Fracking in the Gulf of Mexico

See the original article HERE with map of fracking in the Gulf.

Extent of stealth fracking in Gulf of Mexico revealed

Government lists at least 100 sites offshore where regulators approved the controversial exploration method

by Paul Abowd

al-Jazeera America,
13 February, 2015

In “The Disappearing Delta,” “Fault Lines” investigates the impact of the fossil fuel industry on Louisiana’s disappearing coastline — and examines a new frontier of oil exploration: fracking in the Gulf of Mexico. The film airs on Monday, Feb. 16, at 10 p.m. Eastern time/7 p.m. Pacific on Al Jazeera America. 

Click here to find Al Jazeera in your area.

While a debate rages over the use of hydraulic fracturing to exploit fossil fuel reserves inland, the practice has quietly taken hold offshore, in the Gulf of Mexico.

Documents obtained by “Fault Lines” reveal that the world’s largest oil firms are now fracking in some of the Gulf’s deepest waters — raising questions about how it is being regulated.

A list of about 100 well sites offers one of the first snapshots of the practice, which until just a couple years ago was unknown to the public.

“There’s been a level of secrecy that’s shielded this activity from view, literally and figuratively,” said Jonathan Henderson, who works for New Orleans’ Gulf Restoration Network. “This activity is taking place offshore, and the public can’t get out here [to see it].”

The list of sites obtained by “Fault Lines” reveals that BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell and nearly two dozen other companies were approved to use offshore fracking in 2013. It also reveals that fracking has occurred in the vicinity of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon spill. Chevron, which operates several nearshore rigs visited by a “Fault Lines” team in January, said it also uses offshore fracking “safely and efficiently” at its deepest water sites.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) released the list of offshore fracking sites to “Fault Lines,” noting that it was not exhaustive and included sites only where the most common type of offshore fracking is used.

This technique, dubbed frac packing, has been used offshore for decades and employs highly pressurized water, gravel and chemicals to clear sand from the opening of the well and facilitate the flow of fossil fuels. According to BSEE officials, this is the type of fracking that takes place the “vast majority” of the time in the Gulfand is different from the method that has stirred debate onshore.

But the officials acknowledged in a written statement that a more expansive type of fracking, “involving higher fluid volumes and extending longer distances from the wellbore has been minimally used in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Environmental watchdog Jonathan Henderson accompanied Fault Lines to several offshore fracking sites in the Gulf of Mexico.Joel Van Haren for Al Jazeera America

An October report in Bloomberg describes an emerging fracking technology taking hold at deepwater sites, which can involve harder rock formations described by a Halliburton engineer as “the most challenging, harshest environment that we’ll be working in.”

BSEE officials say hydraulic fracturing has the potential to increase as companies explore at more extreme depths. “BSEE is vigilant in its efforts to consider all the complexities of offshore energy development and allow for the responsible development and safe operations,” the statement read.

After months of requests for more information about this type of offshore fracking, regulators refused to offer details.

In fact, in response to early inquiries, officials at BSEE referred “Fault Lines” to materials produced by the very industry they’re charged with overseeing — pointing to the websites of three oil companies and a fact sheet produced by the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil lobbying group.

Concerns from California

Scrutiny of offshore fracking is growing, especially on the heels of reports by Truthout and The Associated Press in 2013, which revealed that the practice was quietly permitted at hundreds of sites off the coast of California.

In addition to the fracking methods, environmentalists want to know the types of chemicals being used. Companies are not required to disclose that information to the public, and very few have volunteered it.

‘There seems to be no slowdown in the momentum of regulators and government politicians to drill, baby, drill.’ 

Mike Tidwell

environmental writer

Environmental observers in California, however, obtained a list of chemicals used at 12 offshore fracking sites off its coast. Almost all the substances can cause damage to organs in the human body, said Miyoko Sakashita, an environmental lawyer in San Francisco.

“Half of the chemicals impacted the cardiovascular or immune system, and about a third caused some sort of brain damage or nerve system damage,” she said, adding that fracking offshore can increase the risk of an oil spill as well as air and water pollution.

The agencies charged with overseeing offshore oil activity say that companies are allowed to discharge a certain amount of fracking chemicals under the terms of a general wastewater permit issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Additional wastewater is often stored and treated onshore.

In late 2014, two California-based groups, the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological Diversity, prepared lawsuits against federal regulators for approving permits in violation of environmental law.

“One of our key concerns is that offshore fracking has barely been regulated at all,” said Sakashita, who works for the Center for Biological Diversity. “What we’ve found was that the federal government was largely just rubber-stamping permits.”

Fast-tracked permits

The Center for Biological Diversity points to a 2012 fracking permit filed by the oil and gas exploration company DCOR. It shows that regulators approved fracking through a fast-track process called a categorical exclusion, which exempts industry activities from a full environmental review.

Companies have lobbied for this exemption, arguing that it helps cut down on paperwork that can slow operations. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it was discovered that operations at the BP site were approved using a categorical exclusion — and that the company lobbied regulators to continue using the exemptions just 11 days before the spill.

An oil rig operated by the oil and gas giant Chevron in the Gulf of Mexico.Joel Van Haren for Al Jazeera America

Soon after the accident, Michael Bromwich, the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, announced that the agency would curb its use of the exclusions and begin a process to review how they’re dispensed.

But environmental critics say regulators have not kept promises to tighten oversight.

“Almost nothing has changed,” said Mike Tidwell, who has written extensively on climate change in Louisiana. “There seems to be no slowdown in the momentum of regulators and government politicians to drill, baby, dill.”

Chevron, which obtained approval to frack at least 11 offshore sites in 2013, also lobbied federal regulators soon after the Deepwater Horizon spill to continue fast tracking permits.

Privatise the profits; socialise the costs

Oil And Gas Companies Won’t Have To Pay For Damage Caused To Louisiana’s Coast, Judge Rules

Think Progress,

15 February, 2015

Oil and gas companies won’t have to pay for decades of damage to Louisiana’s coast, after a lawsuit filed against the companies in 2013 was thrown out on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Nanette Jolivette Brown dismissed the lawsuit, which was filed by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East against nearly 100 fossil fuel companies. The suit, which the New York Times called the “most ambitious environmental lawsuit ever,” could have cost the industry billions of dollars for its contribution to the erosion of Louisiana’s coast. The state’s coastline loses about a football field’s worth of land every hour, and the wells drilled by the oil and gas industry have been estimated by the Interior Department to have caused anywhere from 15 to 59 percent of the erosion. The lawsuit would have prompted the industry to help pay for the estimated $50 billion in coastal restoration and protection that Louisiana will need over the next several years.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who had long opposed the lawsuit and signed a bill last year to quash it — legislation that was later found unconstitutional — praised the judge’s decision, as did the state’s oil and gas industry, which called the lawsuit “ill-conceived, unwise and divisive.”

The oil and gas industry may not be off the hook quite yet, however — the Flood Protection Authority is expected to appeal the judge’s decision to toss out the lawsuit.

Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of land since the 1930s, and the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the state’s coastal wetlands could disappear in as little as 200 years.

That’s bad news for the state’s coastal communities, which get some protection from storm surge from the wetlands. Sea level rise is likely to exacerbate the land loss problem: coastal Louisiana has seen its sea level rise at a rate that’s roughly double the global rate over the last 50 years.

Steve Estopinal, president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, talked to ThinkProgress earlier this year about the changes he’s seen on Louisiana’s coastline during his lifetime.

“I can remember as a young man going out in the prairie where you could fold the grass down and put a blanket out and you could spend the night, dry,” Estopinal said. “That same place now, people are trolling for shrimp.”

John Barry, former vice chairman of the Flood Protection Authority who helped create the lawsuit against the 97 oil and gas companies, told the National Journal last year that the lawsuit was seeking to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its damage to the coastline, especially since the industry itself admits that it’s responsible for 36 percent of the wetlands loss.

 “People want to call me an environmental activist, but this is not about activism. This is about law and order,” Barry said. “The law required [companies] to clean up after themselves, and they didn’t do it.”