How far below the earth’s surface do property rights extend? The conventional wisdom is that a landowner holds title to everything between the surface and the center of the earth. This article is the first legal scholarship to challenge the traditional view.
Graphic: Discover Magazine
It demonstrates that the “center of the earth” theory is poetic hyperbole, not binding law. Broadly speaking, the deeper the disputed region, the less likely courts are to recognize the surface owner’s title.
The emergence of new technologies for use of the deep subsurface—such as heat mining and carbon sequestration, both of which may help mitigate global climate change—requires that we develop a new model of subsurface ownership.
Accordingly, this article proposes and evaluates four alternative approaches to subsurface property rights. The preferred model would recognize the surface owner’s title for only 1000 feet downward. If adopted, this approach would eliminate over 99 percent of the supposed real property ownership in the United States.
See: Probe Earth's Interior with Advanced Radiation Sources
See: The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels
See: Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI)
Learn how new drilling technology and rising fuel prices are driving the natural gas rush in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale—a 6,000 foot deep rock formation which has the potential to fuel the entire country for two full years.
This live, one-hour, call-in program on Thursday, May 22, 2008, offered viewers objective and reliable advice about:
- Natural gas exploration and drilling on leased land
- Lease negotiations and addenda
- Financial, environmental, and infrastructure impacts
WPSU: Gasrush
Landowner information on gas leasing in the Southern Tier. See: Tioga County Landowners Group.
Chesapeake Energy Flares Barnett Shale Gas Well in Trinity Trai, posted by TxSharon - Sharon Wilson - http://bluedaze.org
Poison Fire-The Movie below. Gas flares are visible from space.
"Whose woods these are I think I know"...
If you plan to stop by these woods on a snowy evening bring some marshmallows and expect an evening sunburn. There's a chance your treats will be toxic.
A recent study from Nigeria on mice associates flaring with respiratory and blood problems. Earlier studies from the Worldbank, the U.S., Canada, Climate Justice and a 2002 Schlumberger report note the importance of eliminating flaring to maintain fragile ecosystems and human health.
Why wait until there are deaths and illness to end industrial practices that waste money and human life? As long as the air or groundwater pollution doesn't clog their drill bits, gas industry engineers say these practices are safe.
Marcellus Protest posts an eyewitness account of gas flaring near a consumer shopping mall in Pittsburgh, where the noise and heat from a gas flare runs 24/7.
Can you see how Pennsylvania is starting to look more and more like Nigeria? (Neil Zusman, 2011-01-22.)
See: Anger grows across the world at the real price of 'frontier oil'
See: Fracking at the (Pittsburgh Mills Mall) | Marcellus Shale Protest 2011-01-10
Sharon Wilson of Bluedaze, Drilling Reform for Texase, recently had a "debate" on her YouTube posting, "Chesapeake Energy Flares Barnett Shale Gas Well in Trinity Trail," regarding flaring.
Sweet gas (natural gas that does not contain significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide) flaring has a longer history in Nigeria. According to the Daily Independent:
The Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) has identified not less than 250 toxins from the gas flared from fossil fuels.
Film Synopsis
In 1956, Shell drilled the first oil well in the village of Olobiri, in the African Niger Delta. Since then, massive quantities of black gold have been pumped out of the ground there, and nobody seems to worry about a little spillage: lots of excess oil gets dumped or spilled, and gas flaring, or the burning of natural gas, takes place as well.
Poison Fire gives the floor to the inhabitants of the Niger Delta. No one sees anything positive in Shell's activities. Cancer, asthma, and miscarriages are all consequences of the pollution caused by the oil giant, and fish, slugs and snakes are dying out.
A group of environmental activists travel to Shell Headquarters in the Netherlands, where CEO Jeroen van der Veer politely addresses them at the entrance. He promises to launch a plan that will stop gas flaring, a practice that has been declared illegal by the Benin City Court. But how can the behaviour of a wealthy multinational realistically be corrected when Nigeria's own authorities are out-and-out corrupt?
Friends of the Earth International website.
Read the report:
Environmental Rights Action, Friends of the Earth Nigeria. "Gas Flaring in Nigeria". Climate Justice. June 2005. (PDF 36 pp.)
See: Bluedaze Video. Chesapeake Energy Flares Barnett Shale Gas Well in Trinity Trail.
See: Chevron articles on Mixplex.
Daily Independent. "Enforcing the gas flaring deadline." Daily Independent. Lagos, Nigeria. August 9, 2010. Also available from the Norwegian Council for Africa.
See: The Case of Chevron.
See: World Bank. Gas Flaring Around the World. (2009). (Is the World Bank forever tainted by Lawrence Summers?).
A view of global gas flaring based on satellite observations: a joint effort between the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the World Bank-led Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership (GGFR)
See: Global Gas Flaring Identification in Google Earth
Download .kmz files for country of your choice. They will be addded to your Google Earth places. You can see the massive gas field with gas flaring adjacent to the Hobbs Public Schools and the Junior College in New Mexico.
See: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado. (CIRES)
Read these reports:
Elvidge, C.D. A Sixteen Year Record of Global Natural Gas Flaring Derived From Satellite Data. Earth Observation Group NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, May 18, 2010. (PDF)
Elvidge, C. D, D. Ziskin, K. E Baugh, B. T Tuttle, T. Ghosh, D. W Pack, E. H Erwin, and M. Zhizhin. “A Fifteen Year Record of Global Natural Gas Flaring Derived from Satellite Data.” Energies 2, no. 3 (2009): 595–622 (PDF).
Otitoloju, Adebayo, and Jemina Dan-Patrick. “Effects of gas flaring on blood parameters and respiratory system of laboratory mice, Mus musculus.” The Environmentalist 30, no. 4 (October 2010): 340-346. (free preview only)
"...And miles to go before I sleep"
Robert Frost. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923). New Hampshire
Read the Appendix if you are concerned about what you can do to protect your children's health from our toxic environment.
Philip Shabecoff is an environmental writer based in Massachusetts. He was a reporter for the New York Times for more than 30 years, and founded the online environmental news service Greenwire in 1991 and served as its publisher until 1996.
Alice Shabecoff served in the 1970s as executive director of the National Consumers League, the country’s oldest consumer organization, and in the 1980s as founder and executive director of the national nonprofit Community Information Exchange, an information service for the community development sector. As a freelance journalist focusing on family and consumer topics, her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, among other publications. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Birth Defects Research Center.
Review From Booklist:
There is a country in which nearly one in three children suffers from some type of chronic disease and whose childhood cancer rates have risen some 67 percent in the last 50 years. What is this country doing wrong to cause so many of its children such suffering?
The country is the U.S., and the Shabecoffs, nationally known journalists, believe they know exactly what is causing our children so much illness. Sure, they say, lifestyle choices (bad diet, secondhand smoke, etc.) can account for a certain amount of ill health.
The real malefactor, however, is greedy American industry, aided and abetted by a shortsighted economic system and a government that turns a blind eye when faced with damning scientific evidence of true crime—the crime of knowingly poisoning children, beginning when they are the most vulnerable: in utero.
See: What is the National Children's Study?
See: Fracking: Implications for Human and Environmental Health
See: The Case for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Toxic Hazards
A television commercial about global warming from Environmental Defense Fund. Public service announcement (PSAs) designed to urge Americans to take advantage of mass transit, carpooling and biking to combat global warming.
Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres Of Wilderness For Oil & Gas Drilling.
Democracy Now reports on student action by Tim DeChristopher.
In a national broadcast exclusive, University of Utah student Tim DeChristopher explains how he bought 22,000 acres of land in an attempt to save the property from drilling. The sale had been strongly opposed by many environmental groups. Stephen Bloch of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said: "This is the fire sale, the Bush administrations last great gift to the oil and gas industry. This is the first 10 minutes of the interview. For the rest go to DemocracyNow!
For full interview click here.
See: Judge says drilling lease lawsuit too late
See: Tim DeChristopher's blog and update on his legal battle.
See: As climate crime continues, who are we sending to jail? Tim DeChristopher?
Nolan Hart. (2008). Includes photos, maps, illustrations.
Named for the town of Marcellus New York, where the shale reaches the surface, it is a Devonian age (roughly 390 million years old) member of a geological structure known as the Hamilton group. It formed when Devonian age seas...covered much of North America.
HUGHESVILLE, Pa. — At first, Raymond Gregoire did not want to listen to the raspy voice on his answering machine offering him money for rights to drill on his land. They want to ruin my land, he thought. But he called back anyway a week later to hear more.
By the end of February, he had a contract in hand for $62,000, and he pulled together a group of 75 neighbors who signed $3 million in deals.
“It’s a modern-day gold rush in our own backyard,” Mr. Gregoire said.
Property owners at a seminar in Clarks Summit, Pa., on negotiating with gas lease companies.
Fracture drilling workers run machinery on a farm outside of Pittsburgh. Companies are risking big money on rural Pennsylvania, producing billions of dollars' worth of natural gas.
An archived Nancy Pelosi blog page.
Americans need Consumer Protection when it comes to Energy and Power.
See The CLEAR Act. (2010): In the wake of the BP disaster, Congress is acting on its commitment to protect America’s families and businesses, rebuild the Gulf Coast, hold BP and oil companies accountable, and work to ensure that a spill of this kind never happens again.
On July 30th, the House passed the CLEAR Act (H.R. 3534) by a vote of 209-193—legislation to effectively prevent and respond to oil spills and protect our coastal communities and waters:
Pelosi has been on it! The MMS has failed us. State monitoring of Horizontal Drilling will not protect consumers. Gas Drilling needs the same Federal scrutiny as Oil Drilling.
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi's blog, includes statements by government representatives on 110th congress H.R.6899 Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act.
The MMS (Minerals and Mining Service) was first brought to my attention through Pelosi's Blog.
Natural Resources Hearing on the Department of Interior Scandal
Thursday, September 18th, 2008 by Karina
Today, the House Natural Resources Committee, led by Chairman Nick J. Rahall, is holding a full Committee oversight hearing on “Recent Interior Department Inspector General Investigations on Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Collections.” Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and Department of the Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney are testifying. Watch the live webcast.
See the true cost of gas!
Natural gas is just another dirty fossil fuel. for more info see: Bluedaze
A [Barnett Shale] drilling rig operating for 3 months has the same impact as a city of 4,000 people—water use, solid waste generation, air emissions and traffic.
~David Burnett, Dir. Global Petroleum Research Institute
