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 2nd 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 5-12th.
Lifting the Veil on Oil & Gas Company Spills & Violations
NRDC Issue Paper • April 2015
Today Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report in conjunction with work by those of us at FracTracker Alliance.
We launched this investigation to determine what information about oil and gas company violations is publicly available on the Internet, how accessible it is, and whether it provides an adequate understanding about the practices of different companies.
This report highlights the information gaps about the frequency and nature of oil and gas company violations; such data is only publically accessible in 3 states – even though 36 states have active oil and gas development.
To take the review one step further, we analyzed the data that was available from these states – Pennsylvania, Colorado, and West Virginia. The results show that companies have been issued a series of violations, some of which were quite severe.
Of these companies, the following 10 had the most violations overall, in order of most to least:
Chesapeake Energy (669)
Cabot Oil and Gas (565)
Talisman Energy (362))
Range Resources (281)
EXCO Resources (249)
ExxonMobil (246)
EQT Corporation (245)
Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (235)
Shell (223)
Penn Virginia Corporation (186)
Find out more information, including the top violators in PA, CO, and WV, on NRDC’s website or by reading the full report (PDF)
Contact: Kate Slusark Kiely, 212-727-4592 or kkiely@nrdc.org
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Fracking-Most-Wanted-Feature1.jpg400900FracTracker Alliancehttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngFracTracker Alliance2015-04-01 15:21:002020-07-21 10:32:12Fracking’s Most Wanted – An NRDC Issue Paper
The US Food, Energy, Water Interface Examined By Ted Auch, Great Lakes Program Coordinator
With the emergence of concerns about the Food, Energy, Water (FEW) intersection as it relates to oil and gas (O&G) expansion, we thought it was time to dig into the numbers and ask some very simple questions about organic farms near drilling. Below is an analysis of the location and quantity of organic farms with heavy drilling activity in Ohio and nationally. Organic farms rely heavily on the inherent/historical quality of their soils and water, so we wanted to understand whether and how these businesses closest to O&G drilling are being affected.
Key Findings:
Currently 11% of US organic farms are within US O&G Regions of Concern (ROC). However, this number has the potential to balloon to 15-31% if our respective shale plays and basins are exploitated, either partially or in full,
68-74% of these farms produce crops in states like California, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas,
Issues such as soil quality, watershed resilience, and water rights are likely to worsen over time with additional drilling.
Methods
To answer this broad question, we divided organic farms in the United States into three categories, depending on whether they were within the:
Core (O&G Wells < 1 mile from each other),
Intermediate (1-3 miles between O&G Wells), or
Periphery (3-5 miles between O&G Wells) of current activity or Regions of Concern (ROC).1
Additionally, from our experience looking at O&G water withdrawal stresses within the largely agrarian Muskingum River Watershed in OH we decided to add to the ROCs. To this end we worked to identify which sub-watersheds (5-10 miles between O&G Wells) and watersheds (10-20 miles between O&G Wells) might be affected by O&G development.
Together, distance from wells and density of development within particular watersheds make up the 5 Regions of Concern (ROCs) (Table 1).
Table 1. Five ROCs under this investigation and what they look like from a mapping perspective
Label
Distance Between Wells
Mapping Visual
Core
< 1 mi
Intermediate
1-3 mi
Periphery
3-5 mi
Sub-Watershed
5-10 mi
Watershed
10-20 mi
We generated a dataset of 19,515 US organic farms from the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) by using the Geocode Address function in ArcGIS 10.2, which resulted in a 100% match for all farms.2
We also extracted soil order polygons within the above 5 ROCs using the NRCS’ STATSGO Derived Soil Order3 dataset made available to us by Sharon Whitmoyer at the USDA-NRCS-NSSC-Geospatial Research Unit and West Virginia University. For those not familiar with soil classification, soil orders are analogous to the kingdom level within the hierarchy of biological classification. Although, in the case of soils there are 12 soil orders compared to the 6 kingdoms of biology.
The National Organic Farms Map
This map shows organic farms across the U.S. that are located within the aforementioned ROCs. Data include certifying agent, whether or not the farm produces livestock, crops, or wild crops along with contact information, farm name, physical address, and specific products produced. View map fullscreen
National Numbers
Figure 1. Total and incremental number of US organic farms in the 5 O&G ROCs.
Nationally, the number of organic farms near drilling activity within specific regions of concern are as follows (as shown in Figure 1):
Watershed O&G ROC – 2,140 organic farms (11% of North American organic farms)
Sub-Watershed O&G ROC – 1,319
Periphery O&G ROC – 752
Intermediate O&G ROC – 455
Core O&G ROC – 183
Ohio’s Organic Farms Near Drilling
The following key statistics stood out among the analyses for OH’s 703 (3.6% of US total) organic farms. Figures 2 & 3 show how many farms are near drilling activity and injection (disposal) wells in OH. Click the images to view fullsize graphics:
Figure 2. OH Organic Farms Proximity to Drilling Activity
Figure 3. OH Organic Farms Proximity to Injection Wells
Potential Trends
If oil and gas extraction continues along the same path that we have seen to-date, it is reasonable to expect that we could see an increase in the number of organic farms near this industrial activity. A few figures that we have worked up are shown below:
2,912 Organic Farms in the US Shale Plays (15% of total organic farms)
Another way to look at these five ROCs when asking how shale gas build-out will interact with and/or influence organic farming is to look at the soils beneath these ROCs. What types of activity do they currently support? The productivity of organic farms, as well as their ability to be labeled “organic,” are reliant upon the health of their soils even more so than conventional farms. Organic farms cannot rely on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or related soil amendments to increase productivity. Soil manipulation is prohibitive from a cost and options perspective. Thus, knowing what types of soils the shale industry has used and is moving towards is critical to understanding how the FEW dynamic will play out in the long-term. There is no more important variable to the organic farmer sans freshwater than soil quality and diversity.
The soils of most concern under this analysis are the Prairie-Forest Transition soils of the Great Lakes and Plains, commonly referred to as Alfisols, and the Carbon-Rich Grasslands or Mollisols (Figure 4 & 5). The latter is proposed by some as a soil order worthy of protection given our historical reliance on its exceptional soil fertility and support for the once ubiquitous Tall Grass Prairies. Both soils face a second potential wave of O&G development, with a combined 18,660 square miles having come under the influence of the O&G industry within the Core ROC and an additional 58-108,000 square miles in the Intermediate and Periphery ROCs. If the watersheds within these soils and O&G co-habitat were to come under development, total potential Alfisol and Mollisol alteration could reach 273,200 square miles. This collection of soils currently accounts for 43-47% of the Core and Intermediate O&G ROCs and would “stabilize” at 50-51% of O&G development if the watersheds they reside in were to see significant O&G exploration.
Figure 6. The five soil orders within the Bakken Shale formation in Montana and North Dakota.
These same soils sit beneath or have been cleared for much of our wheat, corn, and soybean fields – not to mention much of the Bakken Shale exploration to date (Figure 6, above)
The three forest soil orders (i.e., Spodosol, Ultisol, and Andisol shown in Figures 7-9) account for 9,680-20,529 square miles of the Core and Intermediate O&G ROCs, which is 22 and 17% of those ROC’s, respectively. If we assume future exploration into the Periphery and Watershed ROC we see that forest soils will become less of a concern, dropping to 14-15% of these outlying potential plays, with the same being true for the two Miscellaneous soil types. The latter will decline from 28% to 25% of potential O&G ROCs.
Figure 7. Ultisol – Courtesy of the University of Georgia
Figure 8. Spodosol – Courtesy of the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest
Figure 9. Andisol – Courtesy of USDA’s NRCS
Figure 10. Histosol, – Courtesy of Michigan State University
If peripheral exploration were to be realized, another soil type will have to fill this gap. Our analysis demonstrates this gap would be filled by either Organic Wetlands or Histosols, which currently constitute <200 and 529 square miles of the Core and Intermediate ROCs, respectively (Figure 10). For so many reasons wetland soils are crucial to the maintenance and enhancement of ecosystem services, wildlife migration, agricultural productivity, and the capture and storage of greenhouse gases. However, if O&G exploration does expand to the Periphery ROC and beyond we would see reliance on wetland soils increase nearly 15 fold (i.e., 16% of Lower 48 wetland soil acreage).
The quality of these wetlands is certainly up for debate. However, what is fact is that these wetlands would be altered beyond even the best reclamation techniques. We know from the reclamation literature that the myriad difficulties associated with reassembling prior plant wetland communities. Finally, it is worth noting that a similar uptick in O&G reliance on arid (i.e., extremely unproductive but unstable) soils is may occur with future industry expansion. These soils will, as a percent of all ROCs, increase from 7% to 9% (i.e. 10-11% of all lower 48 arid soil acreage).
What do these changes mean for the agriculture industry in OH?
If these future O&G exploration scenarios were to play out, we estimate 20-22% of Southern Acidic Forest, Prairie-Forest Transition, Miscellaneous Recent Origin, and Carbon-Rich Grassland soils will have been effected or dramatically altered due to O&G land-use/land-cover (LULC) change nationally (Figure 11). This decline in productivity is likely familiar to communities currently grappling with how to manage a dramatically different landscape post-shale introduction in counties like Bradford in PA and Carroll in OH. The effects that such alteration has had and will have on landscape productivity, wildlife habitat fragmentation, and hydrological cycles is unknown but worthy of significant inquiry.
These questions are important enough to have received a session at Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association’s (OEFFA) 2015 conference in Granville last month and were deemed worthy of a significant grant to The FracTracker Alliance from the Hoover Foundation aimed at quantifying the total LULC footprint of the shale gas industry across three agrarian OH counties. Early results indicate that every acre of well-pad requires 5.3 acres of gathering lines along with nearly 14 miles of buried pipelines – most of which are beneath high quality wetlands. This study speaks to the potential for 20-30% of the state’s Core Utica Region – or 10-15% of the Expanded Utica Region4 – being altered by shale gas activity.
Figure 11. National distribution of soil types within the 5 ROCs under consideration: 1) Forest Soils, 2) Prairie/Agriculture soils, 3) Organic Wetlands, 4) Miscellaneous soils, 5) Dry Soils.
Figure 11 Description:
Forest Soils – Northern and Southern Acidic Forests, Volcanic Forests,
Prairie/Agriculture – Prairie-Forest Transition and Carbon-Rich Grasslands,
Organic Wetlands
Miscellaneous – Recent and Intermediate Origins,
Dry Soils – Dry Calcium Carbonite and Clay-Rich Shrink/Swell Clays
Conclusion
The current and potential interaction(s) between the O&G and organic farming industries is nontrivial. Currently 11% of US organic farms are within what we are calling O&G ROCs. However, this number has the potential to balloon to 15-31% if our respective shale plays and basins are exploited, either partially or in full. Most of these (68-74%) are crop producers in states like California, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
Issues such as soil quality – specifically Prairie-Forest, Carbon Rich Grasslands, and Wetland soils – watershed resilience, and water rights are likely to become of more acute regional concern as the FEW interactions become increasingly coupled. How and when this will play out is anyone’s guess, but its play out is indisputable. Agriculture is going to face many staunch challenges in the coming years, as the National Science Foundation5 wrote:
The security of the global food supply is under ever-increasing stress due to rises in both human population and standards of living world-wide. By the end of this century, the world’s population is expected to exceed 10 billion, about 30% higher than today. Further, as standards of living increase globally, the demand for meat is increasing, which places more demand on agricultural resources than production of vegetables or grains. Growing energy use, which is connected to water availability and climate change, places additional stress on agriculture. It is clear that scientific and technological breakthroughs are needed to produce food more efficiently from “farm to fork” to meet the challenge of ensuring a secure, affordable food supply.
An additional 69 organic farms were geo-referenced in Canada and 7,524 across the globe for a similar global analysis to come.
Description of STATSGO2 Database and associated metadata here.
Core Utica Regions include any county that has ≥10 Utica permits to date and Expanded Utica Region includes any county that has 1 or more Utica permits.
By the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee – Subcommittee on Food Systems in “Food, Energy and Water: Transformative Research Opportunities in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences”
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/OrganicFarms-Feature.jpg400900Ted Auch, PhDhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngTed Auch, PhD2015-03-11 15:00:572020-07-21 10:32:10Organic farms near drilling activity in the U.S. and Ohio
On January 26, 2015, the Columbian, a paper in Southwestern Washington state, reported that an oil tanker spilled over 1,600 gallons of Bakken Crude in early November 2014. The train spill was never cleaned up, because frankly, nobody knows where the spill occurred. This issue highlights weaknesses in the incident reporting protocol for trains, which appears to be less stringent than other modes of transporting crude.
Possible Train Spill Routes
To follow the most likely train route for this incident, start at the yellow flag, then follow the line west. The route forks at Spokane – the northernmost route would be the most efficient. View full screen map
While there is not a good place for an oil spill of this size, some places are worse than others – and some of the locations along this train route are pretty bad. For example, the train passes through the southern edge of Glacier National Park in Montana, the scenic Columbia River, and the Spokane and Seattle metropolitan areas.
Significant Reporting Delay
The Columbian article mentions that railroads are required to report spills of hazardous materials in Washington State within 30 minutes of spills being noticed. In this case, however, the spill was apparently not noticed until the tanker car in question was no longer in BNSF custody. Therefore, relevant state and federal regulatory agencies were never made aware of the incident.
Both state and federal officials are now investigating, and we will follow up this post with more details when they are made available.
Pittsburgh, PA – FracTracker Alliance announces the release of our free iPhone app – designed to collect and share experiences related to oil and gas drilling across the United States. As unconventional drilling or “fracking” intensifies, so too do the innovative ways in which citizens can track, monitor, and report potential issues from their smart phones.
The app allows users to submit oil and gas photos or reports. Users can also view a map of wells drilled near them and user-submitted reports. This map shows wells that have been drilled both unconventionally and conventionally.
“FracTracker’s app contributes to the collective understanding of oil and gas impacts and provides a new opportunity for public engagement,” explains Brook Lenker, Executive Director of the FracTracker Alliance. “We hope that our mobile app will revolutionize how people share oil and gas information.”
Development Partners
Several organizations and community groups helped to test and improve the app during its development. To address questions about the impacts of oil and gas development across landscapes, FracTracker joined with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) to create a crowd-sourced digital map with photos detailing the scale of oil and gas development near North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park using the app. The photo map is part of a NPCA’s campaign designed to educate citizens about the cross-landscape impacts of oil and gas development near America’s national parks. NPCA is hosting two events this week in support of this campaign work – in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
“FracTracker’s new app allows us to tell a visual story about fracking’s impacts to national parks and their local communities,” said Nick Lund, who manages the NPCA’s Landscape Conservation program. “With this week’s public events in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, we will show the dramatic impact that fracking continues to have, in just a few years, near Theodore Roosevelt National Park. These images can help inform the public and our elected officials as they finalize drilling regulations in Pennsylvania. We hope this information will lead to strong protections for our national parks, our forests, and our drinking water.”
Beta testing and reviews of the app were also conducted by Mountain Watershed Association, Responsible Drilling Alliance, Audubon PA, PA Forest Coalition, Southwest PA Environmental Health Project, and Save Our Streams PA. The app was developed in collaboration with Viable Industries, L.L.C.
Like NPCA, groups can use the FracTracker app to collect visual data and develop customized maps for their own projects. Contact FracTracker to learn more: info@fractracker.org.
Download the App
Download the free app from the iTunes store or visit FracTracker.org to learn more: www.fractracker.org/apps. Currently the app is only available for only iPhone users, but an Android platform is due out later this year.
App Screenshots
See a map of wells near you or submit a report.
The legend describes the points on the map in more detail.
Clicking on a dot shows the record/well
Clicking the “i” shows you more information about the point
FracTracker Alliance is a non-profit organization with offices in PA, OH, NY, WV, and CA that shares maps, data, and analyses to communicate impacts of the global oil and gas industry and inform actions that positively shape our energy future. Learn more about FracTracker at www.fractracker.org.
National Parks Conservation Association: Since 1919, the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association has been the leading voice of the American people in protecting and enhancing our National Park System. NPCA, its one million members and supporters, and many partners work together to protect the park system and preserve our nation’s natural, historical, and cultural heritage for our children and grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.npca.org.
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/iPhone-App-Feature.png400900FracTracker Alliancehttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngFracTracker Alliance2014-11-12 09:43:012020-07-21 10:34:06FracTracker Launches Oil and Gas Tracking App
By Ted Auch, OH Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance
Anyone who has been paying attention to the domestic shale gas conversation knows the issue is fraught with controversy and political leanings. The debate is made only more complicated by the extensive lobbying to promote drilling and related activities. It would be nice to look at shale gas through a purely analytical lens, but it is impossible to decouple the role of politicians and those that fund their campaigns from the myriad socioeconomic, health, and environmental costs/benefits.
As such, this article covers two issues:
Who Gets Funded: the distribution of oil and gas (O&G) funds across the two primary parties in the US, as well as the limited funds awarded to third parties, and
Funding Allocation to a Specialized Committee: industry financing to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology1 the primary house committee responsible for:
…all matters relating to energy research, development, and demonstration projects therefor; commercial application of energy technology; Department of Energy research, development, and demonstration programs; Department of Energy laboratories; Department of Energy science activities; energy supply activities; nuclear, solar, and renewable energy, and other advanced energy technologies; uranium supply and enrichment, and Department of Energy waste management; fossil energy research and development; clean coal technology; energy conservation research and development, including building performance, alternate fuels, distributed power systems, and industrial process improvements; pipeline research, development, and demonstration projects; energy standards; other appropriate matters as referred by the Chairman; and relevant oversight.
Fig. 1. Relevant Oil & Gas PACs, Institutes, and Think Tanks – as well as Koch Industries and subsidiaries offices (Orange). Click to explore
1. Letting the Numbers Speak
“When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”
The above quote has been attributed to a variety of sources from sports figures to economists, but nowhere is it more relevant than the politics of shale gas. The figures below present campaign financing from O&G industry to the men and women that represent us in Washington, DC.
Data Analysis Process
To follow the shale money path, FracTracker has analyzed data from the: a) total contributions and b) average per representative across Democrats and Republicans. Our Third Party analysis included five Independents in the Senate as well as one Green, one Unaffiliated, one Libertarian, and two Independents in the House.
Results
Fig. 3. US Senate Salary (Late 18th Century to 2014) & Average American Salary (1967-2013).
There are sizable inter-party differences across both branches of congress (See Figures 2a-b). In total, Democratic and Republican senators have received $18.1 and $48.6 million from the O&G industry since data collection began in 1990. Meanwhile, Third Party senators have received a total of $385,632 in O&G campaign finance. It stands to reason that the US House would receive more money in total than the senate, given that it contains 435 representatives to the Senate’s 100, and this is indeed the case; Democratic members of the House received $28.9 million to date vs. $104.9 million allocated to the House’ GOP members – or a 3.6 fold difference. Third Party members of the House have received the smallest allotment of O&G political largesse, coming in at $197,145 in total.
To put this into perspective, your average Democratic and Republican senator has seen the gap increase between his/her salary and the average American from $27,536 in 1967 to $145,171 in 2013 (Figure 3).
These same individuals have also seen their political war chests expand on average by $151,043 and $412,007, respectively. Third Party senators have seen their campaign funds swell by an average of $64,272 since 1990. Meanwhile, the U.S. Capitol’s Democratic and GOP south wing residents have seen their O&G campaign contributions increase by an average of $50,836 and $188,529, respectively, with even Third Partiers seeing a $38,429 spike in O&G generosity.
Figure 2a. Total funding received by both branches of the US legislative branch
Figure 2b. Average funding received by oil and gas industry
Location is a better predictor of whether a politician supports the O&G industry than his/her political affiliation. At the top of the O&G campaign financing league tables are extraction-intensive states such as Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Alaska, California, and Louisiana. (See Figures 4a-h at the bottom of this article for Average Oil & Gas Contributions to US House Representatives and Senators across the US.)
2. Committee on Science, Space and Technology
The second portion of this post covers influences related to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology (CSST). There is no more powerful group in this country when it comes O&G policy construction and stewardship than CSST. The committee is currently made up of 22 Republicans and 18 Democrats from 21 states. Thirty-five percent of the committee hails from either California (6) or Texas (8), with Florida and Illinois each contributing three representatives to the committee. Almost all (94%) of the O&G campaign finance allocated to CSST has gone to its sitting GOP membership.
The top three recipients of O&G generosity are all from Texas, receiving 3.2-3.5 times more money than their party averages – totaling $1.93 million or 37% of the total committee O&G financial support. The next four most beholden members of the committee are Frank Lucas and Michael McCaul (TX, $904,709 combined), Cynthia Marie Lummis (WY, $400,400), and Kevin Cramer (ND, $343,000). The average Democratic member of the CSST committee has received 12.8 times less in O&G funding relative to their GOP counterparts; Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex representatives Marc Veasey and Eddie Bernice Johnson collected a combined $130,350 from industry. Interestingly a member of political royalty, Joe Kennedy III, has collected nearly $50K from the O&G industry, which corresponds to the average for his House Democrat colleagues.
See Figures 5-6 for totals and percentage of party averages of O&G campaign funds contributed to current member of the US House CSST.
Figure 5. Totals
Figure 6. Percentage of party averages
“Don’t Confuse Me With The Facts”
In addition to current do-nothing politicians beholden to the O&G industry, we have prospects such as Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst going so far as to declare that the Koch Brothers various Political Action Committees (PACs) started her trajectory in politics. Promising “ ‘to abolish’ the Environmental Protection Agency, she opposes the Clean Water Act, and in May she downplayed the role that human activities have played in climate change and/or rises in atmospheric CO2.
In Ohio it seems realistic to conjecture that OH Governor John Kasich, bracing for a tough reelection campaign, is wary of biting the PAC hands that feed him. He has also likely seen what happened to his “moderate” colleagues in states like Mississippi and Virginia, and in the age of Citizens United and McCutcheon he knows that the Hydrocarbon Industrial Complex will make him pay for anything that they construe as hostile to fossil fuel business as usual.
Close to the Action
Groups like the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, Randolph Foundation, and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)2 are unapologetically wedded to continued production of fossil fuels. Nationally and in OH, politicians appear to be listening more to the talking points and white papers of such groups than they do their own constituents.. Therefore, it is no coincidence that DC and its surrounding Virginia suburbs has been colonized by industry mouthpieces, energy policy and economic academic tanks, philanthropies, and Political Action Committees (PACs). See Figure 1 for more information.
Know Your Vote
So when you go to the polls on November 4th, remember that politicians are increasingly beholden not to their constituents but to the larger donors to their campaigns. Nowhere is this more of a concern than US energy policy and our geopolitical linkages to producers and emerging markets. More to the point, when offered an opportunity to engage said officials make sure to bring up their financial links as it relates to how they vote and the types of legislation they write, massage, customize, or outright eliminate. As Plato once said, “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Our current selection of politicians at the state and federal level are not evil, but data on O&G politics and campaign financing presented herein do indicate that objectivity with respect to oil and gas legislation has been at the very least compromised.
Figures 4a-h. Average & Total O&G Industry Contributions to US House Representatives and Senators across the US mainland and Alaska
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):
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.
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 2nd 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.
