Discuss: Shale Game

@Tom Marks:

Hard to believe, but true. My org works the issue. Learn more at
halliburton.earthworksaction.org.

In a nutshell, Dick Cheney and Halliburton threw their weight behind a loophole that was consequently passed as part of the 2005 Energy bill.

Folks, if you want to tell Congress to close the Halliburton loophole for gas drillers to the Safe Drinking Water Act, you can do so here:

http://frackaction.earthworksaction.org

The link should be live the afternoon of 5/20

To learn more about the issue, you can poke around our site at the link
above. But the propublica investigative series on the subject is peerless:
http://www.propublica.org/series/buried-secrets-gas-drillings-environmental-threat

If above action link doesn’t work, try this:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/676/t/572/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1203

I think the US has used the resources of third world countries and now the powers that be(Haliburton,Chesapeake) have plans to turn the US into a third world country..I hate to see beautiful upstate NY destroyed and lots of other places(the gulf,Appalachia,Alaska,all lakes have mercury warnings..then there is global warming killing so many pine trees in the Rockies…plains topsoil destruction…more Nukes coming

Below is an excerpt from the website of Earthworks with information about high volume slickwater hydraulic fracturing..and it gives an explanation of the exemptions of this specific gas drilling technique from EPA law..It is indeed shocking to learn of this exemption until you understand that Dick Cheney pushed it through Congress with the 2005 Energy Act.

The Halliburton loophole

  Despite the widespread use of the practice, and the risks hydraulic fracturing poses to human health and safe drinking water supplies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) does not regulate the injection of fracturing fluids under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The oil and gas industry is the only industry in America that is allowed by EPA to inject known hazardous materials—unchecked—directly into or adjacent to underground drinking water supplies.

  This exemption from the SDWA has become known as the “Halliburton loophole” because it is widely perceived to have come about as a result of the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force. Before taking office, Cheney was CEO of Halliburton—which patented hydraulic fracturing in the 1940s, and remains one of the three largest manufacturers of fracturing fluids. Halliburton staff were actively involved in review of the 2004 EPA report on hydraulic fracturing.

An excellent resource on this topic is the report by the Oil and Gas Accountability Project:

The Oil and Gas Industry’s Exclusions and Exemptions to Major Environmental Statutes

http://www.earthworksaction.org/pubs/PetroleumExemptions1c.pdf

energyjustice.org talks about fracking..and alternative energy .