I am a theoretical physicist and currently Director of 
May 24, 2011
Film review: Gasland
This award-winning documentary provides a stark warning about the danger that hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking' as it is popularly known, poses to the water supply in the nation and to its air quality. It blasts the notion that natural gas is a 'clean' source of energy. It may be clean when it is used but the way that fracking extracts it from shale rock formations underground creates very serious environmental and health hazards.
Fracking involves pumping huge amounts of water mixed with about 600 chemicals (some known to be toxic and carcinogenous) deep underground at high pressure to create the equivalent of an explosion to fracture the shale rock, thus releasing the natural gas which is then extracted. But only about half of the contaminated water is recovered. The rest, mixed with natural gas, can end up in the water table and watersheds and streams and rivers, polluting them.
The film has much lower production values than Inside Job but, like that film, will make you angry at the way that big corporations, in this case the oil and natural gas industry, aided by its allies in government, ride roughshod over ordinary people, destroying their water supplies and air and, in the process, their very lives. It is heartbreaking to see ordinary people being treated like dirt and having nowhere to turn.
Here's the trailer for Gasland:
It is a personal film, starting with Josh Fox, who was involved with the writing, directing, producing, and camerawork, receiving a letter from a gas company offering him $100,000 for the right to drill wells on the 20 acres of land in rural Pennsylvania, a wooded area with clear running streams, on which his parents had built their home.
Fox travels the country to talk with the people whose lives have been impacted by fracking. In investigating the effect of such drilling, he discovers that it can result in destruction of the environment and the health of the people in the vicinity. People's wells become contaminated and the air gets polluted, resulting in people and animals developing serious health problems.
Most of us assume that industries are subject to regulations imposed by the government to protect people and the environment. The high water mark for such protections occurred in the early 1970s when presidents Nixon and Ford (both Republicans incidentally) signed the Clean Air Act (1970), Clean Water Act (1972), and the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974). What I had not been aware of, and was shocked to learn from the film, was that in 2005, the energy bill that was pushed through Congress by Dick Cheney exempts the oil and natural gas industry from those three laws as well as the CERCLA/Superfund Law (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability) Act (1980). The oil and gas companies were also exempted from even informing the public what chemicals were used in the fracking fluid. They could now act with impunity and they did. Cheney's former company Halliburton benefited greatly from these exemptions.
But that is not the only way that these big companies get their way. They also use their power to defund the regulatory agencies that are supposed to provide oversight to protect people and the environment so that they cannot match the resources that these corporations can bring to bear. That is what this current push against 'big government' is largely about. It is not about eliminating waste or saving money or cutting red tape by reducing the bureaucracy. It is all about making sure that federal, state, and local governments, the only entities that (in principle at least) represent ordinary people and are large enough to act as a counterweight to industry, are made ineffective by cutting the budgets of their regulatory agencies, forcing them to reduce staff and creating working conditions so bad that they cannot attract the kinds of technical experts who are needed.
The people in the Tea Party and other groups who rail against 'big government' and think that 'drill, baby, drill' is a cute and catchy slogan, are being played for suckers by the big corporations and the oligarchy. I wonder how many of the ordinary people that Fox interviewed in the film, whose lives and livelihood were destroyed by the oil and gas industry, were among those who had bought into the idea that government is too big, and whether they now realize that they were duped.
One of the most alarming things in the film were the maps of the country that showed the network of rivers and watersheds, and superimposed on them were the shale formations and the natural gas wells that had been drilled. Much of it consists of public lands that the oil and gas corporations are eagerly eyeing to exploit for their purposes. You immediately see that almost the entire water supply of the US is threatened. Furthermore, they are discovering shale formations around the globe and you can be sure that fracking will spread as money is dangled before the eyes of poor people and nations to provide the oil and gas companies the same immunity they got here.
Gasland should have had people up in arms but although it received an Oscar nomination (it lost to Inside Job), it has not aroused much anger. Interestingly, the film has aroused public opinion in France against fracking and there are moves in that country for a nationwide ban on fracking, citing what we have learned in the US. It seems like people in the US are passively accepting the destruction of their once pristine lands and water supplies, and are reduced to serving as guinea pigs that other nations benefit from.
Comments
Note how Republicans have claimed that reducing the federal debt is a moral issue, necessary to protect future generations from impossible burdens. Every time they trot that argument out, someone needs to ask them how moral it is to expose every living thing to unsafe drinking water for generations to come.
Of course, their response would be - as indicated in the movie clip - that we need to exploit these resources to make us less dependent on foreign sources and thereby stop funding terrorists. Thus, the climate of fear plays beautifully into the hands of the corporations' scorched-earth business model.
But I keep asking myself, where are all these winners going to live when they've sucked all the value out of the country? Don't they have children, too? Or are they also expecting a Rapture to obviate that dilemma? Could it be that the people at the top are just as stupid as the people at the bottom?
Richard,
This is what puzzles me too. When I fight for universal health care or the environment or greater income equality or equal rights for the disadvantaged in some form, partly it is because I think it is the right thing to do but partly for selfish reasons in that even though the current system is working fine for me (I am one of the few lucky ones), surely at least some of my children and grandchildren will not be so lucky. Surely the need to consider that possibility should weigh on the minds of these people too? Or are they, as you suggest, so short-sighted?
I am a geologist that is been involved with fracturing of oil and gas reservoir since 1981 here in California. As with so many anti-industry films Gasland distorts and makes wild claims that really have no basis in fact.
One example:
“What I didn’t know was that the 2005 energy
bill pushed through Congress by Dick Cheney
exempts the oil and natural gas industries from
the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe
Drinking Water Act...and about a dozen other
environmental regulations.” (6:05)
Actual truth:
The oil and natural gas industry is regulated under every single one of these federal laws — under provisions of each that are relevant to its operations.
The 2005 energy bill was supported by nearly three-quarters of the U.S. Senate, including then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. In the U.S. House, 75 Democrats joined 200 Republicans in supporting
the final bill.
Example# 2
“The fracking itself is like a mini-earthquake.
… In order to frack, you need some fracking
fluid — a mix of over 596 chemicals.” (6:50)
Actual truth:
The fracturing process uses a mixture of fluids comprised almost entirely (99.5%) of water and sand. The remaining materials, used to help deliver the water and sand down the wellbore, are typically found and used around the house. The average fracturing operation utilizes fewer than 12 of these components, according to the Ground Water Protection Council — not 596.
Over the course of its history,over 60 years, fracturing has not only been used to increase the flow of oil and natural gas from existing wells, but also to access things like water and geothermal energy. It’s even been used by EPA to clean up Superfund sites.
Example #3
Methane in the water in Fort Lupton, Colo. said
to be the result of natural gas development. This is the shot of the burning faucet in the movie.
Actual truth:
An investigation by the Colorado Oil and Gas CC concluded: “Dissolved methane in well water appears to be biogenic [naturally occurring] in origin. ...There are no indications of oil & gas related impacts to water well.”
(Colorado Oil and Gas CC, 9/30/08)
What many of you don't realize is that me and my family drink the same water and breath the same air as you do. In my work with a small energy company we do everything we can to protect our water and air. This is new resource is a god send to our country and will generate thousands of high paying jobs and clean energy for our country.
You never know what to believe when you see something like this. I'd only heard about fracking for the first time about a month ago and right off the bat it seemed like an awful idea. Is it really awful though? Jim, you say that 99.5% of the fluid is water and sand, but if you get enough of that fluid then the .05% that's left can be a very dangerous quantity. As for what you say about the rest of the fluid being things you can find around the house, I think that's a pretty bad argument, there's plenty of things around my house I wouldn't want in my drinking water. This is obviously an issue for a reason, I think more research needs to be done.
I think that fracking is one of the most horrific ways to extract natural gas. I am SO happy that in the past few days the Queensland government in Australia has fined a gas company for polluting the water ways in the area. Also very happy to see France become the first country to ban this method!
It is unreal how these big oil companies run the industry and how much power they all have.
Where do we, the little guy fall into that?
Thanks for sharing.
It is so sad these companies are ruling the world's industry, doing so much harm to people and the eath in general. I hope people will one day wake up and protest against all that is bringing pain and destruction to this world.