Streetsblog Los Angeles

Early drilling operations in Baldwin Hills (photo courtesy of L.A. Times, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/10/theres-been-muc.html)

I cannot pretend to be an expert on fracking. Not even close. Yet, I can’t help the feeling that drilling thousands of feet into the earth, pumping millions of gallons of chemical-laden water — with many of the chemicals being known carcinogens — multiple times over several days into the ground in earthquake fault zones can’t be great for the environment. Even if that makes me a silly person.

Thankfully, there are many that know much better than I, and they seem to be in agreement that, indeed, fracking is not all it is cracked up to be. A two-year study of earthquake activity triggered by drilling in Dallas by University of Texas researcher Cliff Frolich, for example, claimed its most significant finding to be “that all of the better-located [earthquake] epicenters were situated within a few kilometers of one or more injection wells.” And that “this is important because it suggests that small triggered earthquakes, magnitude about 2 and smaller, occur more often than reported previously. Most of these wells associated with earthquakes were not suspected of triggering earthquakes prior to this study.”

His findings confirmed those of a two-year study conducted in the Horn River Basin in Canada that found anomalous low-level seismic activity “were caused by fluid injection during hydraulic fracturing in proximity to pre-existing [earthquake] faults.”*

While Frolich could not explain why some injection wells in the shale around Dallas triggered earthquakes and others did not, he made clear that better research is necessary to build a better understanding of the link between fracking and seismic activity. Currently, he wrote,

Most investigations of induced or triggered earthquakes take place only after an earthquake occurs that is severe enough to be felt by nearby residents and receive media attention. Such events usually have magnitudes of approximately 3 or greater and occur in populated areas. Limiting research only to these events [reported by the public or the National Earthquake Information Center] doesn’t help us understand why some injection wells trigger seismic activity and others do not. I am unaware of any previous investigation comparing the properties of injection wells that do and do not induce earthquakes.

Meanwhile, a 2011 draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indicated that synthetic chemicals, including glycols and alcohols used in gas production and fracking, concentrations of benzene that were well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards, and high levels of methane, had contaminated an aquifer in Wyoming. While the contaminants had not significantly affected public and private wells — contaminants were detected but in low enough levels to still meet safe standards — the EPA did express concern about the ability of the contaminants to migrate and eventually impact those wells.

Industry leaders, on the other hand, continue to deny that fracking is harmful.

PXP’s study of its own fracking activities in the Inglewood Oil Field concluded that — surprise! — fracking is totally safe. Air quality is not an issue and nor is ground movement, despite the number of residents from Baldwin Hills that have come forward to speak about how the foundations of their homes are cracking.

Furthermore, industry leaders claim, fracking has never once been proven to impact water supplies. According to the organizers at “Save Colorado From Fracking,” however, that may only be because the industry considers “fracking” to be limited to the injection of fluid alone, while the public considers “fracking” to entail the entire process of drilling a well for the purposes of hydraulic fracturing.

Despite the mounting evidence calling the practice into question, a few days ago, Governor Jerry Brown suggested that California should look at fracking as a way to develop its massive oil reserves, currently locked in the Monterey Shale, as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil. The U.S. Energy Department estimates the shale could contain more than 15 billion barrels of oil — the equivalent of approximately 64 percent of the U.S.’ total shale oil resources.

Fracking in the shale could also lead to a massive economic boom, a new report from USC and the Communications Institute, has found. By 2015, the study claims, oil-related tax revenues could top $4.5 billion and $24.6 billion by 2020, generating as many as 500,000 new jobs — both within the industry and because of the services the new workforce would require (food, clothing, housing, supplies, etc.) — in the next two years and 2.8 million jobs by 2020. Read more…

Image taken from "Hydraulic Fracturing Study" of the PXP Inglewood Oilfield prepared by Cardno ENTRIX

Not unlike most of you, I imagine, I am no expert in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Although I have been closely following the controversy regarding the desire of Plains Exploration & Production Company (PXP) to move forward with its plans for fracking several hundred wells at the Inglewood Oil Fields in the coming years as well as regarding the community concerns about the limited oversight of the practice, I can claim no extraordinary competency in the subject. (For more background on the conflict between PXP and the Baldwin Hills community, see here, here and here).

So, when the 200-plus page PXP-funded study released a few days ago found that their fracking operations in the Inglewood Oil Field posed no threat to the community or the environment and would not induce earthquakes, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

No one else seemed particularly surprised by the report’s claim that the practice is safe.

“Fox Guarding Henhouse!” screamed the media release that landed in my inbox from Food & Water Watch. The obvious conflict of interest and lack of consideration of the long-term consequences of the practice, the statement by their Pacific Region Director Kristen Lynch read, makes the report prepared by environmental consulting firm Cardno ENTRIX “an example of shill science at it’s [sic] worst.”

But that judgement may not be wholly fair.

It may indeed seem suspicious that the industry funded its own study, but it did so per the requirements of last year’s settlement of a 2008 lawsuit.

The settlement also required that PXP agree to reduce the number of wells drilled, commission additional studies on health and air quality, and determine the effects that fracking could have on the surrounding area.

The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of organizations on behalf of community members, had been sparked by an incident in early 2006, when noxious fumes released by PXP’s drilling operations wafted through nearby residential areas. Complaints about the odors came from as far as two miles away, and a number of residents had been forced to evacuate the area.

Having PXP pay for the independent study themselves was, at the time, seen as a way to exact punishment, not promote corruption.

That said, a first reading of the lengthy executive summary of the report does raise a few questions. Read more…

Early drilling operations in Baldwin Hills (photo courtesy of L.A. Times, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/10/theres-been-muc.html)

It’s been a disheartening summer for those seeking to regulate fracking in California.

Back in May, the California Senate rejected SB 1054, which would have required companies to give property owners notice that they were going to engage in hydraulic fracturing to tap oil deposits on or near their land.

But hope seemed momentarily at hand on July 2, when the Senate Environmental Quality Committee approved AB 972. The bill, by Assemblywoman Betsy Butler (D-Marina del Rey), sought to “prohibit the supervisor and the district deputy from approving the drilling of a well in which hydraulic fracturing…is used or is proposed to be used in the production of oil and gas” until regulations governing hydraulic fracturing were first adopted. The moratorium passed through the committee along party lines, with 5 Democrats voting for it and 2 Republicans voting against it.

But then the bill headed to the Senate Appropriations Committee for further hearings. There, both it and AB 591, another bill seeking to regulate fracking, met their doom. AB 591 would have required well owners and operators to compile “a list of the chemical constituents used in the hydraulic fracturing fluid and the amount of water and hydraulic fracturing fluid recovered from the well” and to submit that information to the State Oil and Gas Supervisor.

According to legal blog JD Supra, “both bills had been placed on the committee’s suspense file in prior votes.” They then stalled in committee last week and did not get referred to the full Senate, “effectively killing both fracking bills for the current legislative session, if not permanently.” Read more…

The Long Beach stop of regulatory agency DOGGR's listening tour for citizen concerns about fracking

WHERE THE WORKSHOP ON HYDRAULIC FRACTURING, or “fracking,” drew a record (and raucous) crowd in Culver City Tuesday night, the scene Wednesday night in Long Beach was more subdued. There was a steady stream of speakers ready to voice their concerns about the practice, but there were fewer of them and they were more reserved in their presentations.

This may, in part, be because of the limited outreach conducted prior to the workshop.

Why did she have to learn about the meeting through the news media, a frustrated woman wanted to know. Why hadn’t the regulatory agency, the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), been more active in reaching out to residents?

Similarly, Milton, a community organizer from Communities for a Better Environment, asked why DOGGR had not conducted outreach in immigrant communities or provided their materials in languages other than English.   Immigrants frequently reside in areas where drilling and other environmentally hazardous activities take place.

Both of them had a point. In addition to attendance being somewhat sparse, the demographic skewed much older, white, and well-to-do despite the socio-economic diversity of Long Beach and the proximity of the oilfields to the meeting site.

Their questions were met with silence.

In fact, very few questions were answered that evening, much to everyone’s dismay. Read more…

A map of the 1600 wells which have been drilled over the past ~90 years in the Inglewood Oilfield near Baldwin Hills. Photo courtesy of KCET.

(Part 1 of the series is here.)

IF FRACKING IS such a safe practice, then why is it such a secretive one?

For the past several years, outspoken journalist and media critic Earl Ofari Hutchinson has likely been asking himself that question. Hutchinson is a resident of Windsor Hills, a community that sits adjacent to the 1000-acre Inglewood Oilfield — the largest urban oilfield in the country. Beyond the regular complaints of health problems, noise, and pollution of residents in the area, Hutchinson and others in the area have complained for years that the drilling has been so violent that the foundations of their homes are cracking. One resident had to put his home up on blocks, another resident claims he hears the house cracking at night. Hutchinson himself had to spend $100,000 to fix the foundation of his home because it was, according to SoCal Connected correspondent Jennifer London, “splitting in half.” London interviewed Hutchinson as part of the report she prepared for KCET’s feature on fracking in L.A., slated to air tonight.

Cracks in the home of Windsor Hills resident. Photo courtesy of KCET

It would seem that all was not well in them thar hills. And although all signs would seem to point to the drilling — and the fracking that likely was part of the drilling process — as the possible culprit, getting PXP to explore taking responsibility for that has been a long and difficult process.

In 2011, PXP finally launched what they called their “first annual ground movement survey.” They found that 7 of their 42 monitoring stations had experienced ground movement of greater than 0.6 inches (0 – 0.6” being the acceptable range). Two of those sites were in the Windsor Hills area. Based on these results, the L.A. County Dept. of Public Works asked PXP to determine whether or not the ground movement was related to oil field operations. They were hoping to find some resolution to the 12 complaints that have been lodged regarding ground movement and structural damage.

“At this time,” however, PXP’s report states, “the data suggested that the recorded ground movement may be related to the movement of the Newport-Inglewood fault zone.” The data, however, is PXP’s own data (as I understand it). And because PXP has concluded that they are not the source of the problem, the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), the agency tasked with overseeing drilling, has not been called in to evaluate the fluid injection and withdrawal rates or assess the validity of the findings. Read more…

Why are you using discredited science? asks a member of the Community Advisory Panel of Supervisor Tim Kustic and Chief Deputy Director Jason Marshall, representatives of the Department of Conservation

Last night, representatives from the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), Plains Exploration & Production (PXP), the oil company in charge of the Baldwin Hill Oil Field, and other officials went head to head with members of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance and a highly a skeptical community in a standing-room-only meeting at the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area Community Center.

They were there to talk about fracking — a controversial practice that aims to access hard-to-reach deposits of oil and natural gas by enhanced drilling techniques that inject a mixture of water, sand, and toxic chemicals into the ground — and the steps PXP has taken to increase health and safety protections in the oil field, the largest contiguous urban oil field in the country.

The community has reason to be skeptical. In early 2006, noxious fumes released by PXP’s drilling operations wafted through nearby residential areas. Complaints about the odors came from as far as two miles away, and a number of residents evacuated the area.

Residents were stunned to learn at the time that, although PXP had begun one of the most extensive drilling programs in the state – drilling only hundreds of feet from some residences – there had been no environmental impact review as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Moreover, DOGGR, a state agency, had been the one to issue PXP the permits without requiring the CEQA review.

The 2008 lawsuit filed by community members resulted in a settlement whereby PXP agreed to reduce the number of wells drilled, commission additional studies on health and air quality, and determine the effects that fracking could have on the surrounding area.

To study the effects of fracking, however, said the PXP representative, one must actually do some fracking. Read more…