Texans aren’t the only ones having their fracking conversations shaped by industry-funded research. Ohioans got their first taste last week of the latest public-relations campaign by the energy policy wing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It’s called “Shale Works for US,” and it aims to spend millions on advertising and public events to sell Ohioans on the idea that fracking is a surefire way to yank the state out of recession.

The campaign is loaded with rosy employment statistics, which trace to an April report authored by professors at three major Ohio universities and funded by, you guessed it, the natural gas industry. The report paints a bright future for fracking in Ohio as a job creator.

One co-author of the study, Robert Chase, is poised at such a high-traffic crossroads of that state’s natural gas universe that his case was recently taken up by the Ohio Ethics Commission, whose chair called him “more than a passing participant in the operations of the Ohio oil and gas industry,” and questioned his potential conflicts of interest. As landowners in a suite of natural gas-rich states like Texas and Ohio struggle to decipher conflicting reports about the safety of fracking, Chase is a piece in what environmental and academic watchdogs call a growing puzzle of industry-funded fracking research with poor disclosure and dubious objectivity.

Robert Chase’s web of industry connections. (Click to embiggen.)

“It’s hard to find someone who’s truly independent and doesn’t have at least one iron in the fire,” said Ohio oil-and-gas-lease attorney Mark F. Okey. “It’s a good ol’ boys network and they like to take care of their own.”

Chase got his petroleum engineering PhD from Penn State. In 2009, long after Chase left the university, it came under fire for a fracking report, widely cited by state politicians as evidence for opening up the fracking market, which an in-house investigator said “crossed the line between policy analysis and policy advocacy.”  Early in his career, Chase worked as a consultant for many of the nation’s biggest oil and gas developers, including Halliburton, Cabot, and EQT. In 1978, he began teaching petroleum engineering at Marietta College, the small Ohio liberal arts school where he remains on faculty today. In 2008, Ohio’s then-Gov. Ted Strickland (D) appointed him to the Ohio Oil & Gas Commission, an independent judiciary board that hears complaints from landowners and developers against the state’s Division of Mineral Resources Management. And last year, he founded his own consultancy, Chaseland LLC, that helps connect landowners with gas companies seeking drilling rights, for which Chase collects a commission.

In February, Chase gave glowing testimony to Congress on the benefits of fracking, and included a swipe at anti-fracking advocates by citing the very same study now being investigated at the University of Texas. In recent years, Chase has taken his pro-fracking stance to the pages of Ohio newspapers to call for increased fracking and to assure locals of its safety; his latest column was soundly rebutted by a pair of Cincinnati geologists, who wrote that Chase had made “several misleading assertions.” State officials tightened fracking regulations after a series of earthquakes in northeastern Ohio, including a 4.0 quake in Youngstown on New Year’s Eve.

The founding of Chaseland was a bit too much for Oil & Gas Commission Director Linda Osterman, who in February asked the state ethics board to investigate Chase; they ruled that he would have to recuse himself from any commission hearings involving companies or people he had worked with at Chaseland. Chase has only had to sit out once, Osterman told Climate Desk, on the commission’s most recent hearing, in which a local cattle farm disputed a permit given to Chesapeake Energy to drill on the farm’s land, because he had consulted with Chesapeake. Otherwise, Osterman said, “I’ve never had any concerns about his ability to be impartial.” Still, Osterman was concerned enough to initiate the ethics inquiry.

In an interview, Chase said his wide network made him uniquely suited to put the pieces together for his most recent economic impact study. “It’s very cut and dried,” he said. “If you don’t have someone who really has the experience, then it doesn’t make sense to do the study.” The study’s other authors were economists and business professors.

David Brown, a member of Marietta’s Faculty Council, defended his colleague, saying that the fracking study’s funding source “should not by itself call into question his research,” and that Chase letting his varied roles compromise his academic research “is not something I would expect from him.”

But Jack Shaner of the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC) expressed a different take.

“There’s a clear and present danger of industry and university being way too cozy. [Chase] is cleary a poster child for the need for a clear bright line between industry and academia.” A staff attorney for OEC called for Chase to step down from his seat on the commission.

Indeed, Chase isn’t the only professor who has come under fire for not disclosing proximity to the natural gas industry. Two more recent examples:

• Timothy Considine, another Penn State grad who’s now an economist at the University of Wyoming, was the lead author on a SUNY-Buffalo report [PDF] in May that claimed state regulation had made fracking safe in Pennsylvania. Within days, a top Pennsylvania environmental official quoted the Buffalo study in testimony to Congress about the effectiveness of fracking regulations. But both the official and the study itself declined to mention Considine’s close ties to the industry — and that his department had received nearly $6 million in donations from the oil and gas industry last year. Considine — whom one Pennsylvania newspaper called “the shale gas industry’s go-to professor” — also helped write the controversial 2009 Penn State study and a 2010 expansion of it that was funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

• In February, a University of Texas professor and former head of the U.S. Geological Survey, Charles G. Groat, penned a study that found no evidence of groundwater contamination from fracking; the study didn’t disclose Groat’s seat on the board of major Texas fracker Plains Exploration & Production Company, for which he was reportedly paid $400,000 in 2011 — more than double his university salary. The director of Groat’s UT program told Bloomberg News he had “no idea” of Groat’s connection to Plains, but last Tuesday the University of Texas provost said in response to mounting concern that he would convene a panel to reexamine Groat’s findings.

Of course, industry funding of research has been commonplace since at least the heyday of Big Tobacco, and is still de rigueur for pharmaceuticals, among others. But Thomas McGarity, a UT-Austin law professor whose research on industry money in university research led him to write the book Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research, said it’s almost impossible to imagine a bias-free study with industry cash behind it.

“They’re trying to buy the prestige of the university,” he said. “And the universities are happy to sell their prestige, I suppose.”

Correction: The original version of this article stated that Timothy Considine was a geologist at the University of Wyoming. He is in fact an economist there.

This story was produced as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

We often use the word “exploded” when referring to the growth of fracking. Not out of any sense of grim irony, but just because the industry is expanding rapidly as more and more natural gas is produced through hydrofracturing. (The technological breakthrough behind the boom is well-described in this New Yorker article, which you should certainly read.)

Since the middle of 2006, the amount of natural gas produced each month has consistently trended higher.

The gray line is monthly production; the black dotted line, the trend. Click to embiggen.

A large part of why this is happening is that the fracking companies are often way out ahead of jurisdictional laws. It’s a new process with new demand, testing how municipalities and states deal with what’s acceptable and what isn’t. The faster fracking companies put holes in the ground, the harder it is to put the cork back in.

The Natural Resources Defense Council looked at how states are dealing with fracking regulation — particularly in regards to the fluid used as part of the process. From an overview of its findings:

• The majority of states with fracking have no disclosure rules [regarding fracking processes] at all.
• Every state that does have rules fails to require disclosure of many important aspects of fracking.
• Most states with rules allow companies to exploit “trade secret” exemptions to prevent disclosure of any information the company decides is confidential.

In the map below, states colored dark yellow or light blue require some disclosure of fracking chemicals prior to drilling. There are five of them. All of the other colored states allow fracking without prior disclosure of what is used in the process.

Click to embiggen.

Pennsylvania, which requires disclosure after the fact, also has a law on the books that makes it spectacularly easy for companies to start drilling. As described by Bloomberg Businessweek, the law includes “requirements that drilling, waste pits and pipelines be allowed in every zoning district, including residential districts, as long as certain buffers are observed.” Yes, even in residential areas.

Happily, an appellate court panel struck those rules down yesterday.

The state Commonwealth Court ruled 4-3 in a decision released Thursday that the limitations in the so-called Act 13 violated the state constitution. The opinion’s author, President Judge Dan Pellegrini, said the provisions upended the municipal zoning rules that had previously been followed by other property owners, unfairly exposing them to harm. …

“This is a wonderful victory for local government, a recognition that local municipal officials have a valid interest in protecting the property of their citizens,” said Jordan Yeager, one of the lawyers who argued on behalf of the municipalities.

The state plans to appeal.

It is not, however, crack. (Photo by Ed Yourdon.)

Tomorrow, a large contingent of activists arrives in Washington, D.C., for a rally dubbed, “Stop the Frack Attack.” (Politicians are suckers for clever names.) (Also, if you’re going? They recommend you bring a banjo. This also serves as warning to those who might otherwise be in the area tomorrow.)

Despite signs that natural gas prices are rising, the process isn’t going away anytime soon. Given the proclivities of the current Congress, we’re unlikely to see national efforts to improve disclosure, let alone stop fracking altogether. On a local and state level, there’s much more opportunity for smarter regulation and fuller disclosure.

Let’s hope it can happen without banjo accompaniment.

Here’s Sean Lennon, deliberately looking just like his father and singing just like Bob Dylan for some reason, performing a slightly naughty anti-fracking song with his mom on Jimmy Fallon’s show.

Yoko’s contribution, unsurprisingly, just makes things a little more confusing (you’d think that Sean’s “don’t frack my mother” line was cheekily referring to Mother Earth, but then Yoko says “don’t frack me,” so … don’t frack Yoko Ono? Um, check). But Jimmy Fallon, also unsurprisingly, makes everything a little more awesome. And you can’t beat the take-home message: Go frack yourself.

Conservatives are trying to make Solyndra the poster child for bad government investment. They’d have an easier argument — if many unhappy benefactors — if they targeted public land use.

We’ve talked about this before: how the government auctions off mineral resources at low, low prices allowing private sector companies to make massive profits.

That’s only part of it. There’s also the shortsightedness that goes into turning over pristine land, even protected areas, for extraction and development. This week, the Center for American Progress and the Sierra Club launched a video series profiling three areas — the Grand Canyon watershed, Bryce Canyon, and Wyoming’s Noble Basin — that might soon be impacted by private sector extraction.

The House is trying to make this alarmingly easy process even easier. Earlier today, the House of Representatives held votes on a bill — H.R. 4402, introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei (R–Nev.) — that would greatly facilitate the permit process for mining.

President Obama’s view of H.R. 4402 is clear:

The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 4402, which, though vaguely worded, would undermine and remove the environmental safeguards, for, at a minimum, almost all types of hardrock mines on Federal lands. …

The legislation also undermines existing law calling for the multiple uses of public lands by placing mining interests above all other uses. This change has the potential to threaten hunting, fishing, recreation and other activities which create jobs and sustain local economies across the country. Furthermore, the Administration opposes the legislation’s severe restrictions on judicial review. While the legislation purports to limit litigation, its extremely short statute of limitations and vague constraints on the scope of prospective relief that a court may issue are likely to have the opposite effect.

Democrats proposed a series of amendments aiming to blunt the bill’s negative impacts:

• Extend permit review period from 30 days to a year? Rejected.
• Prohibit permits for activity that impacts hunting, fishing, grazing, or recreation? Rejected.
• Use the National Research Council’s definition of “critical” minerals, thereby excluding sand and clay? Rejected.
• Oh, and create a royalty payment to the government of 12.5 percent of the value of extracted minerals? Rejected.

Two amendments from Republican members — one which would limit the Forest Service’s ability to restrict access to development areas — were approved. A final vote on H.R. 4402 has not yet been held.

The odds are not good that we’ll succeed in our proposed campaign to make the government’s poor economic decisions around land use a conservative cause celebre. Partly because mining interests have donated $5.8 million to House members this year alone.

But also because of this:

That’s from an 1884 flyer produced by the Democratic party to call attention to the Republican transfer of public land to the railroads, possibly an even more powerful lobby at the time than the natural resources sector today.

Takeaway: we’ve been fighting for reasonable use of public lands for at least 128 years. It’s safe to say, then, that we could get some traction on the issue by as soon as the year 2140.

New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies.

Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling waste and chemicals could migrate in ways previously thought to be impossible.

The study, conducted by scientists at Duke University and California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested drinking water wells and aquifers across Northeastern Pennsylvania. Researchers found that, in some cases, the water had mixed with brine that closely matched brine thought to be from the Marcellus Shale or areas close to it.

At FuelFix, an energy news site associated with the Houston Chronicle, a story from the Associated Press is titled, “New research shows no Marcellus Shale pollution.”

New research on Marcellus Shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania may only add fuel to the debate over whether the industry poses long-term threats to drinking water.

A paper published on Monday by Duke University researchers found that gas drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania did not contaminate nearby drinking water wells with salty water, which is a byproduct of the drilling.

“These results reinforce our earlier work showing no evidence of brine contamination from shale gas exploration,” said Robert Jackson, director of Duke’s Center on Global Change and a co-author of the paper, which appeared online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So which is it? Is fracking polluting groundwater or not?

The answer, as always: depends on how you want to frame it.

In short, the study suggests that some areas in which fracking takes place may be more susceptible to pollution from deeper pockets of saltwater. ProPublica cites the study directly:

“The coincidence of elevated salinity in shallow groundwater… suggests that these areas could be at greater risk of contamination from shale gas development because of a preexisting network of cross-formational pathways that has enhanced hydraulic connectivity to deeper geological formations.”

And FuelFix quotes a researcher:

But Vengosh said the research found that naturally-occurring pathways can bring the brine up into shallow aquifers, especially at the bottom of valleys. That could mean some areas are naturally more at risk of groundwater contamination from drilling, he said.

That’s the news. ProPublica draws the distinction very subtly in the second paragraph at top, noting that there is no detected pollution of groundwater with fracking chemicals/solutions. Their summary is slightly misleading; “fluids from Marcellus Shale” requires some additional parsing. The thrust of their argument happens later on:

The study is the second in recent months to find that the geology surrounding the Marcellus Shale could allow contaminants to move more freely than expected. A paper published by the journal Ground Water in April used modeling to predict that contaminants could reach the surface within 100 years – or fewer if the ground is fracked.

Last year, some of the same Duke researchers found that methane gas was far more likely to leak into water supplies in places adjacent to drilling.

Today’s research swiftly drew criticism from both the oil and gas industry and a scientist on the National Academy of Science’s peer review panel. They called the science flawed, in part because the researchers do not know how long it may have taken for the brine to leak. The National Academy of Sciences should not have published the article without an accompanying rebuttal, they said.

FuelFix provides the industry’s response:

“This research demonstrates that freshwater aquifers in northeastern Pennsylvania have not been impacted by natural gas development activities,” said Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

Sometimes with news like this, it’s worth drilling down a little deeper. Pun, sadly, intended.

Becky Carney, a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, hit the wrong button.

She meant to support Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of a bill that would lift a ban on fracking in the state, but, instead, voted to overturn the veto. In other words, removing the quadruple negative, she voted to allow fracking in North Carolina. She’d never intended to do that — in fact, a few weeks prior, Carney had voted against lifting the ban.

It gets worse. The vote required 72 votes for the veto to be overturned. Carney was the 72nd.

And then it gets hyper-mega-worse. Her colleagues (“colleagues”) decided that she wasn’t going to be allowed to change her vote.

The vote took her by surprise. Republicans limited debate on the fracking legislation – Senate bill 820 – and called the vote. Green button to override. Red button to sustain.

Carney hit the button and looked to the board above the chamber that shows the results: 72 to 46. The color next to Carney’s name matched the Republicans.

She panicked. She hit a different button to turn on her microphone and called to the House speaker on the dais. He didn’t recognize her. So she rushed to the front, 20 steps from her seat in the eighth row down the red-carpeted middle aisle.

Carney asked the clerk to check her vote. Green. Override.

She then asked Tillis if she could change her vote. Tillis said House rules prevented it.

Lawmakers mistakenly vote all the time but they are not permitted to change a vote if it affects the outcome.

Carney rushed back to her desk and called to the speaker. She wanted to request the House waive the rules – not an uncommon procedure – to allow her to change her vote.

Tillis didn’t respond. He went quickly to his Republican leader, Paul “Skip” Stam of Apex, who moved a “clincher vote” to essentially seal the verdict and prevent reconsideration of the vote. It passed.

Look, the point of democracy isn’t to respect the wishes of the voters — it’s to ensure that the mechanics of voting are paramount. Right? Isn’t that in the Constitution or something? (Who knows! That thing is so long.) If this were an ’80s movie, I’d feel more confident about the character named “Skip” getting his comeuppance.

Here’s what one of Carney’s peers (“peers”) said in response to her completely warranted outrage:

“You ever see my golf game?” said state Sen. Bob Rucho, a bill sponsor, after the vote. “It’s based on luck, not on skill.”

This is without exception the douchiest thing that has ever been said by an elected official. I will happily entertain — and reject — other contenders, but here’s why this one wins:

1. It’s a funny-har-har joke dismissing the fact that his team (since this is a game) was a bunch of jerks and intentionally subverted the democratic process. Har har! You got unlucky, lady politician!
2. The end result is an expansion of fracking.
3. He uses a golfing analogy.

So obviously, I’m starting a natural gas extraction business and fracking the crap out of Sen. Bob Rucho’s favorite North Carolina golf course. Although then he’d just be thrilled because the massive holes all over the course would drop his handicap.

North Carolina: Stop it. Seriously. Or we’re going to start reversing all of the votes you make in Congress. Don’t like it? Think of it as a two-stroke penalty. Now you see the humor in it.

No place blessed with an abundance of natural gas is safe from the possibility of fracking — not even cemeteries.

In Texas, the president of the cemetery association has already been selling the gas underneath his graveyard, the Centre Daily Times reports:

[John] Stephenson leased mineral rights under two of his cemeteries within the past three years, he said. Each is about a century old and populated with 75,000 graves. Revenue from the leases — he wouldn’t say how much — has allowed him to pave roads, repair fences and make other improvements during economic hard times.

To be fair, the drilling rigs don’t necessarily have to be installed right next to grandma’s headstone. Horizontal fracking means the rigs can be far enough away from the site to leave mourners in peace. And you don’t need to worry about the water or air quality of your surroundings if you’re already dead. Still, there’s something kind of unsavory about it. At least the gas companies will learn their lesson when they accidentally suck a vampire right up one of their pipes.

Presenting: New data about fossil fuel consumption from the Worldwatch Institute, in decreasing order of how good the news is.

• Oil consumption in the European Union dropped by 2.8 percent in 2011!
• Oil consumption in the United States dropped by 1.8 percent in 2011!
• Oil consumption increased by .7 percent globally last year — less than the 3.3 percent increase in 2010.
• But a lot more than the 1.3 percent decline in 2009.

• Oil consumption is at an all-time high of 88.03 million barrels per day.
• In part because consumption went up 5.5 percent in China.
• And 5.7 percent in Russia.
• And production is up for the second year in a row, growing 1.3 percent in 2011.
• Oil production grew more slowly than production of natural gas, which grew 3.1 percent.
• And much, much more slowly than coal production, which grew 6.1 percent.

You can read more here. The plus side: It doesn’t get worse.

Sixty-three percent of Americans don’t really know what fracking is. Which is, what? Mind-boggling? Unbelievable? What’s the description I’m looking for here?

The figure comes from a study conducted by the University of Texas, which asked this question: How familiar are you with the term “hydraulic fracturing” (sometimes referred to as “fracking”)? Thirty-two percent of respondents indicated familiarity; nearly everyone else was either not familiar or had never heard the term (which is a weird distinction).

Talking Points Memo (TPM), citing that report, indicated that they’d received a slightly different response from their readers. In 2010 and 2012, TPM asked readers how they felt about increased government investment in natural gas exploration.

The response: In 2010, 55.5% either agreed or strongly agreed and two years later 56.1% either disagreed or strongly disagreed. That’s a big difference. And the polarization also increased: substantially fewer people didn’t have an opinion.

The comparison is not one-to-one. TPM’s survey was just that, a survey, administered to a self-selecting population that is markedly more liberal than the general population. Likewise, TPM’s question was about government investment, not mere awareness. With those caveats, though, it’s clear that TPM saw a shift away from support for natural gas extraction.

In part, that’s likely due to stories like this one, from this morning’s New York Times:

For three years, [David Headley] and his wife, Linda, have wrestled with the land men, natural gas drillers and pipeline builders who are turning this very sleepy corner of Western Pennsylvania into an energy boom land. The farm Mr. Headley bought in 2006 for his semiretirement has become something of a nightmare. Gas wells leak. Drilling blowouts have spewed fine, chalky bentonite into trout-stocked Georges Creek, turning it a milky white. A spring where his wife’s three horses once watered now bubbles and belches. Touched with a flame, it will ignite. …

And last month, a dispute over an $11,000 payment for a pipeline right of way ended with state troopers, guns drawn, pouring out of 10 patrol cars and accusing Mr. Headley of criminal trespassing on his own land. A judge forced the gas company to pay the money — and slapped Mr. Headley with an injunction to keep 50 feet from the pipeline running through his property.

Not that such stories are new. (Remember Gasland?) But now they’re popping up in more and more places around the country as the mad rush to extract natural gas expands, especially in the Marcellus shale region.

Part of that rush is to take advantage of the fact that the process still enjoys a relatively low profile, outside of the bubble in which those of us who are concerned about it live our lives. As the Times describes, the feeling in Western Pennsylvania isn’t enthusiasm about a new business opportunity for the community.

“It’s the Wild West,” said C. J. Callahan, a 29-year-old banker in Point Marion, grabbing dinner with his wife and newborn baby at Apple Annie’s, just down the road from the Headleys. “There aren’t regulations. It’s just, get it out as quick as you can, because they’re going to do the regulations down the road.”

It is not the case that every fracking operation is heedless of the law and negligent in process. But anecdotes about what’s happening in regions where it’s booming are hard to ignore — unless you never hear them at all.

Regulation and reform can’t happen without political support. And political support can’t happen if people aren’t even aware that the issue exists. Some 201 million Americans still don’t.

Media Matters has a good explainer about natural gas that’s worth sharing with your 200 million closest friends.

The New York Times reports:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration is pursuing a plan to limit the controversial drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing to portions of several struggling New York counties along the border with Pennsylvania, and to permit it only in communities that express support for the technology.

Accompanying the article is this map of the areas in which fracking is likely to be allowed — as well as those areas that have barred the practice.

Graphic by the New York Times.

Restrictions on fracking are, of course, generally a good idea. The challenge with Cuomo’s reported proposal stems from this map:

Graphic by the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

The areas that will be opened to fracking are those areas over the Marcellus shale formation. That makes sense. But unfortunately, they’re also areas of the state with some of the highest rates of poverty.

Yes, fracking will bring the region jobs. That’s why areas on the state’s southern border have explicitly passed legislation allowing fracking, as indicated on the Times’ map. But one of the challenges of the fossil fuel economy is that its facilities, refineries, and extraction points are dirty, messy, and rife with pollution. Such things don’t go in the wealthier parts of town — or, often, the wealthier parts of a state.

One of the promises of a renewable energy economy is breaking the link between poverty and pollution-causing facilities. That’s not going to happen in New York any time soon.