hydraulic fracturing

Spreading the goodness all around:

Now state lawmakers who want to turn North Carolina into the nation’s next fracking hotspot are reopening the case for injecting brines and toxins deep underground. This time, the proposal is shifting the fracking debate from the center of the state, where the energy exploration and economic benefits would occur, to tourism-dependent coastal communities where the disposal wells would have to be drilled.

Not only would these coastal communities be dealing with wastes that another region made money from, it's likely that frack water from other states would end up there, as the drilling companies are struggling to find outlets for the hundreds of millions of gallons they've already produced. And in this issue we do have some experience:

And keeps the gold gas for itself:

Lee County officials this month released detailed property data revealing who owns the mineral rights to extract natural gas or other buried resources. The data shows that the owners of 365 parcels, on about 12 square miles, do not own the rights to drill or mine under their land. Many of them are concentrated in the northwestern gas-rich section of the county.

Much of which the King of Deforestation leased to gas companies a few years ago, with (of course) no warning at all to the people living on the land. More from Reuters:

Methinks The Pilot is lost in the storm of propaganda:

In its comprehensive report "Energy Outlook 2030," the London-based BP asserts that the United States will be 99 percent energy self-sufficient by 2030, largely because of shale gas and oil produced by hydraulic fracturing.

Oil companies like BP have been pushing this meme for several years now, with the goal (like this author) of promoting the idea that we can drill our way to independence. But the reality of the global oil trade cuts the legs out from under this fantasy: