What The Frack Is Going On Here?

In the wake of the EPA finding that hydraulic fracturing of rock to obtain natural gas -- fracking -- may contaminate groundwater and cause other environmental issues, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has discovered he has a soul after all and has put a hold on four new state fracking projects in the wake of multiple earthquakes in the drilling area.

State leaders have ordered that four fluid-injection wells in eastern Ohio will be "indefinitely" prohibited from opening in the aftermath of heightened seismic activity in the area, an official said.


Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director James Zehringer had announced on Friday that one such well -- which injects "fluid deep underground into porous rock formations, such as sandstone or limestone, or into or below the shallow soil layer," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency explains -- was closed after a series of small earthquakes in and around Youngstown.

Then on Saturday, a magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck that released at least 40 times more energy than any of the previous 10 or more tremors that had rattled the region in 2011.

Andy Ware, deputy director of Ohio's natural resources department, told CNN on Sunday that Zehringer and Gov. John Kasich subsequently ordered that four nearby injection well projects will not open in the coming weeks, as had previously been planned. They 'll be inoperational until a determination is made in an investigation of a possible link between the earthquakes and the fluid-injection wells, he added.

"They will (not open) until we are satisfied that the process can be safely resumed," said Ware.

Kasich's approval rating is already in the toilet after his huge Senate Bill 5 disaster.  One whiff of anything going wrong with Ohio's fledgling fracking industry in an election year in a battleground state like this and it's lights out for him, and he knows it.  Suddenly in the last month, he's become Ohio's "environmental champion" on assuring that fracking is safe, vowing tough regulations and oversight on the industry.

The promised regulation will affect issues such as gathering lines, high-pressure pipelines, the kinds of chemicals used in the exploration and extraction process, "I mean, it's from A to Z," Kasich said during the news conference, which was streamed on the web.

"And let me also be clear that the biggest companies want strong regulation," he continued. "We don't want yahoos coming into Ohio and damaging the environment, and we are working on that every day. We want to be on top of everything because if it pans out, if it works out the way it looks like it will, it could bring an economic resurgence to all of Ohio, not just the eastern part." 

The Youngstown quakes are literally threatening to rip Kasich's little game apart here, and he damn well knows it.