Photographing the Marquardt
Thanks to the excellent Shale Justice Executive Committee Member John Trallo, here are some fun facts about frack waste at just one frack pad in Pennsylvania, EXCO's Marquardt Unit 1 H, from July 2009-June 2011--and a few pictures that the industry would just as soon see criminalized--taken from the public roads that the industry would prefer to control for its own purposes:
| Total Drilling fluid waste: | 29,581 gallons (704 bbls) |
| Total Flowback fracturing sand: | 1,355 gallons (32 bbls) |
| Total Fracing fluid waste: | 720,846 gallons (17,163 bbls) |
Waste Details:
| |
Waste Type: DRILLING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 704.31 (Bbl)Disposal Method: CENTRALIZED TREATMENT PLANT FOR RECYCLEWaste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)
Waste Type: FRACING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 10425.00 (Bbl) Disposal Method: REUSE OTHER THAN ROAD SPREADING: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)
Waste Type: FLOWBACK FRACTURING SAND: Waste Quantity: 32.25 (Tons)Disposal Method: LANDFILL: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)
Wanna see the trash?
Then there was the spill reported 2.27.14 that included "several barrels of flowback that blew out of flare stack..."
To Putin with Love
As reported in an excellent New York Times article, "U.S. Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin,"
The crisis in Crimea is heralding the rise of a new era of American energy diplomacy, as the Obama administration tries to deploy the vast new supply of natural gas in the United States as a weapon to undercut the influence of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, over Ukraine and Europe.
American
Energy Diplomacy.
Honestly.
What transparent Bull Shit. This is merely code for: exploit the crisis in
Ukraine as an opportunity to effectively appropriate from Russia the very thing
that fuels Putin's hegemony--gas. This isn't about aid to Ukraine; this isn't
about the reincarnation of the Cold War; it's about taking full advantage of
political and economic instability as a means to "justify" the export
of natural gas from the United States, and thereby "justify" the
continues conversion of the shale regions--just like Davidson Township--into
frack-gas colonies for multinationals like ExxonMobil.
Reduce
Ukraine's dependency on Russia, by what? Swapping it out for that struggling
nation's dependency on ExxonMobil--or one more company whose profits line the
pockets of our elected representatives? If we think there is any real
difference between Gazprom and ExxonMobil (or any of the other natural gas
giants), we are fools. This struggle isn't about geography, national
identity, or cultural and ethnic heritage nearly as much as it's about whose fossil
fuel regime is going to control our addiction to what's left of the
gas.
While
nationalism may provide one very ugly face to this conflict, and while other
equally ugly ideologies like Neo-Nazism may capitalize on the conflict, the
facts are that this is about who has access to these last drops of gas,
whose going to make money off it, and who is going to bear the expense. If we
do not begin to see this clearly--if we do not end this addiction--the struggle
we are watching play out in Ukraine is merely a preview of coming attractions.
But I
digress, so let me bring this right back down to home:
All
the while the United States, the European Union, the Russians, and the
Ukrainians are playing a ludicrous game of brinksmanship over geographical
boundaries that matter no more to multinationals like ExxonMobil or EXCO than
the mileage they can get out of waving flags in advertising campaigns, the only
real obstacle the multinationals face is a growing global citizenry that's
wising up to the destruction of the only planet any of us have: this one.
So--no
wonder they're willing to use whatever means they have--governments, police
forces, surveillance agencies, private security forces, retired intelligence
officers to shut us up and shut us down.
We all have a right to know the ways in which we are being poisoned, the real meaning of regulation as rate of harm, and the deception, manipulation, and extortion to which the industry is willing to put its time in the interest of getting the gas out to the highest bidder. We have a right to know what our government might be willing to go to war for--cuz' it ain't you.
I am often cautioned not to use the language of "genocidal profiteering" to describe the behavior of the fossil fuel industry.
But what else is this maniacal rush to extract the last drop of gas using technology that liquidates our ecologies, destroys our communities, contributes to climate change--and is right now fueling, literally and figuratively, the machinery of war?
What none
of these heads of state or their operatives seem to get is that
people--Americans, Ukrainians--people want to live. And we want our children to
live. Folks are beginning to wake up to the fact that "sustainable"
means nothing to ExxonMobil or Shell or Anadarko or Chesapeake or Chevron than
a barely survivable wasteland that looks more like the stripped arm of a heroin
junkie than like a world you could leave to our kids.
And that's pretty much where I
always end these musings. Your kids. My kids. Ukrainian kids. Russian kids. The
kids who live near EXCO's Marquardt, Unit 1, with its insufficiently
constructed pits and tanks, it's spills, and its "stakeholders"
willingness to hold us all hostage even to the threat of war for the sake of
its relentless pursuit of the only green it knows, the one it uses as a
cadaver's cosmetics, but whose real color is always that of money
Wendy Lynne Lee
Shale Justice/Shale Justice
Flickr Photographs of the Marquardt:
It's all the loyalsock to me: Rine road frack pad, sullivan county, pa - a set on Flickr
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