Poison Fire

Chesapeake Energy Flares Barnett Shale Gas Well in Trinity Trail

Posted by TxSharon – Sharon Wilson – https://www.texassharon.com/

Poison Fire-The Movie below. Gas flares are visible from space.

“Whose woods these are I think I know”…

If you plan to stop by these woods on a snowy evening bring some marshmallows and expect an evening sunburn. There’s a chance your treats will be toxic.

A recent study from Nigeria on mice associates flaring with respiratory and blood problems. Earlier studies from the Worldbank, the U.S., Canada, Climate Justice and a 2002 Schlumberger report note the importance of eliminating flaring to maintain fragile ecosystems and human health.

Why wait until there are deaths and illness to end industrial practices that waste money and human life? As long as the air or groundwater pollution doesn’t clog their drill bits, gas industry engineers say these practices are safe.

Marcellus Protest posts an eyewitness account of gas flaring near a consumer shopping mall in Pittsburgh, where the noise and heat from a gas flare runs 24/7.

See also: Reid Frazier. In western Pa., Shell flares burn bright after equipment malfunction at ethane cracker. 13 Feb 2023. State Impact PA | NPR.

Plant has had air pollution problems since opening in November

Courtesy of BreartheProject. A flare at Shell’s Monaca plant February 13, 2023.

Can you see how Pennsylvania is starting to look more and more like Nigeria? (Neil Zusman, 2011-01-22.)

[Download JINN’s 2010 report, Gas Flaring: an overview]

Gas flaring is the burning of natural gas that is associated with crude oil when it is pumped up from the ground. In petroleum-producing areas where insufficient investment was made in infrastructure to utilize natural gas, flaring is employed to dispose of this associated gas.

What do gas flares look like?

Photo credit: Steve Omajugho, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

Marcellus Protest photo in Pennsylvania.

Sharon Wilson of Bluedaze, Drilling Reform for Texase, recently had a “debate” on her YouTube posting, “Chesapeake Energy Flares Barnett Shale Gas Well in Trinity Trail,” regarding flaring.

Sweet gas (natural gas that does not contain significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide) flaring has a longer history in Nigeria. According to the Daily Independent:

The Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) has identified not less than 250 toxins from the gas flared from fossil fuels.

Poison Fire (2008).

Film Synopsis

In 1956, Shell drilled the first oil well in the village of Olobiri, in the African Niger Delta. Since then, massive quantities of black gold have been pumped out of the ground there, and nobody seems to worry about a little spillage: lots of excess oil gets dumped or spilled, and gas flaring, or the burning of natural gas, takes place as well.

Poison Fire gives the floor to the inhabitants of the Niger Delta. No one sees anything positive in Shell’s activities. Cancer, asthma, and miscarriages are all consequences of the pollution caused by the oil giant, and fish, slugs and snakes are dying out.

A group of environmental activists travel to Shell Headquarters in the Netherlands, where CEO Jeroen van der Veer politely addresses them at the entrance. He promises to launch a plan that will stop gas flaring, a practice that has been declared illegal by the Benin City Court. But how can the behaviour of a wealthy multinational realistically be corrected when Nigeria’s own authorities are out-and-out corrupt?

Friends of the Earth International website.

Read the report:

Environmental Rights Action, Friends of the Earth Nigeria. “Gas Flaring in Nigeria”. Climate Justice. June 2005. (PDF 36 pp.)

Daily Independent. “Enforcing the gas flaring deadline.” Daily Independent. Lagos, Nigeria. August 9, 2010.

(Is the World Bank forever tainted by Lawrence Summers?).

Below: A view of global gas flaring based on satellite observations: a joint effort between the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the World Bank-led Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership (GGFR)

Download .kmz files for country of your choice. They will be addded to your Google Earth places. You can see the massive gas field with gas flaring adjacent to the Hobbs Public Schools and the Junior College in New Mexico.

See: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado. (CIRES)

Read these reports:

Elvidge, C.D. A Sixteen Year Record of Global Natural Gas Flaring Derived From Satellite Data. Earth Observation Group NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, May 18, 2010. (PDF)

Elvidge, C. D, D. Ziskin, K. E Baugh, B. T Tuttle, T. Ghosh, D. W Pack, E. H Erwin, and M. Zhizhin. “A Fifteen Year Record of Global Natural Gas Flaring Derived from Satellite Data.” Energies 2, no. 3 (2009): 595–622 (PDF).

Otitoloju, Adebayo, and Jemina Dan-Patrick. “Effects of gas flaring on blood parameters and respiratory system of laboratory mice, Mus musculus.” The Environmentalist 30, no. 4 (October 2010): 340-346. (free preview only)