Guest essay by Steve Goreham
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique to remove natural gas and oil from shale formations, has been under withering assault from environmental groups for much of the last decade. Fracking has been blamed for contamination of drinking water, air pollution, earthquakes, water shortages, global warming, radiation discharge, and even cancer. But it appears that environmentalists have lost the battle against fracking.
Environmental groups have been almost unanimously opposed to hydraulic fracturing. Greenpeace and the Sierra Club favor outright bans, and other organizations call for tight controls on the process. According to the Sierra Club website, “‘Fracking,’ a violent process that dislodges gas deposits from shale rock formations, is known to contaminate drinking water, pollute the air, and cause earthquakes. If drillers can’t extract natural gas without destroying landscapes and endangering the health of families, then we should not drill for natural gas.”
But the case against hydraulic fracturing is weak. Shale is typically fractured at depths greater than 5,000 feet, with thousands of feet of rock between the fractured area and the water table, which is located near the surface. When properly designed, fracking wells are lined with multiple layers of steel and cement casing to prevent leakage of water and natural gas into the local water supply. Approximately one million wells have been hydraulically fractured over the last six decades without cases of water contamination. During Congressional testimony in 2011, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson stated, “I am not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing.”
Earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing appear to be minimal. Only a handful of micro quakes have been linked to fractured wells. None of these quakes have caused damage and most are too weak to feel. Nor is there evidence to show that fracking poses greater air pollution, radiation discharge, or cancer impact than agriculture, other mining, or other common industrial processes.
Burning natural gas releases carbon dioxide, like any other combustion. Climate activists oppose natural gas as a planet-warming fossil fuel and therefore oppose fracking. But gas combustion releases about half the carbon dioxide of coal combustion. The majority of the decline in US carbon dioxide emissions over the last ten years is due to the switch of electric utilities from coal to natural gas fuel, not from the growth of renewables.
Arguments about pollution of drinking water, earthquakes, water usage, radiation, and cancer appear to be a smoke screen to protect renewable energy, the sacred cow of the environmental movement. Natural gas from hydraulic fracturing is a direct threat to the growth of wind and solar energy.
Gas-fueled power plants are low-cost and dispatchable. In contrast, wind and solar electricity is two to three times the price and plagued by intermittent output, unable to respond to varying electrical demand. With hundreds of years of natural gas available from hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques, why build another wind turbine?
Fracking opposition has been strong in isolated locations across the world. Bans or moratoriums are in place in Bulgaria, France, Germany, and South Africa. Protesters are blocking fracking operations in England and Poland. Selected US counties and communities have imposed fracking bans. The state of New York established a fracking moratorium in 2008 and has delayed approval of fracking for more than five years. Ironically, natural gas provides a growing majority of New York’s energy consumption.
Despite the opposition, it appears that environmental groups have lost the battle against fracking. In 2012, 40 percent of US natural gas production was shale gas, using fracking technology, up from less than one percent in 2000. Shale gas is projected to exceed 50 percent of production by 2040. US crude oil production is also surging due to oil recovered from shale fields, up more than 50 percent since 2005.
In Europe, concerns about energy dependency on Russia have triggered a turnaround of government opposition to fracking. Germany is preparing a framework for tapping oil and gas by hydraulic fracturing and planning to lift its ban. The British government is proposing policies to remove roadblocks from fracking efforts.
The Obama administration, despite its campaign to fight climate change, publically supports hydraulic fracturing and liquefied natural gas exports. Climate hawks, such as Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, also support the expansion of natural gas, to the dismay of green organizations. Governor Jerry Brown of California presses for action on climate change, but has not opposed hydraulic fracturing.
Today, hydraulic fracturing is underway in 21 states. Several more states are developing supporting regulations. Despite a number of local bans, fracking is now a frequently used industrial process across the nation.
Shale gas and oil are here to stay. Weak environmental arguments to ban fracking are being overwhelmed by the irresistible economic bonanza of low-cost energy.
Originally published in Communities Digital News, republished here by submission from the author.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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@ur momisugly steve from rockwood,
The professor makes it very clear from the industries own data, that fracking shale for ng has a range of significant problems – best to listen to him than me repeat, basically starts vid 2. thru 10 vid clips on you tube.
I found this very informing and the disinformation exposed is consistent with disinformation techniques of other industries trying to make out their industry is great, cheap, clean, blah blah bs.
take one of your own ‘ the well can be sealed permanently, so leaking is not an issue’
incredibly niaive…
Fracing has been used to stimulate wells since 1947. Well companies first used crude oil and walnut hulls to prop open the frac. The process was very effective in getting past near wellbore damage. As pay zones got tighter and tighter, the fracs got bigger. Water replaced crude and sand replaced walnut hulls. When the wells got very deep they had to change to bauxite because the sand was being crushed. Below 2000′ the fracs are vertical because that is the least principle stress. Above 2000′ they tend to be horizontal. Which makes it hard to get into shallow aquifers.
There are NO examples of a frac entering a fresh water zone that was not meant to be fraced. Why? because no oil company in it’s right mind wants to spend millions of dollars fracing something that has no ROR.
When a well [is] fraced, it starts with a mini-frac to establish the formation parameters. If there is a suspicion that something is wrong, they are not going to frac. Why? they don’t want to waste millions of dollars for no ROR.
CO2 and sometimes N2 are added to the frac to help with flowback recovery. The frac fluid recovered is reused.
There can be acid fracs, but usually in limestone and dolomite formations. Water and sand are what is going to be used on shale and sand. Acid is usually used for near wellbore stimulation. Normally to get past scale that has formed over long periods of production.
If they want to thicken the frac water they use a guar extract. If they are going for a slick water frac, they don’t use guar.
Most women expose themselves to more carcinogens in one application of makeup than they will get from fracing in a lifetime.
The campaign against fracing is nothing more than a drive by shooting by a Michael Moore wanna be. A film made up based on a series of lies.
Just about every well drilled in the continental US these days needs fracing to be economic. To eliminate fracing would destroy the oil and gas industry and put this country in the dark.
We need fracing. And just to remind all of the readers here, the oil companies are not in the habit of wasting money. They are not interested in fracing water zones. If there is no payout, they are not going to do it. This is a very simple concept. Why do so many people have such a problem with it?
[ROR = Rate of Return. Amount of money earned (over time) /amount of money spent (over time) .mod]
How about Shale Bathing?
And what makes this Cornell Professor an expert? Who qualified HIS claims and propaganda?
But, the “right” side of this argument is TRYING to increase the very vital CO2 that ALL plants and living things on this planet NEED!!!! It is Obama who is fighting plants!
Oil Recovery Gas Accumulation Security Housing Methods
See? We’re just in favor of increased ORGASHM safety ….
“If drillers can’t extract natural gas without destroying landscapes and endangering the health of families, then we should not drill for natural gas.”
Please, can I use the same argument for not using wind power?
Moose, I agree. CAGW hysteria has driven inappropriate energy policy and many windmills will end up as white elephants on a blighted landscape. There are however, many alternatives to be developed for our long term energy needs such as nuclear fusion.
Moose, I agree. Many windmills will end up as white elephants on a blighted landscape.
CAGW hysteria has resulted in perverse energy/environmental policies and commercial developments – windmills, bio-fuels, carbon trading, eucalyptus carbon sinks displacing indigenous peoples and ancient forests etc.
However, there are a number of potential solutions to our long term energy needs, such as nuclear fusion (which is probably 30 years away from being viable) but we do need to replace fossil fuels not least because they are finite and the their extraction and combustion has many environmental and health downsides. That’s not to denigrate their contribution to our development to date.
Rational debate is in short supply.
M Simon, to suggest all crop development is GM is disingenuous at best. Genetically introducing terminal seeds, herbicides and pesticides into the food chain is attempting to “play god” with the food chain and the perverse consequences. It could, in extremis, wipe out all life on earth. GM companies are trying to gain monopoly power over the food production – do we really want that?
My browser seems to be playing up and posting comments before I get a chance to edit them properly. Last comment should read:
M Simon, to suggest all crop development is GM is disingenuous at best. Genetically introducing terminal seeds, herbicides and pesticides into the food chain is attempting to “play god” with the food chain and will give rise to perverse consequences. It could, in extremis, wipe out all life on earth. GM companies are trying to gain monopoly power over the food production – do we really want that?
If there are not enough people in poverty, then the left would not have enough people to vote for them. If everyone was taken out of poverty there would be no need for left wing politics.
How do they perpetuate poverty? By making energy more expensive, food more expensive, rents, and basically make everything too expensive for those in poverty to create division.
neillusion says:
June 11, 2014 at 6:12 pm
I’m astonished at some of the WUWT comments, so well informed on the CAGW myth, have not informed themselves on the myth that Fracking is environmentally safe.
——————————————————
Neillusion, I just watched the entire 9 minute video. It has NOTHING to do with FRACKING. In fact, fracking isn’t even mentioned anywhere in the entire video. The video deals with gas migration along the [wellbore] due to incomplete cementing which, as he readily admits, is well known problem. If you don’t know the difference between fracking and cementing you shouldn’t accuse people of not being informed (or of being naive).
Also, in the video, the prof shows a graph of methane (vertical axis) in water wells versus distance from wellbore (horizontal axis) for water wells located near oil & gas producing wells which seems to show an increase in methane concentration to possible dangerous levels for water wells located within 1 km of a drilled wellbore. The problem with this graph is it does not indicate what the methane levels were prior to drilling of the wellbores – that is THE NATURAL METHANE LEVELS. In other words, you are expected to assume that all water wells had no anomalous methane concentrations prior to oil & gas exploration even if they were located adjacent to an oil & gas formation. This is a known false hypothesis as the professor even admits in the video. Water wells located closer to areas of oil & gas accumulation are known to have higher natural levels of methane, levels that can be dangerous in some cases (this the professor does not address and shame on him for leaving it out).
The professors tone during the entire presentation is not very professional – he strikes me more as a slick Greenpeace presenter than an academic simply relaying the facts. His misleading presentation is a testament to that. Grow some skepticism and don’t believe everything you watch on you tube.
All this talk about NG and very little discussion of LNG (liquid). Long haul large trucks need LNG, not compressed NG. Public LNG fuel lanes are slowly opening from Los Angeles to Jacksonville. UPS plans to have almost 1000 LNG trucks on the road by the end of 2014. Lowe’s has started migrating their dedicated fleets to LNG. One Lowe’s dedicated fleet in Texas was migrated last fall. They plan to have all dedicated fleets migrated by the end of 2017. From a pollution perspective moving away from diesel to LNG seems like a great thing and the chicken and egg problem seems to being solved as we speak. I think it’s great.
gregfreemyer says:
There are no LNG retail/commercial outlets in Texas or US, They are all compressed NG. These outlets to dispense NG use three stage compressor systems up to 8000 PSI for what is considered a full tank. The rest of your comment is correct. Many long haul trucks are moving freight in Texas. The conversions are increasing exponentially
“Can anybody think of a better name?”
“Gaia toot-lavage”, maybe?
Here is some info on LNG trucking
http://www.trucknews.com/products/early-lng-adopters-experience-mixed-results
No public LNG fuel lanes in the US?
Is the press mis-reporting. Here’s one example:
http://www.lngindustry.com/news/liquid-natural-gas/articles/LNG_truck_fleet_launched_in_Texas_327.aspx#.U5pT7vmwJ_8
If you look at this vidoe, you see mostly references to natural gas, but 2 or 3 places say LNG.
http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/FX-MM99117-20131017-01.mp4
Several of Clean Energy’s press releases talk about LNG.
http://investors.cleanenergyfuels.com/releases.cfm
Here’s a quote from the May 6 press release:
—
UPS Continues Largest Deployment of Heavy-Duty Natural Gas Trucks in the United States with Additional LNG and CNG Trucks
10 additional LNG trucks will begin fueling at Clean Energy’s Jacksonville, Fla., station and are forecasted to consume approximately 246,000 DGEs of LNG annually.
5 additional heavy-duty CNG trucks will begin fueling at Clean Energy’s station in downtown Los Angeles, Calif. The trucks are forecasted to consume approximately 96,000 DGEs of CNG annually.
—
Note they are differentiating between LNG and CNG and they are saying it is 10 additional LNG trucks.
You are way too optimistic if you think the war is “won.” The greens opposite the modern industrial economy in every way. Sensibly they are focusing first on a relatively soft target, coal. But they oppose oil, natural gas, hydro and nuclear too, and they will get to those. And now that the USEPA has the power to regulate CO2 there is nothing that can be done.
Encourage your grandkids to learn Mandarin. The Chinese will need servants when they take over.
After reading through the comments, there are very few that even have a conversational familiarity with the process. I have designed and performed hydraulic fracturing operations since 1980( I refuse to use fracturing as it was adopted from an old Scifi series as the euphemism for another word that begins with f and ends with K) . To correct a few errors-very few hydraulic fracturing jobs exceed 6000 psi. Those that do must be done down an isolated tubing string(removable tube) since the casing (permanently cemented tube) pressure capacity is seldom more than 10,000 psi. There is acid fracturing, but it is generally hydrochloric acid, not hydrofluoric which has limited applications in stimulation and is seldom injected at high pressure. The size of the proppant is the size of sand grains and I am not aware where any pea size grains were used and doubt whether it would be possible. The production of shale gas has historically required natural gas wellhead prices of at least $6/mmbtu. This is because a truly “shale gas” well will decline by 90% from initial rate during the 1st year and produce the resulting minor 10% volume for a very long time. Due to the enormous expense of the wells, if payout does not occur in the first year it will likely never payout.. The “truly shale” comment is because in order to attract capital no producer wants to admit that the actual production may be coming from associated sands or carbonates that are abutting a shale if one sees a well that does not decline @90% the first year. Unless Anthony wants a full description the discussions of the physics of fluid flow through porous media would take a while.
Finally the only way that hydraulic fracturing fluids could enter into a fresh water aquifer in a well being stimulated would be through a catastrophic failure of at least two high strength steel casings and cement failures. The pressures at the surface are continuously observed and a sudden catastrophic change will indicate this type of failure. Since I am spending $1,000,0000 in order to put the treatment in a particular spot, if it goes somewhere else I have wasted the money. Therefore it takes me less than 30 seconds to shut down the job, so even if I have a failure very little if any fracturing fluid will enter a fresh water horizon. Then the pressure is rapidly relieved by flowing back as rapidly as possible to avoid the costly process of bailing out the proppant in the wellbore. If I communicate with a dynamic aquifer then any fluid is flowed back out. This process assures proper placement and is not due to any altruistic motive to save the aquifer, but to do the best job to produce gas and make money. The “glue heads that have gone organic” should take solace in the fact that this position is completely compatible with avoiding “contamination”.
================================================================
Gaia on crack?
Gaia-Lax?
“More troubling would have been PETA, as they’d force a ceasing of using animals for farming and transportation. That’d knock civilization down a notch.”
Living out of the country for awhile, I seem to be behind on the current cultural references. Last week, visiting my daughter in San Francisco, I saw a bumper sticker on her wall that said:
PETA – [People] Eating Tasty Animals
Makes sense to me – as long as they aren’t doing farm labor…
/sarc
Think before pushing button…
People Eating Tasty Animals
Damn you predictive spellchecker…
My dad was Chief Petroleum Engineer for this field between 1976 and 1980, and designed the fracking operations there (all vertical at the time). During that period I worked with fracking crews every summer, Christmas, and spring break. I never saw any violence during that time, although my supervisor did once threaten to wipe a booger on me it I didn’t shut up.
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2006/06143allan/index.htm
Hey, and today would have been his 86th birthday! But he only made it to 81.
@neillusion
How do you determine who is giving out disinformation? It seems you are working off the premise that fracking is bad, so anybody that says fracking is back must be telling the truth. While anybody that says fracking is not bad must be giving disinformation.