Shreveport, La – Residents happy here two years ago when gas stuck in a giant gas deposit within 2 miles of their homes, sparking a modern gold rush.
The companies offered residents of tens of thousands of dollars per acre to drill on their land, to enrich some people at night in this rural corner of northwest Louisiana.
Than cows started dying. Methane seeped into the drinking water. Homes were evacuated when uncontrolled gas escapes from a borehole.
Today, many residents and local officials still praise the bounty reaped from the Haynesville Shale, one of the world’s largest gas reserves, distributed Louisiana, Arkansas and East Texas. An estimated 250 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is trapped – enough to power the United States for more than a decade, said Kevin McCotter, senior director at Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp., the largest gas producer in the area. The shale is a clean source of energy is supplied, while enriching the residents, he says.
“At a time when our nation needs more jobs and inward investment than ever, the Haynesville Shale is a flu shot for North Louisiana and East Texas,” he says.
Others question whether the money given to landowners to lease their property is worth the risk, they say drilling poses.
“There are many concerns,” said Kassi Ebarb, organized her neighbors in Shreveport for city gas companies demand more environmental safeguards. “We would run (of money) than taking all that was not enough to our neighborhood and to protect our children.”
Shreveport and the surrounding area has entered a national debate on the safety standards of a specialized form of natural gas drilling that pumps chemicals and water in the soil gas trapped thousands of feet below message.
The debate on the controversial technique known as “hydraulic break,” or “fracking,” in which companies drill-down, then horizontally to a natural gas trapped in shale away. A mixture of water, chemicals and sand is then pumped into the shale with great force, breaking up the rock and release the gas.
The technology enables drillers to reach previously inaccessible natural gas and has opened vast swaths of the U.S. to drilling. Nearly 500,000 natural gas wells producing in 32 states, up from 393,000 in 2003, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The percentage of natural gas from shale formations drilled using hydraulic breaking is expected to climb from 14% last year to 23% in 2020, according to the Department of Energy.
Environmentalists warn that chemicals blasted into the ground during fracking could affect water supplies and toxic air and water, threatening rivers, air quality and human health.
“We’ve gone from getting the oil and gas easiest to hardest,” said Gwen Lachelt, director of Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a group of advocates stricter regulation drill. “It’s dirtier and dirtier.”
Gas companies and the fracking advocates say the technique is safe and presents little danger to drinking water or the environment. “We have a very good reputation when it comes to hydraulic break, regulatory and safety of the environment,” says Jodee Bruyninckx of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association.
Recent developments in fracking:
• The New York Assembly last week passed a temporary ban on hydraulic break until next year, while regulators review regulations allow.
• The Environmental Protection Agency in March launched a two-year study into the effects of hydraulic breaking.
• The Pittsburgh City Council last month unanimously approved a ban on gas drilling measure of its city limits, indicating the health and the environment.
• The EPA last year a high level of benzene, oil and other harmful chemicals in wells near gas rigs in Pavilion, WYO. After residents complained about a bad odor and taste found in the water, the agency said.
• Pennsylvania environmental regulators recently blamed for the contamination of methane an aquifer – a natural underground formation that stores water – near Dimock, Pa., on Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas, which is drilling in Marcellus region Shale. Cabot denies.
“Difficult road” A to Regulation
Fracking is exempt from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, passed an exemption under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, according to legal records. Under the exemption, no gas companies are not the chemicals used in the process known.
A bill known as the FRAC Act, introduced in Congress last year by Senator Robert Casey, D-Pa., Would gas forcing these chemicals, most of which are guarded as trade secrets, Casey says. The bill is not expected to bring the Senate floor in the near future, given the current political climate in Washington, he says.
“There is a difficult road for us,” says Casey.
Further testing and monitoring should be done on the technique, which is also exempted from parts of the Clean Water Act and other federal environmental laws, said Josh Fox, a filmmaker whose documentary film, gas country, profiles of families affected by the U.S. natural gas drilling .
The film, released this year, showing people the determination of the water from their taps on fire because of flammable methane gas in the water.
“This process has never been investigated,” says Fox. “We have not put out drugs on the market without testing them first.”
Fears of cranes flaring because fracking overstated, said Gary Hanson, a hydrologist at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, who has studied the technique. Hydraulic fracturing wells over 2 miles underground, and the past aquifers that are less than 1,000 meters, making it difficult for the process to contaminate drinking water, he says.
Even if it does not fall under federal security rules, fracking is still controlled by the state and local agencies, Hanson says.
“You have a number of incidents. There will be a number of spills,” says Hanson. “But I do not see large spill occurs.”
Some see the drilling as a ‘blessing’
The financial benefits are undeniable. Last year, Haynesville Shale Drilling spent 10.6 billion U.S. dollars in new business sales to the State, $ 5.7 billion income households and 57,000 new jobs in the state, according to a study commissioned by the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association.
“Not only is the production of natural gas – and in particular Haynesville Shale – Louisiana stimulate the economy and creating jobs, this type of research is to help America fuel and decrease our dependence on foreign energy sources,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, said in a statement.
Reegis Richard, pastor of the Temple of Knowledge Church International in nearby Mansfield, the heart of drilling activity, received $ 30,000 in gas money by leasing church 7 acres, and the supply of enriched community more than doubled he says.
The influx of cash has allowed him to finish building a new church, a private Christian school opened two times to travel to Israel with his wife and local pastors, he says.
“People’s lives have changed,” says Richard. “It’s a blessing.”
The increased activity has also increased pressure on national regulators. In Louisiana, 38 oil and gas inspectors are responsible for monitoring the condition 19,000 producing natural gas wells, including 781 in the Haynesville Shale area, according to the State Department of Natural Resources.
Government agencies’ lack of political will nor the budget or staff to address adequately the level of drilling going on in this area, “said Murray Lloyd, a local lawyer.
Last spring, the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office talks on cows in a pasture near a drilling rig that foaming and bleeding in the mouth and tilt received, Sheriff Steve Prator says. Deputies found 17 dead cows there.
Sections later determined they had died from drinking the fracking fluids had leaked to the pasture, he says. Chesapeake and one of its subcontractors were later fined $ 22,000 for each of the incidents, according to the State Department of Environmental Quality.
Then in April, about 200 homes in rural Caddo Parish were evacuated when a gas well blew, sending gas into the air and the local water supply, Prator said. Regulators detected high levels of methane in the water of residents’ toilets, he says.
The incident prompted Prator to Jindal’s Office of Homeland Security Contacts and Haynesville Shale Task Force to create a better plan for emergencies. Lack of coordination between government institutions and the overall handling of events frustrated him Prator says. Another worrying development: gas rigs closer to schools and crowded areas, he says.
“It made me question ‘Are we doing the right things?” “Prator says.
One of those evacuated during the blowout was Contario Frances, 50, who left her trailer around Wallace Lake and lived in a room at the Clarion Hotel in Shreveport with her 23-year-old son, Braden, for 17 days. ExCo Resources, the Dallas-based gas company responsible for the eruption, paid the residents’ hotel tabs and expenses, Prator said.
Contario says she can only drink bottled water since the return and fears that the lake, streams and forests near her home in so many will be polluted by drilling.
“We did not ask for this,” said Contario, who grew up in the area. “Our biggest concern is that one day everyone will be infected.”
source:usatoday
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