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From Obama's own mouthpieces:
This week, the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee held a hearing that focused on the price at the pump and domestic energy policy and its impact on oil and gas production. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Department of Interior Deputy Secretary David Hayes testified on behalf of the Administration. EPA Administrator Jackson told Congress that theres no proof fracking is dangerous, and she also said that increasing Americas natural gas production is a good thing since it creates less air pollution than other fossil fuels during questioning. Continue here for a video clip of the OGR hearing.
If Frack is here, where is Frick? Frick and Frack always travel together...
Bruce Frasier sweats in the 106-degree heat at his Carrizo Springs, Texas, farm while stacking 42-pound boxes of cantaloupes bound for Kroger supermarkets and Wal-Mart Stores. But he's turning away all offers for his most prized commodity: water. Texas's worst drought since record-keeping began in 1895 is fueling a rally in water prices as energy prospectors from ExxonMobil to Korea National Oil expand the use of a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that uses up to 13 million gallons in a single well.
Frasier, whose Dixondale Farms is the state's largest cantaloupe grower, has been offered as much as 70 cents per 42-gallon barrel of water he pumps from an aquifer beneath his land. That same water fetched no price at all as recently as three years ago, before oil exploration boomed in Texas's Eagle Ford Shale rock formation. So far, Frasier is standing firm. "I've got to have that water for my farming operation," he explains.
With the region having received less than 2 inches of rainfall since Oct. 1, oil producers are buying water from anyone willing to sell. "It's pretty dry down here and a lot of oil companies are looking for water," says Robert Mace, a deputy executive administrator at the Texas Water Development Board. The water crisis in Texas, the biggest oil- and gas-producing state in the United States, highlights a continuing debate in North America and Europe over fracking's impact on water supplies. Environmentalists say the method poses a contamination threat, while farmers face growing competition for scarce water.
Fracking is a 60-year-old method of shattering rocks to unleash oil and natural gas with high-pressure jets of sand- and chemical-infused water. In the past decade, the technique has been refined and coupled with new ways of drilling sideways through oil-rich shale formations, spurring an onshore exploration boom, says Robert Ineson, senior director of global gas at researcher IHS CERA.
More Water is the new liquid gold in Texas - Business - US business - Bloomberg Businessweek - msnbc.com
A National Academies of Science study.
Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing
Abstract
Directional drilling and hydraulic-fracturing technologies are dramatically increasing natural-gas extraction. In aquifers overlying the Marcellus and Utica shale formations of northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York, we document systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction. In active gas-extraction areas (one or more gas wells within 1 km), average and maximum methane concentrations in drinking-water wells increased with proximity to the nearest gas well and were 19.2 and 64 mg CH4 L-1 (n = 26), a potential explosion hazard; in contrast, dissolved methane samples in neighboring nonextraction sites (no gas wells within 1 km) within similar geologic formations and hydrogeologic regimes averaged only 1.1 mg L-1 (P < 0.05; n = 34). Average δ13C-CH4 values of dissolved methane in shallow groundwater were significantly less negative for active than for nonactive sites (-37 ± 7 and -54 ± 11, respectively; P < 0.0001). These δ13C-CH4 data, coupled with the ratios of methane-to-higher-chain hydrocarbons, and δ2H-CH4 values, are consistent with deeper thermogenic methane sources such as the Marcellus and Utica shales at the active sites and matched gas geochemistry from gas wells nearby. In contrast, lower-concentration samples from shallow groundwater at nonactive sites had isotopic signatures reflecting a more biogenic or mixed biogenic/thermogenic methane source. We found no evidence for contamination of drinking-water samples with deep saline brines or fracturing fluids. We conclude that greater stewardship, data, andpossiblyregulation are needed to ensure the sustainable future of shale-gas extraction and to improve public confidence in its use.
The barrels’ owner, Mike Cullum of Clinton, said he purchased them from a natural-gas employee and was using them for his horses’ barrelracing activities.
Cullum said his biggest concern was that he may have to pay for the testing.
“The property owner has informed those investigating the incident that he took ownership of the barrels a few years ago from a drilling contractor,” states a release from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. “The individual further stated that the barrels were empty when he received them.”
Cullum said he was unaware the barrels had washed away until he heard news of their discovery.
Declaring the United States the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas," President Obama began pushing Thursday for greater use of the fuel resource under domestic soil as he continued to pitch his economic plan on a tour of battleground states. Speaking to a crowd of United Parcel Service workers at a facility here, Obama said the government should encourage U.S. shipping companies and other large users to reduce reliance on foreign oil to power their fleets. Tapping natural gas sources in the U.S. could "power our cars and our homes and our factories in a cleaner and cheaper way," Obama said. "We, it turns out, are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We've got a lot of it."
The president rolled out a plan that offers tax incentives for companies that buy natural-gas-powered trucks. He promoted the idea in a visit to a UPS hub because company officials were, he said, among the first to respond to his call for increased use of natural gas vehicles. "We only have about 2% of the world's oil reserves," Obama told the crowd. "So we've got to have an all-out, all-in, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every source of American energy." Obama made his remarks as part of a five-state tour to promote the economic blueprint he unveiled in his State of the Union address Tuesday. He is selling his energy strategy as an "all of the above" approach that he says would promote the use of domestic sources. After visiting Iowa and Arizona on Wednesday, the second day of the tour took him to Nevada and Colorado. By day's end he was scheduled to travel to another election battleground state, Michigan.
Obama is promoting incentives as one of several proposed changes to the tax code. The changes would require the approval of Congress, including the GOP-controlled House, which most observers think is unlikely to support major initiatives from the president in an election year. But Obama's team believes it will be difficult for Republicans to reject proposals that prove popular with the public, or at least that they run the risk of angering voters if they do. Some industry advocates argue that the Obama administration hasn't put a high enough priority on expediting fuel projects. Obama recently delayed the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline project while developers come up with an alternative route around environmentally sensitive areas. The president's own jobs council recommended a week ago that the government act quickly on energy projects in the interests of encouraging more of them. Republicans complained this week that Obama didn't address the Keystone XL project in his State of the Union address.
On Thursday, Obama announced that his Interior Department was preparing to open up 38 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for more energy exploration and development. The lease sale is the final one scheduled as part of a five-year plan for drilling in the central gulf. Some industry advocates have suggested the administration is holding back offshore drilling by taking its time reviewing permit applications. Administration officials say drilling in the gulf is on a healthy rebound, nearly two years after the BP oil spill. Later in the day, Obama visited Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo., which has tested jets that operate on advanced biofuels.
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