When USA Means "United (Frack) Shills of America": The Marcellus Shale Coalition's Big Gas Parade, May 6th 2014, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

I remember a time--not all that long ago-- when the Marcellus Shale Coalition promoted itself as a largely neutral  coalition of interests connected to the the Marcellus Shale formation under the farms and forests of Pennsylvania and New York. When I look back on that brief moment --when we didn't quite yet surmise the tsunami coming (we could call it BG--Before the Gas), I now realize just how naive we were with respect to the motives of MSC and their well-funded advertising agency analogues. Now we live in the AG--After the Gas--and even the most cursory gander at MSC's sponsoring corporations makes quite clear what their big fat rally is for--and it's certainly not Pennsylvania or Pennsylvanians. 

The MSC executive board reads like a corporate roll call of gas companies--and a cavalcade of environmental violation, liability avoidance, community destruction, property value decimation, and good old fashioned corporate-litigated denial:

Range Resources Corporation--most recent notice of violation "a “significant leak” at the John Day Impoundment in Amwell Township, Washington County, a scary prospect given that Range Resources admits that it doesn't know what's in its frack fluids. As reported by Marcellus Monitor (DEP Issuing Notice of Violation to Range Resources for ‘Significant Leak’ at Washington County Impoundment | Marcellus Monitor) : 

Range Resources impoundments in Washington County have been the subject of

both controversy and national headlines this past year – mostly over questions about what exactly is in the water stored at the sites.

State Impact reported that company executives testified in a civil court case that they do not know what chemicals they are using in the fracking process.

Then there's EXCO--for whom the nation's Safe Drinking Water Act is simply an inconvenient obstacle to its profit objectives--and if that seems unduly harsh, wait to make that judgment after you take a look at the company's connection to the SAGO Mine

disaster:   THE WRENCH: Pretending to Forget What’s Right Under Our Feet Until the Ground Gives Way: EXCO’s Marcellus Gambit, the SAGO Mine Disaster, and the Price of Natural Gas.

Then of course, there's Williams--whose own recent gambit to construct a 42 inch expansion of the Transco natural gas pipeline absurdly named the Atlantic Sunrise" offers a cornucopia of misleading claims, misrepresentation, and potential disaster for ecologies, communities--and property values--all for the sake of global export to China: THE WRENCH: When Sunrise for the Global Gas Markets is Sunset for Pennsylvania: Williams Partner's "Atlantic Sunrise" Expansion of the TRANSCO. Williams--well, they're just a charmer:

Williams Companies, through three pipeline subsidiaries, paid the most in fines in 2013 for excess erosion and drilling mud spills into creeks during pipeline construction and underground boring operations. The subsidiaries, Laser Northeast Gathering, Williams Field Services and Laurel Mountain Midstream, paid a combined $388,694 in fines for 105 violations between March 2011 and September 2012. Williams Field Services and Laser paid one fine each for a host of problems at their sites in Susquehanna, Wyoming and Luzerne counties; they were the second and third largest fines of the year, at $169,648 and $164,622. Laurel Mountain Midstream paid three fines totaling $54,424 for operations in southwestern Pennsylvania. (DEP fined oil and gas companies $2.5 million last year | StateImpact Pennsylvania).

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Add to this list of fracking celebrities EQT (Unfolding Story: Flowback Leaked from Fracking Pit in Tioga County; Pit Liner Full of Holes | Protecting Our Waters), MarkWest Energy Partners (Pa. DEP Slaps MarkWest Gas Plant With Smoke Violation - Law360), Consol (Not a good night for the Extreme Extraction Profiteers: Presentation and Debate at University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, 4.10.13 | Raging Chicken Press), Chevron (Chevron blocked access to DEP after fatal well fire in southwest Pa. | StateImpact Pennsylvania), XTO ( EPA Fines XTO Energy for Lycoming County Frack Water Spills | StateImpact Pennsylvania), EOG Resources (Oil-by-rail disasters prompt crackdown on risky shipments — Business — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine).

You get the picture.

The only interesting question is what--besides either greed or inexcusably willful ignorance would induce anyone to jump on the MSC bus to the United Shale Advocates rally? Well, here's what Tom Shepstone--gas cheerleader extraordinaire says: (USA...USA...United Shale Advocates | Natural Gas NowNatural Gas Now)

United Shale Advocates will set out the facts and the real shale stories of success so many supporters witness with their own eyes every day; how shale gas development is changing lives for the better, revitalizing rural areas and

delivering inexpensive energy to businesses and consumers. It will also unabashedly defend the natural gas record of cleaning our air, for example, and safeguarding our water.

In other words--greed. 

But if you're not convinced, you have two choices: either just wave your mouse over any of the items in the previous paragraphs, click, and read--or just continue on here to enjoy a look at the USA rally speakers, and see for yourselves just how interested these fellas are in the continuation of the frack--regardless the cost to you, your water, your air, your life (and I do mean fellas--fully invested members in the Good Old Boy Extraction Club, Wendy Lynne Lee at Susquehanna University - YouTube).

Speaker 1: Gene Barr, President and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, Executive Director of APIP, Associated Petroleum Industries of Pennsylvania, and member of the law firm of McNees Wallace Nurick, the largest Harrisburg-based law firm, to start a government relations practice  (::: Pennsylvania Chamber Of Business And Industry :::). here's his schtick:

Increased natural gas production is helping consumers by delivering cheaper natural gas, such as the recent rate cut of more than 13 percent announced in the area by UGI. But the longer the oversight debate drags on and the longer drillers face rules that differ from municipality to municipality, the less investment, energy savings, jobs and revenue will be realized in the commonwealth. (Pennsylvania needs uniform Marcellus Shale rules | PennLive.com).

Barr then refers to Washington County, touting its high rate of job growth, the 7th fastest growing metropolitan area in 2010. Trouble is, by 2013 things in Washington County are not so rosy for the residents who actually live there. As reported in The Nation:

DEP whistleblowers have disclosed that the agency purposely restricts its chemical testing so as to reduce evidence of harm to landowners. A resident in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Washington County is suing the agency for failing fully to investigate the drilling-related air and water contamination that she says has made her sick...Theo Colborn, founder of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange and recipient of the National Council for Science and Environment’s Lifetime Achievement Award, identified 353 industry chemicals that could damage the skin, the brain, the respiratory, gastrointestinal, immune, cardiovascular and endocrine (hormone production) systems. Twenty-five percent of the chemicals found by the study could cause cancers. (Fracking Ourselves to Death in Pennsylvania | The Nation).

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Need a little more evidence for the suffering and death scale?

"In the days leading up to an unreported spill of more than 21,000 gallons of flowback water in Washington County, Pennsylvania, by Red Oak Water Transfer, executives from Range Resourcesexpressed frustration with the company – one of its subcontractors – calling Red Oak employees “lying bastards” in a chain of emails detailing issues including three additional leaks of a water supply line flowing from an Amwell Township frac pond, public documents show.
The emails are part of a 31-page supplemental exhibit filed Dec. 19 to compel a response from Red Oak as part of a civil lawsuit that originated in 2012 after three Washington County families living near the frack pond sued Range and more than a dozen of its subcontractors, alleging that toxic exposure from the impoundment caused those residents to suffer various illnesses. It also alleges that those companies were responsible for contamination of their drinking water. While the original motion to compel Red Oak, now doing business as Rockwater Energy Solutions, to provide photographs of the spill included internal emails and personnel files from Red Oak detailing both the spill its “cover up” by an employee later suspended for three days without pay for the “serious incident,” exhibits included in the most recent filing reveal a tense relationship between the company and Range around the time of the unreported spill, which was never reported to the state Department of Environmental Protection, despite clear reporting requirements set forth in Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law."  (Range Resources Calls Subcontractor That Admitted Unreported Spill “Lying Bastards” – Suggests Fracking With Employees’ Bodies | Marcellus Monitor).

Now maybe we'd accept illness, suffering, and potential death if there really were lots of well-paying jobs to compensate for these albeit somewhat daunting problems. And we might feel better that at least one real Red Oak (now Rockwater) employee got a whole

three days suspension without pay for trying to cover up a toxic exposure that made folks sick. But the trouble still is that the whole "lots-a-jobs" thing is bull shit. Just plain unvarnished, you can't make this shit up bull shit.

From the Multistate Research Collaborative, 2013 report:

• While shale-related employment has made a positive contribution to job growth, the number of jobs created is far below industry claims and remains a small share of overall employment in the region.

• Between 2005 and 2012, less than four new direct shale-related jobs have been created for each new well drilled, much less than estimates as high as 31 direct jobs per well in some industry-financed studies.

• Region-wide, shale-related employment accounts for just one out of every 794 jobs. By contrast, education and health sectors account for one out of every six jobs.

• Job growth in the industry has been greatest (as a share of total employment) in West Virginia. Still, shale-related employment is less than 1 percent of total West Virginia employment and less than half a percent of total employment in all the other states.

• Many of the core extraction jobs existed before the emergence of hydrofracking.

• Together, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia had 38 percent of all producing wells in the country in 1990 and 32 percent in 2000.

• Some counties with a long history of mineral extraction have experienced a shift in employment from coal to shale extraction.

• Industry employment projections have been overstated.

• Some industry supporters have equated “new hires” with “new jobs” and attributed ancillary job figures to shale drilling even when they have nothing to do with drilling.

• Industry-funded studies have used questionable assumption in economic modeling to inflate the number of jobs created in related supply chain industries (indirect jobs) as well as those created by the spending of income earned from the industry or its suppliers (induced jobs).

• Drilling is highly sensitive to price fluctuations, which means that job gains may not be lasting.

• In some counties, employment gains have been reversed as drilling activity shifted to more lucrative oil shale fields in Ohio and North Dakota.

• Direct shale-related employment across the six-state Marcellus/Utica region fell over the last 12 months for which there are data — the first quarter 2012 to the first quarter 2013.

What's the upshot? We are being poisoned. We are being lied to. We are being extorted--and the single benefit we were told over and over that we'd get out of this--jobs--as if "jobs" were itself some magical mantra that could dispel all of the other harms this industry delivers--even that was a lie. It was a lie during the first round of the gas boom. Will we see a few more jobs during the potential second boom--the one we're promised if the gas industry gets its big fat wish for pipelines galore? 

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Sure! 

Right up to the BIG BUST, followed by the BIG INDUSTRIAL WASTELAND, followed by the creeping realization that the only purpose of shill parades like this one is to extort, manipulate, and "patriotize" us into thinking that guys like Barr--or any of the other USA speakers give a good goddamn about us. They Don't. 

Jim Kunz

Business Manager, International Union of Operating Engineers

Hank Rettew
CEO, RETTEW Associates, Inc.

Dennis Gilfoyle
CEO, Junior Achievement of Western Pa.

Beth Powell
VP & General Manager, New Pig Energy

Rawley Cogan
President & CEO, Keystone Elk Country Alliance

Brian Smith
Northeast PA landowner, Wayne County farmer

Les Houck
Supervisor, Salisbury Township, Lancaster County

Paula Jackson
President & CEO, American Association of Blacks in Energy

Scott Roy
Chairman, Marcellus Shale Coalition

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

The Pennsylvania Jobs/Pennsylvania Energy flag-wavin', bus-ridin', media-schmoozing, cavalcade is just another moment in this ugly human drama where you get to be treated like a sucker. 

Take a good look at this gorgeous picture of Loyalsock Creek.

Only a sucker could be duped into giving up this.

Don't be one.

Wendy Lynne Lee

The Shale Justice Coalition

FROM RURAL PENNSYLVANIA TO VLADIMIR PUTIN WITH LOVE: POISONED KISSES FROM THE MARQUARDT, UNIT 1H, EXCO.

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: FRACING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 6738.00 (Bbl) Disposal Method: CENTRALIZED TREATMENT PLANT FOR RECYCLE: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jan - Jun 2011 (6 months) 
Waste Type: DRILLING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 704.31 (Bbl)Disposal Method: CENTRALIZED TREATMENT PLANT FOR RECYCLEWaste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jul - Dec 2011 (6 months) Comment text: Not yet completed to frack.
Waste Type: FRACING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 10425.00 (Bbl) Disposal Method: REUSE OTHER THAN ROAD SPREADING: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jul - Dec 2012 (Unconventional wells) Comment Reason: Well Temporarily Shut-In Comment text: APPLYING FOR INACTIVE WELL STATUS

Waste Type: FLOWBACK FRACTURING SAND: Waste Quantity: 32.25 (Tons)Disposal Method: LANDFILL: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jan - Jun 2013 (Unconventional wells) Comment Reason: Well Temporarily Shut-In Comment text: APPLIED FOR INACTIVE STATUS AT PA-DEP

This site has five violations, including two for "Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances," another for "no permit # on sign, cellar full of water - no bubbles, 750 psi on prod. frac tanks on site need to clean up contaminated soil around cellar garbage dumpster is full and trash is all over - clean up," and a spill reported February, 2014: "Spill reported 2/27/14. Several barrels flowback blew out of flare stack. Little sign of spill on ground. Results pending site characterization report."

Wanna see the trash? 

And here's an interesting factoid: when you copy and paste the violation report, it redacts the central content. Hence I have left stand the redactions--so the reader can see precisely what EXCO would prefer you to NOT see. And I have included my own photographs so you can see what EXCO has left of your countryside.

Here are the same sentences, typed out ver batim: This site has five violations, including two for "pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances," another for "no permit # on sign, cellar full of water- no bubbles- 750 psu on prod. frac tanks on site need to clean up contaminated soil around cellar garbage dumpster is full and trash is all over--clean up."

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. 

The only real difference between, say, the Pennsylvania State Police/Joint FBI Terrorism Task Force Officer at your door and the "State Department initiative to use a new boom in American natural gas as a lever against Russia" is a difference of strategy to the very same ends--the conversion of fossil fuel into the cool crisp color of money.

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.

Hell, with the new push by the gas companies--especially ExxonMobil to exploit to its maximum potential the crisis in Ukraine in order to create new markets for shale gas--and the willing complicity of the Obama Administration to this latest industry gambit, why shouldn't we expect to see even more reckless behavior, more pressure to drill, more pressure to construct pipeline--more explosions, more spills, more of the transformation of Pennsylvania--and everywhere there's frackable shale--into the profits of companies who are more than willing to exploit nationalist and ethnic rivalries, ego-driven posturing of world leaders, and the economic destitution of entire peoples to its profit objectives.

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

(THE WRENCH: CADAVER COSMETICS: THE AESTHETICS OF "SUSTAINABILITY").

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

Barry Yeoman's "The Shale Rebellion": Giving Voice to the Grassroots (http://storyscapes.prospect.org/shale-rebellion/)

Like all good writing, Barry Yeoman's "The Shale Rebellion" raises at least as many questions as it answers with respect to the emergence of a grassroots movement in the heart of rural Pennsylvania to ban fracking.

http://storyscapes.prospect.org/shale-rebellion/

At the heart of this movement for Northeast Central Pennsylvania stands Shale Justice--a growing coalition composed of other grassroots anti-fracking groups, large and small, whose mission it is to create the conditions for better organizing, better communication--conditions that ultimately contribute to the one thing capable of monkey wrenching the monied machinery of the natural gas industry: critical mass.

http://shalejustice.org/

Our aims, in other words, are to arm the people with the single most effective tool for combatting dispersed industrialized extraction: education.

Our even larger aims are to expand that mission to national and global scale. After all, wherever there exists shale--and that's nearly everywhere on the globe--there exists the possibility that an industry whose track record of pollution, criminal dumping, deceit, green-washing, and the evasion of responsibility will be soon to follow.

The "storyscape" of Yeoman's piece certainly contributes to that mission, and it offers much food for thought:

Why is it that many of the the primary organizers at the grassroots level are working women--while the "Big Greens" (what I now refer to as the Big Fake Greens) remain affluent white men?

Why, if 58% of Pennsylvanians support a moratorium on fracking, do our elected representatives remain deaf to their constituents?

What counts as a "special place," as the excellent activist and writer John Trallo puts it, if it's not the earth under our feet?

Why, when the overwhelming evidence points to a future neither desirable nor even sustainable in the face of climate change, aren't more Pennsylvanians demanding to be heard?

Yeoman's right when he writes that "the Shale Rebellion remains—for now—a decentralized movement." As it should.

But as we are witness to the prospect of 100,000 wells just in Pennsylvania--imagine the global implications-- I have to hope that Yeoman turns out to be wrong when he goes on to suggest that this movement has "no uniform goal."

And, of course, there's so much more to be said. As key organizer and activist from the invited occupation of Riverdale points out, the tree sits undertaken by "forest defenders" in, for example, Loyalsock State Forest--planned site of 26 well pads for the notorious Anadarko (Kerr McGee)--are vital to the beating heart of this movement.

Just as the eminent Nelson Mandela saw that there could be no "regulated" apartheid, no compromise on injustice, no "middle ground" on institutionalized bigotry, so too there can be no "regulated" destruction of the necessary conditions of life--water and air.

There can be no compromise on the injustice suffered by folks like Deb Eck.

There is no middle ground when the stakes are a habitable planet and a future for our children.

"What do I tell my kids?" asks Bob Deering.

Tell them what Mandela taught us all:

We can either stand up against injustice, or we can lay down and hope our children never ask us why.

What could be clearer?

Wendy Lynne Lee
Shale Justice

For a set of photographs specifically selected for Yeoman's storyscape, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/sets/72157638640400905/

For photographs of the invited occupation of Riverdale, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/collections/72157632998265687/

For photographs of the CYNOG Compressor at Janet Hock Road, Davidson Township, Sullivan County, PA, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/collections/72157632989081288/

For Photographs of the EXCO pad at Lairdsville, Rt. 118, Pennsylvania, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/collections/72157634625434504/