Fluffy ‘Fluff piece’ on Frac’ing in Pennsylvania: Observer-Reporter and or Mr. Shrum propagandizing for polluters and shitting on the many harmed. Warning, reading the boasting, lies and Shrumcrap requires vomit bags and cursing.
Mr. Shrum’s advert is as bad as Post Media’s regurgitating CAPP and AER/UCP propaganda and lies in Canada. Some reality before you dive into Mr. Shrum’s sleazy frac advert (you need to scroll way down to find it):
Yesterday, our local newspaper, the Observer-Reporter, ran a so-called ‘story’ about the past 20 years of fracking in our Washington County, where the 21st century version of fracking actually began. It would appear the Chamber of Commerce, who likes to promote this area as ‘The Energy Capital of the East,’ contributed a large part of that story.Yes, that’s how I read it too, I even wonder if they wrote all of it because it’s so gross and dishonest.
I’ll begin here with the email I’m sending to the reporter who wrote the story, Rick Shrum. Some classic insight, most recently, one of the biggest stories on fracking has to be the Latkanich v. Chevron case, one that’s being argued in Washington County courts. To my knowledge, the Observer-Reporter has yet to report very much on the case, if anything at all (searches on their website with ‘Latkanich’ or ‘Chevron’ come up empty on the case), in spite of my emailed reminders to reporters of court dates and times.
As some further insight to the newspaper story, Mt Pleasant Township is where the small town of Hickory is located, and where the Gulla and Hallowich families formerly resided. Having closely followed this so-called ‘shale revolution’ in that township over the years, I witnessed first hand how that small community was divided, steamrolled and shat upon. As the years and decades have passed, those of us watching other communities have said, “Same story, different place.”
+++
Mr. Shrum — Hopefully your ‘fluff piece’ on fracking in our county [‘Shale Revolution’: A look back at 20 years of gas drilling in theregion] will bring forth some LTEs to balance that one-sided story — ones the Observer-Reporter will print in their entirety.
Thinking back to the Pa DEP’s largest fine ever, $4.15million dollars for Range Resources leaking impoundment dams (holding fluids we now know are often radioactive), their two fish kill spills (only 5 months apart in the same township, with one in our county park) clearly show, even while ignoring all the other devastation fracking has brought to families, air, land,water, livestock and wildlife here, the far more important, and largely unwritten local story.
It’s probably the photo shopped full-page ad your newspaper ran years ago –one that falsely inflated Marcellus shale employment numbers, that pretty much continues to say it all, especially with the O-R’s ‘vacuum of silence’ when it comes to printing very much that’s negative, about the ‘all-important’ fracking you continue to champion, on behalf of the industry.
It’s beyond gross to me how unashamed and arrogantly media lies for frac’ers and their enablers, harming the public interest which they are supposed to protect.
Please, next time label any so-called ‘newspaper story’ like this latest one, as an industry (or Chamber of Commerce) advertisement. Meantime, order a copy of the new book, ‘Petroleum 238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It” to further educate yourself on what’s really happening here, and the fracking pollution that will linger here, for another 1,600 years.
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories reflecting on 20 years of gas drilling in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Mount Pleasant Township is among the most appropriately named municipalities in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
It is pleasant, to be sure, a friendly, bucolic town of about 3,300 residents nestled in its gently rolling hills.
Shane Maga has lived there comfortably for a long while. Yet, when asked to reflect back nearly two decades, he recounted a time of discomfort and uncertainty over the anticipated arrival of a little-known entity.
“People were scared out of their wits about fracking,” said Maga, chairman of the township supervisors. “No one really knew how things would work out, but we tried to make the best of it.”
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, dates to the 1860s in the United States. But in the eastern part of the country, that process did not have a significant impact in the extraction of oil and natural gas from shale and other rock formations until near the turn of the 21st century.Better read Andrew Nikiforuk’s Slick Water and learn the truth about the history of frac’ing in USA. It doesn’t sound to me like you know what you are writing about Mr. Shrum.
In the early 2000s, it appeared the county, and the township, which were sitting atop the expansive Marcellus Shale formation, were destined to become familiar with fracking. “We started to see benefits and advantages,”Ya right. What a liar. Typical of authorities bought and or controlled by oil, frac and gas, or their owned politicians. Maga said.
Fame would be among Mount Pleasant’s benefits.
In early October 2004, high on a hill off Sabo Road, Range Resources Corp. successfully fracked a well on the Renz farm.
Workers at Range extracted an estimated 300,000 cubic feet of natural gas that day.
At the time, it was the largest fracking job executed east of the Mississippi River. The well site has been labeled, “The discovery well for the modern Marcellus Shale gas play.”
Marcellus is the second-largest natural gas field in the world, stretching 31,000 square miles from southern New York state to northern Kentucky, andwest from the Catskills to Ohio. The formation is five times the size of the bountiful Barnett Shale in Texas.Mr. Shrum, supposedly a reporter, but shilling big time for toxic water destroying frac’ers, feeding the greed for them.
The success at Renz Well No. 1, and subsequent industry successes, helped to spark the Shale Revolution in the United States. The oil and natural gas industry, according to the American Petroleum Institute’s website, supports more than 11 million jobs nationwide.Ya, and that lobby group lies big. all. the. time. I wonder how much Mr. Shrum was paid for this harmful sleazy frac propaganda, or did he do it out of greedy goodness of his frac’d heart?
Pennsylvania, in particular, has benefitedbeen raped and harmedfrom this revolution, rising to No. 2 gas producer in the U.S., behind Texas bankrupting companies and stealing $billions from investors; providing jobs for crews from out of state; destroying community water supplies and endless private water wells; sickening kids and adults, livestock, fish, wildlfie and pets; polluting the air for hundreds of miles with undisclosed toxic frac chemicals; dividing communities and families; and more.
For making an indelible mark, Renz Well and everyone involved with the project will be honoredsleaze out more lies and propaganda, to keep the harmed and those yet to be harmed, quietat a date to be determined in October. Range Resources, which declined to participate in this energy seriesNo wonder, the company violated the law too often to keep track of, harming many, and the Washington County Chamber of Commerce are collaborating on the placement of a marker on the well site.
Renz No. 1 is an exemplary example of that bromide, “third time’s a charm.” It was a once-failed well when Range Resources decided to frack there in 2003.
The well, according to an article written by Seamus McGraw in Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine, produced a small amount of gas after a few days of drilling, and increasing amounts over several days before the flow abruptly stopped.
Bill Zagorski, a Range Resources geologist, wasn’t deterred. A voracious reader, he studied old records from this region and histories of shale and other formations that could provide clues to unlocking the Marcellus.
Among his findings: there was a fair amount of drilling in the Mount Pleasant area in the 1940s, where there were reports of brief but strong showings of gas, including several blowouts. That was promising, and buoyed his hopes for Renz. (One blowout reportedly sent several hundreds of pounds of rigging 30 feet up a well bore.It’s fucking insane, to be proud of this or to boast about it! Think of the harms done above and below ground. Typical, though, for news media to propagandize every fucking damage and harm done by oil and gas as a grand positive thing. Crass Idiots.
Range Resources had spent a lot on the 2003 project, and was about to spend more. Zagorski, according to McGraw, was still optimistic that Renz would prove to be bountiful, but less upbeat when he pitched a return to Renz to Jeff Ventura, the company’s chief operating officer. The COO said yes.
“People knew it was there,” said Terry Engelder, professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and a consultant to oil and gas companies.Tells us everything we need to know about Engelder “Zagorski talked to Range to not close the well, and because it was already drilled, not plugged, the company decided to try it.”
Try it and succeed beyond expectations. For his diligence and foresight, Zagorski, a Western Pennsylvania resident, was declared “Father of the Marcellus” by the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists.
The Marcellus was unlocked and potentially prodigious. Engelder proposed that 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be recovered from the formation, or the same amount the entire country uses in about 2 1/2 years. He later revised that estimate upward to 489 trillion cubic feet, or enough for 20 years in the U.S.Gotta feed the greed to keep investors losing more and more billions of dollars.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel that burns ethane, an issue the industry is striving to address. But what happened at the Renz Well 20 years ago has been huge – leading to a more plentiful energy source that would yield financial boons for landowners via royalties and municipalities from impact fees.
Jeff Kotula, president of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement: “Since Range Resources’ successful commercialization of the Renz No. 1 Well in 2004, natural gas has positioned itself as a transformative industry with wide-ranging positivedevastating impacts on our economy, community and country.
“The industry supports (many) jobs, creates significant local and state tax revenues, and generates billions in economic losses, notably in poisoned aquifers, sickened communities, destroyed public infrastructure, and billions in losses to investors and companies bankrupting themselves with dirty judges giving them more value than even company CEOs declare.benefits. It also allows Washington County to be a leader in destroying the environment and polluting the atmosphere with dire consequences being felt globally and worsening every yearour nation’s energy independence – reducing our reliance on foreign energy sources.
“The (chamber) recognizedwas bought and controlled by the industry’s potential early on and concentrated our efforts on educatingpropagandizing and lying to our business community on the opportunities available in the natural gas economy, and how our local businesses could work together with the energy industry in mutually beneficial waysthat benefited corrupt community leaders and politicians while raping and harming ordinary families and costing masses in losses and legal fees while laundering that money into the pockets of the rich.”
“We are proud that some of the leading companies in the energy industry – including producers, transportation, processing and secondary service providers – have selected Washington County as their home – where they are now rip off and abuse and harm our family, friends and neighbors.”
That includes Mount Pleasant.
“Overall,” Shane Maga said, “people are more relaxed now.”Ya, because they are worn out, hauling water and sickened by cancer and other harms caused by the toxic frac industry
No wonder frac’ers break the law, regulators and judges help them get away with it.
