Epic survey finds regional patterns of soot and dirt on North American snow

C. Dang in EurekAlert via the University of Washington: Snow is not as white as it looks. Mixed in with the reflective flakes are tiny, dark particles of pollution. University of Washington scientists recently published the first large-scale survey of impurities in North American snow to see whether they might absorb enough sunlight to speed melt rates and influence climate.

The results, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, show that North American snow away from cities is similar to Arctic snow in many places, with more pollution in the U.S. Great Plains. They also show that agricultural practices, not just smokestacks and tailpipes, may have a big impact on snow purity.

During their almost 10,000-mile trek across North American snowfields, the researchers were particularly interested in the Bakken oil fields of northwest North Dakota. "With all this oil exploration, diesel trucks and new oil wells, people wondered: Is there a huge amount of air pollution making the snowpack darker?" said lead author Sarah Doherty, a research scientist at the UW's Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean.

What they found was that these activities do appear to be adding extra soot to the snow, but perhaps just as important is the dirt. Disturbance from clearing oil pads, new housing sites and all the extra truck traffic on unpaved roads means dirtier snow. But even away from the oil fields, soil is disturbed by agriculture. "Our work suggests that land use and farming practices might matter as much as diesel emissions in many parts of the Great Plains," Doherty said.

....Their main focus was black carbon, a very light-absorbing particle emitted by burning diesel, coal or wood. Many countries have regulated black carbon because of its effects on air quality and human health, but more recently climate scientists also have become interested because the tiny particles darken the snow and hasten melting. The cleanest samples they collected were from northern Canada, with overall levels of black carbon, or soot, similar to that of Arctic snowpack. The Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain states had levels slightly higher. The Great Plains readings were more variable and sometimes two to three or more times higher than in other parts of the country, typically 15 to 70 nanograms of soot per gram of snow....

A snowy landscape in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. National Park Service photo

‘Monster’ fracking wells guzzle water in drought-stricken regions

Anastasia Pantsios in EcoWatch: The fracking industry likes to minimize the sector’s bottomless thirst for often-scarce water resources, saying it takes about 2-4 million gallons of water to frack the average well, an amount the American Petroleum Institute describes as “the equivalent of three to six Olympic swimming pools.” That’s close to the figure cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well.

But a new report released by Environmental Working Group (EWG) located 261 “monster” wells that consumed between 10 and 25 million gallons of water to drill each well. Among the conclusions EWG teased out of data reported by the industry itself and posted at fracfocus.org is that between April 2010 and December 2013, these 261 wells consumed 3.3 billions of water between them, a average of 12.7 million gallons each. And 14 of the wells topped 20 million gallons each.

“It’s far more relevant to compare those figures to basic human needs for water, rather than to swimming pools or golf courses,” said EWG’s report. “The 3.3 billion gallons consumed by the monster wells was almost twice as much water as is needed each year by the people of Atascosa County, Texas, in the heart of the Eagle Ford shale formation, one of the most intensively drilled gas and oil fields in the country.”

And proving that everything really is bigger in Texas, that’s where most of these monster wells were located, hosting 149 of them. Between them they consumed 1.8 billion gallons of water. The largest was located in Harrison County on the east Texas border, where in March 2013, Sabine Oil & Gas LLC drilled a well using more than 24.8 million gallons of water. Irion County in west central Texas had the most monster wells with 19 averaging water use of 12.9 each. And Texas also had what EWG described as the “dubious distinction” of using more fresh water in fracking, consuming 21 million gallons in 2011 alone….

The Jonah Gasfield in Wyoming, shot by Peter Aergst of the Wilderness Society, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 4.0 license

Straits of Mackinac ‘worst possible place’ for a Great Lakes oil spill

University of Michigan News: Because the strong currents in the Straits of Mackinac reverse direction every few days, a rupture of the oil pipeline beneath the channel would quickly contaminate shorelines miles away in both lakes Michigan and Huron, according to a new University of Michigan study commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation.

In one scenario examined in the study and accompanying animations, oil from a hypothetical pipeline break reached Mackinac Island and Round Island after 12 hours and Bois Blanc Island after two days. All three islands are in westernmost Lake Huron, just east of the straits.

Within 20 days of a spill in the Straits of Mackinac -- which separates Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas and connects lakes Michigan and Huron -- oil would spread as far west as Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, a distance of roughly 35 miles, and as far southeast as Rogers City in Lake Huron, a distance of about 50 miles, according to the computer-simulation study released today and conducted by hydrodynamics expert David Schwab of the U-M Water Center.

The area around the 5-mile-wide straits is considered ecologically sensitive and is a major tourist draw. "If you were to pick the worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes, this would be it," Schwab said. "The currents are powerful and change direction frequently. In the event of an oil spill, these factors would lead to a big mess that would be very difficult to contain."

Just west of the Mackinac Bridge, two 20-inch underwater pipes carry 23 million gallons of crude oil daily through the straits. The 61-year-old pipeline is operated by Enbridge Inc.

..."Any material released into the straits will go into both Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which would complicate containment efforts," Schwab said. "Hopefully, these simulations and animations will be useful in understanding and preparing for potential impacts."...

Under the Mackinac Bridge crossing the Straits of Mackinac, shot by varnent, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

US government providing billions in fossil fuel subsidies

Shakuntala Makhinani at Oil Change International: Today, Oil Change International released a comprehensive report on fossil fuel exploration and production subsidies in the U.S. – Cashing in on All of the Above: U.S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama – which demonstrates that at a time when we need urgent action on climate change more than ever, the U.S. government is channeling huge and growing amounts of money to increasing discovery and production of oil, gas, and coal. These federal and state subsidies totaled $21.6 billion in 2013.

Subsidies that promote fossil fuel exploration are particularly harmful and hypocritical. The world’s preeminent scientific institutions working on climate and energy have determined that the majority of the world’s existing fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground in order to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. In 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that “no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2°C goal.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached a similar conclusion in its 2013 climate assessment.

“The All of the Above energy strategy is not only climate denial – it’s climate denial that is funded with more than $20 billion in taxpayer support each year.” said Steve Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International. “Until our representatives in Washington and around the country find the courage necessary to put people’s interests ahead of rich polluters, this theft of our tax dollars is likely to continue. The next step for saving the climate should be clear: Stop Funding Fossils.”

Fossil fuel exploration subsidies are in direct conflict with these calls to restrict fossil fuel production and use. Rather than finding ways to curtail fossil fuel production in line with the demands of climate science, the U.S. federal government, under President Obama’s “All of the Above” energy strategy, is currently channeling more than $5 billion each year in exploration subsidies to actually expand proven reserves, leading to the discovery of fossil fuels that we know we should never burn.

Shakuntala Makhijani, the report’s author, added, “the science is clear that at least two-thirds of proven fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate impacts – it is time for the U.S. government to show leadership and immediately end the massive subsidies that encourage their production.”

A natural gas flare in North Dakota, shot by Tim Evanson, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Senate asks Nigerian government to avert flooding, ocean surge in coastal states

Omololu Ogunmade and Adebiyi Adedapo in AllAfrica.com via This Day (Nigeria):  As the world enters into the rainy season, the Senate yesterday asked the federal government to ensure judicious use of ecological funds by putting in place measures aimed at bringing a lasting solution to the recurrent problem of ocean surge along coastal lines in different parts of the country.

The parliament also tasked the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to send relief materials to Nigerians who have already been displaced by ocean surge in coastal areas.

The call followed a motion by Senator Emmanuel Paulker (Bayelsa Central) in which he expressed the plights of Nigerians residing in coastal communities in Bayelsa and Delta States whom he said were recently displaced by an ocean surge which submerged their communities and destroyed their source of livelihood.

According to Paulker, the surge displaced and washed away many lives in Koluama I, Koluama II, Foropa and many other communities in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State last week. He said the communities which blamed the flood on the "unmitigated impact" of an explosion and fire from Chevron's oil rig, lamented how it washed away their markets as well as properties worth billions of naira and consequently put them in a state of anguish.

The senator said the surge was caused by the failure to address Chevron's oil rig explosion and fire which he said occurred in Koluama in January 2012, recalling that such under water explosions and vibrations triggered the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which claimed 290,000 lives and affected about 14 countries along the ocean coast....

A thunderstorm brews in the Bight of Bonny off the Nigerian coast, oil rig in the foreground, shot by Swandau, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Thousands of fracking wells in Pennsylvania 'may be leaking methane'

Bobby Magill in the Guardian (UK) via Climate Central: A study of abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania finds that the hundreds of thousands of such wells in the state may be leaking methane, suggesting that abandoned wells across the country could be a bigger source of climate changing greenhouse gases than previously thought.

The study by Mary Kang, a Princeton University scientist, looked at 19 wells and found that these oft-forgotten wells are leaking various amounts of methane. There are hundreds of thousands of such oil and gas wells, long abandoned and plugged, in Pennsylvania alone, and countless more in oil and gas fields across the country. These wells go mostly unmonitored, and rarely, if ever, checked for such leaks.

A growing list of studies conducted over the past three years has suggested that crude oil and natural gas development, particularly in shale formations, are significant sources of methane leaks — emissions not fully included in US Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas inventories because they are rarely monitored. Scientists say there is inadequate data available for them to know where all the leaks are and how much methane is leaking.

...So when abandoned oil and gas wells — possibly hundreds of thousands of them in Pennsylvania alone — that are not currently included in any federa
l estimate for total US greenhouse gas emissions are found to be leaking methane, the implications could be significant.

Kang directly measured leaks from the abandoned wells and found that all 19 wells in the study tested positive for methane leaks, some more than others. She found that overall, the wells leak so much methane that if leaks from all the abandoned wells in Pennsylvania are added up, the leaks could account for between 4 percent and 13 percent of human-caused methane emissions in the state.

But because of significant uncertainty about the total number of abandoned and plugged wells that exist in Pennsylvania, more study is needed to fully understand how common leaking abandoned wells are in the state and how much methane they may emit....

A fracking site in Warren Center, Pennsylvania, shot by Ostroff Law - Fracking Lawyer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

We need an apartheid-style boycott to save the planet

Some inspiration from Desmond Tutu in the Guardian (UK): Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction; we are already feeling the effects.

...Who can stop it? Well, we can, you and I. And it is not just that we can stop it, we have a responsibility to do so. It is a responsibility that begins with God commanding the first human inhabitants of the garden of Eden "to till it and keep it". To keep it; not to abuse it, not to destroy it.

...People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change. We can, for instance, boycott events, sports teams and media programming sponsored by fossil-fuel energy companies. We can demand that the advertisements of energy companies carry health warnings. We can encourage more of our universities and municipalities and cultural institutions to cut their ties to the fossil-fuel industry. We can organise car-free days and build broader societal awareness. We can ask our religious communities to speak out.

We can actively encourage energy companies to spend more of their resources on the development of sustainable energy products, and we can reward those companies that do so by using their products. We can press our governments to invest in ren
ewable energy and stop subsidising fossil fuels. Where possible, we can install our own solar panels and water heaters.

...It makes no sense to invest in companies that undermine our future. To serve as custodians of creation is not an empty title; it requires that we act, and with all the urgency this dire situation demands.

Desmond Tutu in 2007, shot by Elke Wetzig (Elya), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Exxon Mobil to assess climate risk

Heather Long in CNN Money: Exxon Mobil (XOM), America's largest energy company, funded global warming denial groups for years. Now it has agreed to release a report by the end of March that details how climate change could affect its business.

The move comes in response to a shareholder resolution and as the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the Valdez oil spill that released 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska. Investors and activists concerned about climate change see this as a major victory that they hope will inspire other companies to follow suit.

The push to get Exxon Mobil to do a climate change assessment has been going on for months. Investors sent letters and tried to engage with Exxon behind the scenes. Arjuna Capital, a sustainable wealth management firm, and As You Sow, a California non-profit, ultimately filed a shareholder resolution demanding a comprehensive "carbon risk report." That resolution has been dropped now that Exxon plans to issue its climate change report.

The argument environmentally conscious investors have made is that shareholders need to know how large a company's fossil fuel reserves are. Regulatory or financial conditions may make it too costly to use all the current reserves, let alone new ones. "Shareholder value is at stake if companies are not prepared for a low-carbon scenario," said Natasha Lamb, director of equity research for Arjuna Capital....

Canadian government targets environment NGOs

Paul Weinberg in IPS: Job cuts totalling 1,000 at Environment Canada’s climate change division this month means there will be even fewer government scientists onboard to monitor the impact of the extraction, development and transportation of crude oil from the carbon-intensive oil sands in Alberta.

The oil sands are a major source of fossil fuel emissions which are heating areas of the planet, including the Arctic.  Ironically, this same department, just weeks earlier, produced new research confirming that toxic chemicals from oil sands tailing ponds covering 176 square kilometres in northern Alberta are leaching into the local groundwater and seeping into the Athabasca River.

But two experts on Canadian environmental policy say they expect fewer such studies to be financed by a Conservative government in Ottawa focused on the development of the Alberta oil sands. “This government is taking out specific forms of [research] capacity and those are the kind of things we need to have if we are ever going to tackle climate change,” said John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada.

“[With] any government that comes into power in the future, it’s going to take them two or three years to get the staff, to review what they have to do,” he told IPS.

Picking up the investigative slack but without the same amount of resources are the environmental NGOs such as the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, said Mark Winfield, a professor in the faculty of environmental studies at Toronto’s York University....

Syncrude's Mildred Lake plant, shot by TastyCakes, Wikimedia Commons, public domain 

Peru to ‘eliminate’ key environmental rule for oil and gas firms, says minister

David Hill in the Guardian (UK): The Peruvian government is planning a new law loosening the social and environmental checks on companies exploring for oil and gas, according to a controversial announcement by the Energy Minister.

Current law states that companies must research and write “Environmental Impact Assessments” (EIAs) of proposed operations before submitting them to the government for approval and then beginning exploration.

However, Energy Minister Eleodoro Mayorga Alba announced this week that oil and gas companies planning to explore by conducting seismic tests will be exempt from the EIA process. Speaking at an event in Lima, he said that Energy Ministry and Environment Ministry personnel are currently working on the law and had reached several agreements:

[One] agreement is to eliminate environmental impact assessments for seismic operations. The [oil and gas] industry has its laws, the industry has principles, it has well-established practices, and the idea is to move away from procedures and permissions to action. The companies know what they have to do.

Mayorga’s comments were reported by Peruvian newspaper Gestion which stated that the new law, according to the minister, is intended to “accelerate investment in the oil and gas sector.”...

An oil pump in Talara, Peru, shot by Maurice Chédel, public domain

Peru blocks plans for new indigenous reserve as oil production starts

David Hill in the "Andes to the Amazon" blog in the Guardian (UK): Two key Peruvian state institutions are blocking plans to establish a reserve for indigenous people living in "voluntary isolation" (IPVI) between the Napo and Tigre rivers in the Amazon rainforest. Opposition to the proposal was condemned by national indigenous organisation AIDESEP after a meeting, held in December, of a cross-sector government commission set up to create such reserves.

In June last year Peru's vice-ministry of inter-culturality (VMI), the state entity responsible for indigenous peoples, officially recognised the existence of IPVI in the Napo-Tigre region and supported the proposal to create the reserve. According to the VMI's memo 190-2013:

This communiqué gives favourable qualification for the recognition of indigenous peoples in isolation, probably related to the Arabela, Iquito, Taushiro, Zápara, Waorani and Abirija peoples, and the categorisation of the Curaray, Napo, Arabela, Nashiño, Pucacuro, Tigre and Tributaries' Indigenous Reserve, details of which are in the attached documentation.

Memo 190 was sent by the then vice-minister of inter-culturality, Paulo Vilca Arpasi, to the then president of the cross-sector commission, Hernán Coronado Chuecas, together with 357 pages of reports, maps, letters and sworn testimonies principally supporting the IPVI's existence.

However, the proposed reserve is almost entirely overlapped by oil concessions including, most significantly, lot 39, run by Repsol, and lot 67, run by London- and Paris-based Perenco together with Vietnamese state oil and gas company PetroVietnam....

Bora people in Peru, shot by Jorge G. Mori, public domain 

Ecuador's government shuts down indigenous rights organization over oil battle

Jeremy Hance in Mongabay: Last Wednesday, the government of Ecuador shutdown the indigenous rights NGO, Fundación Pachamama, in Quito over the group's opposition to oil drilling in indigenous areas. More than a dozen government officials showed up at Pachamama's office with a resolution by the Ministry of Environment that officially dissolved the organization, the first such moved by the government which in June passed an Executive Decree that tightened governmental oversight of the country's NGOs.

The Ecuadorean government, under Rafael Correa, contends that Pachamama was involved in physically harassing an ambassador from Chile and a businessman following a recent presentation on oil concession in the Amazon. But Pachamma denies the allegations, instead accusing the government of violence.

"We reject violent demonstrations that come from any sector. We neither support nor engage in any violent act. We cannot be blamed for acts in which we have not participated," Maria Belén Páez, the president of Fundación Pachamama, said in a statement. "For our work in defending rights, we have been attacked publicly and violently by those who hold political power, and this has been widely disseminated by the media under government control. That is violence. It is also violence to dissolve an organization unexpectedly, without legal cause, without due process that guarantees self-defense."

Pachamama says it will take its case to court and file an appeal to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights. Pachamama, which is the name of an indigenous Earth goddess, works to empower Amazonian communities...

A view in Ecuador's Yasuni area, shot by Geoff Gallice, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

WWF seeks to protect Congo park from oil developer

World Wildlife Fund via AP: The World Wildlife Fund is trying to block proposed oil exploration in Africa's oldest national park where 200 gorillas live.

The Swiss-based conservation group filed its complaint Monday with Britain's Department for Business Innovation and Skills in a bid to stop SOCO International's exploration in Congo's Virunga National Park, a World Heritage site listed by UNESCO as being "in danger."

The WWF says SOCO's plan violates Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development guidelines on sustainable development, public disclosure and other points. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills is the arm of the British government responsible for overseeing compliance with OECD guidelines.

Last year the Congo government authorized SOCO, which is based in London, to explore the region, saying that economic interests take precedence over environmental considerations....

Waterfall in the Virunga National Park. The Virunga National Park (formerly Albert National Park) lies from the Virunga Mountains, to the Rwenzori Mountains, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Rwenzori Mountains National Park in Uganda. Shot by Foto Ad Meskens, Wikimedia Commons

After the floods in Colorado, a deluge of worry about leaking oil

Jack Healy in the New York Times: When floodwaters surged into Colorado’s drilling center, they swamped wells, broke pipes and swept huge oil tanks off their foundations. The state has counted a dozen “notable” spills stemming from the catastrophic floods this month.

 Now, as the waters drain east and regulators move to assess the environmental toll, the sight of drowning oil wells has inflamed the emotional debate over the West’s new resource rush. It is a familiar argument here in a state where oil wells dot farmers’ fields and ragged peaks still bear the scars of century-old gold and silver mines.

 There are about 20,000 oil and gas wells across Weld County, and about 1,900 of them had to be closed off — “shut in” in industry parlance — as the floodwaters coursed down from the mountains and spread out across the plains, inundating entire communities.

 Images of toppled oil tanks and dark sheens on the water created impressions of an environmental calamity, but state officials say the damage appears to be limited. About 37,380 gallons have spilled so far — an amount, energy officials point out, that would fill up about five percent of an Olympic-size swimming pool...

Sandbags for the Colorado flood, with the Colorado National Guard helping. Photo by Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Nicole Manzanares, public domain

Colorado flooding triggers oil spills, shutdowns

CBS News: Colorado's flooding shut down hundreds of natural gas and oil wells in the state's main petroleum-producing region and triggered at least two spills, temporarily suspending a multibillion-dollar drilling frenzy and sending inspectors into the field to gauge the extent of pollution.

Besides the possible environmental impact, flood damage to roads, railroads and other infrastructure will affect the region's energy production for months to come. And analysts warn that images of flooded wellheads from the booming Wattenberg Field will increase public pressure to impose restrictions on drilling techniques such as fracking.

"There's been massive amounts of growth in the last two years and it's certainly expected to continue," Caitlyn McCrimmon, a senior research associate for Calgary-based energy consultant ITG Investment Research, said of Colorado oil and gas drilling. "The only real impediment to growth in this area would be if this gives enough ammunition to environmentalists to rally support for fracking bans, which they had started working on before this."

Two spills were reported by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. — 323 barrels (13,500 gallon) along the St. Vrain River near Platteville, and 125 barrels (5,250 gallons) into the South Platte River near Milliken, federal and state regulators said. The St. Vrain feeds into the South Platte, which flows across Colorado's plains and into Nebraska. In both cases, the oil apparently was swept away by floodwaters. Both releases involved condensate, a mixture of oil and water, said Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Matthew Allen.

The environmental damage still was being assessed, but officials in Weld County, where the spills took place, said the oil was just one among a host of contaminants caught up in floodwaters washing through communities along the Rocky Mountain foothills....

An urban search and rescue dog in Colorado, September 16, 2013. Shot by Michael Rieger of FEMA

Ecuador's president abandons no-drilling plan

Gonzalo Solano in the San Francisco Chronicle via AP: President Rafael Correa said Thursday that he has abandoned a unique and ambitious plan to persuade rich countries to pay Ecuador not to drill for oil in a pristine Amazon rainforest preserve.

Environmentalist had hailed the initiative when Correa first proposed it in 2007, saying he was setting a precedent in the fight against global warming by lowering the high cost to poor countries of preserving the environment.

"The world has failed us," Correa said in a nationally televised speech. He said the global recession was in part responsible but chiefly blamed "the great hypocrisy" of nations who emit most of the world's greenhouse gases.

"It was not charity that we sought from the international community, but co-responsibility in the face of climate change."

Correa had sought $3.6 billion in contributions to maintain a moratorium on drilling in the remote Yasuni National Park, which was declared a biosphere reserve by the United Nations in 1989 and is home to two Indian tribes living in voluntary isolation.

But he said Thursday evening that Ecuador had raised just $13 million in actual donations in pledges and that he had an obligation to his people, particularly the poor, to move ahead with drilling. The U.N. and private donors had put up the cash…

A Texan tragedy: ample oil, no water

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): Beverly McGuire saw the warning signs before the [Barnhart, Texas] town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no effect. But it still did not prepare her for the night last month when she turned on the tap and discovered the tiny town where she had made her home for 35 years was out of water.  ...Across the south-west, residents of small communities like Barnhart are confronting the reality that something as basic as running water, as unthinking as turning on a tap, can no longer be taken for granted. Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry's outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers. And climate change is making things worse.

In Texas alone, about 30 communities could run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Nearly 15 million people are living under some form of water rationing, barred from freely sprinkling their lawns or refilling their swimming pools. In Barnhart's case, the well appears to have run dry because the water was being extracted for shale gas fracking. ...Water levels were dropping in his wells because of the vast amounts of water being pumped out of the Edwards-Trinity-Plateau Aquifer, a 34,000 sq mile water bearing formation. "They are sucking all of the water out of the ground, and there are just hundreds and hundreds of water trucks here every day bringing fresh water out of the wells," Owens said.

Meanwhile, residents in town complained, they were forced to live under water rationing. "I've got dead trees in my yard because I haven't been able to water them," said Glenda Kuykendall. "The state is mandating our water system to conserve water but why?... Getting one oil well fracked takes more water than the entire town can drink or use in a day."

...So what is a town like Barnhart to do? Fracking is a powerful drain on water supplies. In adjacent Crockett county, fracking accounts for up to 25% of water use, according to the groundwater conservation district. But Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, argues fracking is not the only reason Texas is going dry – and nor is the drought. The latest shocks to the water system come after decades of overuse by ranchers, cotton farmers, and fast-growing thirsty cities. "We have large urban centres sucking water out of west Texas to put on their lands. We have a huge agricultural community, and now we have fracking which is also using water," she said. And then there is climate change....

The water tower in Vega, Texas, shot by Christian M. Mericle, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Potential well water contamination highest near natural gas drilling

University of Texas at Arlington News Center: A new study of 100 private water wells in and near the Barnett Shale showed elevated levels of potential contaminants such as arsenic and selenium closest to natural gas extraction sites, according to a team of researchers that was led by UT Arlington associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry Kevin Schug.

Brian Fontenot, who earned his Ph.D. in quantitative biology from UT Arlington, worked with Kevin Schug, UT Arlington associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and a team of researchers to analyze samples from 100 private water wells.

The results of the North Texas well study were published online by the journal Environmental Science & Technology Thursday. The peer-reviewed paper focuses on the presence of metals such as arsenic, barium, selenium and strontium in water samples. Many of these heavy metals occur naturally at low levels in groundwater, but disturbances from natural gas extraction activities could cause them to occur at elevated levels.

“This study alone can’t conclusively identify the exact causes of elevated levels of contaminants in areas near natural gas drilling, but it does provide a powerful argument for continued research,” said Brian Fontenot, a UT Arlington graduate with a doctorate in quantitative biology and lead author on the new paper.

He added: “We expect this to be the first of multiple projects that will ultimately help the scientific community, the natural gas industry, and most importantly, the public, understand the effects of natural gas drilling on water quality.”...

A far view of a fracking operation undetaken by Halliburton, shot by Joshua Doubek, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Repsol to drill for oil in Amazon rainforest in Peru

David Hill in the Andes to the Amazon blog in the Guardian (UK): Repsol has been given the go-ahead by Peru's ministry of energy and mines (MEM) to explore for oil in one "protected" and one proposed reserve in the north of the country in the remote Amazon rainforest bordering Ecuador. According to an environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the company's plans initially submitted to MEM in 2011 and approved this month, exploration will involve 3D seismic tests across a 680sqkm area and drilling at least 21 wells.

Although Repsol doesn't acknowledge it, all the tests and 20 of the 21 wells fall within a proposed reserve for indigenous peoples who live in what Peruvian law calls "voluntary isolation" and are extremely vulnerable to any kind of contact with outsiders. The creation of this reserve was proposed by regional indigenous organisation ORAI in 2003 in order to protect the region and prohibit loggers, miners and oil and gas companies - like Repsol - from operating there.

Last December the Inter-American Development Bank agreed to give $1m to Peru with the stated aim of protecting the country's "isolated" indigenous peoples – some of which was scheduled to be spent on turning the proposed reserve in this region into a real one.

In 2007 national indigenous organisation AIDESEP appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to help stop Repsol, but Peru's ministry of justice and human rights is casting doubt on the "isolated" peoples' existence and urging the IACHR to close the case...

A floating island on Lake Titicaca in Peru, shot by http://veton.picq.fr, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Peru spares Amazon rainforest from oil and gas push

David Hill in the Andes to Amazon blog in the Guardian (UK): Peru has announced a bidding round for new oil and gas concessions but, contrary to what was initially expected, none of them are in the Amazon rainforest. Nine concessions are to be auctioned, energy company Perupetro declared recently, but all of them are offshore along Peru's Pacific Ocean coast.

This constitutes a significant change of plan by Perupetro which last September issued a statement that before the end of 2012 36 new concessions would be established. According to a presentation made to the World Heavy Oil Congress in Aberdeen in Scotland the same month, 27 of these concessions – totaling millions of hectares – would be in the Amazon.

...Perupetro's new chairman, Luis Ortiga Cuneo, who took over from Ortiz in December, told Peruvian press the reason for the postponement was a 'prior consultation law' approved by Congress in 2011. The law's stated aim is to give "indigenous or native peoples" the right to be previously consulted about development projects or "administrative or legislative" measures affecting their collective rights to their "quality of life, cultural identity or physical existence."

...Amazon Watch's Andrew Miller, currently in Peru, says the "sustained campaigns of local indigenous communities, their federations and international allies appear to have changed the government's calculus. Whereas in the past they promoted the oil rounds to international companies without advising communities, now they have to comply with the consultation law."

But others remain extremely skeptical. "The government has been granting concessions without doing consultations for 40 years and it'll be difficult to change now," says Jesus Castro Suarez, from Lima-based NGO Eco-Dess. "I suspect they'll find some legal device to avoid consulting people. This can't or shouldn't be described as a civil society victory."...

Amazon Rainforest, seen from the Alto Madre de Dios river, in Peru, shot by Martin St-Amant (S23678), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license