EPA is studying impacts on water quality, but that study will take years to complete and is limited in its scope. ![]() However, the panel is stocked with only frack-friendly experts. In the next week or two we should see some results fom a panel of experts set up by the Department of Energy, which is supposed to reach conclusions on how to frack safely. Oil and gas companies have spent over three hundred million dollars in the last two years lobbying against federal protections from their pollution, so it is not too surprising that the federal government has decided to ‘shoot now, ask questions later.’ There are few efforts by Congress and the administration to mitigate the public health impacts of fracking. Talisman has even targeted children in its lobbying, with ‘Terry the Fracosaurus’ who promotes an industry that is polluting drinking water with toxic chemicals. Companies like Conoco Phillips, Chesapeake Energy and Talisman Energy are not even required to disclose the more than 900 different chemicals used in the fracking process, which contaminate aquifers. The oil and gas industry have good lobbyists, and have achieved years ago exemptions under virtually every federal environmental law, including the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act. In addition, fracking typically results in the release of significant quantities of methane a potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere despite the availability of cost-effective containment measures.’įracked gas may be no ‘bridge fuel,’ and it certainly is not ‘clean energy.’ Burning natural gas releases about half the greenhouse gas as burning coal, but fracked gas may produce so much more methane during extraction and processing that it could be as bad or worse than coal for the climate. Rivers and lakes are also being contaminated with the release of insufficiently treated waste water recovered from fracking operations. To date, fracking has resulted in over 1,000 documented cases of groundwater contamination across the county, either through the leaking of fracking fluids and methane into groundwater, or by above ground spills of contaminated and often radioactive wastewater from fracking operations. Despite its obvious hazards, regulation necessary to ensure that fracking does not endanger our nation’s water supply has not kept pace with its rapid and increasing use by the oil and gas industry. ‘Fracking involves shooting millions of gallons of water laced with carcinogenic chemicals deep underground to break apart rock to release trapped gas. Often called ‘fracking,’ communities from Pennsylvania to Texas to Minnesota are already suffering from the numerous environmental problems connected with this process to force “natural” gas from shale several thousand feet below ground. These states appreciate the benefits of employment and tax revenue fracking operations stimulate.This morning, CEOs, founders, and other leaders of 68 organizations sent a letter to President Obama, urging that he do what he can to stop the dangerous extraction of shale gas that is occurring across the country without any federal public safeguards. We look at fracking governance in Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania, where fracking technologies are treated as acceptable extensions of conventional technologies and where the practice is neither widely feared nor stigmatized. Several contextual factors favoring fracking in the US are explored: private ownership of mineral rights and royalty policies, favorable state regulatory climates, a national interest in energy security, and vocal support of fracking from national political leaders of both parties. ![]() Risk perception provides less insight into why fracking is generally acceptable in some states of the US but not in others. The classic risk-perception paradigm, which emphasizes the role of public opinion, the mass media, and grass-roots activism, provides useful insight into how and why fracking was banned first in France and later in the UK. This chapter examines the history of fracking as a new technology for enhancing the production of oil and gas, looking for explanations of why the practice is restricted or banned in some jurisdictions but permitted and fostered in others.
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