By Jessica Goad

This morning the U.S. Department of the Interior released new draft regulations on oversight of natural gas drilling on public lands.  The rule specifically addresses  public disclosure of drilling chemicals, well-construction techniques, and “flowback” water that returns to the surface after drilling.

This rule will only apply to public lands, where about 3,400 wells per year are hydraulically fractured.  Public lands produce 20% of the nation’s natural gas.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued a press release today:

“…it is critical that the public have full confidence that the right safety and environmental protections are in place. The proposed rule will modernize our management of well stimulation activities – including hydraulic fracturing – to make sure that fracturing operations conducted on public and Indian lands follow common-sense industry best practices.”

The Interior Department should be commended for modernizing rules that were last updated in 1988 — in particularly for creating new provisions that strengthen the government’s ability to regulate the construction and oversight of wells.  However, the rule lacks a handful of basic public right-to-know measures.

It would require natural gas drillers to disclose the chemicals being used after the fracking has taken place, not beforehand.  This makes baseline testing of water quality nearly impossible, as local communities will be unable to know what exactly to test for.  As Center for American Progress Chairman and Counselor John Podesta put it:

“Disclosure after the fact not only jeopardizes public health but effectively cuts the public out of discussions that affect their communities.”

Additionally, the Interior Department is “working with” the Groundwater Protection Council to determine whether the actual public listing of chemicals can be done on its FracFocus.org website.  The Groundwater Protection Council is comprised of state oil and gas regulators, who often find themselves both promoting drilling and policing it.  A recent investigation by Greenwire found that 40% of state oil and gas regulators have financial ties to the industry.

Hydraulic fracturing is a natural gas drilling technique that involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals underground in order to help stimulate wells. Whether or not chemicals used in the drilling process can contaminate water has been the subject of intense debate.  The Environmental Protection Agency recently found at least one instance where hydraulic fracturing was implicated in drinking water contamination. That report was backed up by an independent analysis.

The Interior Department should require companies to disclose the chemicals that they will use before hydraulic fracturing takes place, as well as make the lists available on a public website.

In addition to these standards, long term natural gas development could be made more safe if exemptions from various federal environmental laws are repealed, the National Academy of Sciences conducts a lifecycle study of natural gas’ greenhouse gas emissions relative to coal, and EPA’s voluntary Natural Gas Star program for methane is made mandatory.

Jessica Goad is Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress.

by Anthony Swift, via NRDC’s Switchboard

The State Department announced that it has received an application from TransCanada for a Presidential Permit for the northern segment of its proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that the President rejected back in January.

Keystone XL would carry 830,000 barrels a day of tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. Tar sands are the world’s dirtiest form of oil, require a devastating process that lays waste to forests to extract tar sands bitumen, a thick low grade fuel that has significantly higher emissions that conventional crude.

Tar sands pipelines also appear to pose higher risks – both in number and severity of pipeline spills. Keystone XL would grant tar sands a route through America’s heartland on its way to the international market. It would raise U.S. oil prices, put our waters and farms in jeopardy of hard to clean up tar sands oil spills, and would increase our dependence on oil – worsening climate change and undermining efforts to move to clean energy.

A new application means a new review process. The environmental review for the Keystone XL process must evaluate climate, water, land, and health impacts not only of the pipeline, but of the tar sands extraction, refining and end use. The national interest determination for this transboundary energy project has to assess whether the pipeline is really needed to meet U.S. security, economic, environmental or other goals. The world of oil and our understanding of the dangers of tar sands have changed since the first time TransCanada applied for a permit for Keystone XL back in 2008. The process for evaluating this permit request needs to be thorough, rigorous, transparent and free from conflicts of interest.

So once TransCanada reapplies, what can we expect?

Read more

by Sarah Pavlus, via the American Independent

An influential trade association representing companies that provide water services to one in four Americans says it will continue its membership with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that has worked with the energy industry to create loophole-filled water protections and opposes federal oversight of fracking.

The National Association of Water Companies represents the far-reaching privatized water utility industry that serves “nearly 73 million people every day,” according to the association’s website. NAWC represents more than 150 private water companies, each of whom pay an annual fee to the association. Its board of directors is drawn from the leadership of some of the country’s largest water companies.

NAWC works with ALEC to persuade state and local officials to adopt policies favorable to the private water industry. NAWC declined to comment on when it first became involved with ALEC and the amount it pays in annual dues. According to The New York Times, ALEC “is primarily financed by more than 200 private-sector members, whose annual dues of $7,000 to $25,000 accounted for most of its $7 million budget in 2010.”

ALEC connects its corporate members with state legislators to create model bills on a variety of issues. In recent weeks, high-profile companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Kraft Foods have dropped their ALEC memberships after the organization’s support for controversial gun rights legislation and voter identification laws was exposed. Following the uproar, ALEC announced it would eliminate its task force that dealt with “non-economic” issues.

ALEC has also been active on issues surrounding hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial drilling technique in which millions of gallons of water — mixed with sand and chemicals — is forced into the ground. Fracking can generate substantial revenues for some water companies, but environmentalists fear that it has the potential to put drinking water resources at risk.

Last week, The New York Times reported that ALEC’s model legislation requiring disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking — which the paper reported was backed by ExxonMobil — includes “loopholes that would allow energy companies to withhold the names of certain fluid contents, for reasons including that they have been deemed trade secrets.”

Read more

For the latest update, go here.

The Heartland Institute has launched one of the most offensive billboard campaigns in U.S. history. The Chicago-based anti-science think tank is comparing all those who accept climate science — and the journalists who report on it accurately — to Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and Osama Bin Laden.

This far-beyond-the-pale ad campaign to promote their Chicago conference later this month is a moment of truth for both the think tank and the broader community of disinformers and their enablers.

Will confirmed speakers like Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Czech President Vasclav Klaus, Joe Bastardi, Pat Michaels, Fred Singer, or former NASA astronauts show up at the conference, thereby endorsing this beyond-extremist message? Will leading deniers denounce these offensive ads — or will they implicitly endorse this kind of hate speech? Will media outlets like PBS keep quoting Heartland ‘experts’ as if they were a legitimate source of information?

GM ended their financial support of Heartland earlier this month, as has AT&T, but why are State Farm and Microsoft still supporting it? Many other public corporations have donated money or provided resources to Heartland, including Eli Lilly & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Nucor, Pfizer, and Time Warner Cable. Will they cut ties or implicitly endorse these extreme ads?

UPDATE: Heartland ended their gruesome failure today at 5 pm, but in a release, refused to admit it was a mistake or apologize. Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast tried to call this an “experiment” even though a series of billboards were planned (see below) and stated, “We do not apologize for running the ad.” So, apparently, no lessons learned for the disinformers. What caused them to fold, then? The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent reported:

Congressman Sensenbrenner will not participate in the upcoming Climate Change Conference if the Heartland Institute decides to continue this ad campaign. We have contacted the Heartland Institute and voiced these same concerns to them.

You know you are off the deep end of anti-science extremism when you’ve offended the sensibility of Sensenbrenner, a man who once “sent a letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, calling for scientists whose names appear in the e-mails stolen from the U.K. Climatic Research Unit to be blacklisted from participating as contributors or reviewers of the forthcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.”

The UK Guardian, which broke the story this morning, calls this “possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

But let’s be clear. This is not some “oops” moment by an individual overzealous Heartland employee with catastrophically poor judgment. Quite the reverse.

This is a collective act by the Institute expressing its core worldview. A sustained billboard campaign would have to be signed off at the highest levels. Heartland displays the above image on its main website, proudly announcing its campaign and linking to its robust defense of “Our Billboards” on its conference website.

Heartland’s detailed rationalization for its hate speech confirms the very worst views of this right-wing group. I’ll quote it at length since it is so self-discrediting:

Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too…

The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).

These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.

Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards?

Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the “mainstream” media, and liberal politicians say about global warming….

The point is that believing in global warming is not “mainstream,” smart, or sophisticated. In fact, it is just the opposite of those things. Still believing in man-made global warming – after all the scientific discoveries and revelations that point against this theory – is more than a little nutty. In fact, some really crazy people use it to justify immoral and frightening behavior.

You just can’t make this stuff up — unless you are a group of professional disinformers. As Climate Central puts it, “Heartland Institute Jumps the Shark.”

Oh, but Heartland wants you to know that not every single climate scientist — nor every member of the over 120 governments who sign off on the IPCC assessment reports nor every reporter who writes accurately — is like a psychopath:

Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.

Seriously. And yet they write:

The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.

Has there ever been a more insidious attack in this country on scientists and reporters — and millions of Americans who are alarmed and concerned about global warming based solely on what the science actually says?

Read more

by Jessica Goad

A report released yesterday by consulting firm Headwaters Economics continues to shed light on the economic importance of protected public lands to local economies in the American West.

It finds that there were more than four times as many jobs created in non-metro counties with protected public lands compared to those without. This data contradicts the ideological rhetoric of many Republicans seeking to throw open more federal acres to mining and drilling.

As the report states, over 40 years:

Western non-metro counties with more than 30% of lands federally protected increased jobs by 344%.

The chart below shows that from 1970 to 2009 (the most recent data available), the more protected public lands (national parks, national monuments, wilderness areas, etc.) that were in a rural county, the more jobs created.  This compares to only an 80% increase for counties with no protected federally-managed places at all.

In part, this trend occurred because land conservation creates a wide variety of jobs.  In 2010, recreation and tourism spurred 388,000 jobs on Interior Department-managed lands and 224,000 in and around national forests. Echoing these facts, a group of 104 economists sent a letter to the president in November asking him to create jobs by protecting more special places for recreation.

This latest data contradicts the mantra of many western Republican lawmakers, who contend that protected public lands are “locked up” by the government and have no value.  For example, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands, has stated:

Contrary to claims by the administration and others, the designation of national monuments and wilderness are not a boon to local economies, but rather a detriment in most scenarios.

That is just plain wrong.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project.

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post other links below.

The Canadian firm behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline will reapply Friday for a federal permit to ship crude oil from the oil sands fields of Alberta to the United States, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. [Washington Post]

The Obama administration wants to clamp down on shale gas drilling on public lands and set standards that proponents of tougher regulation hope will provide a blueprint for drilling oversight nationwide. [Reuters]

As New York State environmental regulators fine-tune proposed rules governing horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial natural-gas extraction process, wastewater has emerged as a challenging issue for the industry and regulators. [New York Times]

Environmentalists have filed a lawsuit seeking to derail efforts by the federal government to lease an estimated 2 billion tons of coal near two major Wyoming mines. [Washington Post]

In this era of pricey gasoline, fuel-efficient cars are getting attention. A subcompact Chevy Sonic that gets 40 miles per gallon? Intriguing! But many drivers have found that a car’s advertised mileage is often quite different from how it actually performs on the road. So how big a problem is this? [Wonk Blog]

Greenland’s glaciers are hemorrhaging ice at an increasingly faster rate but not at the breakneck pace that scientists once feared, a new study says. [Washington Post]

Pakistan’s laws on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) are the “best in the world,” UN special envoy Margareta Wahlström said Thursday. [Global Inquirer]