Exxon CEO joins anti-fracking lawsuit after drilling threatens his property value

Photo: Joshua Doubek

As ExxonMobil’s CEO, it’s Rex Tillerson’s job to promote the hydraulic fracturing enabling the recent oil and gas boom, and fight regulatory oversight. The oil company is the biggest natural gas producer in the U.S., relying on the controversial drilling technology to extract it.

The exception is when Tillerson’s $5 million property value might be harmed. Tillerson has joined a lawsuit that cites fracking’s consequences in order to block the construction of a 160-foot water tower next to his and his wife’s Texas home.

LINK (via: Think Progress)

Like a roomful of zombies

Some of them fisherman.

While most of you out there probably wouldn't characterize Trout Unlimited as an anti drilling group, the editors behind Marcellus Drilling News would beg to disagree.

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Fracking by the Numbers

As US public policy debates over the dangers and benefits of fracking for shale gas persist, a new report has emerged showing that the practice generated 280 billion gallons of toxic waste last year - containing cancer-causing and radioactive substances.

LINK (via: Think Progress)

Much of the concern over fracking has related to the seepage of these chemicals or methane from drilling wells into groundwater or the fact that high-pressure injection can trigger earthquakes, but the wastewater recently tested presents a separate, largely overlooked problem.

LINK (via:Smithsonian)

Injection Wells: The Poison Beneath Us

Graphic by Al Granberg for ProPublica

If you think for a second that the current gas drilling boom is not going to effect the nation's water quality consider this....

Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the earth, using broad expanses of the nation's geology as an invisible dumping ground.

No company would be allowed to pour such dangerous chemicals into the rivers or onto the soil. But until recently, scientists and environmental officials have assumed that deep layers of rock beneath the earth would safely entomb the waste for millennia.

There are growing signs they were mistaken.

LINK (via: pro publica)

My Water's On Fire

The Fracking Song

Little is actually known about the health impacts of drinking methane in the water

Scientists tested water samples taken from 68 private wells in five counties in Pennsylvania and New York to explore accusations that "hydro-fracking" -- a contested technique to extract shale gas -- has contaminated groundwater.

Methane was found in 85 percent of the samples, and at sites within a kilometer (0.6 mile) of active hydraulic-fracturing operations, levels were 17 times higher than in wells far from such operations, said the study by researchers at Duke University in North Carolina.

While some residents have sounded the alarm about running faucets that ignite if a flame is placed nearby, little is actually known about the health impacts of drinking methane in the water, he said.

LINK (Via:The Raw Story)