Gasland
Encyclopedia
Gasland is a 2010 American documentary film
written and directed by Josh Fox. The film focuses on communities in the United States impacted by natural gas
drilling and, specifically, a stimulation method known as hydraulic fracturing
.
for $100,000 to drill for gas.
Following the lease offer, he looked for information about natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale under large parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. He visited Dimock, Pennsylvania where natural gas drilling was already taking place. In Dimock, he met families able to light their tap water
on fire as well as suffering from numerous health issues and fearing their well water had been contaminated.
Fox then set out to see how communities are being affected in the west where a natural gas drilling boom has been underway for the last decade. He spent time with citizens in their homes and on their land as they relayed their stories of natural gas drilling in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Texas, among others. He spoke with residents who have experienced a variety of chronic health problems as well as contamination of their air, water wells or surface water
. In some instances, the residents are reporting that they obtained a court injunction or settlement monies from gas companies to replace the affected water supplies with potable water
or water purification kits
.
Throughout the documentary, Fox reached out to scientists, politicians and gas industry executives and ultimately found himself in the halls of Congress as a subcommittee was discussing the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act
, "a bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act
to repeal a certain exemption for hydraulic fracturing." Hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in the Energy Policy Act of 2005
.
Making appearances in the film are Dr. Theo Colborn, founder of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX); John Hanger
, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP); Dr. Al Armendariz, Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) Administrator for Region 6; Wilma Subra
, MacArthur Award-winning chemist; Calvin Tillman, Mayor of Dish, Texas
; Weston Wilson, EPA scientist; members of Congress Diana DeGette
(Colorado), Dan Boren
(Oklahoma), and Maurice Hinchey
(New York); Albert Appleton, former New York City
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner; Scott Stringer, Manhattan
Borough President
; and James Gennaro, New York City Council
Environmental Board Chair.
and Hunter Gray; producers are Trish Adlesic, Fox and Molly Gandour; co-produced by David Roma
; cinematographers are Fox and Matthew Sanchez; editor is Matthew Sanchez; supervising sound editor is Brian Scibinico; animators are Juan Cardarelli and Alex Tyson; consultants are Morgan Jenness and Henry Chalfant and researchers are Molly Gandour, Barbara Arindell, Fox and Joe Levine. The film is dedicated to the non-profit organization Damascus Citizens for Sustainability.
The documentary was made in about eighteen months. Fox began the project as a one man crew, but was joined by three other cameras at different points. Matt Sanchez is credited with the structure of the film and together with Fox edited roughly 200 hours of footage to about 100 minutes.
Gasland premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival
in Park City, Utah. The film is currently on the film festival
circuit and premiered on HBO on June 21, 2010.
The COGCC concluded that a well belonging to Weld County landowner Aimee Ellsworth, also featured in the film, contained thermogenic methane that was attributable to oil and gas activity in the area. The report states that Mrs. Ellsworth and an operator in the area had reached a settlement in that case.
A 2011 study in Pennsylvania
and New York
states found a tendency for concentrations of methane to be greatly elevated in groundwater near fracking wells, with potential explosion hazard; the methane's isotopic signature
s and other geochemical indicators were consistent with a thermogenic origin in the deep shale formations. The authors of the study note that there are several ways this methane could have migrated into the groundwater, of which migration directly through the rock is the least likely.
in the West Divide Creek area. EnCana Oil & Gas was fined $371,200 by the COGCC and a moratorium was imposed on drilling in the West Divide Creek, Colorado area, where underground geological faulting had contributed to drilling problems. The moratorium was lifted after new drilling rules were put in place to protect water.
Dave Neslin, Director of the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, offered to speak on camera with Gasland director Josh Fox during filming. Neslin requested that he be allowed to review any material that would be used in the film because "the issues are technical and complex and arouse concerns in many people." The statement concludes that "Such a discussion might have prevented the inaccuracies [in COGSS's opinion] noted above." Director Fox refused those terms, which would have given editorial control to COGCC for this segment of the documentary.
of BBC Radio 5 Live
gave it a generally positive review, criticizing its similarity to other recent oil documentaries, yet praising its "extraordinary visual kick". He said "it is a very interesting story which is made better by the fact that the visuals of it are very poetic, very lyrical", and felt that its themes and ideas were relevant and well presented.
Robert Koehler of Variety
referred to it as "one of the most effective and expressive environmental films of recent years… Gasland may become to the dangers of natural gas drilling what Silent Spring
was to DDT
.”
Eric Kohn of IndieWire
wrote, "Gasland is the paragon of first person activist filmmaking done right… By grounding a massive environmental issue in its personal ramifications, Fox turns Gasland into a remarkably urgent diary of national concerns."
Stewart Nusbaumer of the Huffington Post wrote "Gasland... just might take you from outrage right into the fire of action."
The Denton Record Chronicle said “Fox decides that his own backyard in Pennsylvania isn’t his exclusive property... Set to his own banjo music and clever footage, Gasland is both sad and scary... if your soul isn’t moved by the documentary, yours is a heart of shale."
In a blog-post for Forbes magazine, Dr. Michael Economides, an oil and gas industry analyst and Chairman of the Board of XGAS, a natural gas firm, commented on the Gasland scene of "a man lighting his faucet water on fire and making the ridiculous claim that natural gas drilling is responsible for the incident. The clip, though attention-getting, is wildly inaccurate and irresponsible. To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock. Any interchange between the two, if it were possible, would have happened already in geologic time, measured in tens of millions of years, not in recent history." Economides claims that almost any "gas leak" from sources within and around a home has the potential to produce flammable tap water.
Fort Worth Business Press writer John-Laurent Tronche talks about the growing number of documentaries “that aim to shed a light on what they call a dirty, destructive practice: shale gas exploration. And although oil and gas supporters have labeled the motion pictures as radical propaganda, a local drilling activist said they’re part of a larger, critical look into an ever-growing industry."
Bloomberg News critic Dave Shiflett wrote that Fox "may go down in history as the Paul Revere
of fracking."
Chicago TimeOut gave Gasland four out of five stars.
Energy in Depth, a Washington, D.C. based oil and gas industry group, has created a web page with a list of claimed factual inaccuracies in the documentary. In response to the EID's list of claimed factual inaccuracies, the Gasland website offers a complete point-by-point rebuttal.
In Australia, film critic Julie Riggs called the documentary a "horror movie
, and a wake-up call."
Nominations
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
written and directed by Josh Fox. The film focuses on communities in the United States impacted by natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
drilling and, specifically, a stimulation method known as hydraulic fracturing
Hydraulic fracturing
Considerable controversy surrounds the current implementation of hydraulic fracturing technology in the United States. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of utilizing pressurized water, or some other liquid, to fracture rock layers and release petroleum, natural gas, or other...
.
Synopsis
In May 2008, Josh Fox received a letter from a natural gas company offering to lease his family’s land in Milanville, PennsylvaniaMilanville, Pennsylvania
Milanville is an unincorporated community in Damascus Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania, United States. Milanville is located along the Delaware River and the New York border north of Narrowsburg, New York....
for $100,000 to drill for gas.
Following the lease offer, he looked for information about natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale under large parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. He visited Dimock, Pennsylvania where natural gas drilling was already taking place. In Dimock, he met families able to light their tap water
Tap water
Tap water is a principal component of "indoor plumbing", which became available in urban areas of the developed world during the last quarter of the 19th century, and common during the mid-20th century...
on fire as well as suffering from numerous health issues and fearing their well water had been contaminated.
Fox then set out to see how communities are being affected in the west where a natural gas drilling boom has been underway for the last decade. He spent time with citizens in their homes and on their land as they relayed their stories of natural gas drilling in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Texas, among others. He spoke with residents who have experienced a variety of chronic health problems as well as contamination of their air, water wells or surface water
Surface water
Surface water is water collecting on the ground or in a stream, river, lake, wetland, or ocean; it is related to water collecting as groundwater or atmospheric water....
. In some instances, the residents are reporting that they obtained a court injunction or settlement monies from gas companies to replace the affected water supplies with potable water
Drinking water
Drinking water or potable water is water pure enough to be consumed or used with low risk of immediate or long term harm. In most developed countries, the water supplied to households, commerce and industry is all of drinking water standard, even though only a very small proportion is actually...
or water purification kits
Portable water purification
Portable water purification devices also known as point-of-use water treatment systems and field water disinfection techniques are self-contained units that can be used by recreational enthusiasts, military personnel, survivalists, and others who must obtain drinking water from untreated sources...
.
Throughout the documentary, Fox reached out to scientists, politicians and gas industry executives and ultimately found himself in the halls of Congress as a subcommittee was discussing the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act
Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act
The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act , - dubbed the FRAC Act - was introduced to both houses of the 111th United States Congress on June 9, 2009, and aims to repeal the exemption for hydraulic fracturing in the Safe Drinking Water Act...
, "a bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act
Safe Drinking Water Act
The Safe Drinking Water Act is the principle federal law in the United States intended to ensure safe drinking water for the public. Pursuant to the act, the Environmental Protection Agency is required to set standards for drinking water quality and oversee all states, localities, and water...
to repeal a certain exemption for hydraulic fracturing." Hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in the Energy Policy Act of 2005
Energy Policy Act of 2005
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 is a bill passed by the United States Congress on July 29, 2005, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 8, 2005, at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico...
.
Making appearances in the film are Dr. Theo Colborn, founder of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX); John Hanger
John Hanger
John Hanger is a former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, a position he held between September 2008 and January 2011....
, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP); Dr. Al Armendariz, Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
(EPA) Administrator for Region 6; Wilma Subra
Wilma Subra
Wilma Subra is an American environmental scientist.She graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in microbiology, chemistry and computer sciences....
, MacArthur Award-winning chemist; Calvin Tillman, Mayor of Dish, Texas
DISH, Texas
DISH is a town in Denton County, Texas, United States. The town had an estimated population of 218 as of July 1, 2009, according to the United States Census Bureau. This community, established in June 2000, was originally named Clark...
; Weston Wilson, EPA scientist; members of Congress Diana DeGette
Diana DeGette
Diana Louise DeGette is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997, and a Chief Deputy Whip. She is a member of the Democratic Party.The district is based in Denver.-Early life, education and career:...
(Colorado), Dan Boren
Dan Boren
Daniel David "Dan" Boren is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. The district includes most of the eastern part of the state outside of Tulsa...
(Oklahoma), and Maurice Hinchey
Maurice Hinchey
Maurice Dunlea Hinchey , is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Democratic Party...
(New York); Albert Appleton, former New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner; Scott Stringer, Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
Borough President
Borough president
Borough President is an elective office in each of the five boroughs of New York City.-Reasons for establishment:...
; and James Gennaro, New York City Council
New York City Council
The New York City Council is the lawmaking body of the City of New York. It has 51 members from 51 council districts throughout the five boroughs. The Council serves as a check against the mayor in a "strong" mayor-council government model. The council monitors performance of city agencies and...
Environmental Board Chair.
Production
Gasland was conceived, directed, primarily filmed and narrated by Josh Fox. This is his second documentary, his first was entitled Memorial Day. The executive producers of Gasland are Debra WingerDebra Winger
Mary Debra Winger is an American actress. Three-times an Oscar nominee, she received awards for acting in Terms of Endearment, for which she won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress in 1983, and in A Dangerous Woman, for which she won the Tokyo International Film Festival...
and Hunter Gray; producers are Trish Adlesic, Fox and Molly Gandour; co-produced by David Roma
David Roma
-Biography:David Roma is an American television producer, filmmaker and entrepreneur, born in New York City in 1974. The son of 1950s and 60s Capitol Records recording artist Frank Roma and grandson of a classical pianist, David spent his early years until the age of 21 developing a career as a...
; cinematographers are Fox and Matthew Sanchez; editor is Matthew Sanchez; supervising sound editor is Brian Scibinico; animators are Juan Cardarelli and Alex Tyson; consultants are Morgan Jenness and Henry Chalfant and researchers are Molly Gandour, Barbara Arindell, Fox and Joe Levine. The film is dedicated to the non-profit organization Damascus Citizens for Sustainability.
The documentary was made in about eighteen months. Fox began the project as a one man crew, but was joined by three other cameras at different points. Matt Sanchez is credited with the structure of the film and together with Fox edited roughly 200 hours of footage to about 100 minutes.
Gasland premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
in Park City, Utah. The film is currently on the film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
circuit and premiered on HBO on June 21, 2010.
State of Colorado
The State of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources issued a statement regarding what it viewed as “several errors in the film’s portrayal of the Colorado incidents.”Weld County
In a scene from the film, Weld County landowner Mike Markham is shown with director Josh Fox igniting gas from a well water faucet in his home with a cigarette lighter, which the film attributes to natural gas exploration in the area. In 2008 The Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) investigated a complaint made by Markham alleging that nearby natural gas operations impacted his domestic water well. Laboratory tests concluded that Markham’s water well contained biogenic methane, a combustible gas that occurs naturally in underground coal beds. Further investigation revealed that Markham’s water well had been drilled through four different coal beds containing naturally occurring biogenic methane gas. The 2008 investigation concluded that "there [were] no indications of oil & gas related impacts to [Markham's] water well." It was also concluded that the water well of Weld County landowner Renee McClure, also featured in the film, contained naturally occurring biogenic methane not related to oil and gas activity in the area. On the other hand, Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, the D. C. Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, whose research has involved fracture mechanics for more than 30 years, has said that drilling and hydraulic fracturing can liberate biogenic natural gas into a fresh water aquifer. Thus, just because gas is biogenic does not necessarily indicate that it reached a well by natural means.The COGCC concluded that a well belonging to Weld County landowner Aimee Ellsworth, also featured in the film, contained thermogenic methane that was attributable to oil and gas activity in the area. The report states that Mrs. Ellsworth and an operator in the area had reached a settlement in that case.
A 2011 study in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
states found a tendency for concentrations of methane to be greatly elevated in groundwater near fracking wells, with potential explosion hazard; the methane's isotopic signature
Isotopic signature
An isotopic signature is a ratio of stable or unstable isotopes of particular elements found in an investigated material...
s and other geochemical indicators were consistent with a thermogenic origin in the deep shale formations. The authors of the study note that there are several ways this methane could have migrated into the groundwater, of which migration directly through the rock is the least likely.
Garfield County
Gas seeping from land owned by Lisa Bracken in Garfield County, Colorado was found to be the result of fermenting organic matter in the West Divide Creek wetlands surrounding her property. The film claims that the gas seep was caused by hydraulic fracturingHydraulic fracturing
Considerable controversy surrounds the current implementation of hydraulic fracturing technology in the United States. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of utilizing pressurized water, or some other liquid, to fracture rock layers and release petroleum, natural gas, or other...
in the West Divide Creek area. EnCana Oil & Gas was fined $371,200 by the COGCC and a moratorium was imposed on drilling in the West Divide Creek, Colorado area, where underground geological faulting had contributed to drilling problems. The moratorium was lifted after new drilling rules were put in place to protect water.
Dave Neslin, Director of the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, offered to speak on camera with Gasland director Josh Fox during filming. Neslin requested that he be allowed to review any material that would be used in the film because "the issues are technical and complex and arouse concerns in many people." The statement concludes that "Such a discussion might have prevented the inaccuracies [in COGSS's opinion] noted above." Director Fox refused those terms, which would have given editorial control to COGCC for this segment of the documentary.
Critical response
Gasland currently holds a 97% rating on the film site Rotten Tomatoes based on 35 reviews. Mark KermodeMark Kermode
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He contributes to Sight and Sound magazine, The Observer newspaper and BBC Radio 5 Live, where he presents Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews with Simon Mayo on Friday afternoons...
of BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...
gave it a generally positive review, criticizing its similarity to other recent oil documentaries, yet praising its "extraordinary visual kick". He said "it is a very interesting story which is made better by the fact that the visuals of it are very poetic, very lyrical", and felt that its themes and ideas were relevant and well presented.
Robert Koehler of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
referred to it as "one of the most effective and expressive environmental films of recent years… Gasland may become to the dangers of natural gas drilling what Silent Spring
Silent Spring
Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement....
was to DDT
DDT
DDT is one of the most well-known synthetic insecticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history....
.”
Eric Kohn of IndieWire
IndieWire
indieWIRE is a daily news site for the independent film community. It covers indie, documentary and foreign language films, as well industry news, film festival reports, filmmaker interviews and movie reviews...
wrote, "Gasland is the paragon of first person activist filmmaking done right… By grounding a massive environmental issue in its personal ramifications, Fox turns Gasland into a remarkably urgent diary of national concerns."
Stewart Nusbaumer of the Huffington Post wrote "Gasland... just might take you from outrage right into the fire of action."
The Denton Record Chronicle said “Fox decides that his own backyard in Pennsylvania isn’t his exclusive property... Set to his own banjo music and clever footage, Gasland is both sad and scary... if your soul isn’t moved by the documentary, yours is a heart of shale."
In a blog-post for Forbes magazine, Dr. Michael Economides, an oil and gas industry analyst and Chairman of the Board of XGAS, a natural gas firm, commented on the Gasland scene of "a man lighting his faucet water on fire and making the ridiculous claim that natural gas drilling is responsible for the incident. The clip, though attention-getting, is wildly inaccurate and irresponsible. To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock. Any interchange between the two, if it were possible, would have happened already in geologic time, measured in tens of millions of years, not in recent history." Economides claims that almost any "gas leak" from sources within and around a home has the potential to produce flammable tap water.
Fort Worth Business Press writer John-Laurent Tronche talks about the growing number of documentaries “that aim to shed a light on what they call a dirty, destructive practice: shale gas exploration. And although oil and gas supporters have labeled the motion pictures as radical propaganda, a local drilling activist said they’re part of a larger, critical look into an ever-growing industry."
Bloomberg News critic Dave Shiflett wrote that Fox "may go down in history as the Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
of fracking."
Chicago TimeOut gave Gasland four out of five stars.
Energy in Depth, a Washington, D.C. based oil and gas industry group, has created a web page with a list of claimed factual inaccuracies in the documentary. In response to the EID's list of claimed factual inaccuracies, the Gasland website offers a complete point-by-point rebuttal.
In Australia, film critic Julie Riggs called the documentary a "horror movie
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
, and a wake-up call."
Awards
Wins- 2010 Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary Feature
- 2010 Sundance Film Festival26th Sundance Film FestivalThe 26th annual Sundance Film Festival was held from January 21, 2010 until January 31, 2010 in Park City, Utah.-Award winners:*Grand Jury Prize: Documentary - Restrepo*Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic - Winter's Bone...
Special Jury Prize - 2010 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Artistic Vision award
- 2010 Thin Line Film Festival Audience Award
- 2010 Yale Environmental Film Festival Grand Jury Prize
- 2010 Sarasota Film FestivalSarasota Film FestivalThe Sarasota Film Festival has been held annually since 1999 in Sarasota, Florida. The festival is held in April and has become one of the top ten independent festivals in North America...
Special Jury Prize - 2011 Primetime Emmy Award63rd Primetime Emmy AwardsThe 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, honoring the best in primetime television programming from June 1, 2010 until May 31, 2011, was held on September 18, 2011, at the Nokia Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Fox televised the ceremony within the United States. Actress Jane Lynch hosted...
for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming (Josh Fox)
Nominations
- 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
- 2011 Writer's Guild Award for Best Documentary Screenplay.