Gasland Part II Page #9

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ads were everywhere.

They even bought

my name on Google.

Oh, so there it is,

so 60 years later, right,

we have the same PR firm

that actually invented--

John Hill was

the originator of this whole strategy,

so there they are, still

doing the same thing again 56 years later.

Wow. It's--

Wow. Ha ha!

It's depressing,

isn't it? Ha ha!

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Just like the tobacco industry had memos in their drawers

that said all along

that they knew that nicotine was addictive

and tobacco was harmful,

the gas industry also has memos

that show they've known

all along.

Some of them, in fact,

have been published.

Others fell off

"the back of a truck,"

and they'll show you

how they've been trying to solve it for decades

and how they have no way

of completely fixing

or preventing the problem.

Number One, from

Southwestern Energy.

The diagram clearly shows

that the gas well has

a cement barrier around the

sides of it that prevents gas

from lower layers migrating

upwards into aquifers.

But this isn't a PowerPoint

about drilling wells.

This is a PowerPoint about how

cement and casings fail

and allow gas or other

substances to migrate into aquifers.

It's one of their own documents

about how cement fails.

Number Two comes

from Schlumberger--

"Oilfield Review,"

published in 2003--

that showed that sustained

casing pressure,

i.e. cement failure, occurs

at alarming rates.

Their own documents showed

that cement and casings failed

in 5% of wells drilled

immediately upon drilling

and that the failure rate

increased over time;

that over a 30-year period,

50% of wells failed.

Number 3.

This report--leaked out of

a gas industry conference

from Archer,

a well services company--

shows enormous rates of leakage

in the Gulf of Mexico

and the North Sea, and

high rates of what they call

"uncontrolled discharge."

And this PowerPoint slide

from the Society

of Petroleum Engineers

shows that 1.8 million wells

exist in the world

and that 35% of them

are leaking.

It also states that

the industry plans to drill more wells in the next decade

than have been drilled in

the last hundred years.

Recent Pennsylvania

Department of Environmental Protection statistics

back up Schlumberger's

initial findings.

Well leakage was

between 6% and 8.9%

for newly installed wells--

gas migrating into aquifers.

The Pennsylvania Department

of Conservation and Natural Resources

predicts that there will

be 180,000 new gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania.

If 50% of them go bad

over 30 years,

that's 90,000

leaking gas wells.

It's safe to say

there's the potential

for contaminating

the entire state.

Can we ever predict

everything exactly? No.

But we're in much better shape

now than we were generations ago

of predicting probabilistically

the range of events that we expect to see.

Unconventional gas development--

it ain't your

grandmother's gas well.

Longer wells, higher pressures,

higher volumes of frack fluids,

more wells per pad.

We should expect higher risk,

higher accident rate,

and that's what we're seeing.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

For decades, they haven't been able to fix the problem.

There's no way to fix it;

just like tobacco,

they have a problem

that can't be solved.

Just as there's

no safe cigarette,

there's no safe drilling,

and they know it.

Kerosene, benzene,

urea, toluene.

How many of those can I

feed my toddler?

[Audience laughter]

'Cause it's

perfectly safe, right?

It's perfectly safe.

[Cheers and applause]

[Rumbling]

[Australian accent]

Right.

FOX:
Oh, my God.

[Distant screaming sound]

FOX:
And that's

the water well?

Right.

[All chuckle]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

After drilling had taken place all around Cole Davies' farm,

methane from the coal seam

migrated into the source of his water well.

For 6 months, the pipe

that they pump water out

for cattle started screaming,

as if it had been tapped in

to a well of souls in hell.

[Screaming sounds continue]

FOX:
Have you reported this

to the gas company that's around here?

Oh, yeah. They know

all about it.

What do they say?

They know very well all about it.

What do they say to you?

Oh, they just say that

they're not responsible.

Just a natural

occurrence within this area, they said.

Uh-huh.

[Crickets chirping]

[Screaming sound]

Have you had

enough there? [Chuckles]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
Something

about Cole reminded me of American farmers--

soft-spoken, quiet.

He didn't dress up

for the interview,

had no interest whatsoever

in trying to impress us.

AUSTRALIAN MAN:
If it's

damaging our water table in Australia,

you know, we're the driest

country in the world.

We've got this artesian

water table underneath us.

I think they're doing

huge risk to it.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Australia wasn't alone.

In April 2010,

the State Department,

under Secretary Hillary Clinton

and the Obama administration,

started the Global

Shale Gas Initiative,

charting shale plays

in over 30 countries

and pledging a government-

to-government engagement

to help develop shale gas

around the world.

So, in a matter

of months, this map

turned into this map.

So you know that now,

and to quote Calvin Tillman, mayor of Dish, Texas,

"Once you know, you can't

not know," right?

[Australian accent]

The first thing they--sorry, the second sentence they said

to me when they came through

that gate was, "If you don't let us come on here

"to search for gas, we will

force our way onto the land.

We will take you to court

and you'll lose."

And I'm just like,

"Pfff! Rightie-o. I'll see you in court."

Wrong group of people.

The people out here are tough, they're gritty.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
I interviewed

farmer after farmer,

rancher after rancher,

all across Australia.

Nobody wanted this,

and just like in the U.S.,

people were being told to move.

[Australian accent]

They've vowed to literally lock the gate

to the big multi-nationals

and are prepared to be arrested if necessary.

[Australian accent]

This is going to be the biggest single ecological impact

that I think we will have seen--

been seen in 150 years.

FOX:
And all this happening

is the dawn of renewable energy technology, right?

Well, I describe it

as the last gasp of the fossil fuel era.

And as it goes, it lashes out

and destroys whole regions.

What's really at stake here,

apart from the environment,

and some really strong

environmental values,

is governance itself.

Democratic governance

is at stake here.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

But it wasn't just Australia that was rebelling.

Protests against shale gas

and fracking broke out across Europe--

in the U.K., in Bulgaria

and Romania,

in the south

of France, in Canada...

[South African

protestors chanting]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

And a country founded on protests--South Africa--

where a huge area of land,

the Karoo, was leased out to Shell.

In America, hundreds

of thousands of letters

and emails, thousands

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