ONE WELL HEAD for EVERY TEN ACRES!!

In Australia we are under attack from the major corporate Energy companies.  In Queensland it has become such a health problem for those still living in the gas fields.  Government is denying any correlation to health issues and drilling in the area.  We all think differently.  I have seen these children with bleeding ears and bleeding noses and I know its the drilling that has caused their serious health impacts.  Proving this is another kettle of fish though.

One of the Fracc Site in Gloucester

If you want to understand what happened in the USA that brought this industry to another level and changed gas extraction here in Australia as well.  Halliburton is all over it down under.  Recently at Gloucester NSW, Halliburton trucks have been seen and AGL are about to Frac there.

We have the office of Coal Seam Gas in the state of NSW.   This office is supposed to take care of the contracts and make sure there is only a small impact, and none to people and water.

  With the Gloucester Gas Project, the OCSG changed the rules.  This is criminal behaviour by our politicians in NSW.   I have many unanswered questions regarding the procedure for the rubber stamping of this project by AGL.

Below is a very in depth video that is well worth watching if you want to totally familiarize yourself with the hydraulic fracturing process employed to get this natural gas from kilometers under the ground.

The land is in crisis and so is the water and the air.  I have been looking at the drilling at the Coopers Basin in South West of Queensland and the North East of South Australia because of the health of the indigenous peoples who live there.   People are sick.  The government have many excuses for this problem, but Mining is not one of these.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shares a laugh with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney during his farewell parade at the Pentagon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

`Sourced from the Longmont Roar

WATCH THIS VIDEO

The Halliburton Loophole

Content taken from Burning Question: What Would Life Be Like Without the Halliburton Loophole:

“The loop­hole refers to the Energy Pol­icy Act of 2005, which exempts the hydraulic frac­tur­ing process, also known as frack­ing, from fed­eral over­sight under the Safe Drink­ing Water Act of 1974. Then Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney did have a hand in get­ting the exemp­tion put into the Energy Pol­icy Act. He chaired Pres­i­dent Bush’s Energy Pol­icy Task Force, which rec­om­mended frack­ing be excluded. And Cheney is a for­mer Hal­libur­ton exec­u­tive. Hal­libur­ton, by the way, began frack­ing in the 1940’s to extract for oil. But the use of frack­ing, com­bined with hor­i­zon­tal drilling, has only recently been used to mine shale gas.The loop­hole does have an excep­tion. If drilling com­pa­nies use diesel fuel to frack a well, they do have to get a fed­eral permit.

Also amended in the 2005 Energy Pol­icy Act was the Clean Water Act. Con­gress enacted the CWA back in 1972 as a way to reg­u­late dis­charges into the country’s rivers and streams. The CWA was amended in 1987 to include storm water run-off. But oil and gas pro­duc­tion are exempted from those reg­u­la­tions. And in the 2005 Energy Pol­icy Act, those exemp­tions included oil and gas con­struc­tion. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists worry about run-off from well pads, pipelines and con­struc­tion sites.

With­out fed­eral over­sight, it’s up to the states to reg­u­late gas drilling.”

“And it’s not just the Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drink­ing Water Act that exempt the oil and gas indus­try. The Clean Air Act, passed by Con­gress in 1970, exempts oil and gas wells from aggre­ga­tion. That means, each well site is con­sid­ered an indi­vid­ual source of pol­lu­tants, and does not take into account all of the well sites in a spe­cific area.

When it comes to the han­dling of waste water, or frack water, that too is exempt from a fed­eral statute called the Resource Con­ser­va­tion and Recov­ery Act. The RCRA tracks indus­trial wastes from “cra­dle to grave.” But when it comes to the oil and gas indus­try, as long as the waste water is on the drill site, or being trans­ported, it is not con­sid­ered haz­ardous. This also applies to drilling mud. That’s why trucks car­ry­ing waste water, which con­tains high lev­els of salts, toxic chem­i­cals, as well as radioac­tive mate­r­ial, may be labeled “resid­ual waste.”

The National Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­icy Act, or NEPA, requires fed­eral agen­cies to do envi­ron­men­tal impact state­ments if major indus­trial projects would impact the envi­ron­ment. But the Energy Pol­icy Act of 2005 rel­e­gated oil and gas oper­a­tions to a less strin­gent process.

Finally, the Toxic Release Inven­tory requires indus­tries to report toxic chem­i­cals to the EPA. But the oil and gas indus­try are exempt from this reporting.”

 RESOURCES:
Read the Complete Energy Policy Act of 2005
State of the Law: Federal, State and Local Regulation of Hydrofracturing, (Kathleen Dachille, JD)

Images @ Eminpee Fotography