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Frack-happy Colorado clamps down on methane pollution

Frack-happy Colorado clamps down on methane pollution

Rick Kimpel

Cutting back on methane leaks could help reduce Denver’s infamous smog.

Frackers and other companies that handle natural gas will have to start being at least a little bit neighborly in Colorado, where new rules will force them to clamp down on methane leaks from wells, tanks, and pipelines.

When methane (natural gas is pretty much just methane) escapes during drilling and transportation, it fuels ozone pollution and global warming. Methane concentrations in the atmosphere are rising, and methane leaks are a major problem in the U.S. By one recent estimate, the U.S. EPA has understated the problem by a half.

To start trying to tackle the problem, Colorado’s air quality commission voted 8-1 on Sunday to adopt the nation’s first state regulations dealing with methane leaks — regulations that the Natural Resources Defense Council had previously described as “common-sense measures to reduce harmful pollution.” Volatile organic compounds will also be regulated under the new rules. Reuters explains:

The regulations would require operators to perform frequent checks for leaks using infrared cameras and other technologies.

“This is a huge breakthrough for cleaner air and a safer climate. Getting to this point took serious resolve and a willingness to find common ground,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Cutting back on methane leaks doesn’t just make environmental sense — it also makes business sense. Any methane that escapes could have been sold and burned for energy. “This is the right thing to do for our business,” a manager with Noble Energy told Bloomberg.

Which could help explain why the not-so-ecofriendly natural gas industry was so willing to cooperate with Colorado rule-makers on this issue.


Source
Colorado approves limits on air pollution from oil, gas drilling, Reuters
Big step forward to tackle methane pollution from Colorado’s oil and gas industry, NRDC Switchboard
Colorado First State to Clamp Down on Fracking Methane Pollution, Bloomberg

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Frack-happy Colorado clamps down on methane pollution

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Earthquakes shake Texas town on Thanksgiving, and fracking might be to blame

Earthquakes shake Texas town on Thanksgiving, and fracking might be to blame

Shutterstock

Residents of a rural northern Texas area were awoken early on Thanksgiving by not one but two earthquakes. Such quakes have become alarmingly normal during the past month, and fracking practices could be to blame.

From CBS Dallas / Fort Worth:

North Texas has been feeling a string of earthquakes — more than a dozen — over the past few weeks. Most have been centered around Azle, with the most recent [previous] one being on Tuesday morning. All of those quakes have registered between 2.0 and 3.6 in magnitude. Those who live in the small town have grown concerned.

Azle leaders have called on state officials to have geologists investigate the cause of these quakes. “The citizens are concerned,” said Azle Assistant City Manager Lawrence Bryant at a city council meeting. “They should be.”

“If it’s a man-made cause, it would be nice to know,” Bryant added.

By “man-made,” Bryant means fracking-industry-made. Frackers pump their polluted wastewater deep into the ground, a practice well known as a cause of temblors. A wastewater injection well was shut down near Youngstown, Ohio, in late 2011 after it triggered more than 100 earthquakes of growing intensity in just a year.

University of Texas earthquake researcher Cliff Frolich says the recent Texas flurry could be the result of wastewater injection. From KHOU:

“I’d say it certainly looks very possible that the earthquakes are related to injection wells,” [Frolich] said in an interview from Austin.

Frolich notes, however, that thousands of such wells have operated in Texas for decades, with no quakes anywhere near them. He adds that there are probably a thousand unknown faults beneath Texas.

Azle mayor Alan Brundrett says it’s important to determine whether this latest series of quakes are man-made.

“What could it cause, down the road?” he asked. “What if a 5.0 happens and people’s houses start falling in on them?”

Brundrett has installed an earthquake alert app on his smartphone. It shows a dozen minor quakes near his town since November 5.

The growing problem of earthquakes in America is not just limited to Ohio and Texas. The following U.S. Geological Survey graph shows how the number of earthquakes with a magnitude of at least three has spiked as fracking has become widespread. “USGS scientists have found that at some locations the increase in seismicity coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells,” the agency notes.

USGS

Click to embiggen.


Source
2 More Earthquakes Rattle North Texas, CBS
Man-Made Earthquakes Update, USGS
Mayor of small North Texas town uneasy as earthquakes continue, KHOU

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Earthquakes shake Texas town on Thanksgiving, and fracking might be to blame

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Bobby Jindal doesn’t think Big Oil should have to clean up its mess

Bobby Jindal doesn’t think Big Oil should have to clean up its mess

Derek Bridges

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wants everyone to stop picking on poor oil companies.

Oil and gas companies have ruined coastal wetlands that formerly helped protect Louisiana from storms and floods, but Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) doesn’t believe they should have to pay to repair the damage.

The governor opposes a lawsuit filed last month by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East. The suit seeks billions of dollars from energy companies, including BP and ExxonMobil, to restore coastal ecosystems that have been trampled to make way for oil and gas infrastructure along the state’s coast. The Times-Picayune explains:

Jindal said the state needs to protect and restore the coast, “but this lawsuit is not the way to do it.” [His] statement also called the lawsuit “a potential billion dollar plus windfall” for the attorneys representing the levee authority.

At a meeting dedicated to the lawsuit last week, Jindal and other members of the state’s top levee and restoration board said allegations that the oil and gas industry don’t participate in the state’s restoration efforts are incorrect. They pointed out that a number of the restoration and levee projects actually are being built on industry property or with industry assistance. …

[Jindal] also said the levee authority should join the state’s efforts to seek a higher share of federal oil and gas revenues to pay for coastal restoration.

Enviros have a theory about why Jindal opposes the lawsuit. From The Advocate:

A coalition of environmental groups accused Gov. Bobby Jindal on Wednesday of attempting to quash a coastal erosion lawsuit against oil and gas companies in order to benefit his political contributors.

Jindal has racked up more than $1 million in donations from oil and gas companies and their executives over the past 10 years, according to an analysis of campaign finance reports from organizations including Levees.org, the Sierra Club, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, League of Women Voters and Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans.

The response from Jindal’s spokeperson to the charges: “That’s absurd.”

Alicia Lee

Natural flood control in Louisiana.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Bobby Jindal doesn’t think Big Oil should have to clean up its mess

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Can Fixing the American Food System Be This Easy?

Chris C.

on

Dairy-Free Peach Pineapple Ice Cream

2 minutes ago

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Can Fixing the American Food System Be This Easy?

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Don’t Count on Republicans Being Crafty Enough to Pass Immigration Reform via a Discharge Petition

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

It’s hard to believe, but after decades of calling the Senate the place legislation goes to die, suddenly the Senate is the place where legislation and compromise are the order of the day. It’s the House where legislation goes to die, thanks to the House Republican caucus’s near total takeover by its hardcore tea party wing. So does this mean that immigration reform is dead?

That’s my guess. But the hot topic lately among the chattering classes is that there’s actually a way to force passage: a discharge petition. Steve Benen outlines the theory for us:

As a rule, the only bills that reach the House floor for a vote are the ones House leaders allow to reach the floor. But there’s an exception: if 218 members sign a discharge petition, their preferred legislation is brought up for a vote whether the majority party’s leadership likes it or not.

In terms of specific numbers, there are 201 Democrats in the House caucus. If literally all of them are prepared to support the bipartisan Senate bill, they would need 17 House Republicans — just 7% of the 231 GOP House members — to join them on the discharge petition. If, say, 10 conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats from Southern states balked, they would need 27 Republicans to break party ranks.

Just last week, we were told they were as many as 40 House Republicans who consider themselves moderates, unhappy with their party’s far-right direction. Is there a chance half of these alleged centrists might sign a discharge petition and get immigration reform done? Sure there is.

The odds aren’t great, but don’t let all the “D.O.A.” talk convince you the reform fight is already over.

Hey, it worked for the Civil Rights Act! Maybe immigration reform is next.

But I’m not a believer. Here’s why: it actually makes sense. If Republicans really do want to pass immigration reform just to get it over and done with, but they want to do it without getting their fingerprints all over it, the discharge petition is easily their best bet. As Steve says, all it requires is 20 or 30 Republicans in safe seats to vote for it, while the entire rest of the caucus gets to continue railing against it while secretly breathing a sigh of relief. That’s totally logical.

And that’s why it won’t happen. Logic is simply not the GOP’s strong suit these days, and frankly, neither is Machiavellian maneuvering. The only thing they know how to do is yell and scream and hold votes on endless doomed repetitions of bills designed to demonstrate their ideological purity. A different House and a different party leader might be crafty enough to see the value in a discharge petition, but not this one. They’re true believers. They won’t secretly agree to leave the defectors alone after the vote, which is the minimum necessary for this to work, nor will John Boehner risk telling them secretly that he won’t take away their committee assignments or otherwise retaliate against them. The party leadership just doesn’t have this level of craftiness in them.

Which is too bad. It’s an elegant idea.

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Don’t Count on Republicans Being Crafty Enough to Pass Immigration Reform via a Discharge Petition

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