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Mon, 2013-05-20 10:09Steve Horn
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Obama Admin. Approves ALEC Model Bill for Fracking Chemical Fluid Disclosure on Public Lands

On May 16, the Obama Interior Department announced its long-awaited rules governing hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") on federal lands.

As part of its 171-page document of rules, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part of the U.S. Dept. of Interior (DOI), revealed it will adopt the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil for fracking chemical fluid disclosure on U.S. public lands.

ALEC is a 98-percent corporate-funded bill mill and "dating service" that brings predominantly Republican state legislators and corporate lobbyists together at meetings to craft and vote on "model bills" behind closed doors. Many of these bills end up snaking their way into statehouses and become law in what Bill Moyers referred to as "The United States of ALEC."

BLM will utilize an iteration of ALEC's "Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act" - a bill The New York Times revealed was written by ExxonMobil - for chemical fluid disclosure of fracking on public lands and will do so by utilizing FracFocus.org's voluntary online chemical disclosure database.

In a way, it's all come full circle. As we covered here on DeSmogBlog, the original chemical disclosure standards and the decision to utilize FracFocus' database came from the Obama Dept. of Energy's (DOE) industry-stacked Fracking Subcommittee formed in May 2011. DOE gave a $1.5 million grant to FracFocus. 

The Texas state legislature soon thereafter adopted the first bill making FracFocus the fracking chemical disclosure database at the state level in June 2011. Since then, it's been off to the races, with the Council of State Governments adopting the TX bill as model bill in Aug. 2011, ALEC adopting it as a model bill in Oct. 2011, and the bill becoming state law in Colorado, Pennsylvania and other states.

Both the Illinois and Florida state legislatures have also tried to push through this model, but it died dead in its tracks.

FracFocus has been an anemic and failed effort by the Obama Admin. to alter the George W. Bush Admin. "Halliburton Loophole" standards for fracking chemical disclosure, which allowed the recipe of fracking chemicals to remain a "trade secret." It's amounted to nothing more than the same game by a different name, with a Harvard study recently giving FracFocus a "failing grade."     

Read more: Obama Admin. Approves ALEC Model Bill for Fracking Chemical Fluid Disclosure on Public Lands
Sat, 2013-04-27 08:00Ben Jervey
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Fracking Our National Parks: America's Best Idea Threatened By Oil and Gas Addiction

Teddy Roosevelt must be rolling over in his grave. Elkhorn Ranch, where the great Republican conservationist sat on his porch overlooking the Little Missouri River and conceived his then-progressive theories of conservation, is at risk of being despoiled by fracking. 

Now sitting in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, you’d assume that Roosevelt's "home ranch" (as he called it) was protected from fossil fuel development. But the view from Elkhorn could soon be dominated by a new gas well staked just 100 feet from the site, a new bridge over the river and a new road to service nearby fracking fields. “Astronomers at Theodore Roosevelt National Park -- which once offered some of the nation’s darkest, most pristine night skies -- also see a new constellation of flares from nearby fracking wells,” writes the National Parks Conservation Association.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is not alone. Around the country -- from Big Sky Country to the water gaps and rivers of the East -- National Parks and recreation areas are being threatened by rampant, fracking-driven oil and gas development.

Read more: Fracking Our National Parks: America's Best Idea Threatened By Oil and Gas Addiction
Mon, 2013-02-11 00:44Brendan DeMelle
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Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaires

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry's role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party's anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke.

Published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control, the study titled, 'To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts': the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, is not just an historical account of activities in a bygone era. As senior author, Stanton Glantz, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor of medicine, writes:

"Nonprofit organizations associated with the Tea Party have longstanding ties to tobacco companies, and continue to advocate on behalf of the tobacco industry's anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda."

The two main organizations identified in the UCSF Quarterback study are Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks. Both groups are now "supporting the tobacco companies' political agenda by mobilizing local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws." Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity were once a single organization called Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). CSE was founded in 1984 by the infamous Koch Brothers, David and Charles Koch, and received over $5.3 million from tobacco companies, mainly Philip Morris, between 1991 and 2004.

Read more: Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaires
Wed, 2013-01-16 11:15Steve Horn
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Breaking: Obama EPA Shut Down Weatherford, TX Shale Gas Water Contamination Study

The Associated Press has a breaking investigative story out today revealing that the Obama Administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) censored a smoking gun scientific report in March 2012 that it had contracted out to a scientist who conducted field data on 32 water samples in Weatherford, TX.

That report, according to the AP, would have explicitly linked methane migration to hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in Weatherford, a city with 25,000+ citizens located in the heart of the Barnett Shale geologic formation 30 minutes from Dallas.

It was authored by Geoffrey Thyne, a geologist formerly on the faculty of the Colorado School of Mines and University of Wyoming before departing from the latter for a job in the private sector working for Interralogic Inc. in Ft Collins, CO. 

This isn't the first time Thyne's scientific research has been shoved aside, either. Thyne wrote two landmark studies on groundwater contamination in Garfield County, CO, the first showing that it existed, the second confirming that the contamination was directly linked to fracking in the area.

It's the second study that got him in trouble.

"Thyne says he was told to cease his research by higher-ups. He didn’t," The Checks and Balances Project explained. "And when it came to renew his contract, Thyne was cut loose."

Read more: Breaking: Obama EPA Shut Down Weatherford, TX Shale Gas Water Contamination Study
Tue, 2012-12-11 17:02Carol Linnitt
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Northern Gateway Pipeline Hearing Exposes Gaps in Enbridge Evidence

It looks like islands aren't the only thing Enbridge overlooks these days.

A report released today by ForestEthics Advocacy summarizes all of the information missing from Enbridge evidence brought before the Joint Review Panel in the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearing. The ongoing hearings, which began in September, address the proposed project's economics, construction plans, operations, environmental impacts, risks to marine life and First Nations' rights.
 
However ForestEthics suggests the evidence submitted by Enbridge is far from comprehensive. In fact, the company has "a frightening number of gaps in its information that won't be prepared until after approval is granted" to the project, says the report.
 
Below is an abridged version of ForestEthics' Pipelines and Promises, which outlines the evidence Enbridge has so far failed to submit to the Northern Gateway hearings:
Read more: Northern Gateway Pipeline Hearing Exposes Gaps in Enbridge Evidence
Thu, 2012-12-06 05:00Kevin Grandia
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FreedomWorks' Pro-Coal Lobbyist Tom Borelli is Former Professional Pro-Tobacco Scientist

Tom Borelli, a former science director at Philip Morris who fought claims that secondhand tobacco causes lung cancer and respiratory illness in children, is now touted on Fox News as an expert on the cleanliness of the coal industry. Borelli was busy this election season fighting Obama's "war on coal" on behalf of his new employer, FreedomWorks.

Borelli has a long history of attacking the EPA on behalf of Big Tobacco. Serving in his role as Philip Morris' Director of Corporate Scientific Affairs, Borelli appeared in a notorious 1992 film produced by Philip Morris attacking the Environmental Protection Agency for declaring secondhand tobacco smoke a known cancer causing agent. Borelli states that:

"Based on careful review of the science we believe that environmental tobacco smoke has not been shown to be a risk factor in the development of lung cancer, respiratory disease in children or heart disease."

Watch it:

Read more: FreedomWorks' Pro-Coal Lobbyist Tom Borelli is Former Professional Pro-Tobacco Scientist
Thu, 2012-11-08 04:00Sharon Kelly
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In Hurricane Sandy's Aftermath, Fracking Adds to Headaches

As Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast last month, tens of thousands of landowners with oil and gas leases faced an especially acute concern: would they get help from FEMA if their properties were damaged or destroyed by the storm?

The question arises across the Marcellus region –- and the rest of the U.S. -- because one of the agency's disaster response programs will not buyout land that’s been leased to drillers, according to FEMA emails and internal documents.

The US shale boom is drawing increasing attention from federal agencies worried about the potential hazards posed by drilling. A growing awareness of financial risks to landowners and lending institutions associated with oil and gas drilling is slowly emerging. The USDA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already considered moves to protect themselves from potential legal and financial reverberations.

With FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funding now at stake, Congress is also getting involved.

Read more: In Hurricane Sandy's Aftermath, Fracking Adds to Headaches
Fri, 2012-11-02 15:45Carol Linnitt
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Defend Our Coast Rallies Demonstrate Diversity of Public Opposition to Tar Sands Export and FIPA

Standing within the throng of demonstrators at last month's Defend Our Coast rally it became clear to me that a palpable shift in the collective expectations of Canadians had taken place. 

It is evident we expect positive action on climate change; we expect steps to be taken towards clean energy alternatives; we expect those alternatives to be made available to us, not by corporations, but by the individuals we've selected as our leaders; we expect those leaders to respect the rights of First Nations; we expect limits to be placed on the corporate exercise of power; and we expect abuses of that power to be met with swift and strict accountability.
 
Such expectations, however, appear increasingly out of step with our current political and economic regime, showing just how backwards Canada's bitumen bottom line obsession has become.
 
Under the current Harper government, scientists have been intimidated and silenced, production of oil and gas has accelerated at an unprecedented and unhealthy rate, massive budget cuts have gutted environmental legislation which would slow the pace and scale of bitumen production and its export, and those voices calling for balance, for sobriety, in the way we manage our resources have been blacklisted as foreign-funded radicals trying to "hijack" Canada.
 
Adding to the fury, the Harper government is now trying to undemocratically strong-arm a powerful international trade deal called FIPA through the House of Commons even though it's been called unconstitutional and a threat to Canadian sovereignty.
 
But if anything, the growing and diverse chorus of public opposition - as seen at the Defend Our Coast rallies - demonstrates just how bold the Canadian populace is prepared to be in the midst of an increasingly hostile battle to preserve our rights and democracy. 
Read more: Defend Our Coast Rallies Demonstrate Diversity of Public Opposition to Tar Sands Export and FIPA
Thu, 2012-10-18 13:20Steve Horn
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Fracking Your Future: Shale Gas Industry Targets College Campuses, K-12 Schools

In Pennsylvania - a state that sits in the heart of the Marcellus Shale basin - the concept of "frackademia" and "frackademics" has taken on an entirely new meaning.

On Sept. 27, the PA House of Representatives - in a 136-62 vote - passed a bill that allows hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" to take place on the campuses of public universities. Its Senate copycat version passed in June in a 46-3 vote and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett signed it into law as Act 147 on Oct. 8.

The bill is colloquially referred to as the Indigenous Mineral Resources Development Act. It was sponsored by Republican Sen. Don White, one of the state's top recipients of oil and gas industry funding between 2000-April 2012, pulling in $94,150 during that time frame, according to a recent report published by Common Cause PA and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania. Corbett has taken over $1.8 million from the oil and gas industry since his time serving as the state's Attorney General in 2004. 

The Corbett Administration has made higher education budget cuts totaling over $460 million in the past two consecutive PA state budgets. The oil and gas industry has offered fracking as a new fundraising stream at universities starved for cash and looking to fill that massive cash void, as explained by The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Read more: Fracking Your Future: Shale Gas Industry Targets College Campuses, K-12 Schools
Sat, 2012-10-06 11:56Carol Linnitt
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Oil Industry Looks to Create "Lake District" from Open-Pit Mines and Toxic Tar Sands Waste

This week, the Cumulative Environmental Management Association (CEMA), an industry-funded consultancy group in Alberta, released the End Pit Lakes Guidance Document to the Government of Alberta for review. The 434-page document outlines a 100-year plan to integrate open-pit mines and tar sands tailings into Northern Alberta's local ecosystem, introducing what they call a 'reclaimed lake district' as a long-term alternative to the temporary tailings ponds that currently hold the billions of gallons of water, sand, clay, hydrocarbons, naphthenic acids, salt and other byproducts of the bitumen extraction and upgrading process.

The 30 proposed end-pit lakes (EPLs) will take up more than 100 square kilometers, spread out over an area of 2,500 square kilometers. Toronto, for comparison, covers an area of 630 square kilometers. 
 
Industry envisions the artificial lake district as a future recreation site, although there is no indication yet that filling empty open-pit mines with freshwater will give way to the clean natural environments necessary to promote recreational uses of the area. In fact, The Globe and Mail reports the document "highlights the scale of the ecological gamble underway in the province" and suggests the technique is being considered as a remediation option because "it's less costly to fill a mine with water than dirt."
 
Read more: Oil Industry Looks to Create "Lake District" from Open-Pit Mines and Toxic Tar Sands Waste

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