Contains the keyword companies
By Jim Polson. Bloomberg Business Week. January 21, 2010.
Exxon Mobil Corp., XTO Energy Inc. and other shale-gas producers probably won’t face U.S. rules that would add costs of $100,000 a well, given comments at a Congressional hearing yesterday and the loss of a Senate seat by majority Democrats, FBR Capital Markets Corp. analysts said.
Irving, Texas-based Exxon’s $30 billion acquisition of XTO isn’t in jeopardy, Benjamin Salisbury and other FBR analysts wrote in a report to clients today. U.S. laws making shale development “illegal or commercially impracticable” would let Exxon terminate the deal without penalty, under the buyout agreement.
Democrats at the hearing praised the economic and environmental benefits of replacing fuels such as coal with cleaner-burning natural gas, indicating the party will emphasize jobs and the economy rather than restrictions on fracturing petroleum-bearing rock that might curb drilling by as much as 20 percent, the analysts wrote. Environmentalists said chemicals in fracturing fluid contaminate drinking water.
By Joel Kirkland of ClimateWire, New York Times.
The $31 billion Exxon-XTO all-stock deal still has to jump some regulatory hurdles. If the merger becomes real, Exxon will be the largest natural gas producer in the country, controlling large chunks of acreage in the most promising onshore gas fields in the United States.
Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and the Appalachian regions of Pennsylvania and New York are the epicenter of shale gas, coalbed methane and tight-sand gas formations.
See: Marching Band, Quail Hunt Helped Exxon’s Tillerson to XTO Deal - Bloomberg.com
Frac Tech is one of the smaller companies mentioned in the memorandum to Members of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment from Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Edward J. Markey Examining the Potential Impact of Hydraulic Fracturing. (PDF)
Frac Tech describes itself as “one of the largest and fastest growing land stimulation companies.”
Little is known about the practices of these and other small and medium sized companies that provide fracturing services across the country.
Frac Tech's CEO Dan Wilk received one of the eight letters from this Committe on February 18, 2010. They are listed in this document:
Energy & Commerce Committee Investigates Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing.
See Shale Maps of the U.S, World, Australia, China, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
See: Jaime Adame. "Cisco's Frac Tech Grows". August 7, 2010. Abilene Reporternews Online.
Since Pennsylvania’s gas drilling boom ramped up in 2008, companies have been fined regularly for environmental accidents — $23,500 here for spilling 5,000 gallons of waste, $15,557 there for spilling 295 gallons of hydrochloric acid. The fines often amount to slaps on the wrist for companies that stand to make hefty profits from their wells.
But the penalties just got a lot more serious for an owner of Kansas-based Swamp Angel Energy and for the company’s site supervisor, who pleaded guilty last week to felony violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
As part of a plea agreement with the U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania, part-owner Michael Evans, 66, of La Quinta, Calif., and John Morgan, 54, of Sheffield, Penn., admitted dumping 200,000 gallons of brine – salty wastewater that’s created in the drilling process – down an abandoned oil well. The maximum penalty for both Evans and Morgan is three years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or both. Sentencing will be June 24. (See follow-up below). Attorneys for both men declined to comment.
Swamp Angel Energy was drilling in the Allegheny National Forest, in McKean County in northwestern Pennsylvania, and the brine was dumped just outside the border of the federal land. In mid-December, a federal judge overturned a ruling that had essentially banned drilling in the Allegheny Forest...
Follow-Up | U.S. EPA Compliance and Enforcement Criminal Case Activities (nz):
EPA's Criminal Enforcement program investigates and helps to prosecute environmental violations which seriously threaten public health and the environment or involve conduct that may be willful, intentional, or deliberate.
Besides environmental violations, the cases may also have associated U.S. criminal code violations such as conspiracy, false statements, witness tampering, or interfering with a law enforcement investigation. Criminal enforcement sanctions -- which may include incarceration of individuals in addition to monetary fines against individuals, businesses, or corporations represent the enforcement program's strongest sanction and deterrent.
John Morgan and Michael Evans (PDF) (1 pg, 32K)
Acting United States Attorney Robert S. Cessar announced today, June 24, 2010, that a resident of Sheffield, Pennsylvania and a resident of La Quinta, California, have been sentenced in federal court in Erie as a result of their felony convictions for violating the Safe Drinking Water Act by unlawfully injecting brine produced from an oil drilling operation.
United States District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin imposed the sentences on John Morgan, age 54, of Sheffield, Pennsylvania, and Michael Evans, age 66, of La Quinta, California. Mr. Morgan received a sentence of three years probation, a $4,000 fine, eight months home detention and eighty hours community service. Mr. Evans received a sentence of three years probation, a $5,000 fine, ten months home detention and one hundred hours community service.
GasLand (2010) Directed by Josh Fox. Winner of Special Jury Prize - Best US Documentary Feature - Sundance 2010. Screening at Cannes 2010. Nominated for 2011 Academy Award - Best Documentary Feature.
It is happening all across America and now in Europe and Africa as well - rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from a multinational energy conglomerate wanting to lease their property. The Reason? In America, the company hopes to tap into a huge natural gas reservoir dubbed the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Halliburton developed a way to get the gas out of the ground—a hydraulic drilling process called fracking—and suddenly America finds itself on the precipice of becoming an energy superpower.
But what comes out of the ground with that natural gas? How does it affect our air and drinking water? GASLAND is a powerful personal documentary that confronts these questions with spirit, strength, and a sense of humor. When filmmaker Josh Fox receives his cash offer in the mail, he travels across 32 states to meet other rural residents on the front lines of fracking. He discovers toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame. He learns that all water is connected and perhaps some things are more valuable than money.
See PBS interview with filmmaker Josh Fox.
See: Nora Eisenberg. Onshore Drilling Disasters Waiting to Happen: An Interview With 'Gasland' Director Josh Fox | The Nation
See: Drilling Isn't Safe.
Re-Edit by liltrax. July 9, 2010.
Founded in 1919, Halliburton is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industry. It employs more than 50,000 people in nearly 70 countries."
See: Halliburton's web site on Hydraulic Fracturing
See: Soucewatch article on Halliburton.
"Halliburton is under Justice Department Securities and Exchange Commission investigation over allegations of improper dealings in Iraq, Kuwait and Nigeria," Whitley Strieber wrote March 12, 2007.
See New York time Editorial on the "Halliburton Loophole". (2009)
See LA Times, "Halliburton's Interests Assisted by White House." (2004)
See. John Collins Rudolf. "E.P.A. Subpoenas Halliburton on Fracking." NYT Green Blog. Nov. 9, 2010.
See: Barry Meier and Clifford Krauss. "Inquiry Puts Halliburton in a Familiar Hot Seat". NYT Business Day. October 28, 2010.
See: Dauda Garuba. "Halliburton, Bribes and the Deceit of 'Zero-Tolerance' for Corruption in Nigeria." African Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results. (cop-mfdr-africa.org). August 26, 2010.
EPA Update. November 9-10 2010
On November 9, 2010, EPA announced that eight out of the nine hydraulic fracturing companies that received voluntary information requests in September agreed to submit timely and complete information to help the Agency conduct its study on hydraulic fracturing. However, the ninth company, Halliburton, has failed to provide EPA the information necessary to move forward with this important study. As a result, and as part of EPA's effort to move forward as quickly as possible, today EPA issued a subpoena to the company requiring submission of the requested information that has yet to be provided.
See: Letter sent by EPA to Halliburton PDF (2pp, 516K).
See: The subpoena sent by EPA to Halliburton PDF (11pp, 3.5M).
Update:
See: FCPA Blog | UK Court Won't Block Telser Extradition
Judson Berger. "Nigeria Drops Bribery Charges Against Cheney, Halliburton After $250M Deal Struck." Canada Free Press. Dec. 21, 2010.
Nigeria’s government has reportedly dropped bribery charges against former Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, the energy firm he once headed, after the company agreed to pay a hefty settlement.
...The fate of bills before Congress related to regulation of hydraulic fracturing is critically important. Congress exempted hydraulic fracturing from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005, but a bill was introduced last summer to federally regulate hydraulic fracturing under the act.
Regulations developed by the EPA under such a bill are unknowable at this time, but they could be expensive. Congress continues to debate the need for broader regulation and has asked the EPA to study the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water sources.
The industry needs a better, more effective way to advocate and communicate the benefits of fracturing to media, to the public, and to officials whose decisions could impact the future of the technology — and of the nation’s efforts to achieve energy independence.
Claude Cooke. "Industry responds to public take on hydraulic fracturing." Hart Energy E & P. Mar. 1, 2010.
See: Tom Hamburger and Jim Puzzanghera. "Obama a business booster in Chamber of Commerce speech." LA Times. Feb. 7, 2011.
President Obama seeks fresh start with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with whom he has had a prickly relationship.
Obama sought to distinguish between inefficient government regulation of the kind he raised in his State of the Union speech — over things like salmon — and a more legitimate government role in areas such as the environment.
"Even as we work to eliminate burdensome regulations, America's businesses have a responsibility to recognize that there are some safeguards and standards that are necessary to protect the American people from harm or exploitation," he said Monday. "Few of us would want to live in a society without the rules that keep our air and water clean … yet when standards like these have been proposed, opponents have often warned that they would be an assault on business and free enterprise."
The audience welcomed Obama with a standing ovation and laughed politely when he joked they "would have gotten off on a better foot if I had brought over a fruitcake when we first moved in."
But there was little hearty applause, and after the president shook a few hands and walked back to the White House, Chamber members were guarded in their reviews of his message.
See: Pollution in Your Community
See: Draft Plan to Study the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing on Drinking Water Resources
See: Pew Environment Group (PEG) Factsheet: Industry Opposition to Government Regulation (PDF), October 14, 2010.
Lenape Resources, Inc. is the operating arm of Lenape Energy, Inc. Along with its sister companies Lenape Drilling, Inc. and Lenape Gathering Corp, Lenape Resources is involved in the exploration, development, gathering and marketing of oil and natural gas resources in the Appalachian basin with a primary focus in the states of New York and Pennsylvania.
Lenape has been disposing of drilling wastewater in Caledonia NY, 27 miles southwest of Rochester, NY on a permit which expired in 2007 but was administratively continued.
See: Public Notice No. 2010- 25 Permit No. NYU119702 Date: August 3, 2010
The EPA oversees the Underground Injection Control Program. Under the Eleventh amendment to the U.S. Constitution, if the state violates a Federal law, then the courts have jurisdiction, but if it's a purely state matter, they don't. How did Lenape manage to go three years without a permit to dispose of it's fracking waste water?
According to the website, Endangered Environmental Laws, "...over time, courts have transformed [the Eleventh Amendment] into a sweeping doctrine of state “sovereign immunity,” unmoored from the Constitution’s text, and in recent years, a conservative bloc of the Supreme Court has further expanded states’ immunity from private lawsuits. In the environmental context, this has led to near-total immunity of state agencies from citizen suits under the federal coal-mining statute; to similar challenges (so far unsuccessful) to citizen litigation under the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act; and to dismissal of state employees’ whistleblower complaints under the Solid Waste Disposal Act and other laws."
See: Babcock, H. “Effect of the United States Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment Jurisprudence on Clean Water Act Citizen Suits: Muddied Waters, The.” Oregon Law Review 83 (2004): 47.
"The states are permitted to act unjustly only because the highest court in the land has, by its own will, moved the middle ground and narrowed the nation's power.
With rare exception, many people, including Indian tribes, federal employees, patent holders, the elderly, and the disabled, find themselves unable to vindicate rights granted by federal laws in any court when the defendant is a state or a state agency."
Violations are prosecuted only after a dramatic event such as an explosion leading to workers' deaths. Even when the dumping of toxic waste is prosecuted, the sentences' regulatory effect is minimal. Environmental felons absorb these costs of doing business.
However, the Justice Department sees it differently. According to John C. Cruden, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, "The Safe Water Drinking Act and the regulations overseeing oil and gas related injection wells are designed to ensure safe sources of drinking water. Violations of these laws will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." Mr. Cruden was Chief Legislative Counsel, U.S. Army (1988-1991).
See: Oil Company and Two Executives Plead Guilty to Environmental Crimes
See: Texas Transportation Company and Officials Sentenced for Hazmat Violations
See also: Gas Drillers Plead Guilty to Felony Dumping Violations
John Morgan and Michael Evans (PDF) (1 pg, 32K)
United States District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin imposed the sentences on John Morgan, age 54, of Sheffield, Pennsylvania, and Michael Evans, age 66, of La Quinta, California. Mr. Morgan received a sentence of three years probation, a $4,000 fine, eight months home detention and eighty hours community service. Mr. Evans received a sentence of three years probation, a $5,000 fine, ten months home detention and one hundred hours community service.
See: Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own - ProPublica
[Opportunities? Follow this link to jobs in PA, Commonwealth Workforce Development System (CWDS). Are you a carpenter or mason? Want a job for 23k a year? Frac Operator 1 would earn 24,960/year in Greensburg, PA. That's what I found when I looked for a Gas Drilling job. 4/19/10. (Neil Zusman, 2010-04-23.) and SourceWatch.]
The Marcellus Shale Committee is a coalition of oil and gas industry companies which was formed in 2008 to promote "the responsible development of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale geological formation in Pennsylvania and the enhancement of the Commonwealth's economy that can be realized by this clean-burning energy source."
Committee Members
On its website, the Marcellus Shale Committee lists its' members.
Norwegian based company with operations in the US. They own and operate pipeline systems in the northeastern US for gathering and transmission of natural gas. The CEO is Øivind Risberg.
NY Senate to Suspend Hydro Fracing Permits; Norse's Program Unaffected
On Aug. 5, 2010, the New York State Senate approved a proposal to suspend hydraulic fracturing of gas reservoirs in New York State until May 15, 2011.
"This proposed bill does not affect Norse's strategy of developing our estimated 500 Bcf Herkimer field. Actually, if anything, it could improve our strategic position as I anticipate a time limited moratorium on hydraulic fracturing shale permits would extend our lease term under the force majeure clause and allow us to hold more land with our ongoing Herkimer activity.
Our Herkimer drilling program is fully financed and as we now get back to drilling on our 3D seismic locations in the second half of the year, we anticipate our reserve based lending to further improve our financial position and allow for an acceleration of our Herkimer activity into 2011," said Øivind Risberg, CEO of Norse Energy.
See: Tyler Murphy and Melissa DeCordova. The Evening Sun. May 14-15, 2010. "Pro-natural gas drilling concerns say:We’re in the money"
Picture on the front page shows Norse Energy Vice President Stephen Keyes, City of Norwich Mayor Joseph Maiurano, Village of Sherburne Mayor Bill Acee, Realtor Bruce Beadle, Town of Smyrna Supervisor James Bays, County Planning Director Donna Jones, Commerce Chenango President Maureen Carpenter, County Treasurer William Evans, County Consultant Steve Palmatier and Nornew spokesman Dennis Holbrook receiving $656,923 worth of "symbolic checks".
The municipality [Norwich, NY] is one of the first in Chenango County to reap the financial benefits of natural gas development on an unprecedented local scale.
Norse Energy Inc., the Norwegian-based parent company of Nornew, has drilled 23 wells in the county, 13 in the Town of Smyrna since 2007.
The check’s amounts were based on the numbers released by the Chenango County Office of Real Property Services on May 1 and reflect the estimated assessed value using last year’s tax rates.
