Your Help Needed: UK Solidarity and Anti-Fracking Research

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee. Site of Crestwood proposed LNG Storage Facility, Watkin's Glen, NY
October 24th, 2014. For set, see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/sets/72157648941947952

*Below is a letter from my friend and fellow insurgent, Kai Heron, University of Sussex, UK.

Dear all, 

Firstly, please let me apologise for the unsolicited email. My name is Kai Heron; I’m an anti-fracking activist and PhD researcher based at the University of Sussex, UK. I have recently been awarded funding toresearch the impact of hydraulic fracturing on communities in the US and the UK. 

As an activist myself, I have a particular interest in resistance to the industry and I have been following the situation in Pennsylvania and NewYork carefully for several years. The Marcellus Shale region’s example has been instrumental to our own struggle with fracking here in the UK. 

I intend to come to the region for a period of months during my PhD.During my time, I will be looking to conduct interviews with activists and community members, experience the wells first hand, and, I hope, to contribute to the struggle in whatever way I can. The project is intended to be for and by activists, it is therefore really important to me that it makes a difference the communities and individuals I work with.  

I have already made contact with several activists in the region but I am looking to create a further network of contacts interested in the project. If this is something that you would be interested in being involved in, have suggestions for the project, or further questions, please contact me at:

kh326@sussex.ac.uk. 

I would also be happy to discuss the project via Skype.

My username is: kaiheron.  

It would be a pleasure to hear from you and I hope to meet you in person soon. Warmest regards,

Kai Heron

When the Roots Aren't Made of Grass, the Solutions Save the System, and the Only Thing Hotter than the Planet is the Bacon

About two thirds of the way into Josh Fox' Solutions Grassroots Tour performance at Clarke Chapel, Lycoming College, Pennsylvania, I and my partner, Kevin Heatley, got up and walked out. We weren't noisy--but we were definitive. 

I could say that Fox' gig just wasn't very well put together (it wasn't), or that it seemed pretty cheesy on the side of a pitch for his new installment in the Gasland documentary series (it was). I could say that the "theater" promised in the trailer was wholly MIA, and that it wasn't much of a concert--but the surprise musical guests were really really great.

Nope, I got up and walked out because the Progessive Democrat brand of politics being sold to an audience mostly made up of all the usual anti-fracking movement suspects--and no one really new--is a recipe for reinforcing the very system of commodification and exchange that generates endemic social and economic injustice and--through both willful blindness and the demand that the solutions be easy--contributes to climate change.

Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

We walked out because it's just not true that we Westerners can keep consuming practically everything at the massive level we do, and that--just by the easy-peasy switch from centralized fossil fuel production to centralized solar and wind--we're actually making a substantial difference.

Here's just a few reasons why:

1. Corporatized solar/wind is as much a privatizing of a public utility as were fossil fuels, and therefore every bit as much the province of the profit motive as are their predecessors. For anyone committed to the view that a system--in this case globalized corporatism--capable of converting public utilities into private profit ventures is intrinsically inconsistent with basic human rights of access to necessities like water, the prospect of any privatized and corporatized control of a centralized power grid ought to be troubling. It doesn't matter, moreover, what the resource is--if people and nonhuman animal lives depend on it, it ought not ever be a source of profit-generation. What goes for water goes for education goes for medicine goes for heat. We have precisely no more reason to think poor folks will benefit from this systemic reinforcement of a national--and global--system of economic class than we did under the fossil fuel barons--and every reason to believe otherwise. By making solar and wind power just another high stakes commodity for big corporate players, we will do damage to our communities--and we will maintain a class structure that was mirrored in that chapel: white, relatively affluent, Western.

2. In addition to reinforcing a system--centralized corporatized utilities--that re-produces an economic and class system within which some benefit while others are likely to continue to struggle to pay their utility bills, still others--out of sight and apparently out of mind--remain vulnerable to labor exploitation and to exposure to harmful toxins in the manufacture of these panels. As reported by National Geographic, although solar panels are certainly an improvement over coal-fired power plants because they produce renewable energy:

[f]abricating the panels requires caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid, and the process uses water as well as electricity, the production of which emits greenhouse gases. It also creates waste. These problems could undercut solar's ability to fight climate change and reduce environmental toxics. (How Green Are Those Solar Panels, Really?)

Among these chemicals is cadmium: "OSHA estimates that 300,000 workers are exposed to cadmium in the United States. Worker exposure to cadmium can occur in all industry sectors but mostly in manufacturing and construction. Workers may be exposed during smelting and refining of metals, and manufacturing batteries, plastics, coatings, and solar panels." (Safety and Health Topics | Cadmium).

To be clear, considerable improvements are and will likely continue to be made in the manufacture of solar panels (see: Solar Energy Isn’t Always as Green as You Think - IEEE Spectrum). There is much to recommend them. 

But to blithely entrust the manufacture and marketing of solar technology to the same economic and political system that generated the conditions of deforestation, desertification, species extinction, pollution, and climate change is folly in the extreme--and that is precisely what the Solutions Grassroots Tour is doing. Indeed, just because a corporation has the word "ethical" in its name is no guarantee that they actually care about how their product is manufactured.

Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

For example, Ethical Electric--one of the companies for which Fox stumps on the tour--includes nothing whatever on their website about their commitment to insuring that their solar or wind energy suppliers from the "wholesale market" are themselves committed to fair labor practices or safe working conditions--and there is nothing on their "activism" page that speaks to these central issues. Although they claim on their "mission" page to be committed as a B-Corps corporation to "having a positive impact on the world and benefitting society," they provide no information about how they do that other than by being a renewable energy supplier company. Indeed, Ethical Electric propagandizes the idea that just by signing up with them and their 56,000 customers, you're part of a "movement," a tidily cathartic claim for the activist who wants an easy way to feel good about themselves--all the while being given a pass to wholly ignore how solar panels are actually made--and by whom (Ethical Electric). To be fair, CEO Tom Matzzie could rightly respond that the 588,471 pounds of Co2 not emitted into the atmosphere since 2012 is a contribution to mitigating climate change, and that is also a contribution to an improved global environment. But this is cold comfort to the developing world laborer whose potential for toxic exposure is very likely to rise as the competition for alternative sources of energy heats up (no pun intended).

We can tell a similar story about the manufacture of industrial scale wind turbines which requires a substantial commitment to mining rare earth metals--itself a serious environmental and toxic exposure problem:

[E]very wind farm has a few turbines standing idle because their fragile gearboxes have broken down. They can be fixed, of course, but that takes time – and meanwhile wind power isn’t being gathered. Now you can make a more reliable wind turbine that doesn’t need a gearbox at all, King points out, but you need truckload of so-called "rare earth" metals to do it, and there simply isn't the supply. (A Scarcity of Rare Metals Is Hindering Green Technologies by Nicola Jones: Yale Environment 360).

The moral of both wind and solar technology production is the same: if the winners of centralized utility scale renewables benefit at the cost of others--especially all of the same others both at home trying to make their heating bills and in the global economies of extraction--as labor and resources--then we're just lying to ourselves that what we have are really "renewables," are a "solution" to climate change--and most of all are in any way socially or economically just. If it ain't accessible as well as renewable for my neighbor here and everywhere, it ain't really renewable for me. And to whatever extent I am participating in the reproduction of exploitive labor conditions in addition to ecologically damaging ones--even if CO2 emissions are reduced--I am still responsible for harm. 

3. The number of times the word "easy" appears on the Solutions Grassroots website is designed to give us the impression that just switching over to, say, Sungevity (where you can get $750.00 and Solutions Grassroots gets $750.00 for finding the company through the tour), is a real and meaningful contribution to mitigating climate change. This is deceptive. Fact is, the word "conservation" didn't appear once in the hour I spent at the Clarke Chapel--but the notion that we in the West can continue to live the way we live, consume what we consume, and ignore what we ignore is crazy. Fact is, we haven't gotten even close to confronting one of the most significant contributions to climate change--one that all the solar panels and wind turbines in the world aren't going to affect one bit: animal agriculture.

4. There's a tremendous lots more to be said here, but suffice it for now that it's a sure sign that we don't really expect any real change in the activist audience--let alone the sort of systemic change that's clearly demanded if we're to mitigate climate change--that no one even whispers "factory farm" in the equation. But the facts here are as plain as the day for any animal unfortunate enough to be born into a factory farm is horrific. From Cowspiracy (COWSPIRACY: The Sustainability Secret)

• Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32 million tons of carbon dioxide per year or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gases. (Livestock and Climate Change | Worldwatch Institute)

• Methane is 25-100 time more destructive that CO2. (Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions)

• Methane has a global warming power 86 times that of CO2. (Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions)

• Livestock is responsible for 65%of all emissions of nitrous oxide--a greenhouse gas 296 times more destructive than carbon dioxide and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years. (Livestock's long shadow: environmental issues and options)

• Fracking...water use ranges from 70-140 billion gallons annually. (http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/documents/HFStudyPlanDraft_SAB_020711.pdf)

• Animal agriculture use ranges from 34-76 trillion gallons of water annually. (http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/10/909.full)

• Agriculture is responsible for 80-90% of water consumption. (USDA ERS - Irrigation & Water Use: Background)

• The meat and dairy industry use 1/3 of the earth's fresh water. (Forks Over Knives | Freshwater Abuse and Loss: Where Is It All Going?)  

The moral here is obvious: stop eating bacon. In fact, stop eating beef, pork, chicken, and fish. Stop now. "A plant based diet cuts your carbon footprint by 50%" (COWSPIRACY: The Sustainability Secret).

Here's at least two implications that follow directly from the facts above--neither of which rated any mention at Solutions Grassroots:

1. If we put an end to animal agriculture in all of its forms--including sea and ocean--we could keep on driving our Hummers and still significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

 2. Conversely, we could convert every fossil fuel consuming industry, car--whatever--into a solar and/or wind-driven dream--and it isn't going to make any but the most teeny of differences to climate change if we don't end animal agriculture.

Obviously, if we really gave a tinker's damn, we'd do both--we'd stop eating, wearing, using animal products altogether--now that's easy!--and we'd head for decentralized, truly community based solar and wind solutions--with a clear eye to the conditions under which everything we use and consume is produced.

So why wasn't animal agriculture prominently featured in Mr Fox' Solutions Grassroots tour?

Because there's nothing whatever grassroots about Solutions Grassroots.

I actually have no clue what Mr. Fox means by "grassroots." But what I do know is that he doesn't mean:

Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

1. Solutions to energy consumption. Fox' program plays like an infomercial for Big Alternative Still-Centralized Energy like Ethical Energy, Solar City, etc. And we've got no really good reason to think that these companies are any more interested in you or your community going solo than Big Gas does. Their first objective is to make a profit, and they're not going to make it off you or your neighbors if you've got it figured out for yourselves--along perhaps with a nifty community rights bill that keeps out the Big Players. Hells Bells, even if the Big Players are renewables, that by itself is no justification for sanctioning the labor abuses and environmental destruction you're buying into when you sign up with them.

2. Looking to the grassroots anti-carbon extraction community for sponsorship of his message: that the Responsible Drilling Alliance sponsored the Clarke Chapel gig suggests that (a) Mr. Fox or his people have no idea what grassroots organizing in Pennsylvania looks like, (b) Mr. Fox simply called up friends he happened to know in PA, and/or (c) Mr. Fox doesn't really care much where the sponsorship money comes from. All are troubling since RDA is in no way anti-drilling. Indeed, the meme "responsible drilling" has been publicly and enthusiastically appropriated by Department of Environmental Protection's new leader John Quigley who--following the governor's lead to "have our cake and eat it too"--is now spouting the meme as the rallying cry for thousands of new wells, compressors, and pipeline.  Mr. Fox mentioned that he understood the Williamsport region as the "belly of the beast." Indeed, it is--and among those he should be thanking for their contribution to the gas industry's despoiling of Lycoming County is RDA. Not only is RDA in no way "grassroots"--arguing for the protection of "special places" that are manifestly not your back yard or your working class neighbor's--they're not even anti-fracking.

Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

3. The big donors listed on the Solutions Grassroots homepage like the Rockfellers who--behind the green-washing magical words "divestment" have (a) not actually divested from natural gas and transport--at least yet, and (b) were clearly more interested in making sure their companies are viable into the future than they are the future of the planet:

The Rockefeller family is attracting adulatory press coverage for its decision to divest their $860 million charity, the Rockefeller's Brother's Fund, of its investment in fossil fuels. There are at least two significant catches, however. As the statement from the Rockefeller's Brother's Fund puts it: 

 Given the structure of some commingled investment funds and investments in highly diversified energy companies, we recognize that there may continue to be minimal investments in out portfolio in those energy sectors, but we are committed to reducing our exposure to coal and tar sands to less than 1% of the total portfolio by the end of 2014...we are also undertaking a comprehensive analysis of out exposure to any remaining fossil fuel investments and will work with the RBF investment committee and board of trustees to determine an appropriate strategy for further divestment over the next few years.

Second, there's no word at all indicating that Rockefeller and Co., the family investment and wealth management firm, that says it has $44 billion of Rockefeller and outside money undermanagement, will follow suit. As recently as November of 2012, Rockefeller and Co. was touting North American shale oil and natural gas as a "once or twice in every generation" investment opportunity...It's as if the Rockfeller family decided that vegetarianism  is such a fine idea that by year end all of its household staff are going to stop eating meat. Divest the charity from fossil fuels, but not the family's own personal wealth and not the wealth of the clients that the family earns money for managing. (Rockefeller Energy Divestment :: The Future of Capitalism)

This is a lot of hypocrisy for Mr. Fox to sleep with at night.

But here's the far more important upshot: Mr. Fox' Solutions Grassroots Tour is really just one more example of "in the box," "in the system," "in the Democratic Party's Political Tank" thinking. By making an infomercial for Big Solar and Big Wind, by wholly ignoring the more uncomfortable issues of conservation and animal agriculture, by making an advertisement for the "easy activism" of switching from one centralized industry to another, he effectively just creates one more apology for the same-old neo-liberalism that got us the global disparities of North and South, the 1%, the conditions of contemporary war and terrorism, and climate change in the first place. 

Why on earth would we think that the same centralized structures of power and wealth that got us this list of woe could get us to a desirable future--even a survivable one?

It won't.  Mr. Fox doesn't have much excuse for not knowing better.

But this isn't really about him since neither do any of the adoring fans in his audience have that excuse. I think we have a right to expect a lot better from our leaders and heros. 

But "leader" and "hero" are not necessarily, I have learned, the same thing as "frack-a-lebrity," and Mr. Fox is clearly more interested in avoiding offense than mitigating climate change.

Thing is, we absolutely positively could do the right thing by our families and our communities. We have the roof tops. We have the science. We have the capacity for a conscience. We can say no to a system that systematically reinforces global economic disparity, social injustice, animal cruelty,   and ecological destruction. 

It won't be easy. 

But when was the worthwhile ever easy? It wasn't easy to get up and walk out of the Clarke Chapel--but to stay knowing that by doing so Kevin and I had signed on to the next fawning endorsement of the same old status quo...nah.

Better to be able to sleep at night.

Wendy Lynne Lee

Profit-Venture Pipelines are Not Public Utilities

Note: The following is the second of a series of letters to the editor concerning Williams Partner's, MLP (WPZ, formed in 2007) planned expansion of the TRANSCO natural gas pipeline. Each  addition to the series will focus on a specific aspect of the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company, LLC's strategy to maximize natural gas transport from frack pad to compressor station to pipeline to export depot. My aim will be to show that--contrary to Williams' claims to concern for the environment, safety, human health, property rights, job opportunities, or community integrity--the Oklahoma company's singular objective is to maximize the profits of its shareholders and its affiliated industry partners at virtually any cost--so long as that cost can be externalized to the public.

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

My message is simple and clear: this pipeline cannot be built, and if we allow it we will be to blame for the consequent disaster. There's one truth that's as unmistakable as it is undeniable: more pipeline, more frack pads, more compressors, more tractor-trailor, sand can, chem-truck, and waste hauler traffic, more explosions, more abuses of eminent domain, more forced integration, more property condemnations, more water and air pollution, more forest fragmentation, more invasive species, more community division, more cancer, more endocrine disruption, more lung disease, more rashes, more livestock illness, more suffering--more climate change. What this pipeline represents in the continuing liquidation of Pennsylvania's assets, and its systematic  conversion into an industrialized natural gas extraction colony for multinational corporations--just like Williams. 

I will show you.

Letter two:

When is a profit venture whose primary objective is to transport a highly explosive fossil fuel along arteries through forest and fen, farmland and township, past school houses, retirement homes, hospitals, and homes to export terminals bound for the global markets to be counted as a public utility--a public good?

I'd suggest that the answer to that question is: never. 

CYNOG Compressor, PA
Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

And I recommend strongly that you don't cave to the landman. 

Case in point--and if you're following so far, this will make you gag:

As reported at Lancaster Online (Court blocks use of eminent domain on pipeline to pass through Lancaster County - Local News - lancasteronline.com), Sunoco was denied appeal to the use of eminent domain by Judge Stephen Linebaugh (3.25.14) specifically on the grounds that Sunoco is a pipeline carrier and not a public utility. "Officials for Williams Partners, which wants to build a 35-mile Marcellus Shale natural gas line the length of Lancaster County, north to south, said Wednesday that the court case has no bearing on their project...Stockton [Spokesperson for WPZ] said Williams is under the jurisdiction of the Natural Gas Act [FERC: Natural Gas Pipelines], not the Interstate Commerce Act like Sunoco, and would need to get its power of eminent domain if the project is approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission." 

Two points about FERC:

1. Although FERC claims to "work with" corporations like WPZ to insure the safety of pipeline construction, "[t]he Commission has no jurisdiction over pipeline safety or security" (FERC: Natural Gas Pipelines).

Combine that with: 

2.  FERC virtually never denies a permit application. This is, of course, not surprising since the agency's job just is to grant permits: "FERC, is an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil," and because all of its commissioners stand to benefit in one way or another from the energy industries, especially fossil fuels, we can hardly expect them to actually regulate--much less deny--a permit.

Chairperson, Cheryl LaFleur: retired acting CEO of National Grid USA, "responsible for the delivery of electricity to 3.4 million customers in the Northeast" (Cheryl A. LaFleur Biography :: Renewable Energy News and Energy Regulation Information | The Energy Daily). 

Commissioner Tony Clark: From the North Dakota Utility Regulatory Commission, said in a recent interview with the American Gas Association, that the construction of LNG terminals like the one planned by Dominion at Cove Point was good for "energy independence," and insisted--citing "regulatory overreach" that the EPA was not in the best position to evaluate environmental impact--that this should be left to the states (An interview with 2011 NARUC President Tony Clark | True Blue Natural Gas - An Energy Blog from the American Gas Association AGA). In a speech given to a conference of oil and gas operators after his appointment to FERC, he chimed "Keep doing what you’re doing!" (FERC Commissioner—U.S. on Brink of Energy Security | OK Energy Today).

And that's just two of the four current commissioners. Indeed, when commissioner nominee, Ron Binz dared to suggest that natural gas was a "bridge strategy" to renewables, he was attacked  by the Wall Street Journal as a "radical" (More FERC Uproar: Nominee for Chairman Stirs Controversy « Breaking Energy - Energy industry news, analysis, and commentary).     That he  was targeted by the American Energy Alliance and Americans for Prospeity, both Koch Brothers front groups, and thereby forced to withdraw his nomination, should give us a glimpse of the FERC Worldview--or at least who it's not willing to confront (Koch-Fueled Groups Target Ron Binz, Obama's FERC Nominee). 

The upshot is that we have no reason to trust FERC to act particularly for the public good, and every reason to think its commissioners' interests align with the companies they "regulate," including WPZ.

And that brings us right back around to Sunoco, WPZ and eminent domain. As reported by Keep Tap Water Safe (Former PA DEP Secretary Krancer Wants Sunoco To Condemn Your Property | Keep Tap Water Safe), Sunoco's set back--being denied by Judge Linebaugh the right to act as a public utility--was barely even that. In fact, Sunoco had merely paused to reload its property condemnation guns with former Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) secretary, Michael Krancer, now attorney for Blank Rome, who now stood ready and anxious to execute the industry friendly oil and gas laws he helped to put into place while he was at DEP:

Now, the recently former Department of Environmental Protection Secretary is leading the legal team who is working to win Sunoco LP some special utility status, thereby stripping Pennsylvania landowners of their local zoning protections. If this seems ethically challenged to you, maybe it’s because Krancer is now profiting directly from the free-wheeling gas drilling permit policies he enacted while in public office little more than a year ago. Again, it’s sneaky, but it’s not illegal.

Fact is, "Sunoco must export large amounts of gas liquids in order to be profitable. Selling a little propane to the locals on the side does not a public utility make," and that is what's directly relevant to WPZ's plans for the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline. Selling a little natural gas to the locals does not a profit make. Getting to be a public utility-that's where the big bucks are.

If Williams gets Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval for the 176-mile line through six Pennsylvania counties, it will begin negotiations to buy roughly 55-foot-wide land easements from property owners along its preferred path. If property owners object, Williams will seek the easements through eminent domain in the courts. (Natural Gas Archives |)

In other words, if you don't sign over your land to the landman when he arrives at your door, he's going to try to take it from you anyways, and another word for that "taking" is theft.  Why? Because, as I argued in the first installment in this series, the Atlantic Sunrise is not intended for the public good; it is intended for global export (THE WRENCH: When Sunrise for the Global Gas Markets is Sunset for Pennsylvania: Williams Partner's "Atlantic Sunrise" Expansion of the TRANSCO). So all that hype about "American,""energy security," and "cheap" is just that--hype to get you to sign away your property to a multinational company masquerading as a good neighbor in a plaid shirt and jeans.

He's not. He is, in fact, a thief who is poised to steal from you through the sheer force of a FERC permit approval what he can't extort from you through your signature. And given what we can readily surmise about FERC, not one iota of what he's going to tell you about safety, environment, property value is something FERC is in any position to give a tinker's damn about. 

Still, if you're not entirely convinced by these facts that you don't want to sign a contract for that easement or right-of way, consider the wise words of Michael Faherty, attorney representing landowners in eminent domain cases against the gas industry  “Landowners need to be wary about these companies that come looking to acquire land, they don’t have an obligation to be telling the truth,” Faherty said. “They need to be wary of land agents.” 
(Natural Gas Archives |).

No obligation to tell the truth--that is the understatement of the year--so far.

Here's just a snippet (we'll get to this in letter three) of what they don't tell you:

1. More pipeline means more unconventional drilling--fracking--and more drilling means--just for example:

In a 2013 survey of 550 people conducted by business researchers at the University of Denver, a strong majority said they would decline to buy a home near a drilling site. The study, published in the Journal of Real Estate Literature, also showed that people bidding on homes near fracking locations reduced their offers by up to 25 percent.

If you think that there's a big difference in having a pipeline going through your property is really that different than having an active frack pad, think again. 

An economic analysis by the Headwaters Institute undermines the idea that oil and gas developments fatten the bank accounts of communities and leave them better off than before drilling started. While there may be short-term windfalls, the study of six western states found that over the long-term “oil and gas specialization is observed to have negative effects on change in per capita income, crime rate and education rate.”  (How Fracking Destroys the American Dream | EcoWatch)

Now maybe you're thinking that so long as you don't have a drilling operation right in your back yard, a pipeline is OK--and truth is, the likelihood of a pipeline explosion is fairly small. But, where's there's pipeline, there's compressors, and where there's compressors, the potential for exposure to volatile organic compounds, and to other fugitive emissions accelerates. Here's a little light reading until letter three: 

http://un-naturalgas.org/pipeline%20text%20Dec%2009.pdf

Barto Compressor,
Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Air quality concerns raised as gas compressor stations multiply - News - Citizens' Voice

Barto Compressor Station Exceeds Pollution Standards

And then, of course, there are the explosions, for example a Williams' incident just recently in Opal, Wyoming at a natural gas processing plant (Explosion shuts large natural gas processing plant in Wyoming | Reuters):

The Williams plant feeds into the Opal Hub, a crossroads for five pipelines that connect to California, Oregon and Canada and head east across the Rocky Mountains. Gas at the Opal Hub for Thursday delivery rose 6 cents to $4.63 per million British thermal units.
Wyoming and U.S. regulators were not available to comment or say if gas flows at the Hub would be affected. Utilities used a record amount of gas this past winter to meet heating needs during unusual cold snaps that caused volatile prices and left stockpiles at their lowest level since 2003. A string of accidents involving the country's overburdened pipeline and rail infrastructure has prompted new safety concerns as U.S. output of oil and gas surges during an unprecedented boom. On March 31, a pipeline within its liquefied natural gas facility in Washington exploded and shrapnel from the blast caused a leak in one of two liquefied natural gas tanks, prompting evacuation orders near the plant outside the rural town of Plymouth.

On April 7, a Williams unit said that a gas gathering pipeline in West Virginia caught fire.
Williams operates two natural gas processing plants in Wyoming which remove liquids and other impurities from natural gas to allow it to be transported in large pipelines.
Gas comes to the processing plants from the Williams gathering system, a network of 3,500 miles of pipelines which collect gas produced in the region.

So, just to sum it all up (for now): why would anyone in their right mind sign a contract with a company whose 

1. safety record is shoddy, 
2. who's willing to use the power of eminent domain condemnation to get what they want, 
3. whose product is extracted and processed at the immense expense of the health and environments of the people who must live forever in its shadow, 
4. and whose singular aim is to export its product to insure its availability to the highest bidder? 

TRANSCO, Picture Rocks, PA
Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

When the WPZ landman, and his plaid shirt and jeans, knocks on your door, be polite, but tell him no. And when he says he'll be back, wait for him to leave and go talk to your neighbors.

Or better--go talk to your neighbors right now.