President Obama on Friday issued an executive order to better coordinate federal oversight of "fracking," the popular but controversial natural-gas extraction method.
The order establishes an "interagency working group" with members from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, Energy Department, National Economic Council and other bodies. At least 10 federal departments or agencies currently are mulling new regulations of the gas industry or have commissioned studies of its environmental impact. They have to get everyone on the same page before they ban fracking.
The sheer number of potential rule makers has caused many industry insiders to fear confusing or overlapping guidelines; some analysts say that could greatly hamper domestic oil and gas production. The new working group, Mr. Obama said, is designed to "ensure coordination among the appropriate federal entities." And while some industry folks welcome the move ...
It remains to be seen, however, whether the move lessens the potential impact of looming federal rules. Later this year, the EPA will release a long-awaited report on the environmental safety of fracking, the use of water, sand and chemicals to crack underground rock and release vast quantities of fuel. Many industry analysts expect the report to call for sharp new restraints on the drilling method.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/16/2012 14:43 ||
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Link ||
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#1
WHAT!? We don't get another Czar with unlimited power and no oversight?
#4
Some interesting - and ironic - information from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing
The first frac job was performed in 1947 in limestone deposits by Halliburton.
In the 1970s the federal government initiated both the Eastern Gas Shales Project, a set of dozens of public-private hydro-fracturing pilot demonstration projects, and the Gas Research Institute, a gas industry research consortium that received approval for research and funding from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Over this time, Sandia National Laboratories was conducting research into microseismic imaging for use in coalbeds, a geologic mapping technique that would prove crucial for the commercial recovery of natural gas from shale as well as oil from offshore drilling rigs.
In the late 1970s, the Department of Energy pioneered massive hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique that would be improved upon for the economic recovery of shale gas in the future. In 1986, a joint DOE-private venture completed the first successful multi-fracture horizontal well in shale. The Department of Energy later subsidized Mitchell Energy's first successful horizontal drill in the north-Texas Barnett Shale in 1991. Mitchell Energy engineers would go on to develop the hydraulic fracturing technique known as 'slickwater fracturing' that started the modern shale gas boom.
Seems the Feds got it all started, but then poly-ticks got in the way.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/16/2012 16:34 Comments ||
Top||
#5
See TOPIX/WORLD NEWS > UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR STRIKES, NOT [Natural] EARTHQUAKES, HIT WASHINGTON DC IN 2011.
[1960'S-70'S GUAM TAOTAMONAS, HUGO CHAVEZ + LAND/ISLAND(S)-SINKING "EARTHQUAKE/TECTONIC BOMBS" here].
and
* TOPIX > PHYSORG > ZEN-HAVEN.DK BLOG = SCHUMAN RESONANCE | [Mysterious]CHANGES DETECTED IN SOME SCHUMAN CAVITY RESONANCE, aka "Earth's Heartbeat/Pulse" = Global Magnetic Field "Isochronic Tones".
Rise from "normal/routine" frequency of 7.8Hz to 12.0Hz, HIGHER-LEVEL FREQUENCIES POSSIBLE.
IMO is related to the magnitide or strength of the serious background EM distortions = warping/alterations I'd recently experienced. THE SUN HAD RELEASED ENERGIES POWERFUL ENUFF TO DISTORT OR BEND BACKGROUND REALITY.
#6
Iff my childhood dreams/Visions hold true, our future OWG-NWO will agree to formally outlaw
"fracking" as an international crime/felony agz the Planet + Humanity.
Just two days after President Barack Obama gave a sharply edged response to news anchor Larry Conners of KMOV in St. Louis after Conners had asked the president about Americans who "get frustrated and even angered when they see the first family jetting around [to] different vacations and so forth," Obama told a panel at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia that part of his job there was to scout out locations for a future vacation with First Lady Michelle Obama.
Obama was speaking on a panel with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff when he made the remarks. The panel was moderated by Chris Matthews of MSNBC.
"I want to thank President Santos and the people of Colombia for the extraordinary hospitality in the beautiful city of Cartagena," said Obama. "We're having a wonderful time. And usually when I take these summit trips, part of my job is to scout out where I may want to bring Michelle back later for vacation. So we'll make sure to come back sometime in the near future." And of course, before anyone else says it, "It was Bush'es fault because he took 30 trips home to Texas at this stage of his presidency, the Obamas vacation-day count is less than half of W's 220 days at his Crawford ranch."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.