The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

How curious that BP (British Petroleum) takes all safety precautions and is given no environmental exemptions when operating in the storm tossed North Sea. There, they must drill relief wells to be used in the event of the failure of shut off valves. Yet, they use no such discretion in the Gulf of Mexico, where hurricanes are known (like every year). Great Britain also bans the use of the highly toxic oil-dispersant “Corexit.” But, not so in the land of deregulation on this side of the pond.

Too, isn’t is strange that Bobby Jindal, the less-government Republican Governor of Louisiana in the Land of Free-for-All Capitalism, is now calling for more oversight of oil companies by federal agencies.

It used to be axiomatic for investigative journalists to “follow the money” to get to the bottom of any story. The new rule of thumb is to look for the footprints of Halliburton. It turns out that Halliburton was responsible for the cement sealing of the drilling pipes used by BP on the Deep Water Horizon. Apparently, enough methane collected — it’s colorless and odorless — and an inadvertent spark exploded the myth of drilling safety.

The same Halliburton — ever imaginative — also developed the technique known as hydraulic fracturing to get at the natural gas that was formed during the Devonian Period and is presently widely distributed in tiny crevices and pockets in the hard shale around the country. Till the late 1990s, drilling for the gas was not commercially worthwhile. But, under Dick Cheney’s peerless CEOship, Halliburton developed the method of pumping down a million gallons of water laced with fine sand to fracture the shale rock and hold open the spaces created to allow the gas to collect in pools which would flow up through the pipes in profitable quantities. Rube Goldberg would have been envious. State-of-the-art technology notwithstanding, they soon found that Sheriff Murphy was on the scene, arresting the free flow of the American-way-of-life –giving natural gas. Murphy’s Law ordered the innovative Halliburton drilling rigs to get blocked up. In response,
Halliburton added a few chemicals to the million gallons of water and sand:
• Lubricants so the sand-laced water could be pumped down the mile long pipes.
• Rust inhibitors so the whole works would not seize up when exposed to the weather.
• Stiffening agents so the fine sand would hold open the fractures.
• Biocides to suppress the growth of bacteria, algae, and crabgrass.
Maybe 20 or 30 chemicals would be used at each drill site just to make sure things would go smoothly. Not to worry that any of the funny chemicals such as 2-butoxyethanol. ethyl benzene, methyl napthalene, ethylene glycol …  are toxic or carcinogenic. Dick Cheney, as Vice President (de facto President for at least four years) exempted drilling for oil and gas from the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Drill, baby, drill. Just tell the people not to breathe deeply around the drill sites.

Some of the engineers at Halliburton were actually more ethical. They recommended cementing the drilling pipes at aquifer depth to protect drinking water from the polycyclic aromatic chemicals they were pumping down at rock-splitting pressures. [But, that’s the same Halliburton whose cement failed on the pipes of the Gulf oil platform that exploded.] Even if the cement is not defective in the hydraulic fracturing pipes, the drillers can’t predict, let alone control, the extent or direction of the rock layer fractures. The gas will go where its whimsy directs. Adding to the risk, half of the water pumped down comes back up, and that toxic waste is held in pits lined with plastic sheeting. One good nor’easter and the overflow will show up in Caulkins Creek, Callicoon Creek, the Laxawaxan River … and the Delaware River, itself.

Halliburton must have predicted a few disasters in its end times. In 2007 the company moved its home office form Houston TX to Dubai, where its bank accounts would be safe. Actually, Dubai wouldn’t be a bad place for its executive officers to live — Dubai has good restaurants, nightclubs, and tropical beaches. A CEO has to act responsibly for the benefit of stockholders and management alike. As a responsible political satirist, I bring my readers a new rule of journalism: Follow Halliburton’s footsteps.