The Eleanor Project

Before I move onward and upward to CO2 sequestration, I have to get something off my chest.

Recently, after examining my life and the events leading up to this point in my life, I have come to the realization that I, and many women like me, have been caught between two completely different generations of women, two opposing faces of Femininity.

The first of these were the women who lived their lives in the years following WW II, those who embodied the stereotypical image of a feminism on the cusp of extinction: kissing husbands goodbye on their way out the door to work then hauling a station wagon full of children to school. Their highest ambition was to have five little buns in the oven and a perfect home in which to raise them. The second generation were the women of the sixties, pregnant with the power of a revolutionary movement within them, no longer oppressed by a male-dominated society. Their highest ambition was to throw little miss Susy Homemaker and her American Dream right out the window.

So, after looking at my life and all that’s happnened, I guess I’m a bit of both. I am devoted to a life of faith and purpose, and at the same time, I am independent, resourceful, and wild in that Goddess of the Wood kind of way.

I also guess it made sense that I would choose geology as my life’s ambition.

Becoming a geologist was a goal I established quite young in life. I was born in the autumn of 1950, fourth in a family of seven children. By six, I was wearing an apron and helping my mother with chores. At nine, I was cooking family dinners on my own. The great thing that resulted from this constant practice is that I am now a seasoned cook. Beyond this, I only saw my mother exhausted from raising my siblings and me, or at least I thought she was.

It wasn’t hard for me to want to be like my dad, the oil man. And I was determined. By age ten, I was bringing him coffee and helping collate stacks of paper, what I know now as petroleum plays that solicited potential investors for monies to drill wells around Pinedale, Wyoming. It was a golden time.

Fast forward to Mother’s Day 2006, and I’m finally on my way to realizing a dream career in geology, graduating college thirty years after quiting the first time. Then, the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself, a mentoring program in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The company offering the program, very similar to Schlumberger, paired newcomers with more experienced engineers within its infrastructure. I would be spending six months commuting back and forth between classes in Houston, TX, and the unforgiving, desolate oil and gas fields of Minot, North Dakota. It would be a grueling schedule, but this mentorship was the field experience I’d been hoping for and needed after graduation, so I took it. Thirty students, myself and my peers, were assigned to mentors whose sole jobs were to advise and serve as examples to their pupils, nothing more and sometimes a lot less.

Enter my mentor, Frenchie. I call him Frenchie because he reminds me of those little French men with pencil thin mustaches who sneer at unsuspecting maidens in old silent films. I knew by the third month that something was terribly wrong with Frenchie. The program’s original concept was to place new engineers into the field with equipment operators to gain firsthand experience of what it takes to get oil or gas out of the ground and then bring this knowledge back to the classroom. This was not my experience.

At first, I was so excited. I’d been a mudlogger on oil rigs in my younger days and couldn’t wait. Frenchie, however, was more interested making sure I could “spell him” in the monitoring van. In fact, he said that I didn’t need to be in the field, that he would teach me everything I needed to know. My gut instinct told me I was in danger. I did not heed the warning, however. By the time I realized Frenchie had ulterior motives, it was too late; he made unsolicited advances. I immediately reported the incident to three managers, the Three Stooges in charge of the region, and was emphatically assured that the company would take “any form of harassment seriously.” Questionably, Larry, Moe, and Curly took little time to decide, concluding that since Frenchie had not sexually harassed anyone else, he had not harassed me, but guaranteed me that there would be no further contact with my supposed mentor.

Two days later, I fled in terror when Frenchie walked right up behind me. Moe’s response was that he hadn’t gotten ahold of my ex-mentor but had left a message on his cell. Then the three reneged on their guarantee again by ignoring my request for a transfer. Shortly after the whole debacle - stressed, depressed, angry, and still in school part-time! - I failed an exam, which was centered around field experience, and was immediately fired. Go figure.

The retaliation and backlash against the complainants of sexual harassment are not new to this world and still exist in every career choice and facet of a women’s life. The practice is insidious and often difficult to prove. It cost me my new career.

The Secret to keeping our heads up is seeing the many patterns woven into the fabric of our lives. I look at body language, hear subtle innuendos, and take these as intuitive signals, often unintentional, to help people feel comfortable. But this can all backfire. Trying to please everyone on any given day, be it a stranger, family member, or coworker, is exhausting. At times, I have been so diligent and devoted in this endeavor to the point of becoming that ridiculous Susie homemaker that so much of my core rails against.

The thing is, intuition is a double-edged sword but also a tool that can help you stay safe, physically and emotionally; it’s just a matter of developing your gift. Discerning the difference between “gut instinct” and someones else’s “baggage,” for me, has taken time. Over the years I’ve been in physically demanding and dangerous situations - whether driving a 60-ton Euclid in a coal mine or working the open range as a field geologist, often relying on gut instinct to keep me out of harm’s way. My gut told me Frenchie was dangerous. It also told me the Three Stooges weren’t going to watch my back. It was right.

My case is still under investigation by the state of Wyoming.

I’m out of Wyoming now but not going away. Enjoy my blogs and please feel free to contribute.

Denise Eleanor Skinner

My response to a blog on The Wilderness Society’s site.

The author wrote, “powerful interest are also lobbying Congress to open up more wild lands to drilling and to develop oil shale in the Rockies. Wringing oil from shale is a dirty and harmful process that scars the land.” She went on with familiar terminology, “the cost of inaction is just too great” and “we need to take bold, decisive action on global warming” but does not elaborate.

In our carbon constrained world, wringing (her word) oil from shale utilizes a process called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), a common approach for secondary and tertiary recovery of oil in mature wells. Injecting CO2 or nitrogen under high pressure is the most commonly used approach to displace oil to the surface and thus provides the infrastructure for CO2 storage: Co2 injection and sequestration in saline formations below oil reservoirs.

With urgent need for CO2 emission reduction, utilizing historic technology for carbon sequestration is the only value added technology at this time. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we must accelerate our efforts to capture and store carbon in a safe and cost-effective way.”

More on carbon sequestration later.

If you want to be a good steward of our lands and learn about the oil and gas industry, take a tour of a well site. How you might ask? Well, the BLM, Rock Springs (not so lovingly called “The Rock” by field hands), is hosting a public tour of the proposed “North Dutch John No. 1 well” in Wild Horse Basin, south of Rock Springs, Wyoming. This site is in crucial elk and mule deer winter range and comments will be a accepted through August 26. Drilling will commence late November after archery and rifle hunting seasons. Afterwards head south to the magnificent Royal Gorge Reservoir National Recreational Area for some fishing.

I worked on a 10, 000 ft gas well as a mudlogger Read the rest of this entry »

Cora Post Office

In the late fifties we camped at Whiskey Grove Flats along the Green River for most of the summer. Mom, Grammy and Granddad fished for browns and trout while my brothers and sisters and I played in one of the most spectacular spots in the West. Fish was the mainstay for most of our meals around the campfire, and weekly trips to Pinedale meant the much anticipated stop at Clark’s Drugstore for penny candy. About ten miles out of Pinedale we always stopped in the small village of Cora, a once popular stop for trappers and homesteaders. The post office, established in the 1890’s, is made of hand-hewn logs transported from the Upper Green River.

The Pinedale Anticline Project Area (PAPA) is one of the newest gas fields in the continental United States with estimated gas reserves at 40 trillion cubic feet. The project’s area comprises 200,000 acres in southwestern Wyoming and supports approximately 100,000 big-game animals that use the area during migration from summer to winter ranges. More than half of the mule deer that use the Mesa Winter Range, which is part of the anticline, formerly relied on the Pinedale Mesa, the winter range most severely affected by development to date. The Upper Green River area of Wyoming is one of last strongholds for sage grouse in the west. The Pinedale Anticline provides habitat supporting 14 leks, or breeding grounds. Experts have predicted sage grouse extirpation from the PAPA if development proceeds as planned without additional conservation measures. The New Fork River and Green River are world-class trout fisheries within the Pinedale Anticline Project Area. Photo gallery of Pinedale anticline drilling activity, much of which is on prime big game winter range.

In 2005, the BLM Pinedale field office was notified by Ultra Resources, Shell Exploration, Questar, BP America, Stone Energy, Yates Petroleum and others, proposing a new long-term development plan that included limited year-round drilling and completions of natural gas wells. Because the operator’s proposal requested exemption from BLM stipulations for wildlife, which restricts their drilling activities in seasonal migratory ranges, the BLM determined the proposal could cause significant adverse impacts to the environment.

The 2006 draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) outlining the proposed expansion by the operators and planned by the BLM was critized by the EPA with recommendations that the BLM not move forward.

The 2007 revised drilling plan considers the effects of 4,399 additional natural gas wells and surface disturbance increased by 12,000 acres on the Pinedale Anticline. Year-round drilling is proposed on 70,200 acres and would occur in crucial big-game habitats and near sensitive sage grouse habitats. Mule deer populations would be allowed to decline another 15 percent, and the sage grouse population would be allowed to decline 30 percent and monitoring and mitigation plans are not required until after the decision is made.

The EPA criticized BLM’s environmental impact statement and once again recommended that BLM should not move to finalize the plan. The EPA predicted the proposed project would result in a least 10 days of visibility impairment at the Bridger Wilderness Area and noted that groundwater monitoring data suggest current drilling and production activities on the anticline has contributed to contamination of an aquifer used for drinking water.

Dave Freudenthal, Governor of Wyoming, response to proponents’ consideration of additional mitigation based on monitoring data presented at annual review meetings, “it is absurd to not acknowledge upfront that there will be a need for mitigation to protect the wildlife herds. There is no doubt that any habitat mitigation will not provide immediate relief to the wildlife need, and may in fact take several years for the habitat improvement to be effective.”

Studies on the effect of oil & gas development on wildlife

Bureau of Land Management Webpage on the Pinedale RMP

Denise Skinner

Just in time for Summer, The National Parks Service announced three fee-free weekends at more than 100 National Parks. Fins, reefs, goblins, natural bridges and river narrows await you in a land like no other, the great Colorado Plateau. Epitomized by picturesque buttes and mesas, high mountains gashed by river canyons or dry with gullies and washes, the Colorado Plateau extends across southwestern United States, encompassing parts of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

The complex geological processes that created the rugged canyons, towering cliffs and winding rivers led to the greatest concentration of national parks in the United States. Among them are Grand Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, Bryce, Arches and Capitol Reef.

Other topographic features include sunken deserts and shallow structural basins called synclines. The Uintah Basin, also spelled Uinta, in eastern Utah, is the most northerly section of the Colorado Plateau and home of the Northern Ute Tribe. The basin is east of the Wasatch Range and south of the Uinta Mountains. The Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River, flows southward out of the Uinta’s, crossing the basin, flowing into the deep gorge of Desolation Canyon. The confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers is located in Canyonlands National Park. The Green River watershed know as the Green River Basin, covers parts of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado beginning in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, flowing through some of the most spectacular canyons in the United States.

Those same varied and complex geologic processes also endowed eastern Utah with economic energy resources, including coal, oil, oil shale and natural gas. Shale gas has been a growing source of attention due to the use of advanced technologies in hydraulic fracturing. Utah holds approximately 2.5 percent of the country’s proven natural gas reserves and according to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), an insignificant impact on the price of oil and gas nationally.

In 1976, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) directed the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) to inventory and designate roadless areas of the US as suitable for Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs). Utah’s BLM designated only 2.5 million out of 23 million acres of roadless land in Utah as WSAs. After appeals, the acreage was increased to 3.2 million acres.

America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act is reintroduced every two years, with each new Congress, and seeks to permanently protect more than 9 million acres of wilderness quality land in Utah.

The Department of Interior (DOI) cancelled leasing of 77 parcels for exploration and development. Ken Salazar, US Interior Secretary, said, “only when the light of public scrutiny was shed on the situation did they reconsider,” and “many of the 77 parcels auctioned off are close to national park units and even closer to other sensitive, world-class landscapes, including Desolation Canyon.”

The American Petroleum Institute voiced concerns that the report will be used to justify not acting to develop energy resources on public lands in the Intermountain regions. Utah’s state overview of some of our favorite Public Lands!

Range Resources, a major natural gas developer in the Appalachian region, suspects vandals loosened bolts securing pipeline coupling causing hydraulic fracturing wastewater to leak into a  farmers drainage ditch.  A Range spokesman said the pipe had passed a pressure test and physical inspection.  Pennsylvania state environmental regulators are investigating.  

The wastewater subsequently found a path to a tributary of Cross Creek Lake in Washington County.  Salamanders, crayfish and insects were killed in the May 26 spill.

Where was their security?  A fracturing job typically has thirty plus operators, not including company men, water and sand haulers, rolling in all hours of the day or night, a wire-line crew, such as Halliburton, and sundry support personal adding to the number of eyes on site.

Range Resources had a simple choice, step up to plate and accept responsibility. They choose front-line finger pointing at mysterious vandals and a wait-and-see stance instead.

“We have a 60-year track record on our side,” said Chris Tucker, spokesman for Energy in Depth, a Washington, D.C. based industry lobby group, in response to the recent push by legislators to repeal the Energy Policy Act of 2005, (see  ‘Halliburton Loophole’ post)

Tucker went on to say, “Why in 60 years that fracing has been used, why now?  Why is everyone pissed off now?” 

My answer to Tucker is accountability!

Denise Skinner

Democratic Representatives Diana DeGette of Colorado and Maurice Hinchey of New York plan to offer a bill that would repeal a measure in the 2005 energy bill that excluded hydraulic fracturing methods from regulation unde the Safe Drinking Water Act .

Opening the door to Environmental Protection Agency supervision of the practice, energy groups are concerned the law will lead to cumbersome federal standards requiring more permitting, additional testing and higher water quality for fracking fluid.

Denise Skinner

Lawmakers expect to introduce legislation that would reverse hydraulic fracturing practices from federal oversight.

Readers, the most important thing is, it would force Halliburton, Schlumberger Ltd and BJ Services Co USA, to reveal what chemicals they use to produce hydraulic fracturing fluid formulas.

Closing the Halliburton Loophole would not require disclosure of specific proprietary formulas, just a list of constituents injected underground.

Nobody can make Cheerios just by looking at the list on the side of the box!

Denise Skinner

Anadarko jumps on oil shale potential utilizing new technology

Anadarko Petroleum, who holds 700 miles of reserves across thousand of acres of rich wildlife habitat in southwestern Wyoming into Colorado and Utah, is launching an oil shale research program, the first in three decades after the BLM lifted a moratorium on oil shale projects in 2006.

“According the Wall Street Journal, many energy analysts believe that crude prices could soon reach the $100-a-barrel mark seen last year because of two factors: relatively rapid energy consumption growth in emerging markets like China and the fact that much of the world’s easy-to-tap oil is already discovered.”

Anadarko partnered with General Synfuels to test and develop the company’s patented technology, utilizing a process that, according to Luis Lugo, the CEO of Earth Sciences, is environmentally sensitive. General Synfuels will have access to sensitive wildlife habitat and enormous amounts of water. Part of the process involves extreme heat to release crude that has converted back to hard rock.

Estimates are 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable crude.

Denise Skinner

Gas drilling critics welcome  move by U.S. regulator

New restrictions by the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate commission representing Pennsylvania,  New York, New Jersey, Delaware and the federal government, requires prior approval for any new projects in the Delaware River basin, a watershed supplying 15 million people.

This action may slow gas exploration and drilling in the Marcellus Shale, but I doubt it.  Chesapeake Energy Corp. holds 1.3 million acres of drilling rights on the Marcellus formation. 

Chesapeake Energy Corporation’s other activities include partnerning with Orange County Choppers(OCC) in Orange County New York, located on the Marcellus Shale natural gas play to create the first Compressed Natural Gas powered chopper.

The ruling is the first of a geopolitical entity stepping up to the plate to protect water withdrawals and wastewater contamination from hydraulic fracturing techniques. 

A representative from the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Association, said the commission’s action came sooner than expected.  

Denise Skinner

The oil and gas industry is the only industry in America that is allowed to inject known hazardous material, unchecked, directly into or adjacent to drinking water water supplies. In 2000, in response to a 1997 court decision ordering the EPA to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the ‘Safe Drinking Water Act’, the EPA initiated a study to assess the potential for fracturing to contaminate underground drinking water supplies. In 2001, a special task force convened by Vice President Cheney (former CEO of Halliburton), recommended that Congress exempt hydraulic fracturing from the ‘Safe Drinking Water Act’. In 2004 the EPA found that hydraulic fracturing posed “little or no threat” to drinking water, hence the loophole.

The Marcellus Shale, a natural gas formation, which extends through 70% of Pennsylvania, is hinted to hold 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 50 TCF of which is estimated to be recoverable. We have enough natural gas reserves in the United States to last for more than 100 years. Developing these resources could provide energy security to the U.S. by focusing on natural gas as a transportation fuels. Of the petroleum we import, about 70% is used as gasoline or diesel.

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology are used to extract natural gas from vertical fractures in a shale formation. Thousand of pounds of proppant (sand or ceramic beads), and millions of gallons of water are blasted at the shale to get a fracture. The hydraulic fracturing fluid can contain formaldehyde, benzene, toulene, naphthalene and other chemicals known to be carcinogenic. After the frac, flowback water is then pumped out into a slurry pit and in most cases, contaminated. Some companies dispose of wastewater in underground injection wells. I worked as a mudlogger on an injection well in Campbell County, Wyoming. The injection well was to be used for coal-bed methane wastewater disposal.

There is no guarantee that the intended fracture has not traveled. Some injected fluids have been known to travel as far as 3,000 feet from the well. If wastewater is disposed of in streams, the temperature and sheer volumn will affect sensitive aquatic ecosystems.

Denise Skinner

Face-Off Over ‘Fracking’: Water Battle Brews On Hill, May 27, 2009. “Environmentalist and the natural gas industry are getting ready for a battle in Congress…” by Jeff Brady/NPR

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