You’ll find the best resources we’ve found in this section of the site. Know of something we missed? Send your links to berksgastruth@gmail.com!
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You may have noticed that we’ve added drop-down menus arranged by topic. We’re moving the resources below to the new pages and adding resources all the time, so don’t forget to have a look!
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Recent Reports
The Rapid Industrialization of Frac Sand, Food & Water Watch’s February 2014 issue brief on frac sand mining.
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Hydraulic Fracturing & Water Stress: Water Demand by the Numbers, Ceres’ February 2014 report looks at water use for fracking in water stressed regions. Fantastic interactive maps at this link. Report download requires free registration.
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Fracking by the Numbers: Key Impacts of Dirty Drilling at the State and National Level, PennEnvironment’s October 2013 report quantifies key impacts of drilling to date.
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The Social Costs of Fracking: A Pennsylvania Case Study, Food & Water Watch’s September 2013 report provides a detailed examination of the social costs of fracking often overshadowed by environmental costs.
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The Spreading Shadow of the Shale Gas Boom: Fracking’s Growing Proximity to Day Cares, Schools and Hospitals, PennEnvironment’s September 2013 report includes a map of hospitals, schools, and day care facilities within two miles of a permitted well site.
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Reckless Endangerment While Fracking the Eagle Ford: Government Fails, Public Health Suffers and Industry Profits from the Shale Oil Boom, Earthworks’s September 2013 report investigates oil and gas impacts in Texas’ Eagle Ford and examines government negligence in over seeing drilling operations.
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Who Pays the Cost of Fracking: Weak Bonding Rules for Oil and Gas Drilling Leave the Public at Risk, PennEnvironment’s July 2013 report looks at how little financial assurance the industry is required to provide before drilling.
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Hydraulic Fracturing & Water Stress: Growing Competitive Pressures for Water, Ceres’ May 2013 report looks at water use for fracking in water stressed regions.
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National Parks and Hydraulic Fracturing, National Parks Conservation Association’s May 2013 report looks at fracking’s impacts on forests and wildlife, but falls short of opposing drilling elsewhere.
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Fracking and the Revolving Door in Pennsylvania, Public Accountability Initiative’s February 2013 on the relationship between government and the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania.
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Shale and Wall Street: Was the Decline in Natural Gas Prices Orchestrated?, Deborah Rogers, founder of the Energy Policy Forum, examines the relationship between the natural gas industry and Wall Street in this February 2013 report.
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Drill, Baby, Drill: Can Unconventional Fuels Usher in a New Era of Energy Abundance?, The Post Carbon Institute’s J. David Hughes questions bold assertions about fossil fuel abundance in this February 2013 report.
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Look before the LNG Leap: Why Policymakers and the Public Need Fair Disclosure before Exports of Fracked Gas Start, The Sierra Club’s November 2012 report highlighting the significant risks associated with exporting liquified natural gas (LNG).
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U.S. Energy Insecurity: Why Fracking for Oil and Natural Gas Is a False Solution, Food & Water Watch’s November 2012 challenges industry claims that fracking for oil and gas deliver energy security.
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Oil and Gas: Information on Shale Resources, Development, and Environmental and Public Health Risks, Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from October 2012 confirms fracking is reckless.
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Gas Patch Roulette, Earthworks’ October 2012 report on health impacts of drilling.
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Breaking All the Rules, Earthworks’ September 2012 report on regulatory enforcement of oil and gas drilling.
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The Costs of Fracking, Penn Environment’s September 2012 report on the true costs of fracking.
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In Fracking’s Wake: New Rules Are Needed to Protect Our Health and Environment from Contaminated Wastewater,NRDC’s May 2012 brief examines methods of handling fracking waste.
Articles & Reports
The Big Fracking Bubble, Jeff Goodell’s excellent article on the drilling issue in the March 15, 2012 issue of RollingStone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-big-fracking-bubble-the-scam-behind-the-gas-boom-20120301
The Case for a Ban on Gas Fracking, important report from Food & Water Watch, the only national organization to call for an outright ban
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/the-case-for-a-ban-on-gas-fracking/
The Case for a Moratorium, presentation by Dr. J. Stephen Cleghorn
http://www.paradisegardensandfarm.com/
Consultant Warns about Methane in Water Wells South of Silt and Rifle, Phillip Yates’ piece for the Glenwood Springs Post Independent on Geoffrey Thyne’s study of increased methane levels in water wells in two Colorado towns conducted in 2006. His findings were released in 2008.
Could Shale Gas Power the World?, Time asks
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2062331,00.html
Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets, Common Cause’s excellent report released in November 2011 follows the money
http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7Bfb3c17e2-cdd1-4df6-92be-bd4429893665%7D/DEEP%20DRILLING%20DEEP%20POCKETS%20NOV%202011.PDF
Drilling Down, great series from the New York Times
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/us/series/drilling_down/index.html
The Environmental Dangers of Hydro-Fracturing the Marcellus Shale, a great essay loaded with links by Dr. Robert Myers of Loch Haven University in PA
http://www.lhup.edu/rmyers3/marcellus.htm
The Fracturing of Pennsylvania, New York Times’ profile of Amwell Township, one of the many townships in Pennsylvania taken over by drilling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/magazine/fracking-amwell-township.html?pagewanted=all
Fracking the Future, Desmog Blog’s excellent report that looks at the policies and politics of gas drilling
http://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/
How Marcellus Shale Affects You, Berks Gas Truth’s own Michelle Sayles explains the issues to her fellow Kutztown University students in the campus paper, the Keystone.
http://www.keystoneonline.com/2011/03/30/how-marcellus-shale-affects-you/
Impacts of Gas Drilling on Human and Animal Health, study by Michelle Bamberger, DVM, and Robert E. Oswald, Ph.D. published in New Solutions
http://www.psehealthyenergy.org/data/Bamberger_Oswald_NS22_in_press.pdf
Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush, the New York Times‘ great investigative report into the natural gas industry’s inflated claims of well productivity and shale gas reserves featuring Deborah Rogers, Founder of the Energy Policy Forum who spoke at a Berks Gas Truth-hosted event.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Methane and Greenhouse-Gas Footprint of Natural Gas from Shale Formations: A letter, Cornell’s Howarth, Santoro, and Ingraffea compare the footprint of natural gas in relation to those of oil and coal.
http://www.sustainablefuture.cornell.edu/news/attachments/Howarth-EtAl-2011.pdf
Methane and Other Gases in Drinking Water and Groundwater, a new fact sheet from Brian Oram, Professional Geologist and owner of B.F. Environmental Consultants, Inc.
http://www.water-research.net/methanegas.htm
Methane Contamination of Drinking Water Accompanying Gas-Well Drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing, Duke’s Osborn, Vengosh, Warner, and Jackson examine methane levels in water sources in proximity of drilling
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/pnas2011.pdf
Potential Contaminant Pathways from Hydraulically Fractured Shale to Aquifers, Geologist Tom Myers’ peer-reviewed paper in Ground Water that discusses results of computer modeling to determine that methane can migrate into the aquifer in as few as three years.
The Shale Game, WHYY’s great 2010 series
http://whyy.org/cms/news/featured/2010/09/27/the-shale-game/41961
What the Frack? Natural Gas from Subterranean Shale Promises U.S. Energy Independence — With Environmental Costs, Scientific American’s piece from a March 2010
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shale-gas-and-hydraulic-fracturing
The Whole Fracking Enchilada: Violating the Bedrock, the Atmosphere, and Everything in Between, Dr. Sandra Steingraber’s excellent essay in Orion Magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5839/
Websites
Dirty Energy Money, great tool for following the money
http://dirtyenergymoney.org/
Energy Policy Forum, Deborah Rogers’ site that follows the real economics of fracking. Download Deborah’s PowerPoint presentation from her talk hosted by Berks Gas Truth. pdf
http://energypolicyforum.com/
EPA Hydraulic Fracturing Page, the index page to an area of the agency’s site dedicated to hydraulic fracturing includes detailed information on the EPA’s current two-year study of the effects of fracking on groundwater.
http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/
Fracktracker, an amazing collection of mapping data from the Center for Healthy Environments & Communities at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. Free registration required, but absolutely worth it to be able to generate maps and spreadsheet files of just about anything you’d like to know about natural gas drilling on Pennsylvania. See the example of the Permit Violation map below to get a taste of what Fracktracker can do.
http://www.fractracker.org/
Marcellus Money, fabulous follow-the-money site from Common Cause PA and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania
http://www.marcellusmoney.org/
Pennsylvania Energy Impacts Assessment, an interactive map from the Nature Conservancy that shows existing and proposed sites with a variety of tools and the ability to save maps in PDF format.
http://maps.tnc.org/paenergy/
Pipeline – Your Marcellus Shale Community: Learn. See. Share., excellent new site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a paper that has done excellent work covering issues surrounding Marcellus Shale http://shale.sites.post-gazette.com/
ProPublica: Journalism in the Public Interest, writer Abrahm Lustgarten has done so many great stories that the link goes straight to his page, but check out the rest of the site for more coverage http://www.propublica.org/site/author/Abrahm_Lustgarten
Shale Play, interactive map from NPR’s State Impact site displays permits color-coded by whether or not there have been violations. Holding the cursor over a permit brings up info on that permit.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/drilling/
Organizations
Other Gas Truth Chapters
Lehigh Valley Gas Truth
Gas Truth of Central PA
Gas Truth of York County
Bucks-Montgomery-Philadelphia Gas Truth
Catskill Mountainkeeper
http://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/
Damascus Citizens for Sustainability
http://www.damascuscitizens.org/
Delaware Riverkeeper Network
http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/
Food & Water Watch
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/
Frack Action
http://www.frackaction.com/
Marcellus Shale Protest
http://www.marcellusprotest.org/
Protecting Our Waters
http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/
Save the Delaware
http://savethedelaware.wordpress.com/
Shaleshock
http://shaleshock.org/
Un-natural Gas.org
http://un-naturalgas.org/
Water Defense
http://www.waterdefense.org/
Blogs & Ezines
ada.mae.compton – Ada (short for American with Disabilities Act) is a three-legged dog who now lives feet from a drilling site after being abandoned by a driller when he returned to Texas. Ada’s posts are well-worth reading.
http://adamaecompton.wordpress.com/
Neighbors of Easton, Lehigh Valley Gas Truth member Noël Jones frequently writes about natural gas drilling
http://neighborsofeaston.blogspot.com/
Commonsense2, Berks Gas Truth member Chuck Brown is bringing his ezine back from hiatus this May to cover the Marcellus Shale story
http://commonsense2.com
Legislative Links
FRAC Act, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) has once again introduced the bill that would force Halliburton and other manufacturers of fracking fluid to disclose its contents. The bill has gotten stuck in committee in past sessions
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1084ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr1084ih.pdf
Impact Fee Bills, Pennsylvania’s Senate and House bills that would impose an impact fee on drillers while stripping local municipalities of control over drilling.
House Bill 1950
Senate Bill 1100
Marcellus Shale Watch, blog dedicated to following Marcellus Shale law by Saul Ewing LLP
http://marcellusshale.saulnews.com/
