Pandora's Box: Digging the Earth, Killing the Future

Common Dreams
Landgrabbing and mineral extraction spell disaster for Earth

The extent and the scale of the increase in world mineral extraction over the last 10 years is staggering, according to a new report. Across Latin America, Asia and Africa, more and more community lands, rivers and ecosystems are being despoiled, displaced and devoured by mining activities. The rights of farming and indigenous communities are increasingly ignored in the race to grab land and water. Each wave of new extractive technologies requires ever more water to wrench the material from its source. The hunger for these materials is a growing threat to the necessities for life: water, fertile soil and food. The implications are obvious, if not widely ignored by the industrial and economic powers that profit from such activities.

The report, Opening Pandora's Box - A New Wave of Land Grabbing for the Extractive Industries and The Devastating Impact on Earth, was spearheaded by the Gaia foundation and supported by various groups including Friends of the Earth International, Grain, Oilwatch and Navdanya in India.

For example, the report cites that over the last ten years, iron ore production is up by 180%; cobalt by 165%; lithium by 125%, and coal by 44%. The increase in prospecting has also grown exponentially, which means this massive acceleration in extraction will continue if concessions are granted as freely as they are now.

"We live on a beautiful and wondrous planet," write the authors in the executive summary to the report, "the only one we know of in our cosmos. She suddenly feels very small and vulnerable in the face of the momentum of destruction we have unleashed on her, through our conscious and unconscious actions. We must recognise this reality: if we continue in our current direction, our children will be left to clean up an increasingly barren and unstable planet, littered with toxic wastelands and a huge scarcity of water, which we would have left in our wake."

"We live on a beautiful and wondrous planet - the only one we know of in our cosmos. She suddenly feels very small and vulnerable in the face of the momentum of destruction we have unleashed on her, through our conscious and unconscious actions."

Environment editor at The Guardian, Jon Vidal, digested the report, and added:

Africa is the epicentre of the mining industry's search for minerals. Of the 10 biggest mining deals to be completed last year, seven were in Africa, according to Ernst & Young. Mining group Anglo American has earmarked $8bn (£5bn) for new platinum, diamond, iron ore and coal projects on the continent, and Brazil's Vale has said it plans to spend more than $12bn over the next five years in Africa. [...]

China, which has invested heavily in African mines, now sucks up much of the world's mineral resources. According to the report, it uses 53% of the world's cement, 47% of its iron ore, 46% of its coal and more than 40% of the world's steel, lead, zinc and aluminium. However, it re-exports much of this in the form of finished products for world markets.

The loss of enormous quantities of soil, and the eviction of people to make way for large-scale extraction now threaten to make millions of people landless and hungry, a recipe for social problems, says the report.

Water could well be a factor in limiting the extraction of minerals in future. Most mining companies have said they are already experiencing shortages. If demand continues to grow at the same rate that it has in the last decade, industry demands for fresh water are expected to grow from 4,500bn cubic metres today to 6,900bn cubic metres in 2030.

"Humans have almost cleared the surface of the earth. Now all efforts are geared towards going beneath the surface. Large-scale mining is now targeting all parts of the planet," said Gathuri Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network.

Obama Allows BP Back Into Bidding for Gulf Drilling Rights

Sunday, October 16, 2011 by The Observer/UK
US regulator declines to enforce 'death penalty' on oil company despite environmentalists' fury

by Terry Macalister 

 

The Obama administration has infuriated environmentalists by giving BP the green light to bid for new drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Governments should be administering the death penalty to all deepwater drilling rather than waiting for yet more devastating incidents like the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico or in any other part of the world," argued Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth. 

The move – seen as a major step in the company's political rehabilitation as an offshore driller following the Deepwater Horizon accident – was revealed by the head of the US safety regulator after a congressional hearing in Washington.

"They don't have a deeply flawed record offshore," said Michael Bromwich, head of the newly formed Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. "The question is: 'Do you administer the administrative death penalty based on one incident?', and we have concluded that's not appropriate."

Drilling rights are sold off on a regular basis but many believed BP would be ruled out as unsuitable after the gulf well blowout that killed 11 workers and polluted the beaches of southern states. The next sale comes up in December, when more than 8m hectares (20m acres) of offshore rights will come up for grabs.

BP declined to comment, but Friends of the Earth said it was appalled. "Governments should be administering the death penalty to all deepwater drilling rather than waiting for yet more devastating incidents like the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico or in any other part of the world," argued Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at the environmental group.

"It is not just BP operations that are deeply flawed," he added. "There is not a single oil company that can say with a high degree of confidence that it can drill safely and how it will clear up if something goes wrong. It is clear in the context of climate change we need to develop new clean technologies, not hunt for fossil fuels in ever more remote and hard-to-reach areas."

BP has already introduced changes to its offshore safety regime that it claims now leaves it with tougher standards than the regulator demands, but it has yet to gain approval to drill new wells.

The oil company has for many years been the biggest operator in the gulf, but it was pilloried by politicians after the Deepwater Horizon spill and its former chief executive, Tony Hayward, was said to be the most hated person in the US.

Over the last 18 months, BP has gradually seen some of its reputation rebuilt, not least because several studies have suggested that US contractors on the project, such as Transocean and Halliburton, ought to share some of the blame. BP has also helped itself by paying for a massive clean-up and compensation programme, but it still faces huge lawsuits and even possible criminal charges.

On Thursday BP, Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, and well-cementing specialist Halliburton were formally charged with breaches of offshore regulations on 15 separate occasions. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of $35,000 per violation per day but the real threat to BP is if it is found guilty of gross negligence by any court – which would trigger billion-dollar claims under the US's Clean Water Act.

BP, now with its first American chief executive in Bob Dudley, was keen to emphasise the significance of the two contractors being drawn into the legal net, because those firms have argued that BP was at the heart of the Gulf accident. BP is trying to convince them to contribute their share of the compensation it has paid out already. "The issuance today of notices of non-compliance to BP, Transocean and Halliburton makes clear that contractors, like operators, are responsible for properly conducting their deepwater drilling activities and are accountable to the US government and the American public for their conduct," said BP in a statement.

Mineral rights give gas drillers free rein

(Sort of an old article, but it's pretty interesting considering the events of the day--jef)

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Mineral rights give gas drillers free rein
By Caitlin Cleary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Long-standing state laws that split mineral rights from surface real estate are creating big winners and big losers in the current natural-gas gold rush in Western Pennsylvania.

The winners hold the mineral rights. For them, signing a drilling lease with a gas-producing company can be a lucrative transaction. They are entitled to one-eighth of the royalties and can negotiate free natural gas for their homes.

The losers are landowners who find that their mineral rights were severed from the surface property years ago. They have no control over whether wells are drilled on their property.

Gas-producing companies such as Pittsburgh-based Texas Keystone have been quietly tracking down heirs to those who owned the mineral rights and getting them to sign leases to drill on the property.

Some heirs have moved out of state. Some had no idea they possessed mineral rights until they were approached by gas company representatives. Many have failed to pay any taxes on their assets.

For surface property owners such as Dr. David Lentz and his neighbor William Hofecker, of Fairfield, Westmoreland County, who do not own their mineral rights, the first hint that their land had been leased out from under them came in a letter from Texas Keystone. The company searches for and produces natural gas and oil in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and New York.

"I've had this ground for over 20 years," Mr. Hofecker said. "I pay taxes on my ground, and just out of the clear blue sky they came in and they've got every legal right to drill."

Over the past few months, the men say, teams of drillers have scarred hillsides, bulldozed new roads, felled stands of trees and generally devalued their properties. They have no legal recourse and receive no compensation for the losses.

State legislators, including Rep. Jess Stairs, R-Mount Pleasant, are promoting a bill aimed at giving landowners some protection. It encourages "good faith negotiations" between the surface owner and the gas company operators, and stipulates that the landowner be compensated for damage and for lost land value and agricultural production.

"The gas companies can come in and pretty much do what they want to do," Mr. Stairs said. "This [legislation] gives the landowner some maneuverability."

As he flew over the Ligonier Valley while training for his pilot's license recently, Dr. Lentz took in the sight of dozens of new gas wells, drilled into the earth about every 1,000 feet.

"It's like a grid," said Dr. Lentz, a dentist who was born and raised in Fairfield. "They're polka-dotting the land."

He can look out the windows of his home and see more well heads down the hill, on his mother's farm. Two wells were drilled just over her fence rail, a few hundred yards from his father's grave.

And when Dr. Lentz takes a walk around his own 53-acre property, he can see the drilling rigs, the excavators, the swimming-pool-size wastewater pits, all connected by freshly bulldozed access roads.

Few restrictions

All of these alterations are allowed in the pursuit of natural gas when the holders of mineral rights sign a lease with a gas-producing company. The companies, in turn, must adhere to environmental restrictions, taking care to reconstruct the land after drilling is finished.

North of Ligonier on Route 711, the landscape is sprinkled with gas wells, their shiny heads popping out of the combed earth on acre-size well pads, their 10,000-gallon brine tanks unsuccessfully hidden behind trees. Multiple wells dot the nearby Champion Lakes golf course, and bulldozers could be seen at work chewing up the land in front of the Pennsylvania Game Commission building, preparing for another well.

Last year, the state Department of Environmental Protection issued three times the number of oil and gas drilling permits as it did in 2001. High energy prices are driving the boom.

The most active counties are Westmoreland, Fayette, Indiana and Armstrong, said Alan Eichler, the DEP's compliance chief for the oil and gas program in Pittsburgh. In Westmoreland County alone, 309 wells were drilled last year.

"Activity is up everywhere," Mr. Eichler said, "We're setting records in the issuance of permits and the numbers of wells we're seeing drilled."

The Westmoreland County recorder of deeds office has received plenty of calls lately, both from those holding mineral rights and hoping to cash in, and from property owners anxious to find out whether their land has been leased and to find the heirs before the gas companies do.

Searches go back years

Many are from the Murrysville area, one staffer said, the site of the Haymaker well, once the world's largest commercial gas well. Digging through the deeds can be a long and laborious process, they say. Sometimes, the search can go back 80 years, through dozens of real estate transactions.

One recent morning, Mr. Hofecker drove his pickup around his five-acre property and pointed out the changes the gas company had wrought. On a hillside with a spectacular valley view, where he once planned to build a house, is a leveled area about the size of a football field where crews dug into the hill.

"It just burned me to no end that these people can do this, and I've got no compensation, no recourse, no nothing," said Mr. Hofecker, who is retired. "We're the ones eating the cost of the taxes and the gas for the well-drillers and the [heirs] to make their money. Legally, they're right. Morally, it's a shame."

He doesn't begrudge those with mineral rights on their own property to sign with the gas companies and make some money. But Mr. Hofecker feels he was taken advantage of by the heirs to his own property's mineral rights, people who didn't pay any taxes on those rights.

"Why doesn't the county, before it goes up for sale, notify property owners so they have a chance to buy it back, so it goes back to the rightful owner?" he said.

According to the Westmoreland County deeds office, if taxes weren't paid on those rights, they would go up for auction and be announced in the newspaper, with the date of sale, property location or map number.

According to Mr. Eichler at the DEP, most property owners in rural areas have held onto their mineral rights. It is more common to find severed mineral rights in developed areas, where the surface property has changed hands many times and been subdivided into smaller tracts.

Natural gas wells are typically 3,000 to 4,000 feet deep, but some can be 10,000 or even 15,000 feet deep, Mr. Eichler said.

Because Fairfield, in particular, has been a center of drilling activity, for a while, calls from concerned people there poured in to the DEP offices.

"Most of the residents were not used to seeing gas wells drilled. ... They were curious and concerned about what was going on," he said. "We had some problems, but not a lot."

Environmental rules say wells cannot be drilled within 200 feet of a building or water supply; in deep-mine coal areas, wells must be spread 1,000 feet apart; and within nine months of the end of drilling, the company must restore the land, regrade it, reseed it. Under the law, gas companies are responsible for the contamination of any water supply within 1,000 feet of a gas well if it occurred within six months of drilling.

Dr. Lentz can still remember signing on the bottom line when he bought his 53 acres in 1997.

"It was right there in red ink: 'no mineral rights,' " he said. "In my mind, there was only coal in this area. I never thought about these gas rights."

His land's mineral rights were severed in 1943, he said, when the owner sold the farm to someone who subdivided it. Dr. Lentz is frustrated that drillers can come onto his property anytime they want to.

"I'm paying taxes on that," he said. "I feel like I'm not even allowed on my own property."

His land now has two wells on it, a number of access roads and piles of felled trees, all marked with orange paint. He once thought about dividing up his land and passing it on to his children. Now, he says, he just thinks about finding another place to live.

Dr. Lentz has contacted lawyers, who have offered him little encouragement, and attended township meetings, where, he said, one of the drilling excavators asked him if he was a terrorist, the way he was standing in the way of America's achieving energy independence.

For several months after he received the letter from the Texas Keystone, he searched for the heirs who leased out his land. He knows a few of them, but has decided for now not to try to contact them.

"My kids will go to school with their kids. It's a touchy situation," he said. "I'm thinking of taking my family in my arms," showing up at their front door, "and asking if they'd like to meet the people that they're screwing."