A South American Crossroads

May 29, 2015/by Guest Author

by Brook Lenker, Executive Director

Gracious. Passionate. Determined.

Few words fully capture the evocative resilience of Argentina where history is as turbulent as the winds of Patagonia. Fracking for oil and natural gas is a growing storm on the national horizon, and the effects will be fueled or mitigated by the ceaseless power of the Argentine people.

In the plains of Vaca Muerta, the forces collide. Democracy and calls for transparency meet big energy and nonresponsive government. Chevron has seduced YPF, the state-supported oil company, for a heavily-subsidized stake in the hydrocarbon riches. The shale play represents some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world, proportional to the scale of concern about excessive use of water and its possible contamination; ranching and agriculture are the lifeblood of this drought-prone land. So much is at stake.

Our Energy Solutions in South America

FracTracker, Earthworks, and Ecologic Institute sent a delegation to Argentina and Uruguay from May 5 through the 12th as part of an outreach program called Our Energy Solutions made possible by our hosts’ generosity, foundation support, and last year’s Indiegogo campaign.

Eager audiences greeted our presentations about the American experience with unconventional oil and gas development and the promise of renewable energy. It was standing room only at a Senate forum in Buenos Aires and the offices of El Telegrafo in Paysandu. In Parana, we kicked-off a national conference about fracking and concluded our tour in San Rafael – a city on the northern fringe of the drilling boom. In total, we addressed more than 650 people, answering their concerns, cultivating their understanding of the perils of extraction, and sharing the opportunities for cleaner energy. Our ultimate reach was even greater, magnified by television and newspaper coverage and connections fostered with other organizations and institutions. The new relationships in South America may achieve unfathomable good.

A Moral Imperative

With his Argentine roots, Pope Francis is a ubiquitous and revered figure across the country. He’s also a gentle global force calling on humanity to confront climate change and care for the earth. One of our unforgettable hosts, Juan Pablo Olsson, had been in Rome the week prior to meet with the pontiff and participate in an environmental conference at the Vatican. Inspired, Juan Pablo and other speakers cited the moral imperative of the issues we were communicating and shared this papal plea: “a humble and simple request to work together to defend the future of the planet.”

The call still resonates. Every day we are confronted by the acute harms of unrestrained extraction – from contamination of air and water to the violation of fundamental human and constitutional rights. The glaciers of Patagonia aren’t melting, they are crying – for a global demonstration of compassion.

Stay tuned for news in the fall from the next leg of this journey – Europe.

Our Energy Solutions

April 27, 2015/by Guest Author

14 workshops in 7 countries on 3 continents

A FracTracker team has just returned from North Carolina where fracking has been given the green light by the state’s government. Time may tell what reserves are contained within the Mesozoic basins but already landmen are knocking on doors and striking deals with willing landowners. Offshore drilling is also under consideration in a state where tourism – fueled in part by renowned beach destinations – is a $20 billion a year industry.

OES panel answering questions in Asheville, NC

The visit was for Our Energy Solutions, a project bringing 14 workshops to seven countries on three continents. The aim is to help build a global community of engaged citizens and stakeholders who are informed of the risks of fossil fuels (like oil and natural gas), enlightened about renewable energy opportunities, and inspired to share ideas for a more sustainable planet. The attendance, interest, and dialogue at the North Carolina workshops were inspiring. People young and old came out to prove there is great concern about these issues. While acknowledging the complexities of energy and climate challenges, they seemed willing to dig-in, reach-out, engage, and act. The audiences owned the “Our” in Our Energy Solutions. Just weeks earlier, another team from FracTracker and the Ecologic Institute – the lead collaborators in Our Energy Solutions – launched the project with workshops in Florida, hosted by the South Florida Wildlands Association. In North Carolina, our partners were Environment North Carolina and MountainTrue. These regional and statewide groups offer abundant ways to get involved and illuminate a better path forward.

Both states are at risk from accelerated and more extreme hydrocarbon extraction, but both also bear significant potential for broad success with renewable energy. While only 0.1% of Florida’s current generating capacity comes from solar, it has some of the strongest incoming solar radiation in the country. North Carolina sports the best conditions for offshore wind energy on the east coast. The Tarheel State ranked 2^nd in the nation for new installed solar capacity in 2014, and the same year, over 4,300 North Carolinians worked in the solar power industry. Already, 4,800 Floridians work in the solar industry.

Well density by county in the U.S.

The volatile economics of oil and gas, the effects of fossil fuel combustion on the planet, and the impairment of human health and the environment caused by extraction necessitate other approaches to meet our energy needs. Our Energy Solutions will strive to showcase brighter possibilities – one workshop at a time. Next stop, Argentina – May 5-12^th.

Check out Our Energy Solutions on Facebook and join the conversation!

North American Pipeline Proposal Map

March 14, 2014/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – OH Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

With all the focus on the existing TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline – as well as the primary expansion proposal recently rejected by Lancaster County, NB Judge Stephanie Stacy and more recently the Canadian National Energy Board’s approval of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline – we thought it would be good to generate a map that displays related proposals in the US and Canada.

North American Proposed Pipelines and Current Pipelines

To view the fullscreen version of this map along with a legend and more details, click on the arrows in the upper right hand corner of the map.

The map was last updated in October 2014.

Pipeline Incidents

The frequency and intensity of proposals and/or expansions of existing pipelines has increased in recent years to accompany the expansion of the shale gas boom in the Great Plains, Midwest, and the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta. This expansion of existing pipeline infrastructure and increased transport volume pressures has resulted in significant leakages in places like Marshall, MI along the Kalamazoo River and Mayflower, AR. Additionally, the demand for pipelines is rapidly outstripping supply – as can be seen from recent political pressure and headline-grabbing rail explosions in Lac-Mégantic, QC, Casselton, ND, Demopolis, AL, and Philadelphia.¹ According to rail transport consultant Anthony Hatch, “Quebec shocked the industry…the consequences of any accident are rising.” This sentiment is ubiquitous in the US and north of the border, especially in Quebec where the sites, sounds, and casualties of Lac-Mégantic will not soon be forgotten.

Improving Safety Through Transparency

It is imperative that we begin to make pipeline data available to all manner of parties ex ante for planning purposes. The only source of pipeline data historically has been the EIA’s Pipeline Network. However, the last significant update to this data was 7/28/2011 – meaning much of the recent activity has been undocumented and/or mapped in any meaningful way. The EIA (and others) claims national security is a primary reason for the lack of data updates, but it could be argued that citizens’ right-to-know with respect to pending proposals outweighs such concerns – at least at the county or community level. There is no doubt that pipelines are magnets for attention, stretching from the nefarious to the curious. Our interest lies in filling a crucial and much requested data gap.

Metadata

Pipelines in the map above range from the larger Keystone and Bluegrass across PA, OH, and KY to smaller ones like the Rex Energy Seneca Extension in Southeast Ohio or the Addison Natural Gas Project in Vermont. In total the pipeline proposals presented herein are equivalent to 46% of EIA’s 34,133 pipeline segment inventory (Table 1).

Table 1. Pipeline segments (#), min/max length, total length, and mean length (miles).

Section	#	Min	Max	Mean	Sum
Bakken	34	18	560	140	4,774
MW East-West	68	5	1,056	300	20,398
Midwest to OK/TX	13	13	1,346	307	3,997
Great Lakes	5	32	1,515	707	3,535
TransCanada	3	612	2,626	1,341	4,021
Liquids Ventures	2	433	590	512	1,023
Alliance et al	3	439	584	527	1,580
Rocky Express	2	247	2,124	1,186	2,371
Overland Pass	6	66	1,685	639	3,839
TX Eastern	15	53	1,755	397	5,958
Keystone Laterals	4	32	917	505	2,020
Gulf Stream	2	541	621	581	1,162
Arbuckle ECHO	25	27	668	217	5,427
Sterling	9	42	793	313	2,817
West TX Gateway	13	1	759	142	1,852
SXL in PA and NY	15	48	461	191	2,864
New England	70	2	855	65	4,581
Spectra BC	9	11	699	302	2,714
Alliance et al	4	69	4,358	2,186	4,358
MarkWest	63	2	113	19	1,196
Mackenzie	46	3	2,551	190	8,745
Total	411	128	1,268	512	89,232^†

^† This is equivalent to 46% of the current hydrocarbon pipeline inventory in the US across the EIA’s inventory of 34,133 pipeline segments with a total length of 195,990 miles

The map depicts all of the following (Note: Updated quarterly or when notified of proposals by concerned citizens):

All known North American pipeline proposals
Those pipelines that have yet to be documented by the EIA’s Natural Gas Pipeline Network mapping team
EIA documented pipelines more accurately mapped to the county level (i.e., select northeastern pipelines)
The current Keystone XL pipeline and the Keystone XL expansion proposal rectified to the county level in Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas

We generated this map by importing JPEGs into ArcMAP 10.2, we then “Fit To Display”. Once this was accomplished we anchored the image (i.e., georeferenced) in place using a minimum of 10 control points (Note: All Root Mean Square (RMS) error reports are available upon request) and as many as 30-40. When JPEGs were overly distorted we then converted or sought out Portable Network Graphic (PNG) imagery to facilitate more accurate anchoring of imagery.

We will be updating this map periodically, and it should be noted that all layers are a priori aggregations of regional pipelines across the 4 categories above.

Imagery sources:

Northeast – Long Island Sound, Montreal to Portland, Westchester, Spectra Energy Northeast, Maritime Northeast-Algonquin-Texas Eastern, Delaware River Watershed, Northeastern accuracy of existing EIA data, New England Kinder Morgan, Spectra Energy-Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company (TGP)-Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGTS)
Duluth to The Dakotas, NYMarc Pipeline, Mariner East, Millenium Pipeline Company, WBI Energy’s Bakken,
British Columbia – Enbridge, Spectra/BG, Coastal, Tanker Route
Midwest – ATEX and Bluegrass, BlueGrass, BlueGrass Pipeline,
TransCanada/New England – Portland, Financial Post,
Alaska Pipelines Historically
Rail projects and primary transport
Keystone Tar Sands – Canada (website no longer active), United States, Texas-Oklahoma
Gulf Coast – Florida
MarkWest Houston, Liberty, Liberty, Houston and Majorsville,
Texas Oklahoma – Granite Wash Extension,
Ohio – Spectra Energy, Enterprise Products, Kinder Morgan, Buckeye-Kinder Morgan-El Paso, Chesapeake Energy and AEP
The Rockies Express Pipeline (REX)

Reference

1. Krauss, C, & Mouawad, J. (2014, January 25). Accidents Surge as Oil Industry Takes the Train, The New York Times.

Wells in Quebec Along the St. Lawrence

January 20, 2011/by Matt Kelso, BA

Wells along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada. Please click the map for a larger, dynamic view.
The United States isn’t the only place where the gas drilling industry is adversely affecting the environment. I have recently uploaded a dataset from Quebec’s Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement, which includes over 600 wells, including 31 which have recently been inspected.

The CBC has correctly noted that 19 of these inspected wells–more than half–were shown to be have natural gas emissions, which is a violation in Quebec for wells that are supposed to be temporarily capped.

Even though the 31 inspected wells is a small sample size, there were other problems.

[Edit – Map removed; URL expired]

Problems identified with inspected wells along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. Click the “i” and then click on one of the map icons for more information.

In fact, of the 31 wells, there were only three that didn’t have any reported problems at all (1). While this report doesn’t provide a lot of detail on these violations, repeated violations such as, “bolted joints in water” or , “no surface casing” makes it seem like either the drilling operators don’t care about the law, or they actually don’t have someone on site who knows what is permissible in the area that they are drilling in.

With almost every well having a violation and some having more than one, the violations per well in Quebec seem roughly in line with the 0.96 violations per Marcellus well in Pennsylvania.

Although many of the wells in this report are quite old, the natural gas industry is starting to accelerate their efforts there as Canada begins to explore the Utica shale.

One of those wells erroneously appears to be in Maine, an error that probably occurred on my end when I converted from one coordinate system to another. I will try to address that problem shortly.

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