Lawsuit a part of group’s efforts to destroy oil, gas
FOLLOWING through on its November warning, the Sierra Club filed a federal lawsuit this week going after three Oklahoma energy companies for their roles in the state’s increased earthquake activity. The quakes aren’t the only shaking going on.
The Sierra Club is looking for a payday with its move against Chesapeake Energy Corp., Devon Energy Corp. and New Dominion LLC. Recall that SandRidge was on the environmental group’s original list of targets. Since then, SandRidge has experienced terrific cash flow challenges. Color us skeptical of the Sierra Club’s explanation that hiccups in getting notice to the company is the reason it was omitted from this lawsuit.
The Sierra Club wants the court to order that Chesapeake, Devon and New Dominion “reduce immediately and substantially” the amounts of wastewater they’re disposing in underground wells. “At a minimum, the current rates of injection, particularly into the Arbuckle Formation … must be substantially reduced in order to abate the currently acceptable earthquake risks,” the plaintiffs argue.
The club also wants an order requiring the companies to reinforce “vulnerable structures that current forecasts indicate could be impacted by large magnitude earthquakes during the interim period.”
And, the club wants the court to establish an “independent monitoring and production center” to determine how much wastewater can be injected into wells. This is because, according to the lawsuit, “no government body is currently taking a holistic or proactive view of waste injection and its potential to induce earthquakes.”
In other words, the Sierra Club has no faith in the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the Oklahoma Geological Survey or any of the many other agencies that have indeed been working hard on this issue for the past two years. The same day the lawsuit was filed, the Corporation Commission announced its latest move to reduce wastewater volumes in 245 disposal wells, encompassing a 5,200-square-mile area in western Oklahoma.
Commission regulators have long been focusing their efforts on wastewater injections into the Arbuckle. These have included asking operators to reduce the depths of those wells, or in some cases shutting them in completely. To suggest this agency and others are indifferent to the earthquake swarm is disingenuous at best.
It’s also worth noting that many of the thousands of men and women who work at Devon, Chesapeake and New Dominion are also being affected by these earthquakes. They don’t want their homes shaking, either.
The Sierra Club brought its lawsuit under a 1976 federal law that allows citizen lawsuits over hazardous waste. The plaintiffs’ threshold to clear under that law is lower than in state lawsuits that have been filed against energy companies over earthquake damage.
No surprise, the head of the Sierra Club’s Oklahoma chapter resorted to demonization in defending the lawsuit. “It is our hope that these three companies will recognize the immediate danger they are putting communities in, and put our health and our environment ahead of profits,” he said.
Those profits have tanked in the past 18 months as the price of oil has fallen. Devon is laying off about onefifth of its workforce, and Chesapeake has gone through large cutbacks of its own. The Sierra Club longs for the day when there are zero oil and gas companies — but not before trying to cash in first.