Pennsylvania

Energy. Environment. Economy.

NJ Governor Has Interest in Fracking Technology

October 24, 2011 | 1:33 PM
By Susan Phillips

Jeff Zel­e­van­sky / Getty Images

New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie.

The New Jer­sey chap­ter of the Sierra Club says Gov­er­nor Chris Christie’s 2010 income tax return lists an invest­ment in a com­pany that treats frack waste­water. The firm, Ecos­phere Tech­nolo­gies, pro­vides on-site treat­ment of the frack fluid so that nat­ural gas drillers can re-use the water to frack another well. The Ecos­phere web­site says their tech­nol­ogy has oper­ated at more than 300 wells in shale plays across the country.

A press release put out by the Sierra Club says Christie earned more than $28,000 dol­lars last year from his stock in the com­pany. The Sierra Club’s Jeff Tit­tel says the Governor’s invest­ment is a con­flict of interest.

“This raises con­cerns that the Gov­er­nor is more com­mit­ted to gas drilling than pro­tect­ing New Jer­sey res­i­dents from the impacts of frack­ing.  Unfor­tu­nately this leads to ques­tion­ing deci­sions  the Gov­er­nor has made includ­ing  veto­ing the frack­ing ban bill and scrap­ping off-shore LNG which is a com­peti­tor to fracking,”

New Jer­sey does not con­tain sig­nif­i­cant shale gas deposits, and so no gas drilling will occur in the Gar­den state. But New Jer­sey does have a voice on the Delaware River Basin Com­mis­sion, which is expected to enact new drilling rules next month.

Comments

  • ALAN MCGILL

    TIME TO CHECK SOME SCARE WORDS — FRACKING, DRILLING, WASTE WATER, ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE — AMONG OTHERS.  IF YOU ONLY ASSOCIATE “DRILLING” FOR GAS WITH ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE AND “FRACKING” WITH ANOTHER PROCESS USED TO EXTRACT NG THEN THINKING ENDS.  ALL SHOULD CONSIDER THAT NG WILL BE SOUGHT FOR. THAT IS A GIVEN. IT IS LIKE GOLD. IT IS THERE AND THOSE WHO SEEK IT WILL GET IT. SOOO THE NEXT CONSIDERATION FOR OPPONENTS SHOULD BE, “IF IT IS A FIAT COMPLI HOW CAN WE AFFECT THE PROCESS SO THE LEAST DAMAGE WILL BE DONE?”  CAN TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE COME UP WITH WAYS IN WHICH SUCH EXTRACTION CAN BE PERFORMED WITHOUT DAMAGE?  WITHOUT ANY DAMAGE?  IF YOU PURSUE THAT AVENUE YOU WILL SEE THAT THE GOVERNOR HAS INVESTED IN A COMPANY THAT HOLDS PROMISE TO GIVE A POSITIVE ANSWER TO THE LAST QUESTION “WITHOUT ANY DAMAGE”.  ECOSPHERE HAS A PROCESS THAT REUSES WATER AND ULTIMATELY LEAVES IT CLEAN.  WORTH IT? WORTH LOOKING INTO

    • Anony­mous

      Puh-leeze.  No process can remove radi­a­tion and toxic chem­i­cals that no one knows are in it because the indus­try doesn’t have to dis­close it.  Who do you  think you’re fool­ing?  You rely on the cam­paign of dis­in­for­ma­tion and can’t stand it when the true facts come to light.  I shouldn’t even bother to reply to you.  No one lis­tens to any­one who uses all caps anyway.

      • ALAN MCGILL

        thanks for the enlightenment…and your patience.  i (small i only ’cause i want you to lis­ten) (prob­a­bly won’t help).  i am on the alert in hopes of dis­tin­guish­ing them tired old just facts from the “true facts” (hope the use of quo­ta­tion marks doesn’t dis­qual­ify me from seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of being seri­ous).  AND I DIDN’T KNOW RADIATION WAS CAUSED.  thanks. an old guy (btv) (before t.v.) (i loved your open­ing sen­tence and won­der why any one is upset if “no one knows” what’s in it…ah, not nice, just being a wise guy) KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

  • Faith Zerbe

    Accord­ing to Chesa­peake energy nat­ural gas drillers at a pub­lic meet­ing I attended about 10 months ago, about 80% of the water that is used to frack a well (4.5 BILLION gal­lons of water per well — tra­di­tional nat­ural gas used about 100,000 gal­lons of water for a com­par­i­son), stays down in the earth — and never comes back up (or per­haps shows up some­where its not sup­posed to?)— this essen­tially means that we are tak­ing the less than 1% of fresh­wa­ter that we have avail­able on THE PLANET and needed for all life to exist on the planet, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing it with frack­ing chem­i­cals and send­ing it down into 400 mil­lion old rock — lost from the hydro­logic cycle for­ever.  Then that  20% that remains comes back up to the sur­face, highly con­t­a­m­i­nated and cor­ro­sive.  Flow­back water is about five times saltier than sea water — toxic to all fresh­wa­ter life.  The water sup­ply sus­tain­abil­ity index esti­mates that by 2050, more than 400 US coun­ties will be in extreme dan­ger of run­ning out of fresh­wa­ter by 2050. This month we hit 7 bil­lion peo­ple on the planet as well.   We need water to sur­vive — how­ever, we do not need methane pol­lut­ing nat­ural gas.  Frack­ing is not a sus­tain­able method of extrac­tion no mat­ter how you cut it.   

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