Dear President Obama Page #7

You know, they were able to hide

for a long time behind the claim

that, uh, there is no proof

that fracking ever caused

drinking water contamination.

Well, they can no longer

wave that flag.

Um, it's very clear now

that we have confirmed cases

of drinking water

con-contamination

in at least four states.

[thunder rumbling]

[thunder rumbling]

(male #3)

The third most powerful

earthquake in Oklahoma's

recorded history

jolted the northern part

of the state this weekend.

The magnitude 5.1 quake

centered near Fairview

was felt

in seven states overall.

(female #2)

The ground keeps shaking

in Oklahoma, and more violently

this year already

140 quakes, 3.0 or larger

an average of two

and a half per day.

Before 2008, the average

was one and a half per year.

(Mark)

The nationwide explosion

of fracking resulted

in a variety of problems

no one could have predicted.

One was what to do with those

billions of gallons of toxic

waste water pumped back

out of the ground.

Some went to lined pits and

landfills, some were illegally

dumped straight onto

the ground or into waterways.

Today, much of it

is injected back deep

into the ground

in separate wells.

Perhaps, the most unusual

and unexpected side effects

of all this high-pressure

injection are earthquakes.

Oklahoma is the epicenter,

billions of gallons of

waste water have been pumped

into more than 4000 wells.

Since the fracking boom began,

communities from Ohio to Texas

are threatened by tremors

never felt before.

The first really big one

that we had, uh, my husband

was asleep,

I was up watching TV.

I'd just turned off the TV and

the bed shook and hit the wall.

The picture was moving,

the windows were rattling.

My husband woke up and thought

maybe he was just having

a dream and I told him

no, it wasn't a dream.

And it just seemed like

it's getting worse everyday

now we're having

a earthquake and I wouldn't

be surprised if we were sitting

here and had one today.

You know,

during this conversation.

(Dirk)

This whole study

ended up being a report

by Central Earthquake Research

Institute in Memphis, Tennessee

and our local USG rep.

'These are all earthquakes,

all these dots, all the little'

'yellow ones

are production wells'

'but all these circles,

green, yellow, reds, those are'

'the magnitudes

of the earthquakes.'

'I lived right here, in about

the middle of all the 1400'

'between the two injection wells

that caused 80% of 'em.'

They're proud of the fact

that they experimented

in Arkansas.

In other states,

I have friends in Pennsylvania

in New York,

in Ohio and where they are

right now, workers from here

have been taken up there

and they're bragging about

how they perfected

their fracking and waste water

and recycling in Arkansas.

'We were the guinea pigs.'

(Mark)

But the earthquake

felt by politicians

was that despite

industry's boasts

and predictions, there

turned out to be far less

gas and oil in the shale

than they initially predicted.

Over the last seven years or so,

something like 80,000 wells

have been drilled and fracked,

in, uh, tight oil

and shale gas plays.

We know because

we did the research

'cause we wanted to see

whether the promises

that were being made for...uh,

f-for these resources were

uh, genuine

or if this was a-a lot of hype.

And our conclusion

after doing the research

is, it's mostly hype.

We've got a supply

of natural gas..

...under our feet

that can last...America

nearly a hundred years.

Nearly a hundred years.

Now when I say..

(Mark)

What happened to that notion

sold to us by

the gas and oil industry

and supported by politicians

across the country.

including President Obama,

that we had a hundred years

of natural gas that would

power us into the future?

Well, it turns out those

prognosticators were off

by about 80 or 90 years.

It also turns out that most

of these new wells will

exhaust 60 to 70%

of their riches

in the first three years.

The result is that

the shale gas fields

across the US imagined

to be heavily ladened

are already tapped

their sweet spots played out.

The most recent data

on production..

...countrywide..

...uh, shows that there has been

a slight decrease

in the amount of oil being

produced from shale.

Uh, and a certain flattening,

certainly a flattening

of the amount of gas

being produced from shale.

The Marcellus keeps increasing,

a little bit of the Utica

and Ohio keeps increasing.

All the other major

shale gas plays are in decline.

The fact is fossil fuels are,

are a finite energy resource.

There's only so much coal, oil

and natural gas in the ground

and we extract it using

the low-hanging fruit principle.

So we've got, we've already

gotten all the best stuff.

So if we want more oil,

it's going to be

polar oil, arctic oil, uh

deep water oil, uh, tar sands

oil from Canada and all of those

are expensive to produce

and high, have high

environmental risk.

[instrumental music]

(Don)

I think there's a lot

of misconception about cowboys.

The ones that I've known

and respected

have always loved the land.

That's their number one...love.

You can always get the cowboys

to stand up to the oil company

when it impacts the grass,

when the water goes away

when you can't graze

the animals, when you lose

your wildlife.

There's no cowboys

that I know that don't value

those things

above everything else.

There's nothing new

about the modern cowboy.

All cowboys...love grass.

Fracking is gray,

I'm glad people are concerned

but I'm afraid that it's

a sexy issue that gets people

to overlook the hard,

non-spectacular work, no flames

coming out of the creek,

nobody's faucet lighting

on fire, it's just some people

drawing some lines on the ground

and saying,

we're gonna drill here

and that's what

you need to stop.

When this field started

there was one well

every 640 acres.

That was the spacing.

Now, up to 25 wells

in that same 640 acres.

Oil and gas has created

a monopoly here

and wiped out

the ranching in this area.

No more churches,

no more schools here.

No families live here,

uh, for 13 miles.

Drill, baby, drill.

When do you quit?

When it, when it's all

a parking lot?

Then, is your plan

just to continue

until there is no more

wild land until there's

no more undisturbed land?

Until it's just a,

a big North Sea platform

all across

the western United States?

Much of the...problems, I think

caused in mineral development

and in the interface of

the Federal Government

with the land owners is

because the estate is split.

Meaning,

that we own the surface

but...the Federal Government

owns the minerals.

And the surface estate is

subordinate to the minerals.

So when they wanna come in

and access the minerals,

they do it right on top of you.

And you essentially have

nothing to say about it.

(Mark)

The industry operates

the same in Texas

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes