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Drought-stricken California’s fracking operations used 70 mn gallons of water last year
RT,
7
April, 2015
Energy
companies in California used 70 million gallons of water for the
hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process to unearth oil and gas
reserves, according to officials. The figure comes during the state’s
increasingly urgent push to conserve water.
That
amount is of water used is less than previously projected by industry
-- which estimated fracking used about 100 million gallons of water
per year. Nevertheless, water in California is at premium. The state
is entering its fourth year of record drought, and a mandatory water
reduction plan was announced last week by Governor Jerry Brown.
California may only have 12 months’ worth of water left, as
snowpack measurements for the year are set to hit record lows. Yet
fracking operations are not included in the conservation efforts.
To
unleash oil or natural gas from shale or other areas, the fracking
process requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water,
sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. Once used, toxic
fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells,
disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields,
or used over again.
As the california drought continues it's rampage, Fracking Companies go undisturbed.
#CaliforniaDrought
"Hydraulic
fracturing uses a relatively small amount of water – the equivalent
of 514 households annually,” Steven Bohlen, the state oil and gas
supervisor, told Reuters, which first reported the water usage
figure.
Bohlen
added that fracking uses more than fresh water, including “produced”
water that surfaces during the fracking process that cannot be used
for drinking or agricultural purposes.
Patrick
Sullivan, a spokesperson for the Center for Biological Diversity and
Californians Against Fracking, said while the state’s fracking
water use may only equal 514 households, much of that contaminated
water can’t be used again, unlike most common household water
usage.
“It
is water that most likely cannot be put back into the water cycle,”
Sullivan told ThinkProgress. “It’s water that is by and large
gone for good.”
Reuters
also reported last week that environmentalist groups have estimated
that oil and gas developers in the state go through 2 million gallons
of fresh water per day for oil production.
Fracking
has been linked to groundwater contamination, heightened earthquake
activity, exacerbation of drought conditions, and a variety of health
concerns for humans and the local environment.
Oil
and gas companies are under increasingly intense pressure nationwide
to respond over increased transparency of chemicals used in the
fracking process. As RT has reported, industry has avoided divulging
-- often under the cover of official regulatory agencies -- just what
chemicals are involved in their toxic injection fluids. Yet drillers
insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradicting
findings by scientists and environmentalists.
"What
[oil and gas producers] have been doing, especially in the
[California’s agriculturally fertile] Central Valley, is injecting
this very contaminated, very salty -- often containing benzene --
water into shallow aquifers and shallow water supplies,” Helen
Slottje, of the Community Environmental Defense Council, told RT.
"Water is not replaceable, we don't have any alternative sources for water.
But we do have alternative sources for natural gas and oil.”
In
March, disclosures in California revealed that a bevy of toxic,
cancer-linked chemicals in fracking wastewater are routinely injected
back into the ground.
In
February, it was reported that California officials permitted oil and
gas companies to dispose of waste and other fluids into aquifers
containing drinking and irrigation water more than 2,500 times.
Significantly, 46 percent of these permits were authorized within the
last four years – the same timeframe during which the EPA warned
California that regulators were not sufficiently protecting
underground water reserves in the drought-stricken state.
In
October 2014, the state found that the oil and gas industry had
illegally injected about three billion gallons of fracking wastewater
into central California drinking water and farm irrigation aquifers.
The
executive order signed by Gov. Brown mandates cities and towns to
reduce water usage by 25 percent over the next nine months to save
approximately 1.5 million acre-feet of water “or nearly as much as
is currently in Lake Oroville,” the statement said.
The
order also allows California to replace 50 million square feet of
lawns throughout the state with drought tolerant landscaping in
partnership with local governments; direct the creation of a
temporary, statewide consumer rebate program to replace old
appliances with more water and energy efficient models; require
campuses, golf courses, cemeteries and other large landscapes to make
significant cuts in water use; and prohibit new homes and
developments from irrigating with potable water unless
water-efficient drip irrigation systems are used, and ban watering of
ornamental grass on public street medians.
Alas,
fracking operations are exempt from the reduction plan.
"Governor
Brown is forcing ordinary Californians to shoulder the burden of the
drought by cutting their personal water use while giving the oil
industry a continuing license to break the law and poison our water,”
Zack Malitz, of the environmental activism group Credo, told Reuters
last week.
"Fracking
and toxic injection wells may not be the largest uses of water in
California, but they are undoubtedly some of the stupidest,” he
added.
As the california drought continues it's rampage, Fracking Companies go undisturbed.
#CaliforniaDrought
Australia: Emissions soar as brown coal booms after carbon tax repeal
7
April, 2015
Prime
Minister Tony Abbott’s repeal of the carbon price continues to
deliver for the Australian coal industry, with the share of brown
coal generation surging to its highest level in three years, taking a
substantial increase in electricity emissions with it.
Brown coal generators have profited mostly from the carbon tax repeal. Pitt & Sherry’s Hugh Saddler said the five Victorian brown coal generators supplied 31.9 per cent of total coal generation in March, making a total coal share of 75 per cent over the previous 12 months, up from 72.9 per cent in the year to June 2014.
The revival of high polluting brown coal generators has more than offset any gains from wind energy, which made its largest contribution in a 12-month period (9,000GWh or 5.16 per cent), and the growing impact of rooftop solar and energy efficiency.
Abbott’s Direct Action plan will now invite bids in the emissions reduction fund, where coal-fired generators will seek to receive taxpayer funds to reduce their emissions. And under the guidelines released last week, there will be no penalty if they continue to raise them.
For the first time, average demand is also showing a rebound, with two exceptions: Victoria and South Australia. Saddler suggests in the case of Victoria it could be due to the closure of the Point Henry aluminium smelter, while in South Australia it is likely to be the impact of the highest penetration of rooftop solar in the country.
A couple of other notable developments were the share of gas-fired generation. This rose in Queensland because of cheap “ramp gas” which is being produced ahead of the start of LNG exports from that state.
Gas generation was steady in NSW and Victoria, but in South Australia its share decreased because of the growth in wind generation, flowing from the completion during 2014 of most of the wind farm projects in the construction pipeline. Saddler says this has displaced higher cost gas.
And there was the introduction of large-scale solar on to the national grid. The first 25MW to be completed at the Nyngan power plant came on line in late March, and contributed 0.13 per cent of electricity supplied to the NEM in NSW, or 0.04 per cent supplied to the whole NEM, over the same period.
“This of course is much smaller than the energy supplied by small-scale rooftop PV, estimated by AEMO to currently be around 2.5 per cent, but it is a start,” Saddler notes.
Nyngan will be built out to 102MW, making it much bigger than Australia’s other operating solar farm, at Royalla near Canberra, which has a capacity of 20MW. This has been generating since last August, but is embedded within the local ActewAGL distribution network, and thus not part of the NEM dispatch and trading system.
Hydro generation continues to fall. Saddler says Snowy hydro storage levels are now at average long-term levels, but Hydro Tasmania’s storages are down to levels almost as low as those at the height of the drought, in early 2009. Since Tasmania normally provides at least 60 per cent of Australia’s total hydro generation, it may be some time, depending on rainfall in Tasmania over coming months, before hydro generation in the NEM gets back to its long-term average levels.
And peak demand levels are also down – continuing the trend which makes a nonsense of the justification to expand the grids and build more gas and coal plants over the last 10 years.
Saddler says the fall in peak demand in NSW and Queensland, which had the most extreme fears of peak demand (their networks were owned by the state governments), is particularly notable. Part of it is reduced manufacturing demand, part of it an absence of heat waves. “But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that increased household energy efficiency and modified energy-consuming behaviour have also played a part in moderating demand peaks,” Saddler says.
Oregon
Governor Kate Brown declared a drought emergency on Monday in three
southern and central Oregon counties, expanding upon earlier drought
declarations the Democrat made in March, as the state faces record
low snowpack levels.
Continuing
drought has caused "natural and economic disaster conditions"
in Oregon's Crook, Harney and Klamath counties, heightening wildfire
risk, and threatening agriculture, Brown said in her declaration.
Falling
ocean oxygen levels due to rising temperatures and influence from
human activities such as agrochemical use is an increasingly
widespread problem. Considering that the sea floors have taken more
than 1,000 years to recover from past eras of low oxygen, according
to a recent University of California study, this is a serious
problem.
Ocean
regions with low oxygen levels have a huge impact on aquatic
organisms and can even destroy entire ecosystems. Areas of extremely
low oxygen, known as oxygen minimum zones or “dead zones”, are
estimated to constitute 10% and rising of the world’s ocean.
The
Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado tops American Rivers' 32nd
annual list of endangered rivers because of cumulative threats to
scenery and spring water from commercial and residential development
plans, and from a push to restart major uranium mining.
The
designation marks the third year in a row that all or part of the
drought-sapped river has been at or near the top of the advocacy
group's annual watch list of rivers it feels face potentially harmful
actions or decisions in the coming year.
While
California suffers through a historic 4-year drought, the corporate
giant has made billions on bottled water
One-fifth
of the bridges in South Dakota are falling apart and in need of
repair, according to a study released last week.
A
database from the Transportation Department reviewed by the American
Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) found that 1,174
bridges in the state carrying 351,403 vehicles daily are considered
structurally deficient. While the bridges may not be considered
unsafe, some part of the structure is considered to be in poor or
worse condition. South Dakota has 5,872 bridges throughout the state.
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