As I watched the documentary GASLAND last night on HBO my blood began to boil. I’m sure my blood pressure went up dramatically during the 1 hour and 40 minute film. After watching our corrupt government decide that the biggest baddest banks on the planet were too big to fail over the last two years and giving my children’s and their children’s money to these behemoth criminal enterprises, I was not surprised to see poor working class Americans treated like dirt by these same corrupt politicians. Big corporations can buy off politicians to ensure profits. The “small people”, as the Chairman of BP likes to call them, are expendable and can be ignored. They are too small to matter.
Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000, when he became VP of the United States. Halliburton had invented a new process for extracting natural gas from shale formations. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudi Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us.
Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well. Horizontal hydrofracking is a means of tapping shale deposits containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by conventional drilling. Vertical hydrofracking is used to extend the life of an existing well once its productivity starts to run out, sort of a last resort. Horizontal fracking differs in that it uses a mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of gallons of water per frack. This water then becomes contaminated and must be cleaned and disposed of.
This new process opened up much of the US to drilling for natural gas. Every big oil and gas company in America was falling all over themselves to buy up the land rights for drilling. Chesapeake, Encana, Cabot, etc. saw big dollar signs. This is where the story gets interesting. George Bush signed a new energy bill into law in 2005. A loophole was inserted into the bill regarding fracking. The Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.
The industry insists that fracking is safe and does not contaminate drinking water. Why would they need an exemption from the Safe Water Drinking Act if their process doesn’t contaminate drinking water? Did the American public benefit from this loophole? The loophole benefitted Halliburton and the massive gas corporations. This jump started a phenomenal boom in 37 states. My state of PA sits on top of the Marcellus Shale formation. Northern and Western PA are undergoing a drilling boom.
Now the inconvenient truth. The process of capturing this natural gas has consequences:
- The average well is up to 8,000 feet deep. The depth of drinking water aquifers is about 1,000 feet. The problems typically stem from poor cement well casings that leak natural gas as well as fracking fluid into water wells.
- Generally 1 to 8 million gallons of water may be used to frack a well. A well may be fracked up to 18 times.
- For each frack, 80-300 tons of chemicals may be used. Presently, the natural gas industry does not have to disclose the chemicals used, but scientists have identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.
- The gas comes up wet in produced water and has to be separated from the wastewater on the surface. Only 30-50% of the water is typically recovered from a well. This wastewater can be highly toxic.
- Evaporators evaporate off VOCs and condensate tanks steam off VOCs, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The wastewater is then trucked to water treatment facilities.
- As the VOCs are evaporated and come into contact with diesel exhaust from trucks and generators at the well site, ground level ozone is produced. Ozone plumes can travel up to 250 miles.
Since the process is “safe” according to the gas industry, they lease the land from the occupants and drill in people’s front and back yards while the residents continue to live on the property. If the process wasn’t safe, these companies would have to negotiate a purchase price for all the land. This would decrease their profits significantly. Josh Fox lives in a small PA town that sits atop the Marcellus Shale. He received a lease proposal that would have paid him $100,000 if he allowed the company to drill on his property. He decided to find out if the process was indeed safe. He went to a neighboring town where drilling was already being done. He found poor people getting sick. Their drinking water was contaminated and brown. He met people who could light their tap water on fire. The mega-corporations doing the drilling insisted that it wasn’t their fault. Josh then went on a worldwind tour of the U.S. to see if these problems existed in other parts of the country. The journey was painful to watch. Homeowner after homeowner detailed sicknesses, brain legions, aches, cancer and horrific smells and air pollution. Multiple people demonstrated the ability to set their tap water on fire.
As I watched the film, it was clear that there are many parallels to the BP disaster in the Gulf. Corporate fascism rules America. Corporations spend billions to generate legislation which benefits their bottom lines. Their lobbyists write the legislation and bribe the corrupt Washington politicians. The American people suffer. The documentary GASLAND leads me to the following conclusions:
- Mega corporations are not inherently evil, immoral, or greedy. The men who run the Mega corporations are evil, immoral and greedy. EPS, profits, and bonuses are what drive corporate executives.
- Mega corporations use their political connections, highly paid lobbyists, and vast financial resources to steer legislation in order to reap greater profits.
- The people that Josh Fox profiles in his film are poor, uneducated, hard working, and helpless. They are no match for a big corporation. They don’t have the financial resources to fight a corporation with thousands of lawyers and billions of dollars.
- Corporations see the “small people” as just another cost of doing business. The deaths of some uneducated country folk are inconsequential to the Harvard MBAs running corporate America.
- The gas drilling companies have a checklist on how to rape and pillage the land.
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- They low ball the country bumpkins who occupy the land for the drilling rights.
- They promise that the fracking process is safe.
- When they contaminate the wells and people complain, they deny it was their fault.
- If the complaints persist, they agree to pay for the well water being cleaned.
- If this doesn’t work, they pay the occupants a lump sum of money and make them sign a legal document saying they can’t speak about the issue with anyone.
- When people begin to die, they put their high powered legal teams into action fighting every charge until the victim gives up.
The Federal and State regulators of the gas industry have been instructed by their politician bosses that the benefit of the doubt should always be given to the corporations. They generate the tax revenue. They generate the jobs. They make the political contributions. The people drinking the contaminated water can’t have any impact on a politician’s re-election.
The unholy alliance between Big Business and Big Government is destroying this country. The “small people” do matter. The time is approaching when the little guy is going to rise up and take back what is rightfully theirs. Some people are waking up. Some people are getting angry. Some people care about the future of this country.
If you want to get angry, tune into GASLAND on HBO this month.
Eddie says:
Great article, thanks. There is so much going on and it seems the vast majority of it is slamming us into the crapper. I wake up to it and have a hard time getting through a day without being disgusted by how we the people are getting reamed and are led to the precipice. The process just won’t quit. Is it just me?? Do I have more brains, time, information, cynicism than the average person?? What will it take to demand more from our reps? Like accountability??
We are not dealing with democrats or republicans or Christians or persons of any religion who are hell bent on hanging us out to dry. No, these are highly intelligent socio and psychopaths interested only in self aggrandisement, self indulgence, and wealth for the purpose to gain more and more at any cost regardless of cost to anyone or anything. They are in power and control, they will lie and cheat and degrade and kill and stop at nothing.
Is it too late to re mediate? Is there any hope to save ourselves, our children and grandchildren from these greedy monsters, let alone ourselves??
Does anyone out there have a concrete way to put a stop to the travesty/tragedy our government/ wal street bankers revolving door/military/industrial complex/ oil and coal pushing parasites are treating us to at our and the whole planets expense?
I suggest to start with: Vote out all incumbents.
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22nd June 2010 at 5:07 pm
john hobbit says:
CAFR1.com If you have functioning grey matter your answer is here.
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22nd June 2010 at 5:28 pm
Kill Bill says:
this is probably why there is no life on mars.
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22nd June 2010 at 5:44 pm
Eddie says:
Thanks hobbit
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22nd June 2010 at 5:49 pm
BillWHC says:
When I returned to the U.S. in the Summer of 1973 to the first “energy” crisis, every President since then has talked about the need to have an energy policy. Our country has had a policy of doing nothing and simply caving into our individual and corporate greed for larger cars and more energy consumption and that speaks nothing of unlimited greed and corruption. We only need to look into the mirror to see the ennemy…
Feel free to blame BP, the politicians and big business and there is much to blame them for… but they are simply attempting to feed our need/greed for more energy, for larger cars, more roads, etc. and etc. Someday if not now we will/are pay/paying the piper.
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22nd June 2010 at 3:42 am
Links 6/23/10 « naked capitalism says:
[...] Too Small to Matter Jim Quinn. More on fracking, a very good write-up of an HBO documentary, in case you didn’t see it. [...]
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22nd June 2010 at 3:50 am
Expat says:
I say if they don’t like fracking, they can better serve their country by going and slaughtering innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan before getting their legs blown off by an IED.
But seriously, are Americans totally braindead? OK, don’t answer that. Sarah Palin, George Bush, Nancy Pelosi, and Carrot Top. That should answer the question.
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22nd June 2010 at 7:38 am
On The Environmental Impact Of Gas Fracking And Other Links | Credit Writedowns says:
[...] The Burning Platform – Too Small To Matter [...]
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22nd June 2010 at 9:55 am
emma says:
superb article. hell knows how long I´ll have to wait to see the film, way over here in portugal, but it sounds like a great work and mandatory viewing.
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22nd June 2010 at 10:39 am
Anonymous says:
America is a country owned and run by business interests with little to no regard for its citizens. Even politicians who might attempt to restore democracy and protections for citizens are outnumbered by those who serve corporate interests, often having been elected by the very people who are exploited and destroyed by those interests. America is well on its way to becoming a third world country. As former President Bush said, there are the haves and haves more. And then there are the other 80% who apparently are dispensable, except to languish at poverty wages and in toxic wastes.
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22nd June 2010 at 12:19 pm
CompassionateFascist says:
Money-crazy plutocrats + power-crazy socialists = globalization, i.e. near-universal destruction. And about time. This “system” cannot be reformed; only when it collapses – and/or we collapse it – will we be able to de-centralize, localize, and re-create an economy and polity that serve life instead of death.
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22nd June 2010 at 8:32 pm
Fern Ecotel Hotel says:
The water on fire is very strange indeed. It is high time we stand up for what is correct. Especially after the Spill, it is evident that with the help of governments, businesses across the world are misusing resources and destroying the planet. In the commercial world of today, we must look to do green business with fair policies that keep in mind the locals as well as the planet before we plunge in the pool of profits and monopoly!
We have our own blog setup through which we discuss Eco friendly practices.
http://www.fernecotel.wordpress.com
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22nd June 2010 at 3:07 am
The Graveyard, The Empire and The Ugly (Truth) | Personal Patterns says:
[...] methods, poisoning water sources, buy off sick and dying people; pollute so badly the soil that inhabitants can set their tap water on fire; make people shower with chemicals; and in the mean time says that the method is safe to later [...]
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22nd June 2010 at 3:23 pm
Mark Ruby says:
Over the past dozen years of so, the entire fabric of North America has been altered. We are now run by multinational corporations, or perhaps even more so by a relatively small group of super-rich, greed driven individuals. The oil industry, the banking establishment, the pharmaseutical industry, and how many others? My father and thousands of his compatriots faught bravely in the second world war to smash FASCISM, and many thousands or millions died doing so. But who really won?
Our governments have now charted their course, they have cast their lot, they have chosen the path of greed and FASCISM again. And who will there be to fight them this time? When the media is arrested, as they are being in the Gulf, and not allowed to show the peoples of North America the truth of what is going on there, the final assault is beginning. Without a free press, the people of the Americas are blind to much of what is going on. The next few years are going to be pivotal, if the people are going to preserve their free democracys, then we must have a free press. And we must drop what we are doing and begin to unite. I am Canadian, and what I saw in Toronto last week at the G8 and G20 summit sickened me. Our police forces ignoring citizens rights, abusing them, arresting them without charge, mocking their cries for help. We as citizens had better begin to realize that those free rights enshrined in our constitutions are being replaced by brown-shirted Nazi tactics, and a police state is on the doorstep.
Where are the musicians, the poets, the youth, the intelligentsia, it was they who won the battle over Viet Nam, the battles over a corrupt and Fascist state during those years? They have been replaxced by face-book, i-pods, social networking, and many other distractions too numerous to list. It will take PEOPLE, talking to PEOPLE, meeting with PEOPLE. Get with it people of America, begin uniting in groups at work, at play, at any place and event that you can, because this government is going to do their utmost to stop you from doing so. It really is up to YOU, the the abrave and skilled leaders of the future, the likes of Jim Quinn.
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22nd June 2010 at 10:55 pm
dnwb90254 says:
I can’t remember the last time something churned up as much emotion as Gasland. http://marketing-endeavors.com/wordpress/2010/07/06/gasland_energy_company_offensive/
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22nd June 2010 at 7:51 pm