Gasland

In 2009, Josh Fox was approached by a natural gas-drilling company to purchase the rights to drill under his eastern Pennsylvania property for natural gas. Fox was offered $100,000 for his gas rights, but he was concerned about rumors of problems with natural gas drilling in other communities. Armed with his suspicions, a wry sense of humor and a video camera, he set out to investigate.Pockets of natural gas have been safely drilled in America for decades. But rising demand for natural gas has drillers looking to less easily-recoverable sources. A new process called "hydraulic fracturing" is being used by companies like Cabot Oil and Gas and Chesapeake Energy to extract natural gas that is bound up in the rock of a geologic formation called the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York and Pennsylvania through West Virginia, Ohio and into eastern Kentucky and Tennessee.Hydraulic fracturing - also known as "fracking" - injects enormous quantities of water and a witches brew of toxic chemicals including benzene and glycol ethers, under extremely high pressure to break up the underground shale formation, releasing the natural gas from the rock. The gas is then pumped to the surface where it is processed, compressed, and then piped away. Some of the water and toxic chemicals used to fracture the shale are pumped back to the surface, and stored in open pits. Thanks to the "Halliburton Loophole" passed in 2005 during the Bush-Cheney administration, natural gas drilling is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act.In "Gasland," filmmaker Fox travels to Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wyoming, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas to visit communities that have been greatly impacted by natural gas exploration, and he documents the problems there. A scarcity of clean water is one of the greatest problems in arid western states, so pumping millions of gallons of water underground is a huge concern. Water contamination is another.Fox visits several people who have problems with contamination of their well water, allegedly due to the fracking. Hair loss in pets, headaches, brain lesions are reported. In Dimock, Pennsylvania one resident said "Our water was perfectly fine, and then right after they started drilling, propane and stuff like that ..."In one of the most startling moments I have ever seen in a documentary film, Fox visits the home of a Weld County, Colorado resident named Mike Markham who claims that he can light the water coming from his kitchen faucet on fire, because the fracking near his home has allowed the underground natural gas to infiltrate his well water supply.Markham holds a butane lighter up to the faucet, then slowly turns on the water. The flame flickers, but nothing happens. "Just give it a second here," he says. Seconds roll by slowly, and still ... nothing. It looks like a big anti-climax, then suddenly WHOOM!! The kitchen sink explodes into a ball of fire. Markham staggers back, laughing and brushing his forearms. "I smell hair!" he says.In one of the film's most touching moments, Fox visits Wyoming cattle rancher John Fenton. Fenton, the son of "old-time cowboys" is eloquent and evokes all the ideals of the American West. His property is surrounded by 24 gas wells. Vapors from the condensate tanks are sometimes so bad that they surround his house in a brown cloud. His wife Kathy suffers from headaches and dizziness, and a loss of smell. Fenton shakes his head as he looks at his herd of cattle. He calls his water "the damnedest-smelling stuff, comes out different colors all the time ... I don't know how they (the cattle) even drink it."We want to raise the best, most natural clean product we can raise ... but if you're breathing in dirty air and drinking water that could be tainted, what's coming out in these cows? You gotta be sure that what you're putting in `em is as pure as it can be. Cute as they are, in a year or two they're going to be on someone's dinner plate."We need to speak in a unified voice, and stand up to these a******."I highly recommend this film. Fox uses his sense of humor - and his banjo-playing - to make what could be a highly depressing film enjoyable and even funny.

We need more people like Josh Fox because we can no longer trust our state and federal officials to protect us from the corporations that often elect them into office. As a resident of the state of Louisiana I am well acquainted with the machinations of big oil. People no longer even bother to question what is safe here. It is understood that too many people in this state either work for the oil companies or depend on the seafood industry. We were "bought out" long ago and no longer complain, even though everything his film says about our state is true.It isn't safe for the local media to spend too much time talking about the open oil field waste pits or gas injection wells. They have learned that "bad press," isn't in the best interest of their advertisers. Oil feeds too many families here and even if that family is being poisoned by the waste seeping into water tables and over-flowing from pits during our frequent floods, who wants to learn that they may be causing cancer with an income they can't do without? Most people here in the oil and fishing industries are under educated and know little else. It is certainly easier to pretend that no one knows why cancer strikes so many people here. We even call one part of the state along the river "cancer alley". Food is an important part of Josh's story and he shows us that you can't simply turn your back on what goes on in Colorado or Wyoming were the beef cattle (soon to grace your dinner table) are ingesting tainted water with the governments blessing.As Josh illustrates in his film these companies pick on those who cannot easily move or band together to fight back. Poor to middle income people in rural areas are easy prey. Here we have a name for that, "environmental racism". We call it that because many of the rural folks now living in the shadow of wells and chemical plants are poor, black, elderly or all three. They can't afford to run and their lives and properties are cheap. Incidently, a frequent target of big oil/chemical in Louisiana is the Tulane Environmental/Poverty Law Clinic. If your case isn't worth much it is very hard to find a lawyer willing to take it and endure the endless appeals that a billion dollar industry can mount against you. The industry went to our state legislature and authored a bill asking that the law clinic be banned from representing clients asking for monetary damages. They said it was "unfair" because a succession of law students could keep them in court forever! Apparently it is not unfair for them to use their billions to keep a landholder in court until they die from chemical poisoning.You may not be aware that an oil related PR group tried to talk the Academy into removing their nomination from this film for best documentary. They refused. Support this film and others like it with your dollars. After seeing the kind of PR spin manufactured by BP I can say that truth is easily scrambled in the press and you should be VERY afraid of what you don't know. As I write this Erin Brockovich, famous for her earlier fight against chemical laced water is back in Hinkley California again....yes...it is happening all over again. She was nice enough to visit us during the oil spill. I wish her and others like her all the best.

Excellent independent film with a stark reminder of how very fragile our planet can be. Of course there will be deniers to the information provided but then in this day and age nobody wants the truth unless it agrees with their world view. Being from a region highly dependent on oil and natural gas I have seen some of what this film has documented but also see a need to keep the industry robust. While regulations seems to be a dirty word, it is a much needed evil to keep industry from destroying the planet.

è stata un'ottima transazione e come tempi e come attinenza del prodotto acquistato.Consigliato a tutti gli amanti del cinema!!!

Impresionanate documental que no hay que perderse porque posiblemente quieran repetir el modelo en Europa y como no en España. Hay que estar prevenidos.

Nicely done documentary on the dark side of fracking for shale gas. It's impact on humans, animals, environment and underground water!

Seen during HotDocs (Toronto) festival. Eyeopening and well made, especially for a non-professional.As a teacher I would recommend this movie to be shown in classroom.