Mr. Crews Goes to Belleville

Well, as it turned out, a whole slew of unexpected guests showed up (ie: not the usual Unitarians), many of them members of the Local 18 (International Union of Operating Engineers) in Ohio, as well as a few folks from the PR team at EID-Ohio (Energy in Depth), an oil and gas industry group that supports the development of oil and gas resources in Ohio. As it turns out, there had been an ad for the talk in a local newspaper and someone had heard about it and decided the O/G folks needed to show up to defend oil and gas politics in Ohio. It appears most people in the audience came expecting me to rant against oil and gas development (I think this goes for both the pro-frac and the anti-frac sides). You can read the O/G industry take on the talk I gave, and watch some fun videos of the talk and debate, as well as hear from a few of the Local 18 workers, on the EID-Ohio website: Ohio’s Local 18 Members Stand United in Support of Shale Development in Belleville. My overall message, however, was not specifically a pro or anti politics, but rather one of informed policy based on personal education around the politics and details of oil and gas development.You can watch an excerpt of my talk at the Unitarian Church courtesy of EID-Ohio’s PR folks below.

One thing that makes a talk like this challenging–at least from my perspective–is that many people already have in mind what they want (or expect) to hear, especially with a heated issue like fracking. The issue is further complicated by the fact that the technology itself–while not new in the modern sense of the latest phone app, is barely a century old, and high-volume horizontal fracturing (aka HVHF) in particular only dates to the late 1970’s. There is a really fascinating history here about the role of the Eastern Gas Shales Project, which was a joint DOE-oil and gas industry project designed to explore unconventional gas deposits coming out of the 1973 Oil Embargo by OPEC, and the Morgantown Energy Research Center (aka MERC), both of which focused on Devonian shale in the Appalachian basin–but that’s another story for another post (coming soon). For those really antsy folks, you can read an interesting but politically problematic overview of shale gas developments during this time by the liberal greenwashers over at the Breakthrough Institute. Now back to our story.

Needless to say, the topic of fracking is a complex one with many interconnecting parts that are as much scientific as they are politics. For the sake of my talk, I was planning to largely focus on some of the issues that my class had come across in the course of our review of New York’s new proposed rule, and by and large, that is what I stuck to. A few of those issues include:

• How are the economics calculated?

In the case of the dSGEIS (the environmental review document for NY), there were some highly problematic estimates used for calculating economic benefits. As just one example, a Rothschild study that was used for estimating benefits to landowners from gas leases used an estimate of around $6/mcf as the market rate for gas. The problem is, based on a quick check of the weekly gas prices, Henry Hub gas is trading at about $3/mcf, or roughly half of the estimated price. So any projections based on that number would have to be cut in half, thus making all of the economic projections of associated benefits in the document inflated by 100%.

• Disclosure of fracking proppant additives

While this is one of the common refrains from environmental opponents of fracking, it’s not without cause. The oil and gas industry uses more than 300 chemical additives in their fracking operations, and a majority of them are industrial toxins–ranging from somewhat toxic to outright lethal. This problem stems from the fact that the EPA and other federal regulatory agencies, rather than banning harmful chemicals outright, have instead taken the approach of setting minimal and maximum safe levels for many industrial toxins–largely thanks to the influence of industry–and in particular the energy industry. So rather than banning toxins, we attempt to set “safe” levels, which is a surefire plan to slow environmental contamination and pollution, which is precisely what we see across the entire US–and world–but that too is another topic and post. The key point for our discussion here is that while we know that many of the chemicals used are toxic, there are even more being used that we have essentially ZERO health and safety information on. And to make matters worse, we have even less than zero information about synergistic effects of multiple chemicals interactions when combined in these fracking fluids. And if all of this is not enough, most companies have deemed their fracking fluids as “trade secrets” akin to KFC’s “secret ingredients” and therefore not privy to routine public disclosure laws. So in other words, it’s an ironic “don’t bother asking cause we’re not going to tell” policy where the public trusts regulators who trust industry who in turn claims that everything is safe and there are no possible problems.

• Energy and sustainability trade-offs

This is one of the areas where the environmental community is on the weakest footing, mostly because they have no solutions but lots of criticisms about our current energy crisis. The truth of the matter is, no matter how much we want it to be the case, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and all the other so-called “green” energy solution are not enough to replace our current lifestyle and energy demands, and based on even the most conservative estimates, this energy use is expected to double or more globally by the end of the century. And right now the major new sources of energy generation coming on line are Chinese coal-fired power plants.

Because the environmental community, and really the entire world, has no viable alternative plan, and the plans that are out there have limited political support at best, there is no hope of this trend changing anytime soon. So while the environmental argument may hold the moral upper hand in terms of its end vision, when it comes to putting out cards on the table, it’s a lot of 2 and 3’s, and no kings or aces. And because of that, the arguments about natural gas as the “clean energy” alternative to coal or oil are easy for the average person to grasp. If you don’t believe me, check out the latest PR video from Spectra Energy, called Energy for Life, touting the future of natural gas as the industry ramps up for its public relations efforts ahead of the opening of massive new explorations of the Marcellus shale in places like Western New York and Eastern Ohio:

So as long as the energy industry gets to set the terms of the national energy policy debate, which they effectively have since at least the Ford administration, little is likely to change. Given that reality, the environmental community has a choice to face: oppose all new gas exploration or work to improve the future plans for more gas exploration. And the reality is, they don’t want either, so they are stuck opposing both. And the end result is that nothing changes in energy policy, and a lot of people complain while cooking with gas, heating with gas, and going about their daily lives all the while reliant on natural gas. It’s a big problem indeed.

 

When discussing complex issues, there are no simple answers

This is especially the case for an issue like fracking. With the recent schlew of earthquakes in Eastern Ohio, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) finally put a hold on a number of proposed deep injection wells which were slated to open in early 2012.

A September 2011 article in Nature magazine sparked a lively debate about fracking with a piece called Natural Gas: Should Fracking Stop? For more insight into that debate, check out this Multimedia Storytelling post.

Today, Nature published a comprehensive article presenting both sides of the hydrofracking debate. “Natural gas: Should fracking stop?” offers affirmative opinions of Robert W. Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea alongside the counter argument of Terry Engelder. The commentary raises valid points supported by data and research.

Both from Cornell University, Howarth and Ingraffea are professors in ecology and environmental engineering, respectively. Engelder is a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University. Collectively, these men accumulate over 90 years of experience within their respective fields.

You can read the whole piece by clicking on the image on the right, but here are the lead paragraphs to give you a sense of the debate:

No Frack

Natural gas from shale is widely promoted as clean compared with oil and coal, a ‘win–win’ fuel that can lessen emissions while still supplying abundant fossil energy over coming decades until a switch to renewable energy sources is made. But shale gas isn’t clean, and shouldn’t be used as a bridge fuel.

Pro Frack

After a career in geological research on one of the world’s largest gas supplies, I am a born-again ‘cornucopian’. I believe that there is enough domestic gas to meet our needs for the foreseeable future thanks to technological advances in hydraulic fracturing. According to IHS, a business-information company in Douglas County, Colorado, the estimated recoverable gas from US shale source rocks using fracking is about 42 trillion cubic metres, almost equal to the total conventional gas discovered in the United States over the past 150 years, and equivalent to about 65 times the current US annual consumption.

And this brings me to the next point, which is the debate over and within the scientific community on the risks and benefits of fracking. A case in point: the links between fracking, deep injection wells and earthquakes. Here are a few links for those interested, in no particular order, based on some of the research I have done to date.

Earthquake Generation, Hydrofracking, and Fluid Injection

Rocky Mountain Arsenal Deep Well Injection report – 1951/1990

UK Cuadrilla Geomechanical Study of Bowland Shale Seismicity- 2011

And if the Cuadrilla report wasn’t enough, at the start of 2012 Cuadrilla Resources is back at their old fracking game again, but this time the people of West Sussex, UK are not having it, as over 200 residents of the village showed up to tell executives from Cuadrilla Resources that they have no interest in fracking in their area.

 “‘What you are about to do will make our water beyond toxic!” Ella Reeves shouted at Mark Miller, the Pennsylvania oil man who had come to Balcombe to explain plans to search for hydrocarbons 800 metres under the Sussex weald. “It’s about money for you, but for me it is about life.'”

And finally, there is a very fascinating study which was published called “triggered earthquakes and deep well activities” by Craig Nicholson and Robert L. Wesson. The highlight of the report for our interest here is the following:

Earthquakes can be triggered by any significant perturbation of the hydrologic regime. In areas where potentially active faults are already close to failure, the increased pore pressure resulting from fluid injection, or, alternatively, the massive extraction of fluid or gas, can induce sufficient stress and/or strain changes that, with time, can lead to sudden catastrophic failure in a major earthquake. Injection-induced earthquakes typically result from the reduction in frictional strength along preexisting, nearby faults caused by the increased formation fluid pressure. Earthquakes associated with production appear to respond to more complex mechanisms of subsidence, crustal unloading, and poroelastic changes in response to applied strains induced by the massive withdrawal of subsurface material. As each of these different types of triggered events can occur up to several years after well activities have begun (or even several years after all well activities have stopped), this suggests that the actual triggering process may be a very complex combination of effects, particularly if both fluid extraction and injection have taken place locally. To date, more than thirty cases of earthquakes triggered by well activities can be documented throughout the United States and Canada. Based on these case histories, it is evident that, owing to preexisting stress conditions in the upper crust, certain areas tend to have higher probabilities of exhibiting such induced seismicity.

For a very extensive set of additional resourcse and reports on the links between deep well injections and seismic activity check out this Induced Earthquake Bibliography.

The Pollution Problem

Finally, besides the issue of links between fracking and deep injection wells for fracking fluid disposal, there is the more general issue of pollution and contamination from fracking. Here are some additional resources related specifically to these links between fracking and pollution as reported in the mainstream press recently:

EPA: ‘Fracking’ likely polluted town’s water – 2011

Oklahoma fracking and earthquake links – 2011

Showdown this week over ‘fracking’ for natural gas

 

While this is only a cursory review of the fracking issue, the talk in Belleville brought home the larger problem which the environmental community and those opposed to fracking are faced with. When talking with folks like those in Local 18, who showed up in Belleville for the talk, it’s nice to talk about clean energy and all that–but what really matters to a lot of them is having a job to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. And the same goes for environmentalists, who are no less needing of these resources. But if you make a living laying pipes, running heavy equipment and doing earth moving work, how do these types of jobs fit into a clean energy future? It’s a critical question that we need to think about, because as long as the environmental community keeps saying no no no and offers no viable solutions, we’re going to be stuck with more of the same.

And while it’s important to acknowledge that a lot of people are working on alternative energy solutions, we also need to be realistic with ourselves. We are no where near an green energy economy being viable in the US, much less on a larger scale, and as long as keep putting out money and building our life around a fossil fuel economy, we’re largely blowing a lot of hot air when we oppose natural gas with nothing to put in its place. Until we can do that, we’re better off trying to make alliances with folks in Local 18 and other similar industries and trying to make sure they put safety and responsibility at the top of their job list. After all, these are the folks on the proverbial front lines who will determine if a job goes smoothly, or turns into another Gulf Oil spill nightmare. While it might be a bitter pill to swallow, I’d rather know they are thinking about safety while drilling new wells in the Marcellus than not giving it a second thought.

Sometimes allies are found in strange places. After all, and as I stressed in the discussion afterwards over coffee and doughnuts, the real people in charge are not union workers from Eastern Ohio or academics in New York, it’s the energy lobbyists in Washington DC and statehouses around the country. That’s where we need to be waging the real battle, because that’s where the real decisions are being made every day. And until we figure out a strategy to change those politics, the environmental community is going to be fighting a losing fracking battle.