EPA Asks Barack Who? -- July 11, 2017

This is simply incredible. I have followed the story off and on but never posted a note about it until now. The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that the EPA is seeking to reverse its opposition to a controversial Alaskan gold mine.

The Trump administration has taken a key step toward paving the way for a controversial gold, copper and molybdenum mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, marking a sharp reversal from former president Barack Obama's opposition to the project.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed withdrawing its 2014 determination barring any large-scale mine in the area because it would imperil the region's valuable sockeye salmon fishery.

The agency said it would accept public comments on the proposal for the next 90 days.

Amazing how fast the EPA can change their stance on something. Simply amazing. And one would think the EPA is above politics. LOL.

There are rumors that the sage grouse in Wyoming are moving to Canada.

Huge News! EPA Withdraws WOTUS Rule -- July 10, 2017

With Native Americans claiming ownership of all waterways across the US and the US Army Corps of Engineers not far behind, it was refreshing to see this headline: EPA officially withdraws WOTUS rule. From The Dickinson Press:

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers have filed an official proposal to withdraw the 2015 Waters of the U.S. Rule due to the concerns of rural America. EPA now begins a replacement rulemaking process re-evaluating the definition of WOTUS in the Clean Water Act and gathering input from stakeholders.

It would be nice if Congress would codify any new EPA rules under the Trump administration so they are not easily undone if he's a "one and done" president.

So glad Hillary is not running the EPA.

I Wonder If The Russians Had Anything To Do With This? -- March 2, 2017

I love these stories, and I love it when I seem them in The Washington Post: EPA halts inquiry into oil and gas industry emissions of methane, "a powerful greenhouse gas."

Photo at the linked Washington Post story, wahoo!

The lede:

The Environmental Protection Agency Thursday announced it was withdrawing a request that operators of existing oil and gas wells provide the agency with extensive information about their equipment and its emissions of methane, undermining a last-ditch Obama administration climate change initiative.

The EPA announcement was a first step towards reversing an Obama administration effort – which  only got underway two days after Donald Trump’s election – to gather information about  methane, a short-lived but extremely powerful climate pollutant which is responsible for about a quarter of global warming to date.

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The Literature Page

The Boy Who Could Change The World: 

The Writings of Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz

c. 2017

essay by Ben Jackson

The opening paragraph of a review of this book in London Review of Books:

In January 2011, Aaron Swartz was arrested for downloading 4.8 million academic articles from the digital archive JSTOR, using a laptop hidden in a broom cupboard on the MIT campus.

He was 24, and already a respected and influential computer programmer.

As a teenager, he had helped develop RSS, a syndication format that led to the explosion in popularity of blogging, and Markdown, an easy to use tool that converted text to HTML.

He wrote the code for the Creative Commons license, which helped distribute work on the internet more freely than traditional copyright would permit. He was also a successful entrepreneur.

He could easily have carried on working in the tech industry, where people like him can make millions, but instead he became a political activist, and that’s how he got in trouble.

The JSTOR episode led to his facing four felony counts, with a maximum sentence of 35 years; two years after his arrest, he hanged himself with his belt in his Brooklyn apartment.

For Investors Only -- June 23, 2014 -- US Existing Home Sales, Inventory Surge In May; North Dakota Farmers To Be Paid More For Planting Bee-Friendly Crops -- Obama; North Dakota Big Winner In Bee-Friendly Program

Mid-day trading, trading at new 52-week highs so far today (I think a lot of these were at their highs at the market open and have since pulled back): APA, APC, BHI, BK, BP, CFN, CHK, CLR, COP, CVX, EOG, ERF, HAL, HK, KOG, MPO, MRO, NFX, NOV, OXY, PSX, PXD, TPLM, TSO, WFT, WIN, WLL, WPX, XOM.

Early trading: oil down slightly, market down slightly. Shares in publicly traded oil and oil service companies generally up:

• HK: up 1%
• TPLM: up almost 2%
• AMZG: flat
• SD: flat, up slightly
• CHK: up 1.5%
• OAS: up 0.8%
• KOG: up over 1%
• WLL: up almost 1%
• CLR: up 1%
• CVX: up .6%
• COP: up over 1%
• XOM: up about half a percent
• BHI: down slightly
• SLB: flat

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

AXAS has been a big winner. Zack's is reporting:

AXAS was a big mover last session, as the company saw its shares rise nearly 7% on the day. The move came on solid volume too with far more shares changing hands than in a normal session. This breaks the recent trend of the company, as the stock is now trading above the volatile price range of $4.65 to $5.42 in the past one-month time frame.

Other than the headline, I did not read this story over at Seeking Alpha. It seems fairly obvious and high oil prices won't help only KOG but every oil company out there. However, beware of the hedging issue. Some smaller companies could actually get hurt by high oil prices if they didn't hedge correctly or hedged too conservatively.

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Honey

Could a colder climate (the earth has not been warming for 18 years) PLUS putting all that acreage into corn-for-ethanol be causing the demise of the US honey bee industry? 

After years of taking bee-friendly crops out of production in the midwest, to plant corn for ethanol, the US government -- through an Obama initiative -- will now pay farmers to plant bee-friendly crops in land, in a last-ditch effort to stem the impending demise of the honeybee.

North Dakota farmers:

• some of the best cropland to begin with
• plenty of moisture past few years -- due to global cooling, perhaps?
• encouraged to plant more corn for ethanol -- better prices than wheat
• income from wind farms
• surface rights income from oil companies
• mineral rights in the Bakken
• and now, getting paid for planting bee-friendly crops through a new Obama farm program -- what's not to like?

The Bismarck Tribune is reporting:

Farmers and landowners who plant forage for North Dakota’s bee population are now eligible for federal funding.

The program is designed to help preserve what is left of the declining honeybee population in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has allocated $8 million as part of the Conservation Reserve Program for producers in five states that serve as homes to bees during the summer — Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

More than half of the commercially managed honey bees are in those five states.
North Dakota is the nation’s No. 1 honey producer with half a million colonies.

I remember seeing an article on this issue a couple days ago; while Iraq was imploding, Mr Obama was making a bee-friendly speech for North Dakota. One can only assume it was brought to his attention when he visited North Dakota ten days ago.

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Honeybee Paradox

This is the problem with activist environmentalists. By being splintered and trying to save every species (generally only if the species is located where the Koch Brothers want to lay a pipeline), "we" lose sight of the really important species that we don't want to lose. For example, call me crazy, but I wonder if we lost the "snail darter," would anyone really notice. On the other hand, if we lose the honeybee, ....

And that's the problem; money spent litigating the snail darter's future would have been better spent studying the impending demise of the honey bee.

Likewise, environmental activists were jubilant replacing bee-friendly crops in North Dakota with corn for ethanol.

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Going It Alone

As regular readers know, Canada was the first country to renounce the Kyoto Protocol, "taking back their signature," after being one of the original signers of the protocol.  Now Australia announces yet another country turning its back on this scam:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott reintroduced legislation to the Australian Parliament on Monday that would repeal a carbon tax that the nation's worst greenhouse gas polluters have to pay.

The opposition center-left Labor Party and minor Greens party used their Senate majority in March to block the bills that would remove the 24.15 Australian dollar ($22.79) tax per metric ton of carbon dioxide that was introduced by a Labor government in July 2012. The bills were defeated 33 votes to 29.

But with new senators to take their seats on July 7 for the first time since Abbott's conservative coalition government took power in an election in September, the bills are expected to be passed by a narrow margin. Coal mining magnate and carbon tax critic Clive Palmer leads four new senators who have promised their allegiance to his influential Palmer United Party.

******************************

But Things Might Be Changing In The United States

The AP is reporting:

The Supreme Court on Monday placed limits on the sole Obama administration program already in place to deal with power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.

The justices said that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority in some cases to force companies to evaluate ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This rule applies when a company needs a permit to expand facilities or build new ones that would increase overall pollution. Carbon dioxide is the chief gas linked to global warming.

Carbon dioxide makes up about 3 tenths of a percent 350ppm = 0.035% (more like three one hundredths) of the atmosphere or something like that. Water vapor is the major greenhouse gas. 

US Temps Will Be 20 Degrees Than Usual -- Not Reported In Mainstream Media

A record (?) low temperature was set at Indianapolis today during the NASCAR race -- it if didn't set a record low, it was awful close. Not reported in mainstream media; one has to really look for these things when Mother Nature refuses to follow the script.

MailOnline is reporting: What happened to the heatwave? Temperatures will drop 20 degrees below July averages.

Many Americans are reaching for their jackets less than a week after a sweltering heat wave pushed temperatures to record highs, as a cold front sweeps across the country that's expected to last up to two weeks.

The cooler weather, which will sink temperatures between 5 and 20 degrees lower than July averages, will primarily affect the Upper Midwest, causing thunderstorms from Michigan to Illinois to eastern Missouri on Friday. Temperatures on Friday will average 75 degrees Fahrenheit in Chicago, 70 degrees in Boston and 86 degrees in Charlotte, N.C. Saturday looks to be a little cooler than Friday.

I assume the president has a global warming speech he will be giving this next week. Timing is everything.

But don't let the facts stand in your way. Congress just approved new "stronger-than-ever" EPA head, Ms McCarthy, reported in today's New York Times: 

The president told Ms. McCarthy that his environmental and presidential legacy would be incomplete without a serious effort to address climate change.

“I’m so glad he said that, because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted this job,” she said. “It’s an issue I’ve worked on for so many years, and it just can’t wait.”

Mr. Obama’s decision to nominate Ms. McCarthy, 59, was an act of defiance to Congressional and industry opponents of meaningful action on climate change. It was also a sign of his determination to at least begin to put in place rules to reduce carbon pollution. 

Ms. McCarthy, an earthy, tough-talking New Englander who drew criticism as the head of the agency’s air and radiation office during Mr. Obama’s first term, then ticked off a list of controversial air pollution regulations she had helped write: tough greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, a tighter ozone limit that the White House rejected, the first rule on mercury emissions from power plants, and a regulation on smokestack pollution that crosses state lines, which has been blocked by a federal court. She warned that earning confirmation from the Senate might be difficult and that safer choices were available.  

So, if you like in-your-face politics, it should be a rewarding three years.

For Now: 'Nuf Said -- The War On Coal -- But It Meanders Into Fracking

EPA staffer Richard Windsor announces resignation, apparently the same day that Lisa announced her resignation.

Saudi Burns Record Amount of Oil To Generate Electricity For Air Conditioners

Link here.

Saudi Arabia burned record monthly volumes of oil in June and July, official government figures show, contrary to the top crude producer's plan to temper its summer oil burning spree this year with more gas. 

The world's leading oil exporter burned an average of 743,500 barrels per day (bpd) of crude in June and July, up 82,000 bpd from the same months last year, mainly to make electricity to keep the population cool, data issued under the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI) showed on Wednesday. 

The kingdom had hoped that more supply from Saudi gas fields being made available for power generation would save millions of barrels of valuable crude for export this summer.

Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, the US EPA raised biofuels (converting food [corn] into fuel [ethanol]) targets for 2013.

And so it goes.

Crazy Season: EPA Focusing on Recycling Beer Containers at NASCAR Events, Not Green Cars

Link here to Washington Examiner (warning: the link may re-direct you to a number of ads; it was a pain to get back to the story).

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, NASCAR will encourage fans to buy “sustainable concessions” at races, expand the use of “safer chemical products,” conserve water, reduce waste, promote recycling, push products approved by the EPA that have a small enviro footprint and encourage suppliers to get an “E3 tuneup” aimed at promoting sustainable manufacturing.

Missing: any talk of greening races or race cars that consume about 450,000 gallons of gas a year and average five miles per gallon.

“Yes,the focus is on suppliers and programs, not green cars,” said an EPA spokesman. 

Thank goodness for that.

 I can't make this stuff up.

Inmates Running the Asylum?

If ever there was a better story ... link here:

Greco said the Clean Air Act requires EPA to determine the mandated volume of cellulosic biofuels each year at “the projected volume available.” However, in 2011 EPA required refineries to use 6.6 million gal of cellulosic biofuels even though, according to EPA’s own records, none were commercially available, Greco said.

Friday Night After The Weekly News Cycle Ends -- Obama Signs Executive Order on Fracking

Slow-rolling the oil and gas industry

Anything to kill the domestic fossil fuel industry

Comes days after Interior Secretary visits the Bakken

Link here.

Obama signs the executive order and EPA set to announce new rules next week.

A big "thank you" to a reader for alerting me to this. I probably would not have seen this until later this weekend.

Rigzone: US industry happy with executive order. Okay.

Friday's announcement won praise from various segments of the oil and natural gas industry, with prominent trade groups like the American Gas Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of America saying it showed the president is committed to promoting natural-gas development in the U.S.

Less than a decade ago, the U.S. was expected to begin importing greater amounts of natural gas. But a recent boom in production, made available by advances in drilling technology, have flooded the U.S. market and supplied domestic businesses and consumers with cheap natural gas.

The President Keeps His Promise -- Kill The Coal Industry

Updates

August 13, 2013: this Motley Fool article is confusing, hard to read, poorly written, but close reading gives one an idea of where utility prices are headed. I'm not sure if I'm reading what Motley Fool has to say, but it sounds like natural gas is subsidizing the high cost of renewable energy. Wind is the least expensive renewable energy source out there, and it still requires huge government intervention to make it "profitable." If the link breaks:

Despite the rising supply of higher-priced coal-based energy and its nuclear problems, Duke did not end North Carolina's renewable energy program.

It is buying 7 megawatts of commercially-produced solar, for instance, and will continue to purchase solar power from rooftop owners. The company also has installed over 1,000 megawatts of wind power. Duke's policy of grabbing energy with both hands for re-sale to others should be subject to question, because the Energy Information Agency notes that wind farms are becoming more efficient, and total demand is down.

Efficiency pays, it's the cheapest renewable fuel there is, and the more efficient the economy gets the harder it will be for marginal electricity suppliers to profit on their investments.

May 22, 2012: I have no idea how accurate this politically-charged message is but I will archive it, allowing us to to check it out later.

Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.

Why the massive price increases? Andy Ott from PJM stated the obvious: “Capacity prices were higher than last year's because of retirements of existing coal-fired generation resulting largely from environmental regulations which go into effect in 2015.” Northern Ohio is suffering from more forced coal-plant retirements than the rest of the region, hence the even higher price.  

Original Post 

Kill Coal

Link here to campaign fulfillment story.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, an advocacy group fighting coal-fired power, said in an interview that the regulation shows that President Barack Obama is moving to a cleaner energy future.

"It's a strong move," Brune said. "It means there will never be another coal plant built without new technology and it probably means even those won't be built because they can't compete."

And so it goes.

He's probably not going to get a lot of support from West Virginia this fall.

The coal industry will suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden under new climate regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the head of the United Mine Workers of America said this week.

“The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said.

Kudlow, CNBC, thinks this is absolute insanity, killing the coal industry for any number of reasons. He will have EPA representative on his show this evening (date of original post).

US Supreme Court Backs Landowners; Limits Power of EPA

Unanimous decision

Link here.

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that landowners can sue to challenge a federal government compliance order under the clean water law, a decision that sides with corporate groups and puts new limits on a key Environmental Protection Agency power.

The justices unanimously rejected the government's position that individuals or companies must first fail to comply with an EPA order and face potentially costly enforcement action before a court can review the case.

The opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia was a victory for an Idaho couple who challenged a 2007 EPA order that required them to restore a wetland they had filled with dirt and rock as they began to build a new vacation home near Priest Lake. They were also told to stop construction on the home.

The couple, Chantell and Michael Sackett, denied their property had ever contained a wetland and complained they were being forced to comply with an order without a court hearing.

I was out and about all day so I am way behind with updates.

I will get back to this one if I have time.

How Good Is the NDIC? Compare It To New York -- No Comparison -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Update

Five minutes after original post: see first comment. "Anonymous" says New York State does have a map of its gas and oil wells. Memo to self: forward this post to the EPA. One has to really wonder about the EPA.

Original Post

Link here.

I assume "anon 1" has additional reasons for sending me this link but I was flabbergasted to read this advice from the EPA to New York State:

The federal agency also wants New York to develop a map of gas wells and to update it at least monthly to provide more information on drilling activities to the public.

A map! Update it at least monthly? Give me a break!

Neither the EPA nor the state has a map of gas wells in New York! And folks wonder why South Korea is light years ahead of the US in applied technology.

I have looked at a fair number of mineral/oil/gas sites for sites in the midwest/west -- never thought of looking at the New York (I don't even know if it exists) -- and have remarked on one occasion: the NDIC site is the best of the lot. And not by a small bit, but by a large margin.

I was lucky enough to "grow up" on the NDIC GIS map server. The first time I ever went to it, it seemed a bit foreign -- in fact, I think it was the first time I learned about "GIS." But with no instructions, I figured it out fairly quickly. There are still (a lot of) things I don't know about the NDIC GIS map server, I assume, but that's a personal problem, as we used to say in the Air Force.

GIS is not a trivial event. It's huge. I am impressed that North Dakota state has it. I think there is a private app for locating wells, but that would be the next best thing the NDIC could do: provide an app (or multiple tablet apps for the Williston Basin).

New York State has no map of its gas wells! I think there are at least four interactive, dynamic maps for North Dakota: NDIC, ESER, UND, and that app.

Exactly What Were The Headline Writers Trying To Say? -- Exactly What They Said-- Not a Bakken Story

Is it just me or is this confusing, except to those who are following this story very, very closely?

This is the headline: EPA rejects appeal of Arctic air permit for Shell exploratory drilling ship

It certainly sounds like, at least to me, this was bad news for Shell.

But it isn't, as far as I can tell.

The story is this, if I understand it correctly.

Shell has poured billions into this project thinking they had all the necessary permits.

At the last minute, the EPA moved the goalposts and denied Shell's applicaton.

Shell went back in and re-accomplished everything, at great expense, and entailing another delay.

The EPA approved Shell's revised application.

The faux-environmentalists appealed the EPA decision to approve the Shell application.

This story, linked above, says the EPA denied the appeal. If I understand the story correctly, the EPA has given Shell the go-ahead to begin exploratory drilling on a very, very limited and constrained basis.

A better headline: EPA rejects appeal; Shell to drill

Or even better: EPA to Shell: Drill, Drill, Drill

Anyway, that's how I read it. But the headline certainly caught my attention -- when it was sent to me by Don. A big thank you to Don for sending this story my way. I had lost the bubble on this one.

From the linked story, in case the link is broken:

Royal Dutch Shell’s quest to drill exploratory wells in Arctic waters has received a boost with the affirmation that its federal air permits for the Chukchi Sea were properly granted.

The EPA Appeals Board on Thursday rejected challenges to the air permits brought by Alaska Native and conservation groups.

Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith said in a formal announcement that the decision means Shell, for the first time, has usable air permits that will allow its drill ship, the Noble Discoverer, to work in the outer continental shelf off Alaska’s northwest coast in 2012.

But on a very, very limited and constrained basis (oh, I already wrote that).

Even Faux-Environmentalists Express Incredulity With The EPA and Biofuels -- Not Even "The Times" Can Make This Stuff Up

Oil companies have been fined for not adding cellulosic biofuel to their refined gasoline and diesel products.

It should be noted that cellulosic biofuel does not exist.

Even the New Yorks Times has trouble squaring the rationale.

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year. 

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. 

I didn't say that; the NY Times said that.

The EPA has lost all its marbles and Americans will lose even more if the current administration is in a position to strengthen the EPA next year.

I can't make this stuff up. Fined for not adding a substance that does not exist. But yet, the EPA spokesman can rationalize it. 

Strangest Story of the Month -- EPA Cancels Drinking Water Tanker -- Why Are They Trucking in Drinking Water to Flush Toilets? -- Dickinson Press

Link here.

This has to be one of the strangest stories of the year.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency abruptly changed its mind Saturday about delivering fresh water to residents of a northeastern Pennsylvania village where residential wells were found to be tainted by a natural gas drilling operation.

Only 24 hours after promising them water, EPA officials informed residents of Dimock that a tanker truck wouldn’t be coming after all. The about-face left residents furious, confused and let down — and, once again, scrambling for water for bathing, washing dishes and flushing toilets.

Agency officials would not explain why they reneged on their promise, or say whether water would be delivered at some point.

Exactly why is anybody trucking in drinking water to flush toilets, or even for showering for that matter?

Hey, lay a pipeline!

North Dakota has WAWS in place. They've been trucking water into Dimock for the past three years; they could have laid a pipeline by now. Unless someone is afraid of a drinking-water-pipeline spill.

You have to go through several google pages to get to some background.

Here is the January 6, 2011, story before the EPA changed its mind (less than 24 hours later):

Federal regulators are considering trucking to households in a Pennsylvania town where residents say wells have been polluted by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.

Only a month after declaring water in Dimock safe to drink, the Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering action after residents supplied the with hundreds of pages of data that link water pollution to fracking.

Dimock residents began complaining of cloudy, foul-smelling water in 2008 after Cabot Oil & Gas Corp began fracking, which involves injecting chemical-laced water and sand into wells to release gas in shale rock deep below the surface.

Environmentalists say fracking pollutes fresh water as fluids seep from drilling wells into aquifers and other supply sources.

Cabot had trucked water to a dozen Dimock households for three years until November when state regulators agreed it could stop. Now residents are onto the last of their water. Some are using pondwater for showers.

I can understand why the Dimock folks are confused.

This story is better written:

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has promised to deliver water to a northeastern Pennsylvania village where a natural gas driller has been accused of tainting homeowners' wells with methane and possibly hazardous chemicals, residents said Friday.

Homeowners in Dimock Township have been without a reliable supply of clean water since Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., the Houston-based drilling firm blamed for polluting their aquifer, stopped making daily deliveries more than a month ago.

Three Dimock residents said the EPA told them Friday that it's hiring a private contractor to deliver water to their homes, about 20 miles south of the New York state line. The EPA said Friday that no decision had been made.

The EPA told residents only a month ago their water was fine, then backtracked as more sampling data came in that the agency said merited further investigation.

Cabot won permission from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to stop daily deliveries of bulk and bottled water on Nov. 30. Since then, anti-drilling groups have been paying to have water delivered to about a dozen households. But the deliveries are sporadic and, with winter setting in, residents say they can't continue indefinitely. 

It's too bad the federal government isn't as interested in the Devils Lake, ND, problem as the Dimock Township, PA, problem.

But back to the Dimock dots:

• trucking in drinking water to flush toilets? Am I missing something here?
• using pondwater for showers? -- the EPA just said the water was safe to drink -- pondwater is safer than EPA "safe drinking water" for showering?
• "possibly" is the operative word
• no pipeline after three years of trucking drinking water? -- even western North Dakota planned and executed the WAWS project in less time -- and that covered a much larger area, and many, many more cities; even a third-world country can get pipeline for water; I think independent water providers put in pump stations for fracking companies within months in the North Dakota oil patch
• why is the federal govt trucking in water, and not the state?

Too bad we don't have Sam Kinison around any more:

World Hunger, Sam Kinison

Texas Railroad Commission and Regulation of Hydraulic Fracking

This, however, is good news.

The Texas Legislature passed the country's first hydraulic fracking fluid disclosure bill last week, requiring oil and gas companies to publicly list the specific chemicals used in drilling.

"We're in favor of it, actually," Shepperd said, explaining the importance of providing the public with that information. 

"Haliburton discloses the ingredients used in its fracturing operations," Haliburton representative Teresa Wong said in an email. "In fact, Haliburton goes a step further than the law requires by disclosing the constituents and additives used in typical fracturing formulas in its website."

And trade secrets would not be disclosed under the new bill, Texas Oil and Gas Association representative Deb Hastings said.

The chemicals would be posted on Frac Focus, the same website hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals are now voluntarily disclosed, Hastings said.

I've seen the Halliburton ads and they are very intriguing.

This article makes too much sense for some folks. 

Energy company executives on Wednesday argued that states - not the federal government - should take the lead in regulating the hydraulic fracturing process being used to produce natural gas from shale formations in New York, the Midwest and Texas. Geologic differences among the regions mean what works in one state might not work in another, stressed Jack Williams, president of XTO Energy, the natural gas producer purchased by Exxon Mobil last year. For instance, in Arkansas and Texas, natural gas developers are finding ways to inject the water they use back into the ground - something that generally can't be done in a different shale formation in the Northeast.

Fracking: No Ground Water Contamination -- EPA

Link here.

At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday (May 24, 2011?), President Barack Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, admitted the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing is practically nonexistent.

“I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing,” she said.

A big "thank you" to Greg for alerting me to this story.