globalbriefs


Frack Attack Controversial Drilling Threatens Pacifi c Ocean


Federal regulators have approved at least two hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, operations on oil rigs in the Santa Barbara Channel off the coast of California since 2009 without an updated environmental review that critics say may be required by federal law. Environmental advocates are concerned that regulators and the industry have not properly reviewed the potential impacts of fracking in the Pacifi c outer continental shelf. Fracking, a subject of heated debate, is a method of drilling that forces water, chemicals and sand deep beneath the Earth’s surface at high pressure to break up underground rock and release oil and gas. Offshore fracking is currently used to stimulate oil production in old wells and provide well-bore stability. In California, the oil company Venoco has been using fracking


technology to stimulate oil production in an old well off the coast of Santa Barbara—where the public memory of the nation’s third-largest oil spill in 1969 lingers—since early 2010. Another fi rm recently received permission for fracking in the Santa Barbara Channel, home to the Channel Islands Marine Reserve. So far, offshore fracking is rare, but offi cials expect that other fi rms may seek to utilize the environmentally damaging technology on offshore rigs in the future.


Source: Tinyurl.com/Pacifi cFracking


Holy Eco-Crisis! Deadly Fungus Destroying Bat Colonies


White-nose syndrome, a disease spread by a soil fungus, G. destructans, and thought to have been carried to North America from Europe, is devastating bat colonies in the U.S. and Canada. First identifi ed in 2006 in a population of common little brown bats in a cave 150 miles north of New York City, the malady has claimed 98 percent of the bat population there by causing them to awaken prematurely from their normal hibernation and then die from lack of food and exhaustion. A single reproductive female little brown bat can eat her weight in insects each night. A recent Canadian study valued crops potentially lost to insects that would otherwise be devoured by bats at $53 billion a year. Without the bats to keep insect numbers down, farmers may turn to greater use of pesticides.


Source: Telegraph.co.uk


November 2013


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