Discussing Fracking Chemicals to be Outlawed…

North Carolina legislators are considering a bill that would make it a crime to publicly disclose toxic chemicals that energy companies use in the hydraulic fracturing process, with offenders on the hook for fines or even jail time.
Known as the Energy Modernization Act, the bill would make any unauthorized disclosure of fracking trade secrets – including the chemicals used – punishable with a Class I Felony, according to anEnergywire report.
Fracking, a gas and oil mining technique which involves injecting a mixture of sand and chemicals deep into the earth, has been blamed for contaminated drinking water, infertility, birth defects, cancer, air pollution, and other serious concerns. Now, under the parameters of the North Carolina bill, even firefighters and individual healthcare workers could be in trouble if they openly discuss the chemicals that are injected into the ground near their home. rt.com...

Whoever said acid and diesel in water was bad for you? :???:

It’s evident this law has precarious little to do with protecting company secrets, since many fracking companies within the U.S are clearly employing each other’s (unpatented) technology. Industrial espionage really does exist –especially when literally tens of billions of dollars+ are concerned.
Furthermore: This law is only going to apply to North Carolina, so should any info leak from North , it’s hardly going to protect the fracking industry.

Consequently this law is really about shutting down debate (within North Carolina itself) on fracking’s greatest, political weakness: What acids, and which hydrocarbons, and in what quantities, will end up in our ground water? This makes perfect sense since North Carolina is presently without fracking due to the political opposition (as ever, largely due to the murky issue of what exactly gets injected into ground water).

It's Very Much Britain’s Ground Water Too…

Shale gas could be fuelling British homes for the first time by late 2015, under plans from fracking firm Cuadrilla.
The company is preparing to submit planning applications by the end of this month to frack at two sites in Lancashire next year.
Francis Egan, Cuadrilla chief executive, said that, if successful, it planned to connect the test fracking sites up to the gas grid, in what would be a milestone first for the fledgling British shale gas industry.
He also suggested homeowners hostile to fracking beneath their land should be entitled to only minimal compensation, if any.
www.telegraph.co.uk...

Why Britain Has No (Sincere) Excuse For Fracking…
In addition to top class nuclear know how: Main argument in favor of nuclear herewww-958.ibm.com... www.forbes.com...

Britain has the perfect opportunity for Underground Coal Gasification (at sea)

The scale of the reserves is remarkable: 2bn tonnes of coal, of which half may be amenable to gasification, is equivalent in oil terms to 4bn barrels of oil – the size of a Middle Eastern oil field. www.telegraph.co.uk...

With total reserves of 17 billion coal tons, it is at least potentially possible this technology could meet all Britain's energy needs for the next 200 years read here: www.carbonbrief.org...
Underground Coal Gassification is not nearly as pollutive as burning all the coal (i.e. coke). Not only because it avoids the deadly radioactivity released by conventional coal burning www.scientificamerican.com... but also mercury, and most of the associated CO2 emissions of normal coal burning... www.nrdc.org...

We're going to have fracking because all four parties are bribed enough to accept, copying America to the letter. Yet I believe both the Lib Dem's and UKIP could be gaining votes by opposing this issue. They probably won't, but at least you now know fracking is such a great idea, that what exactly it involve will forever remain secretive (for political reasons -not sincerely commercial reasons).

Are human beings running this world any more? Something isn't' right with people. Why poison your own food ,air, and water? What sense does that make? Why do I keep getting the feeling that humans are not this evil? Something is terribly wrong on this planet.

Another one for Wikileaks me thinks.

For the good of the people applies. But which people, evidently not the ones living around the fracking operations.

a reply to: Liberal1984

It should be made a crime to discuss how many sheets of toilet paper i use to wipe my butt.

I don't understand laws that serve to protect few at the expense of many.

DISGUSTING!

The public have a right to know what chemical may be in there drinking water.


I watch a documentary where one woman in a franking area went down seriously ill and it took weeks for her doctor to find out what chemicals may have poisoned her and even then the doctor was not allowed to disclose to her what may have been killing her!

Company secrets be dammed when human life's are at risk!

Well, strike 1 for free speech and informed populace. Give 1 to big energy and corporate America to rape the land we stand on while telling us it's out of sight, so should remain out of mind.

Umm.. No. It won't remain out of mind. I DO care about shattering bedrock thousands of feel below us and pumping it with acids and all kinds of other caustic crap. It could be done better, but it isn't and won't be. That wouldn't be cost effective and why bother, when they can outlaw debate of the subject itself?

This isn't how we win one for the Gipper. (sigh)

a reply to: Liberal1984

Everyone involved with this 'law' ought to rounded up and investigated very closely for corruption.

And then thrown in a very deep and very dark hole for a very long time.

Your lives and health mean nothing to these parasites.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Look like its another freedom grab for both our country's while hurting the little people.

Both our governments sold us out it seems on this

Maybe we should get all of congress and all of Parliament in a room and make them drink water from a franking area

a reply to: crazyewok

You want to see how friggin insane it's become??

Frac'ing ourselves to death

Enter in California in Map View...then zoom into the southern half of the state. Therein lies Hubris on a scale that risks the lives of millions of people, every damn day.

Coal is icky....so killing people by industry induced earthquake is a FAR FAR more acceptable means of powering our society. Coal leaves holes in the ground which are ugly. So it's FAR better to totally DESTROY the bedrock layers so far below us, we're still guessing as to the mammoth forces controlling the world down there.

Oh..but it'll work out. They promise.

a reply to: Liberal1984

North Carolina is full of ignorant law makers who are in the pocket of big Money and this is from a Conservative Republican in NC. Duke energy has coal ash ponds all over the state that have barely been inspected, no permit exists for, or rules for storage of the stuff were simply ignored. story I am not against fracking, but i simply do not trust the corporations to do anything but screw this up. Fracking is the new Boom. It is literally changing the world right now, we are at the very beginning of this new technology. With the middle east being what it is, fracking looks like a huge win for those in the US (seeing as how we use so much energy.)

Parts of Bum fuzzel North Dakota and Edmonton Canada are in full "Gold Rush" style boom times. We are at the very beginning of this in NC. It will be coming to a theater near you. You had best prepare or else we are going to all end up with long term health problems. I don't want these ass hats spoiling my well water.

We have energy coops here. Maybe we could start a fracking coop that does the right thing and make this technology safe. I wouldn't let Haliburton in my back yard.


V

I'm in NC and I don't see anything in the local news about this LAW...

NC struggles to balance cost, promise of fracking

Found information about it...

This is the bill that is being discussed ... Energy Modernization Act (SB 786)

NC Fracking Bill

Doing a FIND on the bill, nothing pops up for ILLEGAL or PRISON...will have to read the entire bill to see if what is being said is true.

Update

Fast-track 'fracking' bill moves quickly

Nothing in the article about prison time...so am going to call this disinformation on the anti-fracking side.

a reply to: Elathan

Maybe you didnt read the article that you linked to above...?

The bill also requires that companies report any chemicals used in the drilling process. That list would be held confidentially by the state in case of emergency. However, the measure makes inappropriately revealing those chemical trade secretes a felony.
Read more at www.wral.com...

You realize a felony is a serious crime punishable by jail time i take it.

This is the source article:
Fracking story

originally posted by: Variable
a reply to: Elathan

Maybe you didnt read the article that you linked to above...?

The bill also requires that companies report any chemicals used in the drilling process. That list would be held confidentially by the state in case of emergency. However, the measure makes inappropriately revealing those chemical trade secretes a felony.
Read more at www.wral.com...

You realize a felony is a serious crime punishable by jail time i take it.

This is the source article:
Fracking story

Right, which makes sense...felony for state employees that reveal the chemical trade secrets...much like it's a felony for someone working for Coca-Cola to reveal the secret formula. So they are telling the state what they use, so there is transparency with the state, but they don't want other fracking companies to know. I'm fine with that.

originally posted by: Elathan

originally posted by: Variable
a reply to: Elathan

Maybe you didnt read the article that you linked to above...?

The bill also requires that companies report any chemicals used in the drilling process. That list would be held confidentially by the state in case of emergency. However, the measure makes inappropriately revealing those chemical trade secretes a felony.
Read more at www.wral.com...

You realize a felony is a serious crime punishable by jail time i take it.

This is the source article:
Fracking story

Right, which makes sense...felony for state employees that reveal the chemical trade secrets...much like it's a felony for someone working for Coca-Cola to reveal the secret formula. So they are telling the state what they use, so there is transparency with the state, but they don't want other fracking companies to know. I'm fine with that.

But that means that YOU wont know, and if your ok with that then your motives must surely be in question!

a reply to: Liberal1984

I think this raises a lot of red flags about what kind of chemicals might be being put into the earth during fracking. I also think that the companies are using this tactic to stifle debate, something that happens quite a bit in America -

The corporation is obviously in the wrong and is trying to make it look like those with good intentions are criminals.

Now the question is, what kind of chemicals are in fracking? I bet someone could find that information on the internet already.

originally posted by: VoidHawk

originally posted by: Elathan

originally posted by: Variable
a reply to: Elathan

Maybe you didnt read the article that you linked to above...?

The bill also requires that companies report any chemicals used in the drilling process. That list would be held confidentially by the state in case of emergency. However, the measure makes inappropriately revealing those chemical trade secretes a felony.
Read more at www.wral.com...

You realize a felony is a serious crime punishable by jail time i take it.

This is the source article:
Fracking story

Right, which makes sense...felony for state employees that reveal the chemical trade secrets...much like it's a felony for someone working for Coca-Cola to reveal the secret formula. So they are telling the state what they use, so there is transparency with the state, but they don't want other fracking companies to know. I'm fine with that.

But that means that YOU wont know, and if your ok with that then your motives must surely be in question!

I think the problem with this is that the fracking companies aren't really keeping the secrets for "trade secret" reasons but because they are handing over to the state damning chemical lists.

I'm sure other fracking companies already know how to frack just fine.

a reply to: Elathan

Wait a second, you said it wasn't punishable by jail time, then proved wrong by your own article and now you say a felony for revealing what chemicals are put in the ground is similar to a felony for revealing Coke secrets. I'm not sure that your using a logical comparison as water beneath the ground is often used for drinking. Perhaps where you live water comes form another source. I am pretty sure chemical contamination of ground water is quite different than giving away Cokes formula. As far as i know fracking chemicals don't hurt anything, but NC deciding to proactively hide the chemicals put into the ground smacks of collusion between big money and politics to the detriment of the People.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000


Its not strike 1. Its an illegal unlawful ordinance that violates the constitution. The Supreme Court of the US said not to follow them. You don't ever follow crimes. If enough people write in to inform them of this and their pending displacement in office, because they don't intend to keep electing criminals, they'd be rather shocked wouldn't they.

So the problem seems to be in this complacent willingness of the people to obey crimes and not write/phone in.