fence and millions of cattle.The cattle graze the land for a couple dollars a month! It costs us taxpayers billions to repair the damages. The land was trampled down the springs ruined by wallowing cattle.

Then came the massive wildfires, look at that map that's where all the wildfires are. Now the President allows fracking/ mines to draw out the millions off gallons of deep water they use and leave behind poison.

This is President Obamas largest fail.

The permafrost boils away methane gas to the skies. no one captures that gas. Technology of plasma gasifacation can turn our garbage dumps into gas. Instead Obama allows the corps to rape OUR land, ruin our lands, poach our wildlife. And pays them billions in our federal funds to do it.

CrispyQ

(36,221 posts)
10. The mega corps are killing every thing for the profit of a few.
Sat May 25, 2013, 11:05 AM
May 2013

Living human beings better wake up & take the power from these behemoths or they will destroy everything. They are tools for the 1% to act without responsibility or accountability.


Call it irony, if you will, or call it a nightmare, but Big Oil evidently has no qualms about making its next set of profits directly off melting the planet. Its top executives continue to plan their futures (and so ours), knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life comfortable for humanity.

~Tom Engelhardt
The Biggest Criminal Enterprise in History
Terracide and the Terrarists Destroying the Planet for Record Profits
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/23-4




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