This week is a depressing week for the oil industry and the federal agencies that govern it. I know, it seems like that’s all I talk about lately. But it’s a hot-button topic. It’s sexy, as long as you’re not covered in mucky, clumpy crude or toxic fracking chemicals.
Unfortunately, it also seems like there’s a lot we don’t know. By we, I mean the folks outside of the industry. Or even, I suppose, the folks inside the industry.
A July 14 U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing defined just how much we didn’t know before the pipeline rupture at Refugio State Beach in May. For instance: A metal robot that scuttles through pipelines to check them for fissures, metal density, and anything else wrong brought back questionable data.
This thing called a PIG supposedly measured the metal density of Line 901—that’s the infamous pipeline you’re sick of hearing about that split open and gurgled oil all over the place—two weeks before the little accident. It said the pipe had lost 45 percent of its metal in certain spots.
Well, an after-the-spill inspection indicated those losses to be almost 80 percent. What?
U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (our fearless Democratic leader only for all causes environmental, health, and veterans-related) asked if the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was surprised at that 35 percent difference. She posed the question to Interim Director Stacy Cummings, who replied: “It takes time.”
Now, what exactly do you mean by that statement? It really doesn’t answer the question. In fact, it totally evades the question. The interim director followed “it takes time” with “for various experts to analyze the data produced by a PIG.” Do you mean the initial measurements are incorrect? Or the new ones?
Oh! I know! You mean “it takes time” to find a new job.
Answer the question, Cummings. Are you surprised? If you aren’t, then you’ve got a problem. If you are, then we’ve got a problem, and it needs to be fixed. Bureaucratic evasive action really gets us nowhere. Hear me out, because Republicans on the House committee also got their lashes in on the pipeline safety administration whipping!
“It seems a few months don’t go by without another leak, explosion, or fire,” said U.S. Rep. David McKinley—a Republican from West Virginia. “It’s almost as though someone’s willing to let these things happen.”
Yes, Cummings, it might in fact “take time” to look for a new job.
McKinley also articulated his worry that repeated pipeline disasters will eventually turn people against fossil fuels. Which would be bad for all the states that make bank off producing oil. California’s included in that number, and so is Santa Barbara County.
Those committee hearings just give politicians a chance to puff out their chests and preen their feathers. It’s unabashedly good stuff.
But onto another juicy oil subject. The California Council on Science and Technology, an independent group, released the results of a study on hydraulic fracturing in the state, as required by SB 4, which was passed last year. A quick version of the things we don’t know: what chemicals are being used in fracking operations, how toxic those chemicals are and what the potential environmental impacts could be, the water quality of so-called “potable water” in groundwater aquifers underneath pits where used fracking water is stored, whether or not an increase in hydraulic fracturing and underground water injection wells means an increase in the number of earthquakes, and how much recoverable oil is actually contained within the Monterey Shale formation that’s being fracked.
Damn.
And that’s just what I could understand from the media call announcing the report’s findings. Also, the report said that chemicals and gases leaching from oil/hydraulic fracturing operations in LA are potentially being breathed in by the millions of people that live around them.
How is that a thing?
It’s crazy the number of things we don’t know. Or maybe we all just believe what we want to believe.
Take the people who spoke at the most recent SLO County Planning Commission hearing about a brick-and-mortar medical cannabis dispensary in Nipomo. It seemed like everyone who spoke out against the dispensary thought that Santa Maria was brimming with drug-hungry gangs eager to take their penniless lives across the Santa Maria Bridge and into Nipomo to spread violence into the quiet industrial area that already sports two bars.
It was also pretty clear that 4th District Planning Commissioner Jim Harrison was among the misinformed, as he questioned the choice of having unarmed guards. I mean, all those guns are just a short walk across the riverbed. They could come for you under the cover of darkness.
Wasn’t there just a huge take down of drugs and weapons in Nipomo?
Listen, you people who live north of the Santa Barbara County line. I don’t appreciate your insinuation that I live in a downtrodden, hopeless place that’s just waiting to leach its directionless life of crime into your San Luis Obispo County peace. Your ignorance is a crime.
If the Canary’s ignorant, she doesn’t want to know. Send comments and opinions to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 16-23, 2015.