Train Derails Carrying Bakken Crude, Falls into James River (VA)

Activists in Virginia have been fighting to keep fracking out of the George Washington National Forest only to have a train full of fracked Bakken oil derail and explode in Lynchburg, leaking crude oil into the James River, part of that crucial watershed.

 

This is not an isolated incident. Unfortunately it often takes a train or a well pad engulfed in flames to garner media attention, but from well casing failures and spills to truck accidents and pipeline explosions, this process is fatally flawed from start to finish. The industry tries to limit the definition of fracking to what happens under the ground, but we know it’s a full cycle of exploitation, from onsite contamination to dangerous transportation and waste disposal consequences.

 

We can’t let the industry isolate these incidents and the communities they effect. That’s why we feel compelled to show this devastating video of the week, to show that North Dakota and Lynchburg, Virginia aren’t far away when it comes to fracking. Knowing the truth about what is really going on is of the strongest tools we have. Please watch and share our video of the week.

 

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Shale Oil Bubble

Will the US be able to sustain oil and gas production long term?  This article casts doubt on this.

"The key question of course is how long production will continue to grow before it inevitably declines. Optimists maintain that we have just scratched the surface of our shale oil reserves and that production will continue increasing for years, if not decades.

 

Realists are not so sure, noting that not only is fracked oil very expensive, requiring circa $80 a barrel to cover the costs of extraction, but that production from fracked oil wells drops off quickly so that new wells have to be drilled constantly to maintain production. Until recently information about just how fast our fracked oil wells were depleting was rather hard to come by, so that the hype about the US becoming energy independent and a major oil exporter became conventional wisdom for most."

Read article, "The Peak Oil Crisis: The Shale Oil Bubble,"  here.

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Here's a book worth reading:  Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future

 

SNAKE OIL casts a critical eye on the oil-industry hype that has hijacked America's energy conversation. This is the first book to look at fracking from both economic and environmental perspectives, informed by the most thorough analysis of shale gas and oil drilling data ever undertaken. Is fracking the miracle cure-all to our energy ills, or a costly distraction from the necessary work of reducing our fossil fuel dependence?