RosenbergGasland


 * Gasland**

** The film // Gasland //, released in 2010 and directed by Josh Fox, details the environmental damage witnessed as a result of hydraulic fracturing by the natural gas industry, and the lack of accountability faced by these corporations within the current regulatory structure. In particular, it is suggested that as a result of conflicts of interest within the United States government leading to diminished oversight, a significant amount of environmental and public health damage has already taken place within such states as Pennsylvania and Wyoming. Without a greater awareness, it is implied by the director that recent trends towards the expansion of natural gas drilling will contribute to larger scales of these kinds of environmental degradation which may serve to threaten metropolises such as New York City and Philadelphia. ** In assessing the scope of the impacts of natural gas drilling, it is essential to consider four crucial stakeholders. The first of these consists of the various corporations involved in drilling; among them the operators and other subcontractors involved in supplying and overseeing facilities. With shareholders of the firm as the primary obligation of these entities, it is clear that the bottom line is the most important motivating factor within their practices. This clear incentive has led to the proposed drilling of 50,000 wells in Pennsylvania, with little acknowledgement of the damage caused by cost-cutting activities such as the dumping of chemicals like trichlorobenzene into local rivers and streams. To prevent awareness of these dangers, numerous nondisclosure agreements have been signed with groups involved in litigation regarding pollution.

In addition to these private actors, local and national governments have a significant role to play in the process of oversight of the natural gas industry. While agencies such as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are tasked with ensuring that drinking water and air quality are at safe levels for public health, they are severely limited by political pressures within the system. For instance, Weston Wilson, an EPA whistleblower, stated that panel members within the agency decided not to investigate well activity in Colorado, despite strong scientific evidence indicating toxicity. In addition, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 contained the aptly nicknamed “Halliburton Exemption,” which exempted the oil and gas industries from the safeguards of the Safe Water Drinking Act and Clean Air Act, among others. Despite a large scale drilling campaign in Pennsylvania, its DEP has faced a 25% reduction in its total budget in recent years. While supposedly protectors of the people, these public actors have failed to implement the kinds of redundancies necessary to ensure that environmental legislation is properly enforced.

Beyond these more obvious interests are those of the members of communities in which hydrofracking occurs. Despite denial by both public and private organizations, these individuals have been faced with numerous impediments to life in the aftermath of drilling operations; including headaches, dizziness, and a loss of smell and taste resulting from drinking contaminated water. With the especially rapid onset of health effects, there is great concern that children and future generations will be unable to inhabit these regions for fear of diminished livelihood. Since many of these groups presently live out of the public spotlight in farming communities, it is difficult for them to incite enough public backlash to force the hands of those in a position to remedy these concerns.

The last set of individuals worth noting consists of those in the path of future expansions of natural gas drilling, which may include residents who obtain drinking water from the Delaware River basin. While organization has occurred in cities such as New York to protest leasing in these untainted reservoirs, agencies such as the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) have not been present to respond to questions. Since 15.6 million people are supplied by this basin, it is possible that the effects of hydrofracking could be devastating in the future in the absence of the proper controls. However, many of these people are unaware of any impending danger, and this has impeded progress towards the various moratoria on drilling which will be necessary to preserve their health in the future.

From an examination of the interests at stake, it is clear that our dependence on oil is closely concurrent with the use of natural gas. With the obstruction stemming from financial interests within government, the expansion of natural gas drilling as well as oil is emphasized in the name of profitability. This is demonstrated no more clearly than by the actions of Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton who served as U.S. Vice President from 2000 to 2008. While in office, he commissioned an Energy Task Force to set U.S. energy policy during the term, which consisted of members of the industry such as Kenneth Lay, the CEO of Enron. As a result of the decisions made at these meetings, the viability of drilling operations was further secured through the previously mentioned “Halliburton Exemption” of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and hydrofracking chemicals were not studied in detail by the EPA, as they were considered to be proprietary. In this sense, clear conflicts of interest within the EPA and executive offices of government have perpetuated a reliance on oil and natural gas which has gone unchecked in recent years.

In examining the concerns raised by our dependence on oil, the piece declares quite clearly that the use of natural gas is an unfortunate consequence of attempts to substitute for the reliance on foreign petroleum supplies which had been perpetuated by this history. The perception of the presence of such an analogy within the industry is demonstrated quite clearly by proclamations that the Marcellus Shale is like the “Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas,” and this newfound interest in drilling is supported by the purported trillions of cubic feet of natural gas reserves present in the United States. Since natural gas has been proclaimed as a “clean burning fuel” by its proponents, in contrast to the backlash against the use of oil, it is obvious that resistance to its use has been severely muted relative to its serious environmental costs.

With this in mind, it is suggested by the film that a shift away from oil may instead lead to the substitution of natural gas, which is wrought with a great deal of uncertainty regarding its own externalities. Within the water utilized for hydraulic fracturing, it was found that there were over 596 chemicals present, of which many were unknown due to their proprietary nature. However, of the ones which could be identified, many of them were either carcinogenic or toxic to humans and animals in some form. As a demonstration of such, workers at drilling facilities were reported as having chemical burns, and in one instance a farmer’s cows and cats were found to be losing their hair upon drinking from local wells. In a series of especially shocking demonstrations, it was found that the tap water of many households in Pennsylvania was flammable, and that water in Divide Creek in Garfield County, Colorado was bubbling from dissolved natural gas.

In light of these concerns, it is worth noting the degree of uncertainty regarding the scale of these impacts. In Sublette County in Wyoming, high ozone levels have led to an overall air quality worse than that of Los Angeles, and it is unclear as to how much of the waste water being dumped in the ocean will ultimately reappear on land in the form of toxic sludge. With the previously mentioned potential for impacts on drinking water in cities along the East Coast of the United States, it is possible that these effects may ultimately be found to encompass millions of people. As a result of these possibilities, the director wonders whether this alternative is at all desirable as a means of weaning our dependence on oil.

In terms of the arguments put forth by the piece, I was particularly compelled by that suggesting that there is a diminished level of control even within the natural gas industry of the previously mentioned operations. For instance, it was found during the filming of the documentary that there was not a significant set of access restrictions and security protocol in place at these sites, which enabled the director to drive near these facilities and play his banjo undeterred. In addition, there is a lack of organization of the infrastructure for drilling, with supplies spread out over a large area within these locations, and many smaller sources utilized which are not under the jurisdiction of the Clean Air Act. In the absence of a strong enough regulatory regime to force rigorous data collection, it is also clear that the effects of such practices as evaporating “produced water” and its various hydrocarbons into the air are relatively unknown to industry officials and government agencies alike. Without the systems necessary to provide self regulation of the natural gas industry, it is further suggested within the piece that these observations necessitate a greater role for environmental regulatory agencies in ensuring the safety of those whose properties are the site of these practices.

Despite the power of many of the points put forth by the piece, I was less convinced by that which implied that agencies such as the EPA have been entirely irresponsible in filling the void in regulatory oversight left by those such as the Pennsylvania DEP and the New York DEC. While regional organizations have failed, national ones such as the EPA were found in the research for the debate paper to be taking on a greater role in response to the outrage which has been generated by independent assessments of drinking water. As an example of this, the EPA recently ordered a review of all permits issued to waste water treatment facilities in the state of Pennsylvania, and has ordered additional testing to ensure that radioactivity is being properly removed from drinking water in the region. In addition, environmental civil society groups such as Clean Water Action were found to be taking on a greater level of responsibility in the process, such as by proposing restrictions on the release of wastes and advocating a greater involvement of governments in the process. While it is clear that there are still holes in oversight, the outlook appears to be slightly more optimistic than that put forth by Josh Fox.

With the concerns presented herein, the film advocates primarily that governments extricate themselves from the various conflicts of interest which restrict the enforcement of environmental legislation. This does not appear to be an entirely impossible task, as New York was found at the time to be in the process of conducting an environmental impact statement for the Delaware River basin as is required under the National Environmental Policy Act. However, it is suggested that action on a national level will be required to supersede the mistakes made within the context of local politics. Through particular emphasis on the hearings of the Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals within the United States Congress, it is demonstrated that lawmakers are willing to call out the hypocrisies and inconsistencies inherent to the business practices of the natural gas industry. Nonetheless, cuts in the budgets of enforcement agencies have made it especially difficult to uphold these principles in practice. With the inability of the EPA to assess the short and long term impacts of hydraulic fracturing at present, and the lack of a substitute for its authority, it is implied that it may be worthwhile to halt entirely the expansion of natural gas drilling in the United States until more knowledge of the kind sought in the film is available . In observing the negative externalities present within the activities of the natural gas industry, I was compelled to seek out additional perspectives which would help to shed some light on what potential benefits continue to motivate the use of natural gas in the face of such concerns. The following references were found to prove useful in this endeavor:

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In the first of these sources, results are provided from emissions tests of light-duty vehicles conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy for a September 1999 report. In this study, levels of release for compressed natural gas (CNG) fuels are compared to those of California Phase 2 reformulated gasoline (RFG), the latter of which was chosen to represent the “best available” gasoline of the time. Upon conducting these tests, it was found that emissions of the majority of regulated substances were lower for CNG in a statistically significant manner, with notable exceptions being methane and THC. While there are some slight concerns within the study regarding the retesting of certain vehicles at higher mileage levels than had been the case previously (which would violate the assumption of a controlled experiment), the high number of data points for the Dodge B250 (144 for CNG and 138 for RFG) and the large number of vehicles tested (54 and 53 respectively) suggest that the observed trend is likely to hold.

In the second reference, Yankee Gas, the largest natural gas distributor in Connecticut, offers a rationale for making the switch to this energy source on numerous levels. As one dimension of the argument, it is stated that 45% less carbon is emitted in heating a home with natural gas than would otherwise be the case for one which utilizes conventional sources. In a similar sense, an Energy Solutions Center report found that natural gas consumption is more than 90% efficient, as opposed to only 28% for electricity sources. Additionally, figures from the American Gas Association (AGA) are cited which proclaim that a high-efficiency, natural gas furnace is nearly three times as cheap as an electric resistance system on a cost basis. The last major point brought forth is the level of reserves in the United States, which are estimated to equal 100 years of supply according to the AGA. In observing the perspective of an organization which is at the forefront of the distribution process, it is especially interesting to note the deceptive presentation of cost based factors, which are provided as the difference between natural gas and its most costly alternative, rather than what might be representative of what would be faced by the average consumer.