Apr 21, 2011


Pennsylvania: the 'ground zero' of the US shale gas drilling boom

Sitting atop a vast deposit of natural gas, Pennsylvania knows how lucrative – and dangerous – this rapidly expanding industry is. But how can it prevent large-scale environmental damage?

• Fossil fuel firms use 'biased' study in massive gas lobbying push
Shale Gas : A pipe leads to a lined pit used to collect drill cuttings, Pennsylvania
A pipe leads to a lined pit used to collect drill cuttings near Montrose, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Getty Images
Last June, Tony Zaffuto arrived at his fieldstone cabin in the forested hills of Pennsylvania's SB Elliott state park to find a notice pinned on the front door: "Danger. Do not occupy dwelling".
A blowout at a gas well in another popular camping spot, in the woods of the Punxsutawney hunt club, also in Clearfield County, had shot a 23-metre (75ft) combustible gusher of gas and toxic waste water into the air. It took the gas company, EOG Resources, 16 hours to control the well and the authorities had to carry out an evacuation.
It was not Zaffuto's first encounter with the dangers of natural gas drilling. In 2009 the spring that was the cabin's only source of water was contaminated by toxic waste from a pond serving the gas wells. Five other nearby water wells were also contaminated.
And yet Zaffuto is right behind Pennsylvania's natural gas boom. He supports the idea of US energy security and he wants his country to reduce oil imports.
"Throughout all this, I am pro-drilling, but I want to see it done correctly," Zaffuto, a businessman whose family have owned the cabin since 1921, said. "Having it done correctly will not cripple the industry. If there is money to be made they will comply. If there is enough natural resource of gas in the ground, they will drill and they will abide by the regulations. It's simple."
But how can rigorous new environmental standards be imposed on an industry well advanced in the 21st century's first big energy rush?
Zaffuto still has no drinking water at his cabin, nearly two years after EOG admitted contaminating his well. The latest laboratory report says it is still unfit to drink.
The federal government is only now beginning to undertake a review of the chemicals that are used in hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", the relatively recent technique used to release vast stores of natural gas buried underground.
The technique uses millions of litres of water, sand and a battery of chemicals – including carcinogens such as benzene – injected at high pressure to fracture the rock and release the stored gas.
A new report released by Democratic members of Congress on Monday found that drilling companies at times injected chemicals that even they could not identify. It also found that more than 650 of the chemicals used in fracking were carcinogens.
Environmental groups, and an investigation by the ProPublica investigative journalism website, have exposed several persistent dangers: leaks in wells owing to faulty casing or migration through layers or rock; breaches in the above-ground tanks meant to store used drilling chemicals; and a rise in air emissions.
Meanwhile, a report due to be published in the Climate Change journal this month from a team at Cornell University, in New York, challenged one of the fuel's main selling points – that shale gas is a low-carbon fuel. The study found that the carbon footprint for shale gas was far greater than conventional oil or gas or even coal – especially over the next 20 years, a crucial window for fighting climate change.
But the demands for greater regulation face powerful opposition from the natural gas companies, and it may be too late to reform an industry that is expanding at such a rapid rate.
Pennsylvania sits atop one of the world's largest deposits of natural gas, a formation known as the Marcellus shale, and the past five years have seen a takeoff in the natural gas industry.
Last year alone, oil and gas companies, such as Shell, Chevron, Reliance and BG Group (the Reading-based company that is one half of the former British Gas) poured $17.9bn (£10.8bn) into projects in the area last year. They drilled 1,415 new wells in Pennsylvania alone.
The companies expect to drill 2,000 additional wells this year, rising to 3,500 a year by the middle of the decade, said Katie Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Association, an industry group.
Some projections suggest there could be 100,000 new gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania by the end of this decade.
"There are very few counties that don't have at least a couple of Marcellus wells that have been drilled," she said. "Just about every county has some drilling." And, environmentalists argue, just about every county has direct experience of its dangers.
In the northern town of Bradford, entire streets have been outfitted with gas meters as precautions against methane gas migration. Two homes have exploded since late last year. "It was just a ball of fire that hit me in the face and caught my hair on fire," said Beverly Butler, whose house blew up on a Sunday afternoon before Christmas.
A number of towns have had to warn locals to boil tap water before drinking after water treatment plants were compromised by bromides in waste water from gas-drilling projects.
Thomas Au, a former lawyer with Pennsylvania's department of environmental protection, argues that the state was caught off guard by the rapid expansion of shale gas drilling.
The laws on the books were drawn up in an area of shallow wells – which in Pennsylvania's case dates back to the mid-19th century – and the regulators were not equipped to deal with the technological advances of hydraulic fracturing or with the increased activity.
J Stephen Cleghorn, who moved to his 50-acre (20-hectare) plot of land near the town of Reynoldsville six years ago to run an organic goat farm, is beginning to get the picture. Across his wooden kitchen table, he slides a survey map showing his goat farm surrounded by yellow-shaded blocs.
The map represents gas leases already acquired by EXCO Resources, a Texas-based firm which reached an agreement with BG Group last year to develop shale gas in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Sometime over the last few months, the land directly beneath Cleghorn's 120-year-old farmhouse – which is under separate ownership – was also leased for drilling.
His immediate concern was the fate of his goats and the future of a business that depends on a promise of purity. But then Cleghorn said he realised that the potential damage went much farther. "I now realise that what they are talking about is a 22,000 square mile gas field across Pennsylvania that will affect all of our rivers, and all of our wells."
Environmentalists are divided about how to deal with that rapid expansion. Some in Pennsylvania are still hoping to bring the industry to a halt. Others though argue that the best hope is for better regulation.
"There is no plausible future in which gas drilling is banned in Pennsylvania. It is not going to happen. It is too lucrative and we have had a history of extraction in this state," said Jan Jarrett, president of the environmental group PennFuture. But that is all the more reason why the state needs to toughen up its standard of environmental protection.
"This is ground zero," she said. "If regulators don't adopt a zero tolerance for violations of standards then what we will have are places that are going to have unacceptable environmental damage."
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Iranian hunger strikers sew their lips together in protest at UK deportation

The four men are among six hunger strikers who say they were tortured after taking part in protests that swept Iran in 2009
Iranian hunger strikers Mahyar and Mehran Meyari and Keyvan Bahari
Mahyar and Mehran Meyari and Keyvan Bahari (left to right) continue their hunger strike outside the UK Border Agency in London. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
Four Iranians, including a 17-year-old boy, are on hunger strike and have sewn their lips together with fishing wire in protest at plans by the British government to send them back to Tehran.
The men, who are among six protesters to have not eaten for 16 days, say they were beaten, tortured and in one case raped after taking part in anti-regime protests that swept Iran in 2009. They claim that although their lives would be in danger in Iran they have been "ignored and dismissed" by UK authorities since they sought refuge in the country last year.
"We have sewn our mouths because there is no other way," said Keyvan Bahari, 32, who has scars across his back and arms from what he said was 12 days of being slashed with razor blades by the Iranian authorities when he was a student. "Nobody in the UK hears us or cares what we say so we have no other option but to do this."
Bahari, a former champion wrestler who ran his own training centre in Tehran, said the media and government in the UK and US had encouraged him and tens of thousands of other young people to stand up against the regime but had now "washed their hands" of the protesters.
"When I was back in Tehran, I was seeing Obama and British officials on our illegal satellite TVs, encouraging us day in day out to continue our protest," said Bahari, who is one of three men camping on the pavement outside Lunar House immigration centre in Croydon. Speaking with difficulty through his sewn-up lips, which are already sore and infected, he said: "They said that they will support us but now that I'm stuck in here and need help, they are nowhere."
The men say they are taking liquids, but doctors say that even so, they could deteriorate quickly, especially if they have pre-existing medical conditions.
Mahyar Meyari, 17, lying in the small tent next to Bahari, recalls how he was raped after being arrested following a demonstration on al-Quds day in 2009. "I was blindfolded and taken to an unknown place where I was kept for a week. I was kicked on the head by batons many times … and even raped," he said before breaking down.
Mahyar paid a smuggler to get him out of the country but says he did not know where he was being taken before he arrived in the UK 16 days later. "I can't explain how I feel here, I can't believe what's happening to me," said Mahyar, who does not speak English. "When I claimed asylum with the Home Office, they first didn't believe that I'm 17 years old, they said I was lying. There's a culture of disbelief in the Home Office, everybody thinks you are lying by default."
The men's asylum claims were all turned down, although some are still involved in appeals. They say they feel let down by the legal system and the lawyers appointed by the Home Office to represent them.
"I'm very discontent about my legal representation," said Bahari. "I saw my lawyer more as a Home Office officer than a lawyer there to protect my rights. He was more looking after the rights of the Home Office."
A government spokesman said the UK Border Agency "takes every asylum application it receives seriously" adding the men were given "every opportunity to make their representations to us as well as a right to appeal the decision to the courts".
He added: "They all had access to free legal advice as well as a designated UK Border Agency caseowner who considered their case on its individual merits."
However, the men say they have had very little contact with the Home Office since they began their protest and campaigners – and fellow Iranian activists – say asylum seekers are fighting a culture of disbelief across the government.
"The people who are supposed to interview asylum seekers in the Home Office, they do not interview these people, they interrogate them," said Akbar Karimian, an Iranian activist who has been helping the group. "They search for an error or a mistake in their testimonies so that they can find a contradictory evidence to reject their claim. You imagine that the officers in a refugee organisation of this government are there to help these vulnerable people, but they are there to find a way to send them back."
Campaigners say the UK hunger strike is a sign of the increasing desperation among Iranian asylum seekers. One man died after setting himself alight in Amsterdam this month and 25 Iranians sewed their lips together in Greece in an attempt to secure refugee status. The Medical Foundation, which is preparing a report on Meyari's condition for his next appeal, says 293 Iranians were referred to the organisation for help in 2010.
Lying in the tent, Mahyar said the UK hunger strikers, like many fellow Iranians, were prepared for drastic action. "I prefer to die here than going back to Iran. I'll continue this protest until somebody comes here and asks me why I'm doing this, until somebodycares about what has happened to me."
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Black male headteachers in Britain's state schools number just 30

Department for Education's figures lead one headteacher to accuse teaching profession of institutional racism
Black male headteachers in Britain’s state schools number just 30
The black male headteacher figures show historical inequalities, says Marva Rollins, headteacher of Raynham primary school. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
There are just 30 black male headteachers in England's 21,600 stateschools, official figures obtained by the Guardian show, triggering accusations that the country's education system is "institutionally racist".
The Department for Education (DfE) revealed that there are 20 black Caribbean or black African male heads in state nurseries and primaries and 10 in secondary schools. There are none in special schools.
The figures from November last year – which do not include academies and which are the latest available – show there are 127 black female headteachers, meaning that one in every 125 heads is a black man or woman.
Headteachers are overwhelmingly white – some 94.7% are white British. Just 0.7% are black Caribbean or black African, despite these ethnic groups making up 2% of England's population.
Black people are also under-represented among those that have not yet made it to senior leadership posts in schools – 89.3% of teachers in England's maintained schools are white British, while 1.5% are black Caribbean or black African, the statistics reveal.
Marva Rollins, headteacher of Raynham primary school in Enfield, north London, predicted that it would take another 50 years for the number of black teachers to reach a level that reflects the country's population. She said it would be another 200 years before the number of black headteachers is broadly in line with the number of black people in England.
"These figures show historical inequalities. When I was at school, 50 years ago in Ilford, Essex, it was not on the agenda for black people to become teachers. It was seen to be a profession that was out of reach for us. To some extent, it is still like that. There is institutional racism."
Some of the figures were published this week by the DfE as part of a statistical breakdown on the school workforce; others were requested by the Guardian.
It has also been revealed that there are only 19 teachers on one of the main programmes designed to improve aspiring black and ethnic minority headteachers, assistant and deputy heads.
The National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services is a quango that runs Equal Access to Promotion, a scheme that started three years ago and is funded jointly by the agency and the National Union of Teachers. It said 60 headteachers had completed another course to help "minorities" advance to headteacher posts and 45 more would start this autumn.
Other organisations, such as Future Leaders, provide mentoring and coaching but do not have specific programmes.
Toby Salt, deputy chief executive of the National College, said the number of black and ethnic minority teachers on "mainstream training courses" was continuing to rise and that the quango had increased tailored support for minority teachers "as part of our drive to encourage all aspiring heads to step up to school leadership roles".
Rollins said: "Often black teachers feel they can get to middle leadership positions, but no further. It's down to the perception that many people have that a headteacher is a white male in a secondary school and a white female in a primary school." Black teachers are often unfairly overlooked and told they are not ready to be heads, she said.
She said part of the problem was that selection panels, which choose headteachers, are made up of governors, who are predominantly white. "More black teachers could come forward and try to be headteachers, but they feel trapped in middle management and do not have the guidance to overcome this."
She said black headteachers were "snowed under" by requests from black teachers for mentoring.
Chris Vieler-Porter, a former teacher who is researching for a PhD at the Institute of Education, University of London, on the low representation of black headteachers, agreed that the figures were an "indication of institutional racism". He said: "It is not racism in a conscious or overt way. This is about the everyday assumptions that are made about the capabilities of black teachers."
Nicole Haynes, a black deputy headteacher at a secondary school in London, said: "For the middle-class and educated young black person, the private sector offers more opportunities, financial incentives and fewer obstacles.
"Education is still a very traditional institution. How many middle managers are black? Once you enter the teaching profession, there is a lack of promotional opportunities or the roles are quite stereotypical, which will not necessarily lead to senior leadership."
Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said he did not think the education system was institutionally racist. He said the figures showed school governing bodies replicated the kinds of headteachers that they had had in the past. "This is more about inertia than racism," he said.
Earlier this month Arne Duncan, the US education secretary, told a civil rights organisation that fewer than 2% of his country's schoolteachers were black men. "And we wonder why our boys are struggling. We need to show these kids that they can also educate people just like them when they grow up."
David Cameron provoked a row with Oxford University earlier this month during which the university accepted that only one student identified as "black Caribbean" origin was accepted for undergraduate admission in 2009.
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Eric Bana: bruised and bewildered

He's talented, charismatic and good-looking – so why isn't Eric Bana the biggest star on the planet? Joe Queenan thinks he knows what's eating him
Eric Bana in Hanna
Eric Bana in Hanna. Photograph: Alex Bailey
Do you ever wonder why movies stars sometimes vanish from the screen for years at a stretch? Not the way Mel Gibson did (no films between 2004 and 2010, largely because personal issues induced him to keep a low profile), but the way major stars will retreat from the limelight for awhile. Hey, what ever happened to Jon Voight? Gosh, what's Neve Campbell been doing the last few years? Wait a sec, is Jean-Claude Van Damme still alive?
  1. Hanna
  2. Production year: 2011
  3. Cert (UK): 12A
  4. Runtime: 111 mins
  5. Directors: Joe Wright
  6. Cast: Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Saoirse Ronan, Tom Hollander
  7. More on this film
The following, then, may be of interest to you. In 2009's rollicking blockbuster Star Trek, the Romulan commander of the aerodynamically implausible, hydra-like spaceship that is threatening to destroy Earth with the deadly weapons mounted in its weird tentacles somehow manages to muff the assignment. Even though his ship is a hundred times bigger than the Starship Enterprise, and even though it boasts infinitely more firepower than its puny target, and even though the Enterprise is under the command of a punk-ass 21-year-old who has not yet graduated from astronaut academy, the Romulan spacecraft ends up being blown to smithereens.
To a lot of people who were sitting on the edge of their seats wondering if the precocious post-adolescents Kirk and Spock could defy the preposterously long odds against them and save Planet Earth from almost certain destruction, this miraculous Romulan screw-up must have come as a bit of a surprise. But not to me. As soon as I saw that Eric Bana was commander of the Romulan spacecraft, I knew Kirk and Spock's victory was in the bag. No matter what the film, no matter what the plot, no matter what the level of competition, Bana is a guy who was just born to finish second.
Please, please, please don't get me wrong: I like and respect Bana, one of the few actors who has successfully managed the transition from standup comic to serious dramatic actor. (Bill Murray, Lily Tomlin, and I suppose, Robin Williams, are the other names that immediately come to mind.) But there can be no denying that Bana is consistently cast in roles in which he doesn't get the girl, doesn't finish the job, doesn't save his planet, and usually winds up six feet under by the time the credits run.
Consider his track record. In Star Trek he is blown into tiny little pieces and his entire race is wiped off the face of the solar system by a wise-ass who drinks too much. In Troy, where he plays Batman (Hector) to Brad Pitt's Superman (Achilles), his Myrmidon rival makes mincemeat of him, butchers his father, enslaves his wife, puts his city to the sword, and makes sure that his race is exterminated. In Munich he accepts an assignment to track down and kill the 11 terrorists responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, but two-thirds of the way through the assignment, he inexplicably throws in the towel and moves to Brooklyn to chill out. What, I ask you, is up with that?
There is more. In The Time Traveller's Wife, Bana goes into the future one too many times and winds up dead as a doornail, leaving his long-suffering wife and adolescent daughter wondering what the hell was wrong with this peripatetic loser. In Funny People, his wife is snatched right out from under him by a noticeably shorter, less debonair and immeasurably less good-looking Adam Sandler, who may be dying of cancer. That's right: cold-cocked by a carcinogenic cuckolder, a fate worse than death. Going way back to the beginning of his career in Australia, let us recall that one of the first film characters Bana played cuts off both his ears in order to get an early release from prison, an unusual jailbreak tactic no matter how you look at it. The film was called Chopper. Somebody has a sense of humour down under.
I raise the Bana-the-bumbler issue because I do not enjoy seeing movies in which the biggest star on the marquee gets nuked. I go to the movies to see good triumph over evil, but I would prefer that at the end of the film the good are still standing, while the bad and the ugly have gone to meet their maker. Movie stars, for the most part, understand this. John Wayne bit the dust in just four of his films. Cary Grant in none that I can think of. Humphrey Bogart perished early and often in his career, but almost never died after he hit the big time with Casablanca and stopped being cast as a hood. Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Jimmy Stewart rarely breathed their last on screen. Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman have hardly ever been on intimate terms with the grim reaper. Among contemporaries, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx almost never die. And when they do – Pacino in Scarface, Gibson in Braveheart, Cruise in Collateral, Crowe in Gladiator – they tend to go out in a blaze of glory.
What's more, they still manage to get the job done even though they themselves may not live to see the Promised Land; by the time the films have run their course, Scotland is freed from the English yoke, the demented Emperor Commodus is dispatched, the Mexicans wish they had never attacked that dilapidated little mission deep in the heart of Texas. And when these stars do not succeed in accomplishing what they have set out to do, they at least make sure that a good time is had by all before they exit. Tony Montana being the obvious case in point.
A few years ago Bana crossed paths with Jennifer Connelly in Ang Lee's epic bomb Hulk. This did not surprise me; in a weird way, these two were meant for each other. In Hulk, Connelly played a brilliant nuclear biologist who is seduced by a shy mutant who is shot, worked over, impaled, barraged with heat-seeking missiles, and finally has to polish off his own father before disappearing into the jungles of the Amazon for ever. As usual, nothing goes right for Bana throughout the film, and by the time the credits roll, he is washed up as a scientist, lover, son and even a human being. Once again, Bana finished out of the money, while his co-star flourished.
In Bana's defence, he was outgunned from the start. If there was ever a co-star Bana was born to be upstaged by, it was Connelly, the black widow of Hollywood. A few years ago, I wrote a story pointing out that in movies starring the talented, striking Connelly, the characters played by her male co-stars always ended up in dire straits, and usually dead. Ed Harris buys the farm in Pollock. Ben Kingsley kills himself in House of Sand and Fog. Jared Leto winds up armless, cashless and miserable in Requiem for a Dream. Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't make it to the end of Blood Diamond. More recently, Keanu Reeves screws up the mission and takes the pipe in The Day the Earth Stood Still, while Joaquin Phoenix is flattened by an SUV in Reservation Road. Connelly literally makes mincemeat out of guys like Eric Bana. Mincemeat.
Yet Connelly never stops working. Never. Is anyone in Hollywood paying attention to this?
Yes. Eric Bana.
More than a year ago I went online to see what exciting new Bana releases lay in store. There weren't any. He did not have a movie out in 2010; nothing since The Time Traveller's Wife. A friend of mine who is knowledgable about the industry suggests that the parts may have dried up – that if Bana were being offered juicy roles, he would be grabbing them. But the work is not there.
Well, that's one theory. But I think the truth lies elsewhere. I think that Bana deliberately took himself out of the mix. I think he finally figured out that the reason so many of his films tanked at the box office is because the public is tired of seeing movies about runner-ups. I think Bana has made it clear to the powers-that-be that until he's offered similar jobs to Eastwood and Bruce Willis, and Hugh Jackman and Clive Owen, where you're still alive and kicking at the end, he's just going to stay at home and sulk. He is gifted, good-looking, and charismatic and he has worked hard to get where he is. But he is sick and tired of playing incompetent extraterrestrials, dithering assassins, audiophonically challenged psychopaths, knock-kneed sons of Ilium, time travellers burdened with a rapidly approaching expiration date and namby-pamby executives whose wives are having it off with a cancer-ridden standup. Until he gets offered a few roles in which he is cast as the conquering hero, putting some points  up there on the scoreboard, we won't be seeing Bana a whole lot. And that's final.
This week, at long last, Bana can be seen in Hanna, an engrossing film about a precocious teenaged assassin raised by her dad in the wilds of Finland. It stars Bana as her father, the CIA operative who taught her how to kill. It also stars Cate Blanchett as a remorseless intelligence agent who is trying to track her down. It's a good movie. The kid is mesmerising. Blanchett does a nice Cruella de Vil turn. And Bana, as usual, is a warm and charismatic presence. So if you haven't seen the movie, and you're looking forward to it, trust me on this one: it's worth the price of admission.
As for the male lead's ultimate fate, I don't want to spoil the ending, so let's just put it this way: for Bana to make it through a movie from beginning to end would be just great. It would make such a nice change. It might even mark a turning point in his career. So enjoy the film. But bear one thing in mind: this is a motion picture in which Blanchett and a sociopathic teenaged girl both have high-powered rifles in their hands, and loads of ordnance in the boot, and don't seem to have an ounce of compassion between them. So if you're betting on Bana to still be standing tall when the final credits roll, by all means, make that wager.
But don't bet the house.
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