Fracking caused Ohio Earthquakes

RT
January 3, 2012

Ohio lawmakers have put a temporary ban on fracking after experts say it is certain that recent fracking in the Buckeye State caused an outbreak of earthquakes.

According to some seismologists, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is to blame for a string of tremors in Ohio, including a 4.0-magnitude quake on New Year’s Eve. It has long been suggested that fracking, which involves deep-earth drilling to extract gas for natural resource reserves, has been culpable for quakes. In the fracking process, wastewater collected during the deep drilling is injected back into the Earth for disposal. Thought to be safe by some, other experts insist that the brine water could find its way into subterranean faults and force parts of the planet to separate. The Youngstown, OH area has seen 11 small quakes since last spring, and now a moratorium has been instated in the area to keep future fracking from occurring while seismologists reinvestigate the quakes.

Even with a stay in place, however, experts say the quakes won’t be stopping anytime soon.

“The earthquakes will trickle on as a kind of a cascading process once you’ve caused them to occur,” John Armbruster of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory tells the Associated Press. “This one year of pumping is a pulse that has been pushed into the ground, and it’s going to be spreading out for at least a year.”

Ray Beiersdorfer, a geology professor at Youngstown State University, adds to the Business Journal, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it continued for a year or so.”

Regulators in Ohio have asked D&L Energy Inc., a company that carries out fracking near Youngstown, to stop injecting waste water back into the Earth while an investigation is opened up. Another quake of 2.7 magnitude occurred on Christmas Eve and prompted state officials to step in less than a week later. Had regulators not recommending the halt, D&L could have continued to operate fracking wells — and only a day before the moratorium was instated they submitted permit applications in hopes of beginning drilling in a residential neighborhood just outside of downtown Youngstown.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says that by D&L injecting wastewater more than 9,000 feet into the Earth, the onslaught of quakes were caused by human action. Officials in other areas of Ohio area considering stopping drilling in the interim as well.

In all, there are 177 wells used by fracking operations in the state.

The D&L company first began their own drilling in December 2010 and seismologists say the fracking has yielded nearly a dozen quakes as a result so far. Since fracking began in all of Ohio in 1985, around seven million barrels of wastewater have been injected in the Earth.

“We fully support the decision of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to issue a temporary suspension of five injection wells in the Youngstown area,” Thomas E. Stewart of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association adds to the Business Journal. “It was the correct course of action to ensure the safety and peace of mind for area residents.”

U.S. Senate Also Covering-up Oil spill

Global Research

On Tuesday, the US senate began hearings into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which took the lives of 11 workers in an April 20oil spillexplosion and has since poured millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the region with an environmental and economic catastrophe.

Appearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the morning and the Environmental and Public Health Committee in the afternoon were executives from the three corporations implicated in the disaster: Lamar McKay, president of the US operations of BP, which owned the oil and the drill site; Steven Newman, president of Transocean, the contractor that owned the rig and employed most of its workers; and Tim Probert, an executive with Halliburton, which contracted for the work of cementing the rig’s wellhead one mile beneath ocean’s surface.

The hearing resembled a falling out among thieves, with multi-millionaire executives—who, until April 20, had collaborated in thwarting basic safety and environmental considerations—each blaming the other for the explosion.

McKay of BP blamed Transocean. “Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and its equipment, including the blowout preventer,” he said. “Transocean’s blowout preventer failed to operate.” Newman flatly denied that the blowout preventer was responsible for the disaster, shifting blame to BP, which he said controlled the operation, and Halliburton, which was responsible for the cementing around the well cap. “The one thing we know with certainty is that on the evening of April 20 there was a sudden, catastrophic failure of the cement, the casing, or both,” Newman said. Probert of Halliburton pushed back, indicating that BP and Transocean had moved forward operations before cementing was adequately set.

There was, in fact, some harmony between the accounts offered by the executives of Halliburton and Transocean, both of whom appeared to suggest that BP ordered the skipping of a usual step in offshore drilling—the placing of a cement plug inside the well to hold explosive gases in place. That this step was passed over was corroborated by two workers on the rig, who spoke to the Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity. The workers also told the Journal that BP first cleared the decision with the US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS). Both BP and the MMS refused comment to the Journal.

Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor, has gathered testimony from Deepwater Horizon survivors that indicates the rig was hit by major bursts of natural gas, promoting fears of an explosion just weeks before the April 20 blast, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. This raised concerns about whether mud at the well head should be replaced by much lighter seawater prior to installation of a concrete plug. The decision to proceed won out, according to information gathered by Bea.

Whatever the immediate cause of the disaster, the clear thrust of the hearings was to focus public outrage on a single, correctable “mistake,” such as a mechanical failure or regulatory oversight, in order to obscure the more fundamental reasons for the disaster: the decades-long gutting of regulation carried out by both Republicans and Democrats at the behest of the oil industry that made such a catastrophe all but inevitable.

A similar calculation lay behind Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s Tuesday announcement that the MMS, which ostensibly regulates offshore oil drilling, will be split into two units—one that collects the estimated $13 billion in annual royalties from the nation’s extractive industries, and one that enforces safety and environmental regulations. Salazar’s claim that this would eliminate “conflicts of interest” in government regulation was nervy, to say the least, coming from a man with long-standing and intimate ties with oil and mining concerns, including BP.

Indeed, more farcical than the executives’ recriminations against each other was the spectacle of senators attempting to pose as tough critics of the oil industry. The US Senate, like the House of Representatives, the Department of the Interior, and the White House, is for all intents and purposes on the payroll of BP and the energy industry as a whole. Among the senators sitting on the two committees who have received tens of thousands in campaign cash from BP and the oil industry are Richard Shelby (Republican, Alabama), Mary Landrieu (Democrat, Louisiana), John McCain (Republican, Arizona) and Lisa Murkowski (Republican, Alaska).

One of the few truthful moments in the hearings came when an exasperated Murkowski told the executives, “I would suggest to all three of you that we are all in this together.” Murkowski and Landrieu also expressed concerns that the disaster could compromise offshore drilling.

None with even a passing familiarity of the workings of Washington or the Senate can have any doubt that Tuesday’s hearings were but the opening of a government whitewash. The ultimate aim is to shield the major industry players and the financial interests that stand behind them from any serious consequences.

The assemblage of the guilty parties inside the Senate chambers took place as ruptured pipes on the ocean floor continued to gush forth oil at a rate conservatively estimated at 220,000 gallons per day some 40 miles off Louisiana’s coast. The rate could be many times greater, but arriving at a more accurate estimate is impossible because BP has refused to release its underwater video footage for independent analysis.

BP, which is liable for cleanup costs, has all but admitted it has no idea of how to stop the leak. Its attempt last weekend to lower a four story box over the piping failed when ice crystals clogged a portal at the structure’s roof, a result that was widely anticipated. BP is now considering lowering a much smaller box in order to avoid icing. US Coast Guard and BP representatives have also floated the idea of a “junk shot,” firing golf balls, tire shreds, and other refuse at high pressure into the well.

The drilling of two relief wells continues, with the aim of disrupting the flow of oil from the current well. This option will take a minimum of 90 days, during which 18 million gallons more oil will pour out at the low-end estimate. Even this option provides no certainty. “The risks include unpredictable weather, since the wells will be operational at the start of hurricane season,” according to a report in the Christian Science Monitor. “The wells are also being drilled into the same mix of oil and gas that caused the original explosion, and operating two wells in the area creates the potential of igniting a second explosion that is more powerful.”

If the spill cannot be stopped—a distinct possibility—the ruptured well could release a large share of the deposit’s underground reserves into the Gulf of Mexico, which totals upwards of 100 million barrels of crude oil. And even if the spill is stopped at a lesser volume, with each day there is a growing probability that the oil will devastate the entire Gulf from Louisiana to Florida and possibly reach the Gulf Stream, impacting the Atlantic seaboard.

In the interim, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given BP clearance to resume pumping chemical dispersants into the oil column as it emerges from the broken piping. BP also continues to dump large quantities of dispersant onto the ocean’s surface. The environmental impact of such heavy use of dispersants is unknown, but a growing number of scientists and environmental groups are warning that the highly toxic substance could simply be transferring the brunt of the spill from the shore to marine ecosytems.

“The companies love the idea of using a chemical to spray on an oil slick to sink it,” Rick Steiner, a former professor of Marine Conservation at the University of Alaska, told the World Socialist Web Site. “It’s ‘out of sight out of mind’ as far as the public is concerned because TV cameras can’t see it. This is the big oil company playbook: public relations, litigation protection, and image.”

Oil has now washed ashore in three places: the Chandeleur Islands off Louisana’s coast, on the coast of a navigable channel from the Mississippi River known as the “South Pass,” and on Alabama’s Dauphin Island. Fishing has been blocked over a wide area, effectively imposing layoffs on thousands of fishermen, many of whom are self-employed and therefore not entitled to unemployment benefits. Sightings of birds covered in oil and dead sea turtles washed ashore have increased in recent days.

In his testimony, McKay boasted that BP would make available “grants of $25 million to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida,” and that it has paid out approximately $3.5 million in damage claims to those affected by the spill. These figures, presented as an act of enormous magnanimity, are such a tiny share of BP’s revenues as to be almost inconsequential.

The company took home $93 million per day in profits—for a total of $6.1 billion—during the first quarter alone. The $3.5 million in damage claims paid out are significantly less than CEO Tony Hayward’s 2009 compensation, estimated at over $4,700,000 by Forbes.

The Geopolitical Hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon Empire in Latin America

The Military Presence to Maintain Neo-colonialism, Instability and Poverty

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
May 1, 2010

By obtaining its independence, the colonies were preparing for what will inevitably come: the road to development andanglo-saxon empire modernization. Many countries, was suggested, would be developed quickly; politically and economically. But these nations soon realized the sad reality. The dream would not be realized. Underdevelopment in Latin America found strong allies: the colonizers and their new social, economic and military agendas to ensure that those who had recently proclaimed its independence did not come out of their reach.

The Anglo-Saxon empire, mainly supported by a banking system without military or economic boundaries, swallowed the first semi-democratic bastions left in the planet now known as G7, and once these were controlled, it was a matter of time before the rest of the planet was well absorbed. Working through proxy governments like the United States, Canada, France, Spain, England, Italy, Australia, Colombia and more recently Iraq and Afghanistan, the empire used mainly three tools: the model of dependence, foreign aid and military hegemony .

With the dependency model, the empire was guaranteed, and still is today, that countries could not compete with their former owners. The unit includes illegal policies of protectionism, subsidies, establishing trading programs (FTAA, NAFTA, CAFTA)-to flood markets with cheap products, which together amount today to a perpetual trade imbalance tilted to favor bankers. This resulted in the fact that developing countries were never competitive in international markets and rather remained as subjects of the Anglo-Saxons to a greater degree. Developing countries continued to be territories where the globalist-controlled developed nations got their materials to perpetuate their development, while taking advantage of third world countries’ cheap labor to strengthen the corporatist system that has ruled the planet for nearly 200 years.

With financial aid, the corporatists inflicted a second blow that destroyed more dependent countries on the intentions of reaching the much desired development. When third world countries failed to develop, it just seemed like a great idea to borrow money to boost their economies towards development. However, the trojan horse with this new method was to keep the borrowing countries deep indebted to prevent their development. Most of the money from the World Bank, IMF and governments dominated by European bankers were given as loans. These loans are so attractive because of the time is provided for the repayment, but at the same time are brutal due to their high interest rates of 30%, 40%, etc., which makes it mathematically impossible to pay the accrued interests, let alone the capital. This effectively tied up the wings of any development momentum the third world had. Along with high-interest loans, the agreements contained in them also requires the adoption of austerity policies that further restrict governments from encouraging development; less money is spent on education, health, infrastructure, creation of projects that in turn generate jobs, etc.. Also attached to these limitations exists an obligation on the part of the debtors to pass on the debt to three or four generations to ensure that countries cannot allocate resources and/or plan ahead.

While the globalists plundered -and continue plundering resources-, developing are also the markets for selling finished products with added value, which transformed them not only in slaves, but also in mindless consumists molded through the Madison Avenue hollow propaganda. Then, a third strategy was implemented. The creation of military conflicts in the region by where corporatists simply collapsed large areas, almost the entire continent. This is very clear in Latin America today. The U.S. proxy government, led through the decades by various puppets of the Anglo-Saxon empire, flooded Latin America officially and unofficially, using his terrorist organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They used for operations in countries like Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, Argentina and others to create resistance movements to destabilize the nations. This is one of the most common strategies used to create divisions among the people who end up eating away any country that shows a vestige of independence. The corporatists also ensure that only their pawns are elected presidents in these countries. Only those who attend the most famous universities in the U.S. and Europe, where they are indoctrinated or bribed, have a real chance to “steer” the destinies of their people.

The existence of common understandings through these governments ensures access to the country, establishing policies that assure more underdevelopment and the continued plundering of more resources. Today, the bankers who control the U.S. government has established military bases throughout Latin America. Along with this armies, the implementation of aid packages and coporatist policies, have also secured access to unlimited sources of energy, water and biodiversity. Some of the most influential are: the Plan Colombia, the FTAA, Plan Puebla Panama, and soon in 2010, the new carbon emissions agreement to be negotiated in Mexico under the command of the Prince of change, Barack Hussein Obama .

The military hegemony and the exercises that assure it are practiced in various countries by the Southern Command, which is an American paramilitary organization that for years has eaten away the independence and sovereignty of all countries in which it operates. Its main purpose is to train Latin American militaries to fight “terrorism”; that deluded idea created during the administration of George Bush and that is based on the assumption that Islamic extremists want to destroy the American dream and that if it was achieved, we would all suffer. Military exercises are conducted throughout Latin America, with recruits from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia. The most notorious example of these military exercises took place in 2001 when international troops invaded the Argentine territory of Salta to practice against suspected insurgents. New military bases are opened each year through the signing of new agreements for the establishment of more bases in Latin American and Caribbean territories. “The plan of economic and political domination, which has spearheaded the U.S. military dominance, goes also to monitor and control the dynamics of popular movements in the region or, as the Mexican teacher Ana Esther Cecena calls, deter, prevent the enemy from forming. “

The creation of military and naval bases is the daily bread for more and more Latinos. The facilities vary in names and sizes: the Tres Esquinas, Colombia; Iquitos, in Peru, Manta in Ecuador; Palmerola, Honduras; Comalapa, El Salvador, Queen Beatrix, on the island of Aruba, Liberia, Costa Rica. Resistance by many Latino citizens has had few positive results. In Brazil and Argentina, the banker controlled Washington, DC has developed a possible handover of the base of Alcantara, installed in Brazilian territory, and the possibility of installing a base in Misiones, on the triple border between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil is almost a reality as well. The military hegemony not only consolidates the imperialist war power, but also enables the control of resources in the region. As bankers have done it in Asia, Latin America is also a source of precious materials. The 21st century colonialists who are the same for the past two centuries, have sacrificed the lives of millions of people in their desire to grab more territory. The United States in particular, has mechanisms of domination and overexploitation of the FTAA and NAFTA policies promoted by the IMF and World Bank, which are agencies of the Anglo-Saxon imperialist power. And why is there so much interest in what Latin America can provide? “Latin America and the Caribbean possesses 11 percent of the world oil reserves and produces nearly 15 percent of the oil extracted in the world,” cites the website visionesalternativas.com. “In addition, Latin America accounts for about 6 percent of natural gas reserves, large coal reserves – enough for about 288 years of exploitation – and abundant hydro-energy resources, estimated at over 20 per cent the global potential.

The Latin American natural wealth should be added to the fact that the globalists seek to implement more comprehensive policies in order to get more control over the population. Brazil, for example, has already adopted the RFID technology to impose property taxes on animals and in 2010 for the identification of individuals. Also in Brazil, the president recently signed a law that transferred huge tracts of land in the Amazon to the hands of the UN. A new “green police” also limits the development of projects and land use for food crops, thereby jeopardizing the supply of products to local and international markets. Mexico is currently the country with the continent’s most oppressive government where citizens are targeted by the military and paramilitaries, both groups are funded and controlled by the United States in order to ensure easy traffic of drugs to North America. Mexican cartels that do not obey the imperialists are exterminated and those who do pay their share of the goods and profits are free to murder anyone who opposes their reign. Just as in Afghanistan and Colombia, the U.S. army trained and armed Southern Command, controls the planting, harvesting and selling of tons of drugs that are then sent in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and of course in Latin America. The proceeds are then laundered through the big banks on Wall Street. The Anglo-Saxons have also hijacked the continent through the imposition of restrictions on commerce and military agreements between Latin American countries and other competitors such as China and Russia.

And what is the common denominator of imposing economic, political and military rules on the continent? The result is very clear. All you have to do is to review the overall state of the countries to realize that the objective of limiting or nullifying the development has been reached. According to the World Bank, the external debt only from the Mercosur countries increased from $185 million in 1990 to $325 million in 2005. The crime continues to increase in countries like Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, where gangs and drug cartels control populations on the outskirts of the metropolis, and remains highly stable in Guatemala, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Haiti and others. But perhaps the clearest result of policies imposed on Latin America is the underdevelopment in which all countries are maintained. No country in this block is considered to be developed after having proclaimed themselves independent nations for decades. Poverty in Latin America has gotten worse in many countries due to their internal and regional conflicts as well as corrupt governments that serve the globalists.

A recent study by ECLAC, an organization of the UN reveals that at least 182 million people live in poverty in Latin America, and the number of those living in extreme poverty reached 12.9 percent. The study reveals that the number of people regarded as poor increased due mainly to higher inflation and higher food prices. The poverty rate is divided into four groups. The first highlights countries whose levels are below 22% such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, the second poorest group includes Brazil, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, the third and even poorer has Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador and Peru, and the fourth is composed by the worse off countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay.

Neo-colonialism does not allow developing countries to prosper, that’s a fact. The patent monopoly, control of natural resources and energy sources stop any progress. The use of military and paramilitary terrorism by globalists also stifles the nations and makes them victims of a system that is aimed at undermining the sovereignty and independence of any State. However, there is another fact that does not help in implementing development policies in Latin America. The legal and illegal choice of tyrants like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and puppets like Oscar Arias, Ernesto Cedillo, Luis Inacio da Silva, Kristina Fernandez, Felipe Calderón, Alvaro Uribe and many others, contributes to all countries in Latin America continued in the hands of the imperialists. The tyrants, restrict progress because of their thirst for power denies their people the real benefits of development. Venezuela and Cuba are hit daily with attacks on freedom of speech, assembly, property rights and others. The puppets also limit development because they follow directly and indirectly imposing on the continent the plans that seek to restrain their countries from developing at all costs. It is a deadly combination of corruption and selfishness.

We must remember that the Anglo-Saxon plan’s main objective is to increase their control over the rest of the planet, and thereby promote and impose their policies on the nations of Latin America and beyond by using their own governments or organizations such as Mercosur, the North American Union, the African Union, Asian Union and of course the UN, the European Union, the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization. The only way to start the path to development is thus breaking any existing relationships with these organizations to which all countries subject their decisions.

No organization has power over any country. This power that seems so hard to break is only valid if people let it rule them. In Iceland for example, Congress is about to vote on a measure to not pay external debt incurred in with the World Bank and IMF which was created through their illegal schemes of development loans. In the U.S., member states have and continue to proclaim their independence from the federal government which is bound to them by the system of slavery of the globalists. In Europe, at least half of the countries question the installation of malicious scanners at airports under the pretext of terrorism. When we understand that we are free to do what our Constitution allows, and that this is the only document that governs each of our lands, is when we will hold the Anglo-Saxon imperialists at bay. Therefore, progress, independence and freedom are realistic and achievable goals that are will come when each of the citizens as individuals make the decision to educate themselves, to understand how to the globalists deceive them with names, ideologies, political parties, false choices and even with religious extremism to keep them as slaves. No individual, no ideology, no political party, no politician or religion is the solution to progress by itself. The solution begins with each one of us first as thinking individuals and groups of active citizens demanding their governments the results for which they were elected.


Sources for this article include but are not limited to the following:

United States Imperialism in Latin America
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/index-dca.html

US Interventions in Latin America Since 1823
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/US-Interventions-1823.htm

Neocolonialism: a bibliography
http://science.jrank.org/pages/7920/Neocolonialism.html

U.S. Military Aid Before and After 9/11, Region Breakdown
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/militaryaid/regiondetail.aspx?REGION=Western Hemisphere

The Bush Effect: U.S. Military Involvement in Latin America Rises, Development and Humanitarian Aid Fall
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1105-21.htm

Qué es el ALCA?
http://www.visionesalternativas.com/militarizacion/geoestrategia/alca.htm

El Plan Puebla Panama
http://www.visionesalternativas.com/militarizacion/geoestrategia/ppp.htm

El Plan Colombia
http://www.visionesalternativas.com/militarizacion/geoestrategia/pcolom.htm

La Triple Frontera
http://www.visionesalternativas.com/militarizacion/geoestrategia/3front.htm

US Navy Deploys Around Latin America
http://rinf.com/alt-news/war-terrorism/us-navy-deploys-around-latin-america/3375/

Honduras deal a boost for US influence in Latin America http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2009/1030/p06s19-woam.html

US Navy Re-establishes Fleet for Caribbean, Latin America http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_Navy_re_establishes_fleet_for_Ca_04242008.html

US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-builds-up-its-bases-in-oilrich-south-america-1825398.html

US launches major military exercises in the Caribbean as a warning to Venezuela and Cuba
http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/us_military_exercises_venezuela_cuba.htm

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