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Recent posts
- Beartooth landowners victorious in lawsuit against Stillwater County
- PLEASE NOTE: Change in Zoom access code for today’s hearing
- Action alert: Watch court hearing on Zoom, Thursday, 2:00 pm
- Action alert: Stillwater County Planning Board meeting, Wed, 9/4, 7pm
- Must attend! Stillwater County Planning Board: Wednesday, August 7, 7pm
Blog Archives
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Author Archives: davidjkatz
New study: Women living near fracked wells have increased likelihood of high-risk pregnancies, pre-term births
A new study in Pennsylvania shows that expectant mothers who live near active natural gas wells are at an increased risk of giving birth prematurely and of having high-risk pregnancies.
This study is one of the first results of a remarkable new partnership that we told you about last November. This partnership promises to cut through the secrecy and legal protections that the oil and gas industry enjoys by employing technology, science, and the collaboration of creative scientists and citizen activists all over the world.
Brian Schwartz, lead research in the study, says, “The growth in the fracking industry has gotten way out ahead of our ability to assess what the environmental and, just as importantly, public health impacts are,…The first few studies have all shown health impacts. Policymakers need to consider findings like these in thinking about how they allow this industry to go forward.”
These findings directly relate to local regulation proposed by landowners in Stillwater and Carbon counties along the Beartooth Front. The regulations address the issues raised by the study as possible causes of adverse health outcomes. Those regulations are just common sense, and should be supported. Continue reading
“SLAPP suit” attempts to intimidate organizations protesting local oil and gas zoning
Oil and gas companies continuously try new legislative, judicial and business tactics to keep landowners from interfering with their business. When those strategies are successful in one state, they are exported to other states.
So it is of particular interest that in Pennsylvania, a corporate landowner and twelve individual landowners who have leased their shale gas drilling rights to an oil and gas operator have filed suit against environmental organizations that oppose the drilling.
Attorneys for the environmental groups have argued that the suit is a “SLAPP suit” — a strategic lawsuit against public participation — targeting individuals and groups for participating in public debate on government policies and the legal appeals of those policies.
29 states have laws against SLAPP suits. Montana is not one of them. Don’t be surprised if suits like this happen here. Continue reading
Montana temperatures have risen 2.6° over the last century
Click to see a chart from the Montana Climate Office at the University of Montana depicting the temperature rise in the state from 1895-2012. Continue reading
Montana Supreme Court agrees to hear Silvertip zoning case
We’ve often said that the road to progress on oil and gas issues is long, so it’s nice to get small victories along the way.
The Montana Supreme Court this month denied a motion to dismiss the Silvertip zoning case by the Carbon County Commission. The decision allows the case to continue and be heard by the Supreme Court in early 2016.
For more information and access to documents related to the case, click the link. Continue reading
Shell folds in Arctic as Obama wins a big bet
Royal Dutch Shell announced Monday that it has abandoned its Arctic search for oil after failing to find enough crude to justify the cost of continued investment. Shell has spent about $7 billion on exploration in the waters off Alaska so far and said it could book losses of up to $4.1 billion for pulling out of the Chukchi Sea for the “foreseeable future”.
As we recently described at Preserve the Beartooth Front, Arctic drilling has been a bone of contention between environmentalists concerned about the substantial risks of drilling, and pro-drilling forces who argue that, because the Arctic Ocean contains 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil, Arctic reserves could replenish a diminishing supply from the Bakken and other US shale fields.
In August the US Department of the Interior issued a permit to Shell to drill an exploratory well into oil-bearing zones in the Arctic Ocean, contingent on the company meeting strict environmental standards.
You have to score this one as a major victory for Obama, who likely anticipated that Shell was not going to be able to justify continued drilling activity when the permits were granted. He took considerable criticism from environmental groups like Greenpeace, who charged, “We think it’s deeply hypocritical for a president who’s done so much for the climate, to see him do something that could undo that is a real tragedy.”
The President plays the long game, and he picks his battles carefully. He chose not to fight this one, but the ultimate outcome should satisfy his environmental critics without angering the oil and gas industry. Continue reading
Posted in Politics and History, Uncategorized
Tagged Alaska, Arctic drilling, Obama, Royal Dutch Shell
1 Comment
Well blowout near Watford City; this could be your 15 acres
A North Dakota oil well owned by Exxon Mobil subsidiary XTO Energy blew out on Saturday, leaking more than 550 barrels (23,100 gallons) of crude, some of which left the wellpad and seeped into surrounding grasses. The damage occurred over 15 acres.
Oil drilling is a dirty business, and this kind of accident could happen anywhere.
Doesn’t it make sense to put appropriate regulation in place to make sure that your property is protected when the inevitable occurs? Continue reading
The regulation of Arctic Ocean drilling, with implications for the Beartooth Front
As President Obama heads off to Alaska this week, he has focused on climate change. Alaska is suffering greater effects of global warming than any other state in the United States.
His presence there highlights recent conflicts between the Administration and environmentalists over drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Shell was awarded a permit this month to drill two exploratory wells there. The potential benefits are great because the area contains 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves, but the dangers of a spill in such a remote and inaccessible area are frightening.
Obama justified the decision in his weekly address by saying that, despite our progress in moving to renewable energy, we need to continue to drill for fossil fuels. Given that, it is better we find domestic sources than foreign ones, and the regulation put on Arctic drilling makes the possibility of a spill very small.
In a sense, we face similar choices along the Beartooth Front, where drilling is allowed, but the environmental risk is great. Continue reading
Where is Montana’s “man on the moon” leader?
In 1961 President Kennedy announced the US would put a man on the moon within a decade. The power of this vision, and the resources that accompanied it, enabled Neil Armstrong to take “one giant leap for mankind” eight years later.
In Hawaii, visionary leadership by Governor David Ige has led Hawaii to pass legislation that mandates that the state’s power grid must deliver 100 percent renewable electricity by the end of 2045, just 30 years away.
Where is that leadership in Montana? While state agencies are doing everything they can to protect the fossil fuel industry, our leaders happily promote an “all of the above strategy” that fails to explain how the state will transition from coal, oil and gas to renewables over time. We need man on the moon leaders who will put a stake in the ground saying what Montana will look like in 20, 30, or 50 years.
The means ruffling feathers. That means offending Big Oil and Big Coal. That means having a grown up conversation within the state about the future of energy.
We need a “man on the moon” leader to step forward. Continue reading
We now have comprehensive data on how much water is required to frack wells. It’s probably more than we have
A new database looks at water usage for every one of the 263,859 oil and gas well drilled in the United States from 2000-2014. This data shows that most wells drilled in Montana are horizontally fracked and that water usage per well is increasing.
Meanwhile, drought conditions throughout the West and in parts of Montana make fresh water increasingly scarce. Along the Beartooth Front, the Stillwater and Clarks Fork Yellowstone basins are particularly dry.
When ECA announced plans to drill 50 wells along the Front, we estimate that it would require 130 million gallons of water to drill them all. Where would this water come from? Continue reading
Preserve the Beartooth Front 