Fracking Frackers

Our new homestead came with mineral rites and a pre-existing oil & gas lease which basically gives those rites to the oil company.  I received an illegible copy of it before we purchased.  We knew there was a Columbia Gas gas line running through the back 40.  It doesn't produce any gas for our use, only transports it.  We aren't even sure yet if it is still active.  All I could find out about the lease prior to purchase was that it did transfer owner to owner and would have to be dealt with at some sort of legal level later.  We decided it wasn't a show stopper.

I attended a meeting of Fairfield County landowners a couple weeks ago hosted by a local law firm.  They presented an overview of what the oil & gas companies were after, the fracking process, and how the oil & gas companies were misleading landowners into signing cheap leases.  The law firm was trying to form a consortium of land owners to provide collective bartering power and an educational forum so land owners would know how to deal with the lease negotiations.  Of course the law firm is making a chuck of change in the process.  Bottom line was that land owners are not in any position to negotiate these agreements without legal representation.  Agreed.  They also provide representation to those that, like us, who inherited crappy lease agreements from their previous owners.

There were about 40 landowners at the meeting.  The law firm has 10 members and 4 are totally dedicated to working the oil & gas leases.  They have been having these meetings for 4 months across 4 counties.  This was the 6th and final meeting in Fairfield County.  They had maps showing which landowners had already signed up for their program of representation in the event the oil & gas companies approached them.

I was a little amazed at the passive-deer-in-the-headlights expressions of the collective landowners at the meeting.  There were a few asking the right questions; what are the risks to health/environment?  What about all the 'accidental' spillage and 'earthquakes' we've heard about in the news due to fracking?  What chemicals do they use in the process?  However, the majority seemed to have $$$ in their eyes.  

We sit on the Utica Shale Shelf which runs through NY, PA, WV, OH, IN and on up into Canada.  It has been one of the oil companies interests for at least the past decade.  Instead of drilling for oil, they have determined that there is more money to be made in the liquid propane and natural gas they can extract from the massive shale shelves across the U.S.  In order to extract it, they drill several thousand feet to the shale shelf and blast it with tons of water and hundreds of various chemicals to release the propane for extraction.  This is fracking.  There have been hundreds of incidents of permanently polluted water supplies and families devasted by their early fracking processes.  They have been improving these processes and more and more state restrictions have been imposed.  They will never be SAFE. 

I see evidence of their drilling all around my rural community.  My property water suppy is spring fed.  Which means it could be polluted before it even reaches me and there's nothing I can do about it.  Wells aren't any safer.  There are many reports of wells being polluted by chemicals seeping into underground water supplies.  Just a matter of time before we hear of a village or a city water supply being polluted.  And of course the oil & gas companies NEVER admit their drilling was the cause of the pollution.  However, they have settled out of court in hundreds of cases.  Many of those effected can't afford the legal representation to even begin the battle of suing them.  And of course the gas companies know this.

These pics are of a Columbia Gas compressor station just 1 mile from my house.  You have to drive right through it to get to the  Wahkeena Nature Preserve entrance.  It links up all the fracked pipelines,  cleans & compresses the gas for transporting.  They are every 40-100 miles.

I am now in the process of getting a legible copy of our lease agreement so it can be evaluated and determine if our gas line is opertional.  Until then, I don't even know what our options are.

There is a very informative documentary on fracking on Netflix called GASLAND from 2009 (multiply the effects of this X 10 to see what is happening 2012).  It is a MUST see for every US citizen.  It does and will effect us all eventually.  We need to educate ourselves and our neighbors.