Information and disinformation

A couple of stories published in the past couple of days offer intriguing glimpses into the worldwide debate over the profitability and health impacts of shale gas production. The Associated Press on Sunday moved a lengthy report examining the accuracy of Gasland filmmaker Josh Fox's assertion, in a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, that breast cancer rates jumped in the Barnett Shale, but nowhere else in Texas. Researchers from Duke University, the University of Texas Southwestern Health Science Center, Texas Cancer Registry and Susan G. Komen For The Cure all told AP that's not borne out by any evidence they have seen.

Government officials in Pennsylvania likewise reported that their testing has failed to support fears that radioactivity from wastewater posed a threat to rivers and public water supplies, while others said concerns about emissions from natural gas production operations needs to be weighed against the decline in harmful emissions from coal-fired power plants, which are being idled in favor of gas-fired facilities. The Star-Telegram published the story Monday, and a copy is here.

The second item comes from Platts, an information service focused on energy markets. Russian gas giant Gazprom maintains the shale gas boom is unsustainable economically and threatened by regulatory issues, citing research by U.S. firm Pace Global Energy Services. But in a comment that could have come straight out of the Cold War, "Aviezer Tucker, assistant director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, says the Russian government is paying public-relations firms to spread 'myths and misconceptions' about fracking so that Romania, Bulgaria, China and other countries will remain viable export markets for conventional Russian gas. 'Where does the money come from to organize such [anti-fracking] demonstrations and brochure writing?' he said in an interview. 'All that seems to point to a common source, which would be Moscow.' " Platts also reported that "Gazprom announced last week that it sent a team of 'technical specialists' to a shale-gas field in China that is being developed by China National Petroleum Corp., the country's largest state-owned oil and gas company. Gazprom, which has been negotiating with Beijing to export Russian gas to China, did not say in its press release why it was sending technical experts to inspect China's shale-gas field" The Platts story is here.

-- Jim Fuquay

 

Comments

[renewable energy]

Your post is really enticing to let readers know about this over pricing in gas production. Thanks to Platt's story for revealing this information. Someone has to be sent in China without the bias influence to get the correct data.

[Nadine Haven]

Keep working, nice post! This was the information I had to know.

[Leland Snyder]

We have 10 years max with experience with this industrial scale fracking. Upstate NY townships are being railroaded into fracking, and the issues are too numerous to mention in one post, sound bites which this would be reduced to, are easily defeatable (easily debated).

First let's examine the history.

We know NOW that Cheney had meetings on this with the energy companies, and that he was instrumental in inserting clauses into the clean water act that exempted fracking from these rules. If he had a blind trust in his old company is unknown, but surely he would be rechly rewarded in the revolving door of industy/polotics even in his elderly state now.

Initial disposal technics of the fracking back-wash reads like a chapter of "The Jungle", literally BLM land with frack waste ponds with sprayers (as seen on "GasLand") creating a mist blowing off the pond.

I'm too tired to type all this, let's take one example, a microcosim if you will. The Barnett Shale drilling started about 10 years ago, the majority of the drilling happened 5 years ago. The Dallas-Fort Worth area is the first major population area directly down wind of the Barnett shale and very very close to these drilling sites. An "Article" posted by AP ("bad science") hit over 20 papers or more in the US saying the claims of a Breast cancer rise (in the DalasFW area) is bad science (they never directly state the claim is wrong ... yet the article in the in the best method of popaganda leaves every one with that impression).

Here is a map of the drilling sites in the Barnett Shale: http://shale.typepad.com/.a/6a...

Here is a population map of the Texas area http://txlandtrends.org/images...

Take agood hard look, no one in the industry will spell this out, the people in the Cheney meeting IMHO knew the dangers. Now match that up with this article.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/healt...

If some one like me, a fairly average Joe has to do reasearch to find this connection, and no one else is bringing to you, then god have mercy you are really (colorful metaphored). But ask yourself, how could an AP article claiming to debunk this be posted in so many papers (with out a comment section). I just realized that a lot of "paper" ownership is centerlized, I hope that does not have anything to do with it. But more to the point ... people are now walking around like nazis with a bad idea, that need to be corrected and chances are they won't beleive you when you tell them.... because ... THEY read it in a paper so it must be true.

The royal scam is if they (the industry) can open up New York State to fracking before these consequences become clear.

If I was a head of a company and I wanted to get rich no mater what the consequences and I knew the long term consequences were (for lack of a better word ... bad) ... I would move as quickly as I could to as many areas to exploit the resource, I would use articles to give people the warm and fuzzies while I push through the agenda with lobbiest. I would make sure a GW denialist is in the NYS DEC and I would sub-contract all aspects of the operation.

When they frack:

*One company creates the well pad.

*One a seperate company drills.

*A seperate company fracks.

*A seperate company disposes of the waste.

*A seperate company caps the well.

Now there is nothing wrong with small companies or Texas, but FYI these are all small companies from Texas that got started in the Barnett shale... the point being, if this "special sauce" starts welling up 10 years laters or more after the fracking.

*There will no longer be any company to sue.

Every square mile of upstate NYS will have one of these well sites, and if you know how things like Benzene and other toxic elements and chemeical quickly raise the cost of cleanup. This could make a good portion of UP NY a toxic superfund site.

Now this is not fear, limestone leaches out of cement eventually, and cement eventually becomes something closer to sand. About 40% of what they pump down stays down there, looking for a way up. This will come up eventually, the macellus shale is the bottom of an ancient inland sea and is up to 8k feet below sea level and (due to pressure) is currently dry as a bone. There are people who will get insanely rich in the next ten years from this process. you decide. Do you really think you have been given all the fact yet? What was discussed in Cheney's secret meeting, shouldn't we know that before Halibuton and the likes cashes out on this process?

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/22/3717357/experts-some-fracking-critics.html#storylink=cpy

[Brown Bess]

The S-T has a lot of nerve lecturing others about bias in the gas patch. The paper has practically been an extension of the Chesapeake PR department.

[Don Young]

Jim--Is that a typo in your second sentence? Did you mean "removed?" There may be confusion over breast cancer vs. asthma, which HAS increased dramatically in the Barnett while dropping elsewhere.

Note that PA officials are very pro-drilling so not reliable sources.

As for Platts commie allegatioons... I'm still laughing. The industry must be really desperate to equate anti-fracking with Communism.