A friend recently told me her relatives had oil wells in Arkansas, Oklahoma
(OK), and Texas (TX) and were ordered to cap them
in the 1980s or lose their land; I found nothing to support this. I did find Nicholas Mercuro’s 1992 Taking Property and
Just Compensation that said the Supreme Court did not from 1937 to 1985 uphold
the intent of the 5th amendment when it came to taking personal
property and a 1981 Executive Order (#12287)
for the decontrol of crude oil and refined petroleum products. I also found people
who personally saw 100s of capped wells in both OK and TX in 2008. I also
learned that during the 1980s OPEC lifted its
embargo, oil prices dropped and the US again got oil from the Middle East. To
this issue I found Lou Cannon’s 1991 The Role of a Lifetime that said Reagan didn’t take
advantage of the opportunity to fill the nation’s strategic reserves, reduce US
dependency on foreign oil, or encourage conservation.
An
April 5, 2012 Daily Kos website reported that researchers at the US Geological
Survey (USGS) just published a study by the Seismological
Society of America; it determined
that a series of earthquakes from Alabama to the Rocky Mountains have been
caused by oil and natural gas drilling. According to the study led by USGS
geophysicist William Ellsworth, the spike in earthquakes since 2001 near oil
and gas extraction operations is “almost certainly man-made.” The research team
cites underground injection of drilling wastewater as a possible cause. The
study appears to confirm that the staggering rise in seismic activity in the US
can be attributed to drilling activities; it found the frequency of earthquakes
started rising in 2001 across a broad swath of the country between Alabama and
Montana. In 2009, there were 50 earthquakes greater than magnitude 3.0, in the
abstract states, then 87 quakes in 2010 and the 134 quakes in 2011 is a 6 fold
increase over 20th century levels.
If any
of this is true the question becomes -
why don't we open capped wells before drilling new ones or build pipelines that
carry oil from Canada or our waterways? There’s more on this issue.
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