talisman energy

Tue, 2011-03-15 16:02Brendan DeMelle
Brendan DeMelle's picture

Shale Gas Industry Targeting B.C. Public Water Supplies For Fracking Boom

The Tyee's Ben Parfitt has a must-read piece today focusing on the huge amounts of drinking water that the shale gas industry is drawing from public water resources for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations. It describes the efforts of Talisman Energy and Canbriam Energy to secure long-term licenses that would allow the gas industry to draw from B.C.'s public water supplies for years and possibly decades with little thought about water stewardship. 

The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission - the same agency charged with regulating the gas industry - is consulting with the industry without public input or information sharing with key water stewardship officials.

Gas companies are currently sourcing most of their water needs for fracking from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) through temporary permits. The Tyee notes that the gas industry "has a unique advantage over all other water users in the province in that it can get water from its own dedicated regulator."

Read more: Shale Gas Industry Targeting B.C. Public Water Supplies For Fracking Boom
Thu, 2011-02-17 03:35Brendan DeMelle
Brendan DeMelle's picture

‘Energy In Depth’ Was Created By Major Oil and Gas Companies According to Industry Memo

Update 11:35am PST: IPAA link is broken again, so use this link to view the memo.

Update 9:48am PST: It looks like the IPAA link works again. Here is the original link. In case similar access issues arise, I will continue to host the document at DeSmogBlog.

*Update 9:03am PST: It appears IPAA may have removed the memo from its website today in the wake of this report, so I have attached it to this post as a PDF and updated the links in the post so the memo is available for the world to see.

DeSmogBlog has uncovered an industry memo revealing that ‘Energy In Depth’ is hardly comprised of the mom-and-pop “small, independent oil and natural gas producers” it claims to represent.  In fact, the industry memo we found, entitled “Hydraulic Fracturing Under Attack,” shows that Energy In Depth “would not be possible without the early financial commitments” of major oil and gas interests including BP, Halliburton, Chevron, Shell, XTO Energy (now owned by ExxonMobil), and several other huge oil and gas companies that provided significant funding early on and presumably still fund the group's efforts.

According to the 2009 memo, Energy In Depth was orchestrated as a “major initiative to respond to…attacks” and to devise and circulate “coordinated messages” using “new communications tools that are becoming the pathway of choice in national political campaigns.”

Energy In Depth (EID) is featured in the news a lot these days, chiefly for attacking the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland, but also for its extensive efforts to malign the excellent reporting done by ProPublica, the Associated Press and other outlets. EID seems to attack everyone who attempts to investigate the significant problems posed by hydraulic fracturing and other natural gas industry practices that have been shown to threaten public health and water quality across America.

Read more: ‘Energy In Depth’ Was Created By Major Oil and Gas Companies According to Industry Memo
Tue, 2011-01-25 16:32Emma Pullman
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Industry Groups Fight Dirty Against Oscar-Nominated Hydraulic Fracturing Documentary "Gasland"

In the United States and beyond, governments are praising the "clean, plentiful fuel" that is natural gas, and tout it as a viable alternative to oil and coal.  According to Abrahm Lustgarten at ProPublica, its advocates are calling natural gas a step toward a greener energy future due to the fact, they assert, that natural gas produces 50 percent less greenhouse gases than coal. 

Josh Fox's critically-acclaimed documentary Gasland tells quite a different story about the natural gas industry and its extraction process, called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.  As he journeys across the United States, he discovers the devastating environmental and health impacts of humans and animals in close proximity to gas wells, and realizes that the so-called "Saudi Arabia of natural gas" is causing more pain than it is worth.

After the release of Fox's documentary, an oil and gas lobby group calling itself "Energy In-Depth" launched a public relations offensive against the film (apparently they didn't like the footage of people lighting their tap water on fire).  As it turns out, the website of the lobby group was registered to a Washington, DC public relations firm called FD Americas Public Affairs (formerly FD Dittus Communications) whose clients included oil and gas lobby groups including the American Energy Alliance, run by former Republican staffers Eric Creighton, Kevin Kennedy and Laura Henderson.

Today, when Fox's documentary was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature, a major energy trade association weighed in on Gasland's nomination.  The industry group, the America's Natural Gas Alliance argues on its website that "for our nation's economy" we must make greater use of the "Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas" for the sake of the environment and economy.

Read more: Industry Groups Fight Dirty Against Oscar-Nominated Hydraulic Fracturing Documentary "Gasland"

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