The other day, someone informed me that fracking is not a pressing issue because as Rochester residents living in an area that does not overlap with the Marcellus Shale, we will be unaffected. This is simply not the case. Even more concerning, I’ve also talked with several people who are unaware as to what fracking entails. So what is fracking, or hydraulic fracturing and why should you be concerned? This video gives a quick and strangely catchy summary for those who have not heard about the natural gas extraction process.
These are all important factors to take into consideration, as fracking is far from a black and white issue. However, these undeniable benefits come at an extremely high cost.
For instance, there are quite a few social implications. Fracking often brings booming business to small towns that simply do not have the infrastructure to support such an influx of people and supplies. Their roads weren’t built for the truck traffic that occurs with drill pad construction during the development phase and many town halls are not adequately prepared to handle the sudden increase in conflicts and regulations that must be addressed. Also, fracking is basically a boom and bust-type industry, and there is a concern that once-prosperous towns will collapse economically after all of the natural gas has been extracted.
Next, natural gas may seem like a “greener” alternative to oil, but some studies indicate that the methane released during the process of fracking may counterbalance the decreased emissions that are released when natural gas is burned. (Howarth, Robert W. et. al. “Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations: A letter” Climate Change. Change, vol. 106, issue 4, June 2011 at 679) In addition, methane is often accidentally released into the water near drilling sites in dangerous concentrations. One of the most concerning factors of fracking is that it is currently exempt from regulations in the Safe Drinking Water Act. In an investigation by ProPublica, over 1,000 cases of water contamination were found in areas where drilling has happened in Colorado, Alabama, New Mexico, and other states. (Lustgarten, Abrahm. “Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies?” ProPublica. November 13th, 2008) Regular wastewater treatment plants cannot handle the fracking fluid chemicals, and there have been many instances of gas well leaks contaminating water sources. Naturally occuring fractures in the earth can allow pressurized fracking fluids to travel into the New York City water aqueduct, and the buffer zones proposed by the state may prove to be inadequate. Wastewater from fracking is often radioactive, and there is currently no safe way of safely treating this water.
Above all else, fracking is a step in the wrong direction, and should be banned on the national level. Currently, the Department of Environmental Conservation is finishing regulations and, and many towns are urging Cuomo to allow permitting to begin. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/new-york-fracking-decision_n_1862112.html) Ideally, New York should invest in clean, renewable energy sources instead of spending millions on the limited and temporary solution of natural gas drilling.
So what can you do? Tomorrow, September 22nd is Global Frackdown day, with anti-fracking protests and marches occurring all over the globe. On a more local level, there is a nonviolent demonstration today at Cobb’s Hill Park in Rochester from 5 to 8:30pm in which participants are encouraged to wear blue and bring signs voicing their concerns and fears about what fracking will mean for the health and welfare of our community. Hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale is not an issue to be taken lightly, and if allowed, will undoubtedly have serious implications for our future.
Written by Leslie Wolf, Class of 2015
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We are a stock picking newsletter and we follow natural gas / fracking – this is a quote from our recent Weekend Update – ck us out for more.
Let’s talk natural gas and “fracking”. Fracking can cost several million dollars per well so companies are continually on the look-out for lower cost options. Recently, Schlumberger has been discussing a new technology that reduces fracking cost substantially.
Fracking a well involves three major costs – proppant (sand/chemical mix), water and trucks. The fracking technology Schlumberger has developed utilizes 40% less proppant and up to 50% less water. Less proppant and less water leads to significantly fewer supply trucks and therefore less operating cost.
JPMorgan has estimated that fracking costs could drop from $2.5 million per well down to under $1 million. A significant cost reduction for natural gas producers.
Lower cost means more oil/gas can be economically recovered (higher company reserves), increasing the overall supply. More supply equates to lower retail prices and more support for our “Investment Case For Natural Gas”.
For subscribers not familiar with a “resource reserve (proven / probable) calculation” you can read our article explaining how prices and cost components influence economic reserves. It is the seventh article from the top of our
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I completely agree- there are no free lunches in energy. However, I am curious about your claim that solar and wind have not been able to reduce, and have even added substantially to carbon emissions. Do you have a source that supports this?
Leslie
Hi Leslie, there are several posts pending that are not showing up which include numerous links and references to the research and provides answers to some of your questions, including more references to what we know about water quality impacts in PA.
There are no, alas, free lunches in energy. So far, wind and solar have not been demonstrated to be able to actually reduce carbon emissions. In some countries they have even added to co2 emissions. Combine that with open hostility to nuclear (which is actually more costly than its advocates typically claim) and there are not many ways we’re going to see lower emissions anytime soon. It is remarkable just how much gas has and can help. If climate change is the worst threat we face on the planet and folks lock themselves out of nuclear expansions, it seems that gas ought to be taken more seriously.
EVEN IF the standard favored renewables could actually reduce emissions and keep land use to a minimum the transition times are going to take far too long to get any meaningful emissions reductions anytime soon (worth a book unto itself). Given that challenge and the other demonstrated aspects of gas it is puzzling that it is rejected out of hand. Is any form of energy development OK? Does the same scrutiny get applied to renewables? Does the federal government really have jurisdiction in what in most cases are local, intra-state issues? And so on.
You wrote, “Which country on earth has reduced carbon emissions more than any other in the previous decade? And why. Hint: our energy related CO2 emissions in the US this year are on track to reach levels not seen since 1992. And carbon emissions from coal are down to 1983 levels.”
In response, an article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/carbon-emissions-nuclearpower
It seems clear that no matter how well we are doing as comapred to the rest of the world, it is not enough. “To preserve our planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 ppm.” (http://www.350.org/mission)
Also, I was not claiming that the towns in question are poor, just that in order to support the influx of people that move to the town during the development phase, certain accomodations must be built (hotels, stores, etc…) and these may not see any business after there is no longer any need for them. So not only do the towns go through the boom and bust, they could potentially find themselves in a worse situation, faced with costly and now-unnecessary structures, as well as the residual pollution and equipment.
You raise some excellent points. In regards to your argument about the delegation of power, the EPA’s decision to allow states to regulate drilling was actually extremely problematic in PA when fracking was allowed to proceed in 2009 with limited regulations. PA residents wound up drinking polluted water, as the very toxic flowback was often dumped into rivers and wells sprung leaks. It makes sense that they now test the water daily.
Admittedly, and maybe using Pennsylvania as an important indicator of what could occur, New York has taken more precautions. Cuomo has seen to it that regulations are carefully analyzed, and the public has even been allowed to review and comment on proposed regulations. This is still far from ideal, in my opinion. Can regulations stop the release of methane? Can they prevent a well from leaking?
Leslie
Finally, here is a little more on the issue of water contamination.
PA DEC authorizes use of acid mine drainage for fracking: http://gantdaily.com/2011/11/21/dep-effort-encourages-oil-and-gas-industry-to-use-mine-drainage-water/
Coal mines pollute over 5,000 miles of streams with acid-mine drainage water http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/minres/districts/cmdp/chap04.html
The EPA has published study concluding that fracking is safe. Here is a description of new studies they plan in 2011 and beyond: http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/upload/HFStudyPlanDraft_SAB_020711-08.pdf
Here is SAB review of study proposal: http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabproduct.nsf/0/2BC3CD632FCC0E99852578E2006DF890/$File/EPA-SAB-11-012-unsigned.pdf
Ground Water Protection Council, a nonprofit made up of state regulatory agencies, hasn’t found a single documented case (well, actually one, but it is not thought to be from gas fracking) of fracking having polluted local ground water.: http://www.gwpc.org/e-library/documents/general/State%20Oil%20and%20Gas%20Regulations%20Designed%20to%20Protect%20Water%20Resources.pdf
You end by arguing that fracking is a step in the wrong direction and should be banned. You argue this after not mentioning the clear and large carbon reduction benefits we get from fracking and by placing this risk in the context of other risks to our water supplies – especially our local ones. For example, it was hard to swim in Lake Ontario this summer, and that had nothing to do with drilling. And the blue-green algae taking over the Finger Lakes at the end of the summer ended fishing, swimming or even sitting by the stinking, poisonous mess. Of course, it is not fashionable to blame local farmers whose organic runoff is partly to blame for these problems.
But low-cost natural gas has benefits that go beyond this (by the way, a gas company paid me quite a sum of money to say this!). For example, a typical PA resident has seen their energy bills fall by $1,500 in a year by being able to access cheap gas. Name another program that has not required the taking of resources from one person to give to another that has delivered anything like that kind of benefit. https://www.npr.org/2012/04/18/150903306/as-gasoline-goes-up-natural-gas-cheaper-than-ever
There are people who believe that low-cost natural gas will enable the midwestern rust belt (including the auto companies and suppliers that we seem to care so much about) could see a revival if cheap, easy to use gas stays around for a while. Dow chemical is now in the process of building a plastics plant in Texas.
But more important than those anecdotes is new research that finds that shale gas may ALREADY have delivered $100 BILLION of benefits to consumers per year while others put the estimates at triple that (http://johnhanger.blogspot.com/2012/07/stunning-fact-us-shale-gas-oil-benefits.html)
And perhaps most interesting of all is that the shale gas boom seems to have been delivering a bean boom to some of the poorest people in the world: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/28/us-india-shale-guar-idUSBRE84R07820120528 … so combining this with the major cost savings this provides to American consumers, the issue of shale-gas drilling seems to involve very real social-justice issues.
Thanks for allowing me to clarify. Fracking is a complex issue with both benefits and drawbacks, making it difficult to claim that it is overall a “good” or “bad” process. This is why I claimed that it is not black and white.
However, in my opinion, given the risks to our drinking water, atmosphere, and environment, as well as many other concerning public health factors, the benefits are not substantial enough to make the decison to allow fracking one that should be allowed. I do not think that current regulations or policies are stringent enough to protect us from the potentially disastrous outcomes of fracking, nor do most of these policies hold the gas companies accountable.
Thus, I believe that hydraulic fracturing should not be peritted.
This is my opinion, although many disagree. It is certainly a divisive issue.
Leslie
“One of the most concerning factors of fracking is that it is currently exempt from regulations in the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
The EPA has delegated the power to regulate drilling to the states. So that (rightly) should be a state by state issue. Funny, NYS banned fracking in 2008 and here we are 4 years later with no fracking (though it may be coming soon). It seems that there regulations were “working” here.
But on the issue of water, wastewater is regulated under either the SDWA or the CWA. Do you know if the CWA does not apply in these cases? For example, in Pennsylvania, public water systems are tested DAILY to examine compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act and no wastewater from the Marcellus drilling is discharged into rivers and streams. And as former PA DEC employee John Hanger tells us: “Between 2008 and 2011, PA passed 5 different regulatory programs: Most significant is August 2010 rule that protects Pennsylvania’s streams from Total Dissolved Solids pollution from drilling and other sources”
The EPA has just begun a comprehensive review of the known fracking sites to re-examine what we know about water issues. I’ll spare you the run down on what the EPA has found for existing sites under older reviews. There clearly is some evidence of some contamination, but it is not clear in several of the cases where the contamination is coming from. Chemicals seeping from depth are not commonly observed.
In any case, scientists are now close to establishing a new method of fracking that does not even require water, and several entrepreneurs have developed water cleaning technologies (they look like glorified cotton balls) that are developed precisely to clean up fracking water.
” Fracking often brings booming business to small towns that simply do not have the infrastructure to support such an influx of people and supplies. Their roads weren’t built for the truck traffic that occurs with drill pad construction during the development phase and many town halls are not adequately prepared to handle the sudden increase in conflicts and regulations that must be addressed. Also, fracking is basically a boom and bust-type industry, and there is a concern that once-prosperous towns will collapse economically after all of the natural gas has been extracted.”
The issue of externalities is relevant and important and it is the role of towns, the state and the parties involved to deal with them in an effective matter. No one disputes this. But does not one find it strange that if we delegate the provision of roads to government agencies that we cannot trust those very agencies to raise the funds from the gas leases to fix the roads when and if they are damaged? Furthermore, is it not the case that you are arguing that the towns right now are poor? So your point above is that we cannot allow fracking because (after seeing a little bit of a good time) they will revert back to being poor?
This is a nice complement to current arguments in support of the government to provide more stimulus right now. The idea is that who cares about the long run, people are suffering today. And so we should invest in spending today in order to get the money flowing. Isn’t that kind of what is going on in the boom towns? And if we want to call those towns failures, then how can one (you do not, others do) argue that stimulus for light-rail, windmills, etc. will be an economic boon?
Finally, at least on this issue: are the same issues not there when it comes to building and installing wind turbines? Do access roads and high voltage transmission lines and maintenance, etc. not get built? Do trucks not bring in all kinds of cement and metals and tubes to get those built? What is different? Sure, the scale of fracking activity in a short period of time is clearly larger, but what generally is different? Does a crumbling road know the difference between a 10 ton truck carrying a turbine blade and a 10 ton truck carting off fracking chemicals?
And here are a few tidbits on the Howarth study, even the WorldWatch Institute has called its findings into question:
“While we share Dr. Howarth’s urgency about the need to transition to a renewable-based economy, we believe based on our research that natural gas, not coal, affords the cleanest pathway to such a future”
“Despite differences in methodology and coverage, all of the recent studies except Howarth et al. estimate that life-cycle emissions from natural gas-fired generation are significantly less than those from coal-fired generation on a per MMBtu basis.” (p. 9) http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/pdf/Natural_Gas_LCA_Update_082511.pdf
And since then, a number of institutions from a variety of sources have weighed in on the paper to conclude that the paper has too many errors to be credible. Even Howarth has said, “A lot of the data we used are really low quality, but I’m confident they are the best available” (http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April11/GasDrillingDirtier.html)
And here are just a few of the studies:
From U of MD (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044008): “A]rguments that shale gas is more polluting than coal arelargely unjustified.” {p. 8}
From CMU (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/3/034014/fulltext/): “For comparison purposes, Marcellus shale gas adds only 3% more emissions to the average conventional gas, which is likely within the uncertainty bounds of the study. Marcellus shale gas has lower GHG emissions relative to coal when used to generate electricity” and as quoted by Politico the lead researcher on this paper: “We don’t think they’re using credible data and some of the assumptions they’re making are biased. And the comparison they make at the end, my biggest problem, is wrong”
This paper says (warning: the sponsoring group is said to be a bunch of evil global warming deniers) “The Howarth estimates assume that daily methane emissions throughout the flowback period actually exceed the wells’ IP at completion. This is a fundamental error, since the gas stream builds up slowly during flowback. Compounding this error is the assumption that all flowback methane is vented… Vented emissions of the magnitudes estimated by Howarth would be extremely dangerous and subject to ignition”(http://heartland.org/sites/default/files/Mismeasuring%20Methane.pdf)
In June 2011 (I am missing this link, so this may be hearsay) a Cornell professor is said to have said, ““[Ingraffea’s and Howarth’s] analysis is seriously flawed in that they significantly overestimate the fugitive emissions associated with unconventional gas extraction…”
“[T]he assumptions used by Howarth et al. are inappropriate and…their data, which the authors themselves characterize as ‘limited’, do not support their conclusions”
Here is a Department of Energy Study (http://cce.cornell.edu/EnergyClimateChange/NaturalGasDev/Documents/PDFs/SKONE_NG_LC_GHG_Profile_Cornell_12MAY11_Final.pdf) that concludes that 62% of gas that was thought to have escaped is not lost at all – it is used to power equipment. Indeed, the study also points out that Howarth diverges from the IPCC use of a 100 year GW potential factor and uses instead a 20 year GW potential factor in his study.
Here is an interesting take from the NRDC: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlashof/natural_gas_needs_tighter_prod.html
Here is a study in England that addresses more than one of your claims, including the one regarding fractures getting all the way into the NYC reservoirs: http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/dei/JMPG_1575.pdf … “Our research found contamination of aquifers from drilling is very, very unlikely” Eliminating fracks within 600 meters of aquifers could virtually eliminate risks … Chance of fractures extending more than 350 meters (1,000 feet) found to be about 1%”
Several other studies are out there as well.
We’ll provide some links to analysis of the now famous Howarth study in a moment, but I presume Climate Change is a serious concern of people. As are risks to our water.
(1) Which country on earth has reduced carbon emissions more than any other in the previous decade? And why. Hint: our energy related CO2 emissions in the US this year are on track to reach levels not seen since 1992. And carbon emissions from coal are down to 1983 levels. Some of that is due to substitution of renewables (hydro especially); some due to clean-air regulations on smokestacks; but the majority due to?
(2) What are the most serious risks to America’s water supply right now and how do the potential risks from fracking compare to those?
“These are all important factors to take into consideration, as fracking is far from a black and white issue. ”
And a few paragraphs down you say that fracking should be banned on the national level. That seems pretty black and white.