USA! USA! Part Deux

[tvashtarkatena]

Yeah...didn't think so.

 

Ah...the easy chair activist. Keep 'em in bullshit bulgar and they're...still not happy.

[prole]

As for the 'rents, I'm pretty sure they're good with what they did for the world. You know, beating back the Nazis and all that drivel.

 

Lord knows it's nothing like the smug satisfaction that comes from driving a Prius.

[prole]

Funny how your professed compassion for jailed potheads doesn't extend to communities effected by fracking. That's okay, we always knew it was only about getting a dispensary next to the Kangen water boutique and the anal bleaching salon.

[j_b]

There is widespread disagreement among experts about the amount of shale gas reserve:

 

while we appear to be narrowing in more realistic figures, the inconsistencies in shale gas reserve estimates among industry, federal agencies and state agencies is of concern. The New York Times had a piece Wednesday on the differences in analysis:

 

In April 2010, the Energy Information Administration revised its methodology for estimating natural gas production. Despite the change, some energy analysts say that in Texas significant discrepancies remain between the federal numbers and estimates produced by state regulators. Some energy analysts have also faulted regulators in Pennsylvania, which is the only gas-producing state to publish oil and gas production data every six months rather than providing it monthly. This practice, according to the energy analysts, limits the ability to accurately assess well performance and provide more exact long-term estimates for how much gas that part of the shale formation can actually produce over time.

 

Some analysts have been very critical of industry estimates and projected decline rates, saying the amount of economically recoverable gas is far lower than what companies are claiming. In June, the Times released a large number of emails between industry analysts that suggest the industry is vastly overstating reserves:

 

“The word in the world of independents is that the shale plays are just giant Ponzi schemes and the economics just do not work,” an analyst from IHS Drilling Data, an energy research company, wrote in an e-mail on Aug. 28, 2009.

 

Deborah Rogers, a member of the advisory committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, recalled saying that in a May 2010 telephone call to a senior economist at the Reserve, Mine K. Yucel. “We need to take a close look at this right away,” she added.

 

A former stockbroker with Merrill Lynch, Ms. Rogers said she started studying well data from shale companies in October 2009 after attending a speech by the chief executive of Chesapeake, Aubrey K. McClendon. The math was not adding up, Ms. Rogers said. Her research showed that wells were petering out faster than expected.

 

“These wells are depleting so quickly that the operators are in an expensive game of ‘catch-up,’ ” Ms. Rogers wrote in an e-mail on Nov. 17, 2009, to a petroleum geologist in Houston, who wrote back that he agreed.

 

After USGS Analysis, EIA Cuts Estimates of Marcellus Shale Gas Reserves by 80%

 

but since the Torygraph and the usual cheerleaders claim thtat everything is ok ...

[billcoe]

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April11/GasDrillingDirtier.html

 

There is no free ride. As a society, we are hooked and there's no easy way to detox. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Maybe we just need to stick to scraping the bitum off the sand in Canada and continue to use "clean" coal LOL ? Let the Arabs be our buddies?

[j_b]

"S.E.C. Shift Leads to Worries of Overestimation of Reserves

By IAN URBINA

Published: June 27, 2011

 

In 2008, the stocks of many natural gas companies were sinking because of the financial meltdown, recession fears and falling gas prices.

 

But they began to rebound after a sweeping rule change by the Securities and Exchange Commission, intended to modernize how energy companies report their gas reserves.

 

As part of that change, the commission acquiesced to industry pressure by giving these companies greater latitude in how they estimated reserves in areas that were not yet drilled. The new rules, which were several years in the making, were officially adopted only weeks before the S.E.C. chairman under President George W. Bush, Christopher Cox, stepped down.

 

Previously, companies were allowed to count gas only from areas close to their active wells as part of their “proved” reserves, the amount of gas that a company estimates to investors it will tap. This was meant to prevent companies from claiming reserves of gas based largely on guesswork.

 

After the rule change, companies were allowed to include gas located farther from producing wells in their reserves estimates, using modeling methods to predict how much gas could be produced from these yet-untapped areas. But the S.E.C. said that the companies, for reasons of trade secrecy, did not have to disclose precise details about the technology they used to estimate reserve sizes. Though the commission considered requiring third-party audits to verify the reserve estimates, the idea was dropped in the end.

 

The rule change was especially helpful to shale gas companies because it approved the use of new technology and modeling techniques that these companies rely on more heavily than traditional oil and gas companies.

 

Shale gas producers also especially benefited from the relaxed restrictions on how large an area companies could predict would be productive without drilling to test first. Shale formations tend to span much bigger areas than conventional oil and gas fields, and some shale gas producers say they can achieve relatively predictable results across these large areas.

 

Among 19 of the largest shale companies reviewed by The New York Times, at least seven increased — some by more than 200 percent — the amount of undeveloped reserves they reported in their federal filings immediately after the rule took effect, according to their S.E.C. filings. Investors cheered the rule change as it was adopted, and in the following months they sharply bid up the stocks of five of the seven companies.

 

The rule change also allowed these companies to reduce one of the costs that investors often rely on to compare the performance of energy companies: their finding and development costs. These costs now appeared drastically lower because they were being divided across a much larger reserve estimate. Five of the seven shale companies also reported huge decreases in their finding and development costs — by as much as 86 percent, according to a review by The Times of their federal filings. The average decrease in these costs for the oil and gas industry on the whole was about 48 percent for the year.

 

However, in internal e-mails and documents, many industry executives and federal officials have questioned whether some companies are overstating, perhaps intentionally, the amount of gas they can economically produce in a given period. This practice, known as overbooking, is illegal because it misleads investors trying to assess a company’s strength and banks that use reserves as collateral for loans.

 

“There is now plenty of production data available from the states to show that these wells are nowhere near what these guys are touting,” an official with a Texas oil and gas company who formerly worked at Enron wrote on Nov. 7, 2009, comparing the practices of shale companies to Enron’s. “I have discussed this numerous times with analysts that are friends of mine — they agree with me and then just shrug their shoulders.” [..]

 

Worries of Overestimation of Reserves

[tvashtarkatena]

Funny how your professed compassion for jailed potheads doesn't extend to communities effected by fracking. That's okay, we always knew it was only about getting a dispensary next to the Kangen water boutique and the anal bleaching salon.

 

Actually, the War on Drugs has disproportionately been focused on African Americans 3:1 across the board, but, black or white, people are people.

 

Oh, on the anti-fracking activist front, we're handling that (while you're spraying), too:

 

the curious case of Virginia Cody

 

 

[ivan]

the spice must flow!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Funny how your professed compassion for jailed potheads doesn't extend to communities effected by fracking. That's okay, we always knew it was only about getting a dispensary next to the Kangen water boutique and the anal bleaching salon.

 

Kind of like your feigned compassion for working class people for whom you clearly hold the highest contempt. But keep up your elitist, arrogant, pseudo-intellectual posturing - it'll eventually convince us otherwise.

 

 

[prole]

Cardinals fans are anything but working class.

[prole]

...more like a horde.

[sobo]

Unfortunately hydro-fracking is a dirty precess and releases some heavy duty shit into ground waters (like mercury and other heavy metals). I don't think people are realizing they are creating large scale "Love Canal".

So just how do you "know" this, Bob? Having spent some time in ND on the Bakken Play, that is not what I witnessed firsthand. From my work as a consultant and conversations with State regulators, frac water begins as clean water that is purchased from a public water supply producer. It has to be, by regulation. The clean water is injected into the well at about 10,000 feet below the surface, which is where the Bakken Formation lies in that part of the country. As the well is frac'ed, all frac water is returned to the surface, captured, and treated at the well pad in separators. Liquid light sweet crude oil is separated from the frac water, and trucked to pumping stations. The frac water is collected in double-shelled tanks situated in an impermeable containment structure at the pad. The water is treated, and becomes known as "salt water" and when sufficient volume is present, it is pumped into tanker trucks and transported to, and disposed of in, some mighty deep (10,000 feet +) salt water disposal wells that are permitted by the State.

 

Everything is monitored closely by regulators and all operations are permitted by the State NDIC. It's not all "rootin' tootin' do-what-you-want-devil-may-care Wild West" like you think. Mind you, this is for extraction of liquid crude. I am not up on the particulars of the natural gas frac'ing process, so YMMV on that score...

[prole]

Here's a nice collection of articles, documents, interactive features, and other resources that can help you get up to speed, Sobo. Edited October 26, 2011 by prole

[sobo]

Thanks for that link, prole.

 

So the question is begged: Why are the regulations for hydraulic fracturing and extraction of liquid oil in ND (and subsequent disposal of frac water) so vastly different (and constraining) from the regulations for hydraulic fracturing and extraction of natural gas in PA (and subsequent disposal of frac water)?

[G-spotter]

Story's from the Torygraph, pretty damning lack of credibility right there.

[j_b]

Story's from the Torygraph, pretty damning lack of credibility right there.

 

Yes, and peddled by the very same person who warned us about the coming "green bubble" (still waiting); yet, apparently there is no questioning when oil and gas interests literally multiply reserve numbers out of the blue.

[j_b]

Thanks for that link, prole.

 

So the question is begged: Why are the regulations for hydraulic fracturing and extraction of liquid oil in ND (and subsequent disposal of frac water) so vastly different (and constraining) from the regulations for hydraulic fracturing and extraction of natural gas in PA (and subsequent disposal of frac water)?

 

because congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act so regulating is left to the states ... with the usual result.

[prole]

Story's from the Torygraph, pretty damning lack of credibility right there.

 

I don't know that it is a "story". It's a funhouse ride corporate puffpiece on the prodigal corporations supposedly returning as saviors to areas where sufficient deregulation, labor discipline, and the right kind of corruption have taken place. Mix in a healthy dose of fear-based nationalism and myopic "if you can't mine or drill it, you've got to frack it" narrative and voile: A resurgent American Pheonix based on a low wage/no wage labor force, a belligerent foreign policy, and a degraded environment. What's new here?

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Story's from the Torygraph, pretty damning lack of credibility right there.

 

I don't know that it is a "story". It's a funhouse ride corporate puffpiece on the prodigal corporations supposedly returning as saviors to areas where sufficient deregulation, labor discipline, and the right kind of corruption have taken place. Mix in a healthy dose of fear-based nationalism and myopic "if you can't mine or drill it, you've got to frack it" narrative and voile: A resurgent American Pheonix based on a low wage/no wage labor force, a belligerent foreign policy, and a degraded environment. What's new here?

 

BOTTOMLESS HOPELESSNESS FROM PROLE!

[tvashtarkatena]

I-502 (legalize pot) is on track with more than 150,000 signatures. It's now meeting its goal of 20,000 signatures a week.

 

The revolution will not be televised.

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I-502 (legalize pot) is on track with more than 150,000 signatures. It's now meeting its goal of 20,000 signatures a week.

 

The revolution will not be televised.

 

 

Will there be a cc.com smoke-out when it is passed?

[tvashtarkatena]

We at New Approach Washington do not encourage the use of any intoxicant. If, however, a legislative victory results in thousands taking to the streets wielding zeppelin-like spliffs and bongs the size of cannons in celebration, we will, as always, support their right to peacefully assemble.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2011 by tvashtarkatena

[j_b]

because congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act so regulating is left to the states ... with the usual result.

 

Congress voted the exemption in 2005, just before the surge in the use of fracking, hmmm ...

 

but it's not over: Energy Industry Fights Fracking Chemical Disclosure

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

We at New Approach Washington do not encourage the use of any intoxicant. If, however, a legislative victory results in thousands taking to the streets wielding zeppelin-like spliffs and bongs the size of cannons in celebration, we will, as always, support their right to peacefully assemble.

 

 

You should change the name of the organization, transposing the second and third words and resulting in a much cooler acronym...

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

because congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act so regulating is left to the states ... with the usual result.

 

Congress voted the exemption in 2005, just before the surge in the use of fracking, hmmm ...

 

but it's not over: Energy Industry Fights Fracking Chemical Disclosure

 

 

Just slit your wrists and be done with it!