“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out,
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.” – John Lennon
John Lennon imagined a World Beyond Wars. We miss you John. Fracking and pipeline exports benefit the U.S. oil industry with an unsustainable business model. Everyone else pays for corporate greed and corruption. Attack dogs and armored military vehicles are used to build shale oil pipelines, without media coverage and unlawful arrests. Wars for oil result in oil fields being set on fire. Fracking is a weapon of mass destruction, accelerating climate change. Fracking has to stop.
Nothing is real
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are used to build pipelines for the wrong reasons. Energy independence, safe transport of crude oil, job creation, and economic development are some of the fictional reasons to build pipelines. 1920’s ideas may sound good but they don’t hold water. There is a global glut of oil. The U.S. will continue importing oil, pipelines do not create jobs, and total cost of shale exports including the social costs far exceeds export revenues.
In the oil industry, supply and demand are unrelated. When oil prices drop producers keep the wells running. The financial debt must be repaid with interest whether or not the fracking continues. Prices are driven by wars with built-in delays in the supply chain.
And nothing to get hung about
Since 1991, Germans have enjoyed individual freedom to put solar on their roofs and build community solar and wind farms. Plug-in Electric Vehicles powered by sunlight make gas pumps a thing of the past.
In the U.S., Electric Vehicles (EV), like the Nissan Leaf, have a lower cost to own/operate than equivalent gasmobiles. Unlike the bulky, smelly, leaky, loud gasmobiles of the past, EV’s have fewer components, superior features and performance.
The main reason to care about community energy is liberty: you have the right to make your own energy. This is what Energy Independence is all about.
Living is easy with eyes closed
To understand the 2016 U.S. oil industry, it helps to start with the Athabasca oil sands. In 2009 Canada saw an opportunity to become a world oil exporter from the Gulf Coast. Bitumen is extremely heavy crude oil as thick as peanut butter. To make it flow bitumen is diluted with naphtha and other chemicals, a toxic soup called dilbit. Tar Sands processing and dilbit spills are an environmental disaster.
For over 40 years U.S. oil exports were illegal. It took an act of Congress to change the law, but special interest bills are approved when the price is right. Former Gov. Rick Perry [R-Texas] urged lawmakers to lift the ban on crude oil only one month after joining the board of Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 30-inch diameter, 1,170-mile, pipeline (DAPL). Keystone and DAPL are export lines.
Misunderstanding all you see
The Canadian plan was simple: build pipelines to U.S. refineries and export oil and gas. Greed and ignorance combined with high-risk, high-return financing killed the plan. Fracking and pipelines are expensive projects, it takes years to get revenues. Master Limited Partnerships became available for pipeline operators, to hide ownership, reduce liabilities, share the risk, and grow like Ponzi schemes. The U.S. black snake starts at the Bakken shale wells and ends at U.K. gas pumps.
Water is life. Millions of gallons of fresh, clean water are mixed with toxic chemicals to frack shale oil wells. Most of the polluted water flows out of the well and needs disposal. Wastewater is stored deep in the ground, using injection wells. Dick Cheney’s Halliburton loophole gives frackers an exemption from the Safe Water Drinking Act, classifying wastewater as non-hazardous. Groundwater Chromium-6 contamination and earthquakes are the social cost of fracking wastewater.
South Dakota Standing Rock water protectors view water as life. Frackers take millions of gallons of water out of the water cycle, pretending there is an infinite amount, ignoring groundwater contamination. Please go to sacredstonecamp.org to see how you can help.