In my backyard: Gas drilling rig sprouts in Remuda Ranch Estates, near Fort Worth, Texas. (Courtesy of Kathy Chruscielski)
Controversial path to possible glut of natural gas
Water and chemicals injected at high pressure can extract more gas – and possibly pollute drinking water.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ September 17, 2008 edition
Reporter Mark Clayton details the experience of a Texas woman whose home is near a natural gas drilling site.
Reporter Mark Clayton
After decades of declining US natural-gas production, an advanced drilling system so powerful it fractures rock with high-pressure fluid is opening up vast shale-gas deposits.
Instead of falling, US gas production is rising, with up to 118 years’ worth of “unconventional” natural gas reserves in 21 huge shale basins, an industry study in July reported. Such reserves could make the nation more energy self-sufficient and provide more of a cleaner “bridge fuel” to help meet carbon-reduction goals urged by environmentalists.
Shale gas reserves have a powerful economic lure. Companies, states, and landowners could all reap a windfall in the tens of billions. Some also predict lower heating costs for residential gas users as production increases.
Now, scores of natural gas companies are fanning out from Fort Worth, Texas, where hydraulic fracturing of shale has been done for at least five years, to lease shale lands in 19 states, including Pennsylvania and New York.
But some warn that by expanding “hydraulic fracturing” of shale, America strikes a Faustian bargain: It gains new energy reserves, but it consumes and quite possibly pollutes critical water resources.
“People need to understand that these are not your old-fashioned gas wells,” says Tracy Carluccio, special projects director for Delaware Riverkeeper, a watchdog group worried about a surge in new gas drilling from New York to Pennsylvania and from Ohio to West Virginia. “This technology produces tremendous amounts of polluted water and uses dangerous chemicals in every single well that’s developed.”
Traditional gas wells bore straight into porous stone, using a few thousand gallons of water during drilling. But dense shale has gas locked inside.
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” and horizontal drilling unlock it.
Each hydraulically fractured horizontal well can require from 2 million to 7 million gallons of fresh water mixed with sand and thousands of gallons of industrial chemicals to make the water penetrate more easily.
This frac-water mixture is blasted at high pressure into shale deposits up to 10,000 feet deep, fracturing them. The sand lodges in the cracks, propping them open and providing a path for the gas to exit after external pressure is released.
Besides using vast amounts of groundwater, scientists and environmentalists worry that toxic frac water – 30 percent or more – remains underground and may years later pollute freshwater aquifers.
Millions of gallons of frac water come back to the surface. It could be treated, but in Texas it is most often reinjected into the ground.
Millions more gallons of “produced” water flow out later during gas production. This flow, too, is often tainted with radioactivity and poisons from the shale. Often stored in pits, that waste can leak or overflow while awaiting reinjection.
Simply put: “Each of these wells uses millions of gallons of fresh water, and all of it is going to be contaminated,” Ms. Carluccio says.
Industry spokesmen say such fears are overblown.
“The wells we drill … are insulated with concrete,” says Chip Minty, a spokesman for Devon Energy, an Oklahoma City-based gas company that pioneered hydraulic fracturing in the Barnett shale formation beneath Fort Worth, Texas. “The purpose is to protect any kind of aquifer or ground water layer. Those processes are controlled by regulatory agencies, and that keeps us safe from any kind of aquifer pollution.”
A pioneer in “best practices,” Devon has also developed a way to purify and reuse frac water. But those techniques are costly and not widely used at present. Whether such practices will be required elsewhere is an open question.
Targets for this new kind of drilling
One huge target is the Marcellus shale basin that spans large parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. States are eager to get to get new revenues – and so are many landowners lining up to sign leases.
“I’ll be glad to welcome the crews with open arms,” writes Al Czervic in the Catskill Commentator, an online publication. “Drill here, my friends,” he writes, “Drill here. And then, drill some more.”
But amid this gold-rush-type fever in the Delaware and Susquehanna River Basins, voices warn that environmental safeguards and industry standards need to be beefed up before drill bits hit – or the great gas boom could exact a steep price in polluted water.
“Decades ago, we weren’t careful with coal mining,” wrote Bryan Swistock, a water resources specialist with the Penn State Cooperative Extension, in a recent statement. “As a result, we are still paying huge sums to clean up acid mine drainage. We need to be careful and vigilant or we could see lasting damage to our water resources from so many deep gas wells.”
State environmental agencies and industry experts say multiple systems will be in place to safeguard water.
“The current balanced management approach works – allowing for effective state regulatory programs that appropriately protect the environment while providing for the essential development of oil and gas,” wrote Stephanie Meadows, a senior policy adviser at the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington trade group, in an e-mail response to Monitor questions on hydraulic fracturing.
Where safeguards failed
Still, one can point to examples where those safeguards did not work. New Mexico and Colorado, which have struggled with leakage from frac-water waste pits involving gas exploration, are now moving forward with legislation.
“There are numerous instances in various states of surface water and drinking water contamination from hydraulic fracturing,” says Kate Sinding, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York. “Nobody, including the industry, has done any in-depth examination to find out the impact on ground water. We are seeing some bad stuff coming out of individual wells and taps.”
The nation’s shale-gas guinea pigs reside in 15 counties around Fort Worth, where shale-gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing has been validated in recent years. The results have brought wealth to some, but infuriated others.
Charlotte Harris and her husband signed a mineral lease last year. But she’s upset now. She sharply recalls a day last November when her drinking-water well died and a new gas well 100 yards from her Grandview, Texas, home was born.
She washed dishes that morning as usual, she says in an phone interview. But after a shower, her skin itched terribly and she realized the water had a sulfurous odor. Later that day, without warning, her toilet erupted. Water shot out of it “like Niagara Falls.”
About that time, she learned, powerful pump trucks at the nearby well site were sending pulses of water mixed with sand and chemicals thousands of feet down into solid shale to fracture it to increase the flow of gas. She and her husband now believe some of that fluid escaped under pressure much nearer the surface.
After the Harrises complained, the drilling company had the water tested but found no problem. Harris’s next-door neighbor, John Sayers, had a lab test his well water. The lab found toluene, a chemical used in explosives, paint stripper – and often in drilling fluids.
Almost a year later, the Harris family well water, once clear and sweet, is murky and foul-smelling. Ms. Harris’s husband, Stevan, trucks in about 1,500 gallons twice a week, at 15 cents a gallon.
“We’re not using that [well] water for anything at all,” Mr. Sayers says. “I was told not to drink, wash, or anything. Not even water my grass with it.”
Is New York City drinking water at risk?
In July, New York’s governor signed a bill to expand shale-gas drilling using fracturing technology, which could bring the state $1 billion in annual revenues. But the state is first requiring an updated environmental assessment and may yet require companies to reveal the type of chemicals they mix with the water they shoot down the wells – something that Texas does not require.
New York City is one of only four large cities in the nation with unfiltered drinking water. It flows from the northern Catskill region. That’s the same basin in which gas companies want to drill.
Drilling “is completely and utterly inconsistent with a drinking water supply,” said New York City Councilman James Gennaro at a press conference last month. “This would destroy the New York City watershed, and for what? For short-term gains on natural gas.”
But while New York has a drilling freeze pending its environmental review, a gas-drilling rush is on in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River region. Scores of wells are being drilled, with applications pending to drill hundreds more. In the long run, some say there may be 10,000 new gas wells across the region.
“We’re hearing various stories … about flow backwater,” says Susan Obleski, a spokeswoman for the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, which oversees water usage. “We could eventually be seeing 29 million gallons a day usage by this industry. That sounds like a lot, but golf courses use double that.”
The concern, however, is that the most productive gas drilling areas tend to be in remote, forested areas, with forested streams – headwaters areas. If water is removed in significant amounts from there, it could damage ecosystems and Susquehanna watershed water quality.
The SBRC has issued two cease-and-desist orders to companies illegally removing water. It has told 23 others to clarify requirements, and found that about 50, in all, are vying for water, leases, and drilling permits in the region.
Tiny Nockamixon Township, which has resisted gas drilling, is being sued by natural-gas drillers. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in which some towns are seeking to overturn lower court decisions that keep municipalities from having laws regulating gas drilling inside their borders.
Back in Texas, some are fighting the practice of reinjecting frac water into the earth. In Erath County, near Fort Worth, Bill Gordon has successfully protested several new commercial injection wells that, according to him, would have pumped as much as 30,000 barrels a day of untreated frac water underground.
A recent lightning strike set one such well on fire, proving to Mr. Gordon that volatile chemicals remain in the fluid.
“Nobody knows what’s in this drilling fluid,” he says. “I think we need to know.”
What’s being injected deep underground?
Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling are not new. Both date back decades. But their combined use to get gas from shale formations is new within the past decade.
Hydraulic fracturing has long been used to get gas from coal beds, a process some say is similar to shale-gas fracturing.
An Environmental Protection Agency study in 2004 concluded that hydraulic fracturing to get methane gas from coal beds “poses little or no threat” to drinking water supplies. But several EPA scientists have challenged that finding.
“EPA produced a final report … that I believe is scientifically unsound and contrary to the purposes of law,” Weston Wilson, a 30-year EPA veteran, wrote in a whistle-blower petition in 2004. “Based on the available science and literature, EPA’s conclusions are unsupportable.”
Today, chemicals used in fracturing are considered by the companies to be trade secrets. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempts companies from being forced by the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and other federal laws to reveal what chemicals are in their fracturing fluids.
But some say that it’s critical to know what’s being injected deep underground.
“We’re very concerned about this toxic drilling and hydraulic fracturing,” says Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project in Durango, Colo. “We need to know what’s in what they’re putting into the ground.”
[ Editor’s Note: The original version of this article described a New York bill as a way to “permit” shale-gas drilling using fracturing technology. In fact, fracturing was already permitted. The new bill changes “well-unit spacing” in a way that opens the way for greatly expanded use of hydraulic fracturing in tandem with horizontal drilling. ]
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Comments
2. Marcus | 09.17.08
Republicans should be happy about this. Another chance to make a bundle AND destroy some more of the country.
4. jb | 09.18.08
You get what you pay for - you can have cheap energy and cheap SUVs and a cheap disposable lifestyle. Or you can have expensive but clean energy. So you drive a smaller more efficient vehicle, buy fewer but more expensive items that last longer. Start acting like a human being instead of a monkey and think a few years out. Do you really need the newest ipod? The new color of carpeting, the second house, the boat, etc. etc.? I don’t give a damn about global warming but I sure don’t want to smell toluene in my drinking water. My friend’s car was just totaled when hit behind by a big Dodge Ram pickup. Pickup was fine of course, it rode right over the back of my friend’s Honda. Thanks a lot - bigger is not better - it’s just dumb.
5. allen | 09.18.08
Natural gas is nearly pure methane with the formula CH4. It’s thermal content per unit weight is only exceeded by hydrogen gas. Combustion of one methane molecule in air or oxygen yields 2 water molecules and 1 carbon dioxide molecule. This is the greenest of all hydrocarbon fuels. Its cleanliness and high thermal content makes it preferred for electrical power plant generation, but the best use for natural gas is clean home heating and cooking. There are also plans to use it in liquefied form (LNG) for transportation.
Natural gas is also very useful in commercially making hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is used in fertilizer production (ammonia), cracking tar-like hydrocarbon deposits to make gasoline, hydrogenation of oils, fuel cell operation, metallurgy and as a potential transportation fuel.
Clearly there is a rapidly growing demand for natural gas, LNG and hydrogen such that LNG is now being imported into the US, as our current supply is inadequate for our current demand. Fractured release of US gas is one possibility for solving our growing appetite for methane.
Instead would like to see natural gas mainly reserved for residential heating because of the distribution network and its cleanliness.
I would like to see type 4 nuclear reactors built to produce electrical power during peak demand and then be mainly used for hydrogen generation from water (not methane) at off-peak times for all users of hydrogen. Nuclear is a pure green technology with zero pollution. Hydrogen is also nonpolluting and pure green as the only combustion product is pure water vapor.
France uses nuclear to generate 80% of their nuclear power. China and India has that goal with reactors on order. Most of the US navy ships are nuclear powered with up to 7 reactors on an aircraft carrier where sailors work and sleep around them day and night.
As hydrocarbon fuels become exhausted, the US will need nuclear fuel. If the Volt car is battery is successful, I see transportation running off of electrical generation plants rather soon.
I just hope the US who first unleashed atomic power is not the last one to adopt a nuclear future, which operates on fission. The final step will be fusion reactors not yet possible, which is the power source of our sun. These are the things the US needs to work on now, before we are constrained by dwindling hydrocarbon fuels, as the world becomes a massive energy user within the next 10 to 30 years.
Remember time goes by swiftly and we have a very slow moving congress that takes many missteps. Peace.
6. Chuck | 09.18.08
There is a company out of Stuart Florida that has developed a technology for treating the Frac-flow water and is also working on the produced waters as well.
Devon Energy,Williams, and Newfield are all currently working on pilot programs with Ecosphere Techologies to treat and reuse this water in order to protect their neighbors around these sites. I think it’s great that these companies are taking a proactive approach to protecting the environment.
7. Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D. | 09.18.08
This so-called glut of natural gas is illusive, as we need to make thousands of drilling rigs at a time when capital is very scarce and it will become more scarce as oil becomes more expensive. And, without cheap oil, we won’t have natural gas, coal, nuclear, nor wind/solar. All energies depend on oil for their mining, processing, manufacture, transportation, and maintenance.
According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue steadily until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
Surviving Peak Oil: We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from “outside,” and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
8. Steve | 09.18.08
It seems that this is another Left wing scare tactic to stop the country from trying to keep us from running out of natural gas
9. Jerry Lobdill | 09.18.08
For those in areas where there is shale gas trapped below waiting to be produced by this “new” technology, Fort Worth is the nation’s test case and template for urban gas development. You would be well advised to watch what is happening here very closely, because it’s coming soon to your area. Pay no attention to what the industry says. They are some of the most dishonest and predatory businesses we’ve ever seen. They have a scripted attack plan for every play they attack (and it is an attack). Here is their plan:
1. Well in advance of any marketing of a new target area send in a reconnaissance team to feel out the local government. If there seems to be a less than enthusiastic attitude, fund pro-drilling candidates in the local election prior to starting the attack.
2. With governmental support assured send in the PR team with plenty of money to use to sow seeds of greed and promote a “We all win!” message.
3. Send in landmen to attack mineral rights owners one-on-one with producer’s form leases that speak not of anything but easy profits. Say nothing about pipelines, huge water requirements, toxic waste, unbelievable heavy traffic on roads and streets designed for light traffic, 24-7 drilling and bright lights, compressors that create harmful levels of noise, etc. Don’t mention that the “No Surface Use” lease is a fraudulent claim, because the driller’s wholly owned pipeline subsidiary will come in after the leases are signed and take pipeline right of way from lessors through eminent domain or the threat thereof while pretending to be not an arm of the drilling company that promised “No Surface Use”.
4. After greed and gold rush fever have provided all the leases needed then start the pipeline development. Blame the victims if they complain. Use government cronies to pacify the marks with assurances that regulation will keep them safe from fire and explosion, and that they are helpless to prevent eminent domain even if they have a zoning ordinance that protects people from such other dangerous industrial uses as a fireworks warehouse in a residential area.
5. Plan your attack to be a blitzkrieg so that the people are suckered in and committed before they realize how the deck has been stacked. Buy Tommy Lee Jones or some other locally popular celebrity to lecture the people to stop whining and get rich.
6. After the vast network of unodorized, raw, wet gas gathering pipelines have been installed, monetize your investment and move on to the next attack. Let the second and third operators deal with the “significant events” that are bound to occur regardless of regulations and “new technology”.
10. Gary D | 09.18.08
Watch around Ft. Worth very closely. The oil and gas men are buying the politicians and local paper and bad mouthing the people documenting the damage their injection wells are doing.
Sharon has had an interesting experience.
http://txsharon.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-i-became-far-left-radical-with.html
http://txsharon.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-barnett-shale-sludge-pond.html
11. Kim Feil | 09.18.08
Watch a sneak preview of video http://www.waterunderattack.com
God bless us cause we are gonna need it!
12. Charles Barrows | 09.18.08
E-Connections should run this type of story by the Exploration and Production arm of Black Hills Corporation before printing. We do have in-house expertise. Hydraulic “fracing”, along with the water and chemicals that are used, is a technique that has been in use, and continually improved on, for the past 50 years. It is not something new, the water requirements cited are vastly inflated and the chemicals used, when used, are largely inert.
Water returning to the surface and causing habitation problems are extremely rare. By devoting such a large part of the article to rare, isolated incidents leaves the impression that the drilling and production industry routinely engages in unsafe practices and/or often can’t control the procedure.
Hydrolic fracturing is nether a new Godsend that will solve our energy problems nor is it a new threat to our environment. This type of article does nothing except feed the ‘green’ hysteria. The end result is that we’ll all be paying for unnecessary cost increases regulating something that is already well-regulated and we won’t be any healthier.
13. Jerome | 09.18.08
Nuclear power is not clean. Uranium mining pollutes ground water in South Texas. Wells with 5-8 times the recommended exposure to uranium are not safe, not clean. The companies that poison the wells avoid personal and corporate responsibility. Regulatory agencies protect business, not people. Business elect officials who appoint business insiders to the regulatory agencies. It is not clean.
14. John Q Democrat | 09.23.08
Interesting that T. Boone Pickens has been buying up water rights in Texas. Could he be planning to be the purveyor of nonpolluted water if his plan to run all cars on natural gas comes to fruition?
15. elizabeth | 09.26.08
I live on a ranch in south texas and we have a lot of oil and gas exploration here. It’s a huge mess. I made a webpage and blog and I take the photos and make the youtube movies so people can see first hand what a gas lease operated by major oil companies looks like. It is a COMPLETE disaster. The companies that operate on this lease are ExxonMobil, Chevron, El Paso Natural Gas, and Sierra Resources LLC. If you live in Pennsylvania and want to see what an oil and gas lease looks like — you can go to my website. http://www.RanchoLosMalulos.com
If you like what you see then I suggest you sign a lease with one of these companies ASAP. Who needs trees or groundwater anyway?
16. Kathy Chruscielski | 09.27.08
Gas drilling in the Barnett Shale is threatening our groundwater, damaging our streets, polluting our air and changing Fort Worth from a “most liveable city” to an industrial area. An excellent source of consumer information is found at http://www.fwcando.org
17. Carol Overland | 09.30.08
My client, Nancy Prehn, lives on top of a natural gas storage dome in south central Minnesota, just north of Waseca. (”legalectric.org” and search for “Prehn” or “Simon Industries” or “CenterPoint” or “Hutchinson”) It’s under 10 square miles of farmland that the gas company paid $35/acre for back in the late 1960s. There is 7 billion c.f. of natural gas below her house, and they routinely suck it out and pump it in, and her water, when they’re doing that, turns black with chunks. There are nasty chemicals in the water, has been for decades and no one cares, only enough to build underground tanks to collect the flow from the wells when the pump them, forced by her actions in the 1990s, but their well water remains a mess. They say the 700-1000ft deep natural gas storage has no impact on her 300ft well, but that’s not what her kitchen faucet says… If you’re looking at impacts of natural gas, check out “Gas Migration” by Khilyuk. Gas moves around, it migrates, and it’s not just movement into and of the water supply, or leakage resulting in “BOOM!” It also is related to earthquakes and other seismic activity. Living with wells or storage isn’t a gas!
Carol Overland
Attorney for Nancy Prehn v. Simon Industries
p.s. We did stop the gas plant, successfully challenging a legislative tax exemption, and the cost tanked the project!
18. Lisa Bracken | 02.03.09
Our website may be a useful resource for anyone researching natural gas drilling and the effects of hydraulic fracturing.
Our area was the focus of the 2004 EnCana well blow-out that released an est. 115 mil cubic feet of raw gas into the surrounding environment including West Divide Creek (still blowing benzene) - as much as a half mile away.
journeyoftheforsaken.com
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
2. Greener Minds- Sustainable Living in Western New York » Blog Archive » CSM Has a Piece on NG Fracking and Water | 09.18.08
3. More natural gas today, less and polluted water tomorrow. | Water Conservation News -NUPRANA | 09.19.08
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1. Donald Sherwood | 09.17.08
2/3,s water we are, use the gas to steam sea water,no shortage
no problem.
Love is the answer