Oil Company Investors Seeking the Big Two to Come Clean About Hydraulic Fracturing

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Today May 25, 2011, two of the top big oil companies got a big surprise from a significant amount of shareholders seeking full disclosure about the environmental risks of Hydraulic fracturing. 40% of Chevron shareholders are serious about the environment involving hydraulic fracturing. Even in Prime time TV the dangers hydraulic fracturing of made into the hit show CSI airing on CBS. Currently there is an estimate of 25,000 abandon wells alone in the United States, and it has been a push by EPA and some of our elected officials to get the oil companies to clean up their act as well make sure that those abandon wells are leaking. Even after being notified the oil companies have fail to comply. Under the Clean Water Act the EPA has the power to the authority to regulate anyone not in compliance. This has also been a current battle between the EPA up against the oil companies and Republicans. Republicans wanted the power to regulate to be given to Congress.

At today’s’ Exxon Mobil Corp annual share holder’s meeting a significant t block of 30% shareholders went after Chief Executive Rex Tillerson about their concerns. Today at Chevron Corp. 40% voted went against a resolution on hydraulic fracturing. This in itself is considered historical, since according to Michael Passoff, “Breaking 40 percent on a first year resolution has only happened a few times in the last few decades, so it shows how seriously the company’s shareholders are taking this issue,”

It has also been mentioned that share holders at Houston-based Ultra Petroleum are also seeking disclosure about hydraulic fracturing.

Previously to dispel rumors Exxon Mobil created a campaign showing that the shale gas did not threaten the environment or public health. Accoring to Cornell University why some say Shale gas is safe they find it a dangerous alternatve to coal. “In a 2011 study, Climatic Change Letters provides the first comprehensive analysis of the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas. In that peer-reviewed paper, Cornell University professor Robert W. Howarth and colleagues find that once methane leak and venting impacts are included, the life-cycle greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas is far worse than those of coal and fuel oil when viewed for the integrated 20-year period after emission. On the 100-year integrated time frame, this analysis finds shale gas comparable to coal and worse than fuel oil.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gasShale gas is a natural gas produced from shale. In the last decade interest in Shale Gas has spread to other foreign nations. It is expected by 2020 that around half of the natural gas produced in the United States will come from Shale.

Shale gas is natural gas produced from shale. Shale gas has become an increasingly important source of natural gas in the United States over the past decade, and interest has spread to potential gas shales in Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. One analyst expects shale gas to supply as much as half the natural gas production in North America by 2020

Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a mix of water, chemicals and sand into the earth to break up shale rock, in order to release oil or natural gas. Environmentalists say it can contaminate groundwater with dangerous chemicals. As I blogged before about this some of the chemicals involved are carcinogens. In recent years the use of hydraulic fracturing has increase. The dangers of this process is not lost on the oil companies, it just they rather overlook it.
Tillerson told reporters after the meeting. “We know there are risks. We’re not trying to characterize this as an activity that does not have risks.”

In Texas today the State Senate passed a bill that would require drilling companies using hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” techniques to disclose on a public website the chemicals they use in the process. The House already passed an almost similar of the Bill. Other states who have also passed similar bills are Wyoming and Arkansas. Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, tried to push three amendments involving using a tracer in fracking fluid to make it potentially easier to sort out any water-contamination but they were voted down. However the Texas Bill like in Wyoming allows for some trade secrets involving some trade secrets not to be disclosed on their web-site. Under the Texas bill, it allows for Halliburton to keep “trade secrets” off the public website, fracfocus.org.