That’s Fracking Enough ! Regulators Shut Down Frackquake Well

Chad Devereaux examines bricks that fell from three sides of his in-laws home in Sparks, Okla., following two earthquakes that hit the area in less than 24 hours in 2011. 

That’s Fracking Enough ! Regulators Shut Down Frackquake Well

 

by Chip Northrup February 4, 2015     nofrackingway
 
After a whopping 4.1 earthquake on Friday, even Oklahoma regulators were finally fracking fed up. And they ordered the culprit – a frack waste disposal well – shut down. To bring a little piece and quiet to the prairie. And allow the neighbors time to shore up their walls, file their insurance claims and call their lawyers.

How many cracked walls, cave-ins, busted water lines and nervous nights do you endure before you’re finally fracking fed up with frackquakes ? Don’t get mad. Get even. Sue the frackers, sue their contractors and sue their fracking lawyers. What the frack are you waiting on ? 

video at site

State Orders Waste Well Closed After Frackquake

The order follows a magnitude-4.1 earthquake on Friday.

Coming Sunday: Quake Debate

On Sunday, the Tulsa World begins a three-part series on Oklahoma’s increase in earthquakes. Stories will focus on concerns of residents in quake-prone areas, how public officials are responding to the problem and what scientists say about earthquakes and wastewater injection wells.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015   Updated: 12:44 pm, Wed Feb 4, 2015.

By ZIVA BRANSTETTER World Enterprise Editor |12 comments

Staff at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission directed that an injection well operated by SandRidge Energy be shut down Tuesday due to continuing earthquakes in Alfalfa County near the Kansas border.

The well is the second active wastewater injection well directed to “shut in” or halt operations by the agency since it began a new monitoring system in 2013.

Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the commission, said agency staff issued the directive Tuesday morning due to a magnitude-4.1 earthquake recorded in the area Friday. The well is just west of the Alfalfa County town of Cherokee.

“They were operating under a ‘yellow light’ permit with language that said shut in if there’s any seismic activity,” Skinner said.

Injection wells are used to dispose of wastewater, laden with salt and toxic chemicals, produced from oil and gas wells. The state has about 3,200 active injection wells that disposed of a combined 1.1 billion barrels of wastewater in 2013.

Due to a huge increase in earthquakes in recent years, the Corporation Commission began using a “traffic light” system in December 2013.

Under the system, wells within a six-mile radius of a magnitude-4.0 earthquake are placed under operating restrictions. If additional earthquakes occur within six miles of an active well in that area, the commission can order the operator to halt injection while more information is gathered....   more here

The Fracked and the Frackers- Hard Times All Around

Ilargi: Drilling Our Way Into Oblivion

December 21, 2014 by Lambert Strether    naked capitalism  

           

Lambert here: So the fracking companies have purchased “risk insurance.” I wonder what happens when they all file their claims at the same time. What could go wrong?

By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth. Originally published at Automatic Earth.

Oh, that sweet black gold won’t leave us alone, will it? West Texas Intermediate went through some speedbumps Friday, but ended over +5%, though still only at $57. Think them buyers know something we don’t? I don’t either. I see people covering lousy bets. And PPT (and that’s not the one we used to spray our crops with).

The damage done must be epic by now, throughout the financial system, but we’re not hearing much about that yet, are we? We will in time, not to worry. Everyone’s invested in oil, and big time too, and they’ve all just become party to a loss of about half of what both oil itself and oil stocks were worth just this summer.

There’s those who can ride it out and wait for sunnier days, but many funds don’t have that luxury. Who wants to be manager of Norway’s huge oil-based sovereign fund these days? With all these long-term obligations entered into when oil was selling for $110, no questions asked? The Vikings must be selling assets east, west, left and right. But they’re not going to tell us, not if they can help it.

Just like all the other money managers who pray every morning and night on their weak knees for this nightmare to pass. Your pension fund, your government, they’re all losing. BIG. They’ll try and hide those losses as long as they can. But trust me on this one: all major funds have oil in a prominent place in their portfolios. And there’s a Bloomberg index that says the average share values of 76 North American oil companies, i.e. not just the price of oil, have lost 49% of their value since June. There will be Blood with a capital B.....   read more here

Hard Times in a Boom Town: Pennsylvanians Describe Costs of Fracking:

DeSmogBlog    Sharon Kelly  12/02/14 

....Expectations ran high when the boom first began. In 2010, 60 Minutes introduced a new word to the national media – “shale-ionaires,” or landowners who made millions simply by leasing their land for drilling.....

...Aikens pulls a tattered photocopy of a ten cent check from his wallet, emblazoned with the logo of a division of Chesapeake Energy. It's the royalty check for the gas produced on his 359 acre farm, after post-production expenses were deducted from the check....    read more here

( video)  Glenn Aikens, who owns a farm in Bradford County, PA describes the costs associated with fracking.

 

Oil tanker trains threaten to trash US northwest- and other news

Oil tanker trains threaten to trash US northwest

America’s expanding oil production threatens the pristine region of the country with a rash of new oil terminals along coast

 

Pic: Carol Von Canon/Flickr

rtcc.org    29 October 2014         By Valerie Brown

Oil and coal producers in the US are planning to use mile-long tanker trains to transport vast quantities of fossil fuels to the coast through areas that environmental groups believe should be protected.

The change in world fossil fuel production, consumption and costs caused by tar sands exploitation in Canada and the fracking boom in the US is causing what Bill McKibben − author, environmental activist and co-founder of the international climate campaign group 350.org − calls a “chokepoint” in the unspoiled Northwest of the country.....  read more here

Canada toughens train brake rules, to impose 'audit blitz'

By Richard Valdmanis    Oct 29, 2014     (Reuters)

 - Canada has issued an emergency order to railways detailing how many handbrakes they must set on unattended trains to prevent deadly runaways, and will hire new staff to conduct an "audit blitz" of rail companies' safety systems.

The changes are the latest in a slew of regulatory moves in North America since a train carrying crude oil crashed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, last year, killing 47 people and highlighting the dangers from a surge in oil transport by rail.

The announcement on Wednesday came in response to the Canadian Transportation Safety Board's final report in August on the Lac-Megantic crash that found shortfalls in railway safety culture and federal oversight of the industry....

.....Canada's Conservative government has already imposed several new regulations in the wake of Lac-Megantic, including toughening tank car safety and requiring railways do risk assessments, produce emergency response plans, and improve the security of parked trains.... read more here

 

Unknotting rail congestion compels investment

Railway Age     by  Frank N. Wilner     10/28/14

Unraveling the knot restricting rail network fluidity cannot be achieved through Surface Transportation Board (STB) intimidation of rail CEOs, or by the agency's issuance of an emergency service order instructing one railroad to operate over the tracks of another, or by merging the nation's seven major rail systems into a North American duopoly.

None would cause to appear, in sufficiently short order, the required additional locomotives and track capacity essential to curing the problem.....

.... The knot of railroad congestion is one of capacity constraint. It imposes costs on freight shippers, Amtrak, and the economy as a whole, plus menaces homeland security. Unraveling the knot entails added capital investment — and time.....

.....public spending on infrastructure improvements generates impressive economic returns to society, according to academic studies such as Canada 2020 Think Tank. It found that $1 billion in infrastructure spending creates almost 17,000 jobs, including manufacturing, business services and transportation; increases gross domestic product by as much as $1.8 billion; boosts tax revenue by at least 30% without increasing taxes; and, longer-term, lowers production costs for business..... read more here

Truth in Advertising ? -   in the oil business.....

 

How State Public Money Pays for Coal Exports and Oil Trains

  

Tracking public fund investments in fossil fuel projects.

Sightline Daily  by Eric de Place and Nick Abraham    
September 17, 2014

Communities across Oregon and Washington are growing increasingly agitated about the risks of fossil fuel export. Proposed coal terminals generated unprecedented opposition from local residents and, more recently, dramatic increases in oil train traffic have many questioning the grave safety risks associated with a cargo so prone to explode. Yet at the very same time, the state governments of both Oregon and Washington are bankrolling coal, oil, and gas infrastructure.

In some cases, the subsidies and expenditures are known but relatively small. But in other cases, large quantities of public money fund the very same facilities so bitterly opposed by the taxpayers that the states are supposed to be investing for.

The governors of each state have voiced strong concern about—and even outright opposition to—major fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Yet, while Governors Inslee and Kitzhaber preach a sustainable future for our region, another wing of the executive branch is quietly betting public money on a vastly different vision.