I wrote this report a couple of years ago, when local misguided fracktivists tried to get our local board of supervisors to issue a county-wide ban against fracking. I thought it might do some good for my readers here, so I decided to publish it.
A report to the Butte County Board of Supervisors and to the Butte County Planning Commission
Introduction
I had considered speaking before you, but in the emotionally charged venue of your chambers it is often difficult for a rational voice to be heard without being shouted down. Plus, I have a hearing impairment that makes interaction difficult. Therefore, I thought I’d prepare a document.
My intent here is to help you make the most enlightened decision possible, by sorting through the hyperbole, political agendas, and emotions which have presented themselves in this debate by providing a factual guide that is based on reality, and not on any viewpoint from any vested interest.
The history of hydraulic fracturing aka “fracking”
Modern hydraulic fracturing technologies started on April 25th, 1865, when Civil War veteran Col. Edward A. L. Roberts received the first of his many patents for an “exploding torpedo.” Nitroglycerine and later Dynamite was used back then to provide the force. Roberts was awarded U.S. Patent (No. 59,936) in November 1866 for what would become known as the Roberts Torpedo. The new technology would revolutionize the young oil and natural gas industry by vastly increasing production from individual wells.
On March 17, 1949, a team of petroleum production experts tried a new technique on an oil well about 12 miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma – to perform the first commercial application of hydraulic fracturing. This began the modernized process that is still in use today.
Since 1949, hydraulic fracturing has done more to increase recoverable reserves than any other technique. In the more than 60 years following those first treatments, more than two million fracking treatments have been drilled and pumped with not a single documented case of any fracking treatment polluting an aquifer.
Reference: American Oil and Gas Historical Society
RELEVANCE: Hydraulic fracking is not a “new” technique. History of use shows it has not polluted groundwater/aquifers.
How does “fracking” actually work?
Fracking is simply a technique use to increase the surface area of a drilled well. By having an enlarged surface area of cracks, crevices, and seam splits, more oil or natural gas can be recovered. It improves the production of a new well or an existing well.
In virtually every case, the shale seams are far below the water table, as seen in this cross section below showing how shale is fractured to increase surface area to retrieve more natural gas.
The gas is pulled from the ground through a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which large volumes of water, plus sand and chemicals, are injected deep underground to break shale apart and free the gas.
RELEVANCE: most fracking is conducted well below the water table.
What is in fracking fluid? Water, sand, and, some common chemicals.
Water accounts for about 90 percent of the fracturing mixture and sand accounts for about 9.5 percent. Chemicals account for the remaining one half of one percent of the mixture. This graphic illustrates the breakdown.
RELEVANCE: Traditional fracking fluid is mostly water & sand, with 0.5% common household chemicals. There are no large amounts of “highly toxic” chemicals as some activists claim.
Why the worry over fracking water?
Many people worried about what chemicals are used in fracking cite the potential danger of a hypothetical scenario where fracking fluids leaking into the groundwater as the primary reason for their concern. However, there are many misconceptions about how fracking water is collected and disposed of after it has been pumped into the shale to release natural gas trapped inside.
Once the fracturing process is completed, the water rises back to the surface, forced upward by the geologic formation’s natural pressure. Then, the fluids are stored in pits or tanks to be treated – if the water is to be discharged into surface water – or is injected deep underground.
Spent or used fracturing fluids are normally recovered at the initial stage of well production and recycled in a closed system for future use or disposed of under regulation, either by surface discharge where authorized under the Clean Water Act or by injection into Class II wells as authorized under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Regulation may also allow recovered fracturing fluids to be disposed of at appropriate commercial facilities. Not all fracturing fluid returns to the surface. Over the life of the well, some is left behind and confined by thousands of feet of rock layers.
Treatment of fracking water is highly regulated by EPA rules, and many states are working to revise or create their own laws overseeing gas drilling operations in their areas. So, there is a huge financial incentive for drilling companies to do it right, otherwise they are faced with fines, and possible shutdowns.
A 2004 study from the EPA investigating the environmental impact of disposing what chemicals are used in fracking into coal bed methane production wells found no confirmed cases of drinking water wells’ quality being compromised as a result. The study noted that:
“Where fluids are injected, EPA believes that groundwater production, combined with mitigating effects of dilution and dispersion, absorption, and biodegradation, minimize the possibility that chemicals included in fracturing fluids would adversely affect [underground sources of drinking water],”
Source: EPA: Hydraulic Fracturing of Coaled Methane Reservoirs; National Study Final Report, June 2004 http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/uic/pdfs/cbmstudy_attach_uic_final_fact_sheet.pdf
It’s our experience in Pennsylvania that we have not had one case in which the fluids used to break off the gas from 5,000 to 8,000 feet (1,500-2,400 m) underground have returned to contaminate ground water.
John Hanger, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Fracking fluid is now going through a change to make the small 0.5% portion of chemicals even safer.
As The Associated Press reported in August 2011, one Halliburton executive drank a new recipe for hydraulic fracking fluid at a conference by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. The intent was to quash fears about what is hydraulic fracking and the chemicals that are used – Halliburton’s development uses food industry materials – by showing how safe they can be.
“During a keynote lunch speech at the conference presented by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, Halliburton Co. CEO Dave Lesar talked about addressing public concerns about hydraulic fracturing, which extracts natural gas by blasting a mix of water, chemicals and sand underground.
He raised a container of Halliburton’s new fracking fluid made from materials sourced from the food industry, then called up a fellow executive to demonstrate how safe it was by drinking it, according to two attendees. The executive mocked reluctance, then took a swig.
The thing I took away is the industry is stepping up to plate and taking these concerns seriously,” Ken Carlson, a Colorado State University environmental engineering professor, told the AP. “Halliburton is showing they can get the same economic benefits or close to that by putting a little effort into reformulating the fluids.”
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/22/halliburton-executive-drinks-fracking-fluid_n_933621.html
The process is safe, and continues to be proven as such.
For example, on May 13th 2011, the New York Times reported:
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” got a clean bill of health this week in the first scientific look at the safety of the oil and production practice.
In a May 6th 2011 story on a senate hearing, E&E Newswires reported:
The debate about hydraulic fracturing has intensified as advances in the technology have opened vast gas-bearing formations in densely populated areas, like the Northeast. Critics say fracturing could cause some of the hazardous chemicals in the fluid to find its way into groundwater, but industry representatives say the fluid would have to travel upward through thousands of feet of rock, and there has never been a proven case of that happening.
Source: http://www.eenews.net/public/eenewspm/2011/05/06/2
The British also aren’t worried about it:
The British government’s health agency is the latest body to give fracking a clean bill of health, in a move that should galvanize the country to act on its considerable reserves of shale gas. Reuters reports:
Public Health England (PHE) said in a review that any health impacts were likely to be minimal from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves the pumping of water and chemicals into dense shale formations deep underground….
“The currently available evidence indicates that the potential risks to public health from exposure to emissions associated with the shale gas extraction process are low if operations are properly run and regulated,” said John Harrison, director of PHE’s center for radiation, chemical and environmental hazards.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/31/us-britain-health-fracking-idUSBRE99U0KX20131031
RELEVANCE: The EPA sees no threat to drinking water in studies they have conducted. Neither do the British.
There is a huge financial incentive by drilling companies to manage fracking water properly or face fines. Newer formulations of fracking fluid are safe enough to actually drink.
Scientific studies show the process is safe.
If fracking is safe, and has been in use since 1949, with it used in over 2 million wells, how did it get such a bad reputation?
The answer lies in an activist movie known as “Gasland”, seen on HBO in 2010 and also shown in “alternative” theatres in the USA, such as the Pageant Theater in downtown Chico.
In that movie, a claim is made that fracking caused groundwater to become flammable, due to methane gas leaking into the water table. This frame from the dramatic scene in that film shows a Colorado resident igniting his tap water with a cigarette lighter.
Source: GASLAND trailer, 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8
The implication made by the director/producer (Josh Fox) in the film is that this was caused by the recent increased in fracked wells in that part of Colorado, Weld County. To the untrained and uncurious, this certainly seems like a valid conclusion.
However, research shows that a few inconvenient facts about that movie. A 1976 study by the Colorado Division of Water found that this area was plagued with gas in the water problems back then. And it was naturally occurring.
As the report stated there was “troublesome amounts of methane” in the water decades before fracking began. It seems that in geographical areas gas has always been in the water.
But Josh Fox knew this and chose not to put it in Gasland anyway.
Another filmmaker asked Fox about this omission at a screening at Northwestern University in Chicago. You can watch that video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9CfUm0QeOk
And as way of verification of the Gasland’s claim of fracking causing methane in groundwater was based on a fabricated claim or not, I went looking for the 1976 report that McAleer cited. I didn’t find it, but I did find another report from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) which was equally damning:
Source: http://search.datapages.com/data/doi/10.1306/03B5B46B-16D1-11D7-8645000102C1865D
Also, the state of Colorado Department of Natural Resources came to a similar conclusion in a report they produced about the Gasland movie, saying that the methane came from nearby coal seams (biogenic) and what not from fracking operations, and had been present for quite some time:
…we concluded that Mike Markham’s and Renee McClure’s wells contained biogenic gas that was not related to oil and gas activity. Unfortunately, Gasland does not mention our McClure finding and dismisses our Markham finding out of hand.
The Markham and McClure water wells are both located in the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Weld County. They and other water wells in this area draw water from the Laramie-Fox Hills Aquifer, which is composed of interbedded sandstones, shales, and coals. Indeed, the water well completion report for Mr. Markham’s well shows that it penetrated at least four different coal beds. The occurrence of methane in the coals of the Laramie Formation has been well documented in numerous publications by the Colorado Geological Survey, the United States Geological Survey, and the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists dating back more than 30 years. For example, a 1976 publication by the Colorado Division of Water Resources states that the aquifer contains “troublesome amounts of . . . methane.” A 1983 publication by the United States Geological Survey similarly states that “[m]ethane-rich gas commonly occurs in ground water in the Denver Basin, southern Weld County, Colorado.” And a 2001 report by the Colorado Geological Survey discusses the methane potential of this formation and cites approximately 30 publications on this subject.
…
Finally, it should be understood that the COGCC Director, Dave Neslin, offered to speak with Gasland’s producer, Josh Fox, on camera during the filming of the movie. Because the issues are technical and complex and arouse concerns in many people, Director Neslin asked that he be allowed to review any material from the interview that would be included in the final film. Unfortunately, Mr. Fox declined. Such a discussion might have prevented the inaccuracies noted above.
Source: http://cogcc.state.co.us/library/GASLAND%20DOC.pdf
Essentially, what we have is an activist movie director making false claims that can be easily refuted with geologic studies done by the State of Colorado, refusing to have his work reviewed, and those false claims being used to incite and worry people who are otherwise unable to make distinctions themselves.
Despite this and many more inaccuracies being well documented, activist organizations like Greenpeace, with multi-million dollar budgets, include the “flaming faucets” claim in their own anti-fracking materials, such as this one from their website, seen below.
Item# 10 says: “Concentrated Methane gas create flammable water and poisonous fumes”
Despite the science being well known and well documented, anti-fracking activist groups simply don’t care; they’ll make the claims anyway. Their goal is to stifle energy development, more on that later.
This is what is happening in Butte County with the “Frack Free Butte County” activists. Much of the claims they are making can be easily refuted if you bother to do a modicum of research.
For example, one of their claims is:
Fracking uses gross amounts of water. In a drought, the last thing we should rely on is fracking for purposes supplied by other sources.
What they don’t seem to realize is that fracking is a closed water system, it does not use “millions of gallons of water” (a common citation to position fracking as a water hog), but instead uses water that it treats and recycles at the surface.
The shale gas industry uses water: 1-5 million gallons per well. However, its needs are not great in comparison with those of other industries, such as the power generation industry, or even the quantity used in domestic appliances. Gas drilling in Pennsylvania uses less than 60 million gallons per day, compared with 1,550 million gallons per day used in public water systems, 1,680 million gallons per day used in industry and 5,930 million gallons per day used in power generation in the state (US Geological Survey). A single shale gas well uses in total about the same amount of water as a golf course uses in three weeks.
Sidenote:
If you look at the amount of water used by the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico per year, you’ll find it far and regularly exceeds any expectation of water to be used for hydraulic fracturing in Butte County, should it ever occur in Butte County.
For example in 2007, SNB used over 6 million barrels of water (31 US gallons/barrel) for a total of 186 million gallons of water.
Approximately one-third of the water pumped down the well for fracking returns eventually to the surface together with gas during production. In the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, this water is saline, because the shale rock was formed on the bed of an ancient sea. The water is extracted from the gas, collected in pools doubly lined with heavy-duty polythene, and either re-used for fracking in other wells or desalinated, treated and disposed of as waste. This is no different from the treatment of waste water in any other industrial process. Pollution incidents involving such `produced water‘ are rare. A gas well operated by EOG Resources blew out in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, in June 2010, spilling 35,000 gallons of slick water. The water was contained by berms and linings, and there were no injuries or significant damage to the environment.
Another claim used by activists is that the water coming to the surface is radioactive.
The returning water is also slightly more radioactive than surface water because of naturally occurring isotopes within the rocks. However, this radioactivity drops when the salt is removed and before the water is disposed of in the sewage system. In any case many granite rocks have higher natural radioactivity, so exposure to waste water from gas drilling is likely to be no more hazardous than exposure to some other kinds of rock. There is no evidence that either gets close to being hazardous. Indeed the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has tested the water in seven rivers to which treated waste water from gas wells is discharged and found not only no elevation in radioactivity but:
All samples were at or below background levels of radioactivity; and all samples showed levels below the federal drinking water standard for Radium 226 and 228. — Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, 7 March 201140
All technologies have environmental risks. Press coverage that talks about `toxic‘, `carcinogenic‘ and `radioactive‘ `chemicals‘ is meaningless. Vitamin A is toxic. A single cup of coffee contains more known carcinogens than the average American ingests from pesticide residues in a whole year. Bananas are radioactive. Dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical (water, H2O).
RELEVANCE: As demonstrated above, the list of easy refutations to activist’s claims about fracking is quite long, if any of you want to have them specifically addressed, I’ll be happy to do so personally on request.
This will surprise you – fracking has actually helped solve the “global warming” problem
The same people who complain that fracking will kill the planet also say similar things about carbon dioxide emissions related to “global warming”.
The great irony of fracking to produce more natural gas is that it has helped make a shift from coal to natural gas in energy production, actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the USA.
As demonstrated in this article, carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. are at their lowest level in 20 years thanks to fracking.
The EIA data shows natural gas on the rise:
So many activists want us to get off “dirty coal” as an energy source, yet they seem unwilling and unable to accept a much cleaner burning fuel, natural gas, because it involves “fracking”.
But, you shouldn’t take my word for it, read what they say at U.C. Berkeley about Natural Gas in their August 2014 report:
Climate Impacts of Coal and Natural Gas
In a world where a cost-‐competitive near-‐ zero carbon energy source is not readily available, particularly in developing countries, replacing coal electric generation with natural gas could provide an effective strategy to mitigate climate change and reduce harmful air pollution.
Source: http://static.berkeleyearth.org/pdf/climate-impacts-of-coal-and-natural-gas.pdf
Just as surprising, the leader of the group that produced that report, Berkeley Earth, is an advocate of fracking to produce more natural gas.
Deadly particulate pollution known as PM2.5 (highly regulated in California) is currently killing over three million people each year, primarily in the developing world, demonstrates Richard Muller (Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley since 1980) in Why Every Serious Environmentalist should favour Fracking. His co-author, Elizabeth Muller, is his daughter and co-founder (with him) of Berkeley Earth, a non-profit working on environmental issues.
The summary from that report:
See the full report: http://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/131202135150-WhyEverySeriousEnvironmentalistShouldFavourFracking.pdf
Study: Fracked shale gas impacts have positive and negative benefits, but there’s no reason not to make it part of the energy mix – September 22, 2014
From The University of Manchester: Fracking’s environmental impacts scrutinised
Greenhouse gas emissions from the production and use of shale gas would be comparable to conventional natural gas, but the controversial energy source actually faired better than renewables on some environmental impacts, according to new research.
The UK holds enough shale gas to supply its entire gas demand for 470 years, promising to solve the country’s energy crisis and end its reliance on fossil-fuel imports from unstable markets. But for many, including climate scientists and environmental groups, shale gas exploitation is viewed as environmentally dangerous and would result in the UK reneging on its greenhouse gas reduction obligations under the Climate Change Act.
University of Manchester scientists have now conducted one of the most thorough examinations of the likely environmental impacts of shale gas exploitation in the UK in a bid to inform the debate. Their research has just been published in the leading academic journal Applied Energy and study lead author, Professor Adisa Azapagic, will outline the findings at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester on Monday (22 September).
“While exploration is currently ongoing in the UK, commercial extraction of shale gas has not yet begun, yet its potential has stirred controversy over its environmental impacts, its safety and the difficulty of justifying its use to a nation conscious of climate change,” said Professor Azapagic.
“There are many unknowns in the debate surrounding shale gas, so we have attempted to address some of these unknowns by estimating its life cycle environmental impacts from ‘cradle to grave’. We looked at 11 different impacts from the extraction of shale gas using hydraulic fracturing – known as ‘fracking’– as well as from its processing and use to generate electricity.”
The researchers compared shale gas to other fossil-fuel alternatives, such as conventional natural gas and coal, as well as low-carbon options, including nuclear, offshore wind and solar power (solar photovoltaics).
The results of the research suggest that the average emissions of greenhouse gases from shale gas over its entire life cycle are about 460 grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. This, the authors say, is comparable to the emissions from conventional natural gas. For most of the other life-cycle environmental impacts considered by the team, shale gas was also comparable to conventional natural gas.
But the study also found that shale gas was better than offshore wind and solar for four out of 11 impacts: depletion of natural resources, toxicity to humans, as well as the impact on freshwater and marine organisms. Additionally, shale gas was better than solar (but not wind) for ozone layer depletion and eutrophication (the effect of nutrients such as phosphates, on natural ecosystems).
On the other hand, shale gas was worse than coal for three impacts: ozone layer depletion, summer smog and terrestrial eco-toxicity.
Professor Azapagic said:
“Some of the impacts of solar power are actually relatively high, so it is not a complete surprise that shale gas is better in a few cases. This is mainly because manufacturing solar panels is very energy and resource-intensive, while their electrical output is quite low in a country like the UK, as we don’t have as much sunshine. However, our research shows that the environmental impacts of shale gas can vary widely, depending on the assumptions for various parameters, including the composition and volume of the fracking fluid used, disposal routes for the drilling waste and the amount of shale gas that can be recovered from a well.
“Assuming the worst case conditions, several of the environmental impacts from shale gas could be worse than from any other options considered in the research, including coal. But, under the best-case conditions, shale gas may be preferable to imported liquefied natural gas.”
The authors say their results highlight the need for tight regulation of shale gas exploration – weak regulation, they claim, may result in shale gas having higher impacts than coal power, resulting in a failure to meet climate change and sustainability imperatives and undermining the deployment of low-carbon technologies.
Professor Azapagic added:
“Whether shale gas is an environmentally sound option depends on the perceived importance of different environmental impacts and the regulatory structure under which shale gas operates.
“From the government policy perspective – focusing mainly on economic growth and energy security – it appears likely that shale gas represents a good option for the UK energy sector, assuming that it can be extracted at reasonable cost.
“However, a wider view must also consider other aspects of widespread use of shale gas, including the impact on climate change, as well as many other environmental considerations addressed in our study. Ultimately, the environmental impacts from shale gas will depend on which options it is displacing and how tight the regulation is.”
Study co-author Dr Laurence Stamford, from Manchester’s School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, said: “Appropriate regulation should introduce stringent controls on the emissions from shale gas extraction and disposal of drilling waste. It should also discourage extraction from sites where there is little shale gas in order to avoid the high emissions associated with a low-output well.
He continued:
“If shale gas is extracted under tight regulations and is reasonably cheap, there is no obvious reason, as yet, why it should not make some contribution to our energy mix. However, regulation should also ensure that investment in sustainable technologies is not reduced at the expense of shale gas.”
The paper, ‘Life cycle environmental impacts of UK shale gas’ by L. Stamford and A. Azapagic, published in Applied Energy (doi 10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.08.063), is available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261914008745
From Stanford University – Stanford-led study assesses the environmental costs and benefits of fracking – September 13, 2014
A strange thing happened on the way to dealing with climate change: Advances in hydraulic fracturing put trillions of dollars’ worth of previously unreachable oil and natural gas within humanity’s grasp.
The environmental costs – and benefits – from “fracking,” which requires blasting huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals deep into underground rock formations, are the subject of new research that synthesizes 165 academic studies and government databases. The survey covers not only greenhouse gas impacts but also fracking’s influence on local air pollution, earthquakes and, especially, supplies of clean water.
The authors are seven environmental scientists who underscore the real consequences of policy decisions on people who live near the wells, as well as some important remaining questions.
“Society is certain to extract more gas and oil due to fracking,” said Stanford environmental scientist Robert Jackson, who led the new study. “The key is to reduce the environmental costs as much as possible, while making the most of the environmental benefits.”
Fracking’s consumption of water is rising quickly at a time when much of the United States is suffering from drought, but extracting natural gas with hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling compares well with conventional energy sources, the study finds. Fracking requires more water than conventional gas drilling; but when natural gas is used in place of coal or nuclear fuel to generate electricity, it saves water. From mining to generation, coal power consumes more than twice the water per megawatt-hour generated than unconventional gas does.
Unconventional drilling’s water demand can be better or worse than alternative energy sources, the study finds. Photovoltaic solar and wind power use almost no water and emit no greenhouse gas, but cheap, abundant natural gas may limit their deployment as new sources of electricity. On the other hand, fracked gas requires less than a hundredth the water of corn ethanol per unit of energy.
Fracking’s impact on both climate change and local air pollution is similar to its impact on water, finds the study “The Environmental Costs and Benefits of Fracking,” published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
Getting a fractured well going is more intense than for conventional oil and gas drilling, with potential health threats arising from increases in volatile organic compounds and air toxics.
But when natural gas replaces coal as a fuel for generating electricity, the benefits to air quality include lower carbon dioxide emissions than coal and almost none of the mercury, sulfur dioxide or ash.
The study highlights several policies and practices that could optimize fracking’s environmental cost-benefit balance, and it highlights the need for further research. For example, the direct impact on the health of nearby residents is virtually unknown. “Almost no comprehensive research has been done on health effects,” said Jackson, “but decisions about drilling – both approvals and bans on fracking –are made all the time based on assumptions about health risks.”
And finally, from a political perspective, just how much support does the anti-fracking movement in Butte County have?
The “Frack Free Butte County” group tried to get their fellow citizens to fund their efforts via a crowd sourcing campaign. They only raised 9% of their expected goal:
Source: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/frack-free-butte-county
That speaks loudly when the citizenry can’t get behind it. It also suggests that the people who did contribute money (just 72 people) are limited to their friends and peers.
UPDATE: Via Tom Anderson in comments.
One interesting sidelight is that the EPA itself grudgingly confirmed in 2015 that fracking does not contaminate groundwater, barring mishap or poor practice.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/hf_es_erd_jun2015.pdf
About a year later, in January 21, 2016, the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board endorsed the agency’s findings and recommended its conclusions be stated less ambiguously. I think the agency is still trying to get out of that.
The study had further corroborated a study by the U.S. Department of Energy in which the researchers injected tracers into the hydraulic fracturing fluid, with no observable groundwater contamination after twelve months’ monitoring. It also confirmed reports by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Government Accountability Office, Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, the University of Colorado, and the Groundwater Protection Council – to name just a few.
Summary and my best advice
· Fracking is not something that just started, it is a long and well proven process
· Fracking is safe, despite activist claims of flaming faucets and other nonsense
· Fracking is not a water hog in comparison to other industries
· Fracking has benefits, including reduced carbon dioxide and reduced PM2.5 particulates
· Fracking is an emotional issue that is soundly refuted by government and scientific studies
· Fracking is a tool being used improperly by activists to stifle energy production
If you pass a fracking ban, will it affect me? No. However it may affect landowners who may wish to develop or improve wells in the small pockets of natural gas near Willows. A ban may render their mineral rights moot.
But, as we already know, there is only a small amount of gas wells in Butte County, and some of those were enhanced with fracking (check well logs) though owners don’t want to admit it for fear of activists chaining themselves to well or other such things.
A ban probably won’t matter much in the scheme of production, but if passed it will be used as a political bandwagon tool.
A fracking ban will be just about as useless as the infamous “nuclear weapons ban” in Chico, but it will make some emotional folks feel good about themselves.
If I were to be in your position, I’d put it up to a vote of the people of Butte County, rather than approve a ban outright. I think you’ll find it has about as much support in the citizenry as the ill-fated attempt to ban Genetically Modified Food (GMO’s) a few years back.
Thank you for your consideration.
DISCLOSURE:
I have no interests, funds, ownership, business arrangements, or any connection of any kind to any activist or political group, nor any industry that relies on oil or gas exploration, drilling, or production.
I produced this report of my own volition, simply to help educate you on the issues as I have done for myself over the past few years. The outcome of your vote will not affect me in any way, personally or financially.
The opinions expressed are my own, the facts expressed stand on their own merit and are referenced by source.
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Close to where i live in eastern Canada, there was a swarm of very minor earth tremors not so very long ago. This province has not yet allowed fracking, but if it had, I could have seen the headlines plastered across every newspaper. STOP THE FRACKING NOW. The environmentalists were all geared up to go ape over it, but couldn’t.
On our unstable planet, earthquakes happen all of the time. Without any release, the instability builds up to where the eventual earthquake, releases large amounts of energy, sometimes in a catastrophic way, as many reported earthquakes each year demonstrate. I prefer to think that fracking helps put off that awkward moment in some small and indefinable way. But every little, helps.
If fracking causes any premature release of that energy, then it might just help us avoid the really big one. That, is the way I look at fracking and the needless hysteria that goes along with it.
Go, fracking! Go!
Why is the text to this article blank in Opera, Chrome and Firefox browsers?
Looks fine in Safari.
I’m onFirefox and if works fine.
Okay on my version of Opera.
I’m using Chrome and it’s fine. If in doubt you can always use IE.
May be your firewall settings or some such thing.
Unstable planet?! Unstable planet?! How dare you!! This planet is perfectly in balance. Everything on this planet was absolutely perfectly, precisionly, wonderfully, sweetly, and oh so delicately in perfect, delicate balance … until … US. Until we came along.
And caused it to wobble, blow up mountains, wipe out shorelines with tsunamis or hurricanes or just plain erosion, to have earthquakes, asteroid hits, droughts, floods …
Oh wait, it has those anyway.
Never mind.
C’mon Tom, did you flunk Sunday school? GAWD sent those plagues to SMITE us puny humans for our SINS! Never had none o’ those nasty “natural disastas” until that bad lady Eve et that APPLE . . .
The tie between fracking liquid blowback disposal into injection wells and small earth quakes up to 4 is well established, although still suppressed in some states like it was for a time in Oklahoma. Small earth quakes generally aren’t a problem unless you have a brick facade house near one, then it can get expensive. Oklahoma has finally decided to start addressing the problem:
https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/tag/earthquakes/
http://earthquakes.ok.gov/
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/induced/myths.php
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/images/2015_04_23/cumulative_earthquakes.jpg
Of course if one has a nochalant attitude toward your neighbors problems, then maybe this is how to feel:
Your comment is misleading. There is no correlation between “fracking liquid blowback” and “small earth quakes” because injection wells receive multiple types of fluids, most often the salt water that is pumped out with the oil & gas. You would have to have injection wells dedicated only to fracking fluid and then compare those injection wells with others to make such a conclusion. I would be interested in such a study as we are looking to acquiring producing oil & gas wells in Oklahoma, Louisiana and of course Texas.
BFL. There is a minor quake problem in Oklahoma, but not otherwise. For example, your Arkansas map includes the Reelfoot Reef, which had periodic minor earthquake swarms ever since the 1816 big one, and well before any fracking or reinjection began. An example in the correlation is not causation chapter of The Arts of Truth. Which included 3D seismic maps.
Oklahoma is a ‘new’ special case, with previously unknown geological tectonic tensions and roughly NE/SW faults. Solutions include lower volumes per injectiion well, and new injection wells away from the newly evidenced fault syatem. Hardly a geological catastrophe.
The Oklahoma earthquakes have indeed been caused by disposal of waste fluids from oil and gas production. They just have nothing to do with fracking. No one fracks a well producing 10,000 barrels of waste water a day. Permiability is not the issue, oil/water % is.
here’s a note from an insider:
We were under a tornado watch (had an F4 in SW Oklahoma), had severe thunder and lightning and an earthquake all at the same time (4.7, biggest last weekend was 5.6).
I heard the rumble that actually did turn out to be the earthquake, but needed ten seconds to figure out which it was. Not a big deal. The news keeps trying to blame it on fracs.
No, it isn’t a frac, but we did notice that they are pumping mind boggling amounts of water (over 10,000 barrels water per day per well) in hundreds of wells near epicenter/fault (huge water reinjection sweep of
old watered-out field recovering about 2% oil cut). Somebody from the USGS did say that this type of water injection could cause up to a 5 magnitude quake, however, nobody seems to be listening to him
as long as the misinformed public keeps blaming it on fracs, the industry can continue to categorically deny fracs are the cause.
The graph, and supposed tie between water injection and earthquakes, is very misleading. Better put; Wrong! Water injection into oil fields for use in secondary recovery has been ongoing for 80 years and is magnitudes greater than the volume of water produced and disposed from recently drilled shale oil wells. Whereas older oil wells benefit from massive volumes of water injected for secondary recovery, shale oil wells are too tight (extremely low permeability) to benefit from water injection.
The amount of water injected/disposed in older, traditional oil fields is more correlated to oil price than to the number of earthquakes.
It can only be surmised that the recent increase in earthquakes is the result of more comprehensive monitoring and not fracing or water injection. It would be more correct to plot the current rig count (decreasing) vs earthquakes to show how false the graph above really is.
It is also important to note that water disposal wells are under the jurisdiction of the different states OGCC’s and BLM. Under rules enforced by both agencies, water disposal cannot take place in a well at a pressure greater than the formation frac pressure. No fracing takes place when water is disposed or injected. Water is disposed only to the available voidage.
First off, a mag 4 earthquake is nothing.
Secondly, your claim that the link between fraking and earthquakes has been established is nothing more the pure BS.
1) The areas that are having earthquakes have always had earthquakes.
2) Most of the quakes that are happening are hundreds of miles away from the sites of fraking.
3) The energy being used to frak rocks, couldn’t cause a mag 1 earthquake, much less the larger ones being claimed.
Remind us again, what is the penalty for setting off a nuclear device in Chico?
[…] what is the penalty for setting off a nuclear device in Chico?”
A stern reprimand and you are grounded after school for 2 whole weeks. Upon completion of your sentence, you are given a warm hug to help soften the blow to your self esteem.
Seriously, I think it was something like a $1,000 fine. It was ridiculous.
Back in the 60’s or 70’s in the US nukes were used 3 times experimentally for fracing.
As I recall from what I’ve read, the concern was the gas being radioactive, not the drinking water.
It was done under Operation Plowshares, looking for peaceful uses for nukes. I think the plan to replace the Panama Canal with one excavated by nukes was part of it.
PS There is a reservoir in Russia that was made by their version of Plowshares.
(I’m not sure what the fishing is like.)
Silly rabbit. You can’t reason with lip-trembling, finger-pointing, tongue-wagging, pants-wetting eviro-kooks and quacks. They hate the facts as much as, if not more than fracking itself.
OMG – it’s perfect grammar and punctuation! I thought that went extinct!
ROTFL
No, “if not more than” should have been offset with a concluding comma.
Well, obviously, you havent’ red many of me coments!
Good post, but ultimately irrelevant, as the green blob does not care. As long as they have “Gasland” and other tendentious screeds, they will contintue to spread panic. After all, cheap and abundant eneragy is like giving an idiot child a machine gun. I do wonder just how many of the CAGW trolls on this site are also into fractivism.
“Good post, but ultimately irrelevant, as the green blob does not care.”
Sadly, I have to agree with you. It’s no coincidence that the anti fracking campaign began about the time that the CAGW meme started showing weaknesses to which we are all too familiar. Belief in CAGW and anti fracking go hand in hand, and facts such as presented in this excellent article matter not in the least.
It’s sad state of affairs. The eco-zealots are further emboldened by the political legitimacy given them by the Left, dancing the quid-pro-quo tango all the way to totalitarianism.
In Canada, Justin Twerpdeau’s government changed the title of the minister of the environment to the “minster of environment and climate change“. He has further empowered ENGO’s by adding “climate change impact” to environmental assessments for any new projects. Development will all but cease under this government. Only unicorn breeding projects will be able to jump that arbitrary regulatory hurdle.
Canada’s brand of socialism is becoming more and more unpalatable, except (sadly, ruinously) to a majority of voters who prefer selfies over substance.
@ur momisugly Robmorrow, 1:50 pm, Justin Twerpdeau’s, You got a few $$ for a new screen ? Hard to read with coffee all over it, thanks for the laugh, can I use it?
Please do! We’ll need those laughs to maintain sanity over the next three years.
I had one activist try to tell me that prior to fraking there had never been an earthquake in Oklahoma. This lady actually claimed to have studied geology in college.
I dug up a chart from the OK govt that showed historical earthquakes going back 100 years. She shut up, but still opposed fraking.
Thank you for debunking the anti-fracking hoax. It’s been a long time since I was taken in on one of these media operations, but I admit that I was on this one. I suppose it reflects the general wish of the powers that be to reduce the economy further– perhaps larded with Big Oil’s wish to get rid of smaller, newer oil.
Nice article. Only thing I would have added is that all drinking water acquifers are above 1000 feet down. Minimally mineralized fresh groundwater. For that reason, O&G wells are typically double steel cased and cement grouted for the first 1000 feet. There are always exceptions, like Kern River in California where the average depth of the oil field is only 600 feet.
A point many do not know. Part of the shale production engineering is to understand how far the frack fissues will extend. That determines the minimum well spacing. Ordinarilly the radius is less than 100 feet. Outside that radius, the rock remains unaffected. The Greenpeace illustration is very misleading for that reason.
There is as much nonsense spead about fracking source rock shales as there is about anthropogenic global warming. Many times by the same perpetrators. Greenpeace, FoE, … Either they knowingly prevaricate, or have weirdly distorted reality and selective fact retention.
Well done Anthony. Step by step explanation of false information and referenced evidence of why we shouldn’t be fearful. I buy this type of rational explanation every time.
The power of the anti-GM food, global warming crowd, anti-fracking groups and climate change proponents, etc is that they relentlessly lie about how these “activities” will cause the end of life as we know it. They constantly go for the emotional fear mongering that so many “feel”, attracting “believers” and those for whom knowledge, education and true scientific understanding are neither capable of nor desirous of. The success of these groups is because they understand that the war is a fight for what people feel NOT what they know and therefore the ends justify the means. I heard this expressed as the necessity to move the fight just 18″ from the brain to the heart. (politicians obviously know this)
Once that is done explanations like yours bounce off the armor of the believers.
I had one anti-GM nut case tell me that I would change my mind about GM foods when I had a kid with three arms.
Yes, he actually believed that GM foods would cause genetic modifications in people who ate it.
I think the first pictorial is probably the most helpful for the easily frightened. Of course even that can’t really show the true scale of how far underground the action happens.It really is down with the Balrogs.
Meanwhile here in the northeast US, Kinder Morgan is in the process of building a $5 billion gas pipeline for Marcellus Shale gas. The problem is, there most likely isn’t a regional market for a good portion of the gas that would flow through it, but there is a healthy, and potentially very-lucrative market for it in Europe. The solution is to turn it into LNG, and ship it from Nova Scotia. Now that’s a bit of a sticky wicket, because how much of that pipeline are ratepayers here going to be shouldering? There’s always an environmental trade-off with projects like these, and we New Englanders tend to take a dim view on things which may benefit giant companies and foreign lands more than they do us. My view is that it is still worth it, but I can see how others might not see it that way.
http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2016/03/09/kinder-morgan-northeast-energy-direct-pipeline-opposition-fred-hewett
I’m all for it if it will make natural gas and electricity cheaper here in Massachusetts. I do agree that exporters should pay their share of the pipeline costs, though.
/Mr Lynn
Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
..Oh for frack sakes !! LOL
That’s because their motivation is to capitalize on people’s irrational fears. If they can accomplish that, whether what they say is true is a very secondary consideration.
However they will always claim that rebuttals from their opponents are not true. To protect against that, it’s necessary to do a lot of research to solidly document the actual facts. Also the response needs to be phrased very carefully to make it harder for them to create straw men to try to discredit it. All that takes a lot more effort than what they put into their original claims.
The following is from Wikipedia’s article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Harry_Frankfurt.27s_concept
In his essay On Bullshit … philosopher Harry Frankfurt of Princeton University characterizes bullshit as a form of falsehood distinct from lying. The liar, Frankfurt holds, knows and cares about the truth, but deliberately sets out to mislead instead of telling the truth. The “bullshitter”, on the other hand, does not care about the truth and is only seeking to impress:
[T]he bullshitter … is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
Also note the follow-up tweet at https://twitter.com/krelnik/status/472046082135162881
And the energy grows exponentially b/c you put the effort into refuting and they just respond w/ more BS.
A lie can be halfway around the world before the truth can get it’s shoes on.
I believe that was Mark Twain.
Many little stitches in time saves the big Richter Nine.
=============
Yes. I was wondering if anyone was going to make that observation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811%E2%80%9312_New_Madrid_earthquakes
Good information up until:
“The great irony of fracking to produce more natural gas is that it has helped make a shift from coal to natural gas in energy production, actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the USA.”
Correct me if I am wrong Anthony, but you do not subscribe to the junk science associated with CAGW. So why use it to dilute information about fracking?
I am in favor of using coal and natural gas to make electricity. Same for renewable energy. I can articulate the reason but basically the benefits of producing electricity far outweigh risk.
For example:
“Deadly particulate pollution known as PM2.5 (highly regulated in California) is currently killing over three million people each year, primarily in the developing world, demonstrates …”
First of all that is not true. Sure some over educated idiot at UC Berkeley has a model but that is not how to solve a problem. First you measure to see if there is problems. Then you find the root causes. One cause is automobiles and truck. That has been solved in California. Another source is wild fires. In the third world, it might be using dried cow dung for cooking and heating.
My point is that it is not an argument for fracking and against coal. It is junk science.
So the gist of the argument about the junk science related to fracking is lost by ending with junk science.
‘Correct me if I am wrong Anthony, but you do not subscribe to the junk science associated with CAGW. So why use it to dilute information about fracking? ‘
Well consider that the fracktivists want everyone to believe that fracking is destructive on every level. In fact the claim is already out there that fracking adds to CO2 levels http://www.climatechangenews.com/2013/09/09/shale-gas-will-increase-co2-emissions-without-global-climate-change-deal/
The idea behind the report is to debunk all such claims.
Why do you have to debunk all claims and why would you use junk science? Provide information based on science.
Agreed, but the ‘fearful’ (politicans in this case) reading this need some arguments supporting the ‘correct’ view.
By showing that their claims are mutually exclusive, you help to show how ridiculous they are in all areas.
Spellcheck “hyperbole.”
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, nice summary.
fixed thanks
Any reason why the text does not appear at all? The post is empty-looking to me.
no text.. me too.
My text also vanished when I refreshed. Fortunately I had read it but seeing only three comments I knew there would be many more, having taken so long to read it all.
Was it spelled “hyperbowl”?
I wrote a report “Proppants: North American Industry Markets and Outlook” published by Roskill in the UK (www.roskil.com) for whom I write the occasional mineral commodity economic report that is sold in the industry and to financial, consulting, brokerage, etc. firms (It is quite high-priced so this is not a promotion for readers here).
To add a few dimensions to your report Anthony, the industry is even experimenting with using liquid nitrogen as the fracking fluid. It adds a pressure increase punch to expand the fractures and needs no chemicals and it can be produced from the atmosphere at the well head.
EOG Resources (largest on shore producer of oil in the US) is one of the few petroleum companies to open their own frac sand mines and they have experimented with closer spaced fracking of their reservoirs, essentially more than doubling up sand usage to ~4000t/well and they have extended horizontal wells to 10,000ft in length. This has resulted in almost doubling percent recovery from shale resources in the last three years and damping the historical rapid decline in production in the first several years. It also means that 50,000 wells that have been fracked and are in production can be re-fracked at a fraction of a greenfield well costs and will approximately duplicate its ‘first’ production.
A new practice in the US and Canada after the swoon in oil and gas prices, is the drilling and capping of an inventory of new high potential wells that can be quickly re-entered and fracked in quick response to a rise in prices. Essentially, it has become almost like a manufacturing process.
Also changes in drilling technology with multiple wells from one pad, “walking rigs” that don’t require dismantling and resetup and improvements to drill bit motors, etc. have reduced the time for drilling a battery of wells to less than half that of 2012!
Two years ago an EOG spokesman said that with the rapidly improving technologies, they were more profitable at $65/bbl than they were at $95/bbl in 2012. Consolidation and rationalization of the frac sand industry, which had been selling sand at boom prices until the oil price drop along with lowered drilling costs, will also reduce O&G production costs. The best projects can still make a few dollars at today’s prices.
One other thing, I raised six kids some 40 years ago (plus two nieces for a couple of years) on a farm in eastern Ontario, Canada where the regions wells are all in black shales leaking natural gas. Some farmers have utilized the gas, all have vents in the well covers. I had an elbow welded onto the vent in the concrete cover and I suggested to the welder that we take the cover off before torching it. He said no, it will flame out and, indeed, we did ignite a flame that flickered for a while. There was sulphur in the water, too, so we had to develop the locals’ taste for this. It actually made good tasting coffee and some attributed the large size of our lambs to the sulphur in the water and fertilizing pasture! None of us ever got sick and I’m hale and hearty at an advancing age.
The enviro commie scum never, ever cared about fracking because it was an “old” technology and the amount of oil/gas recovered using that technology was no big deal.
What REALLY changed everything was horizontal directional drilling (HDD) ; it was this NEW technology that was the game changer.
When combined with the “old” technology of fracking, massive quantities of oil and gas could now be extracted from very tight rock formations and, as they say, the rest is history.
Of course, now that these combined technologies greatly increased the production of domestic oil and gas, the enviro commie scum had to act. After all, they couldn’t allow the imperialistic, racist, homophobic, greedy, militaristic, capitalistic USA to even begin to approach energy independence or even provide less expensive oil and gas to US consumers. Yep, better to have folks in the colder regions of the USA go into bankruptcy trying to heat their homes in the winter.
You will note that the enviro wackos have never, ever demonstrated or agitated in those nations that have (had) the absolute worse environmental records; the USSR, East Germany, the former East Bloc nations, etc. This should tell you what are the real motivations of the “environmentalists.”
The ecofasc15ts actually are concerned by the threat that US produced oil and gas poses to the imperialistic, racist, homophobic, greedy, militaristic OPEC nations. The ecofasc15st will never forgive the USA – or Russia (although they gratefully trouser funding from the latter) – for kicking over the sandcastles of the founder of the current greenpeace-ecofasc15t movement, Na3i Germany in the 1930-40s.
Bravo JT. Add China to the list of worst environmental records, have you SEEN their air?
Report seems to be missing.
It was here earlier and some commented upon it. I am using the same server I always use and no idea why I saw it then and can’t see it now.
Agree with Myron Mesecke, although WUWT HomePage has the article headline & graphic, clicking through lands on a page with _ONLY_ comments. Note: Browser in use is Firefox 45.0.1 running on Win10.
That’s curious. I read the report earlier today; now it is gone.
Does seem to be absent now.
The article disappeared for me as well but is back now.
Not sure what happened, all the text disappeared, but was restored from a backup
A fraker hacker?
Why don’t these frackers simply document the lies, and then turn over a sample of their fluid to an independent lab for verification. If the claims turn out to be false, sue the living daylights out of the environmental organization making the claims? The judge can make sure that the finding are kept confidential, and if there is a secret recipe it can be kept safe from competitors.
You can’t sue people that have no money, because even if you win you lose – the Streisand effect.
Fracking is an engineering problem. Like deep water drilling or nuclear power it can be done safely
or it can be done cheaply. The problems arise when you try to have both.
Well managed nuke projects produce power at a lower cost and better safety indicators.
Sure. The key phrase being “well-managed”. You have a nuclear plant design that is safe when being managed by Harvard Business School graduates?
Geronimo
+ Shedloads – your perceptive comment is absolutely true for for every human activity.
Thank you.
Auto
extremely well written, comprehensive, and informative. i will print this out for my bookshelf. thank you.
Article appears properly in Vivaldi 1.0.435.42 on Windows 10 Pro x86_64 and it’s Chrome based, so who knows?
Save your ink and paper
Excellent report; thanks. Will circulate to family and friends.
So what did the Butte County officials decide?
/Mr Lynn
It’s on the ballot for this June.