British Geologists Dismiss Shale Gas Pollution Fears

 

1) British Geologists Dismiss Shale Gas Pollution Fears - The Press Association, 10 January 2012

2) Shale Drilling Won’t Start Dangerous Quakes, U.K. Scientists Say - Bloomberg, 10 January 2012

3) Nick Grealy: Science At Last On UK Shale Gas - No Hot Air, 11 January 2012

4) Shale And GHG: Cornell Vs Cornell - Natural Gas Europe, 6 January 2012

5) Clark Whelton: Shale Game - City Journal, 8 January 2012

6) Peter Glover: A Shale-Fuelled Economic Miracle For 2012 - Energy Tribune, 5 January 2012

 

1) British Geologists Dismiss Shale Gas Pollution Fears

The Press Association, 10 January 2012

It is "extremely unlikely" that ground water supplies would be polluted by methane as a result of controversial "fracking" for shale gas, UK geologists have said. And although the process, which uses high-pressure liquid pumped deep underground to fracture shale rock and release gas, caused two earthquakes in Lancashire last year, the quakes were too small to cause damage, they said.

Campaigners have called for a moratorium on fracking in the UK in the face of the earthquakes and amid fears it could lead to pollution of drinking water by methane gas or chemicals in the liquid used in the process.

Fracking has proved controversial in the US, where shale gas is already being exploited on a large scale and where footage has been captured of people able to set fire to the water coming out of their taps as a result of gas contamination.

But Professor Mike Stephenson, of the British Geological Survey, said most geologists thought it was a "pretty safe activity" and the risks associated with it were low.

He said the distance between groundwater supplies around 40-50 metres below the surface and the deep sources of gas in the shale a mile or two underground, made it unlikely methane would leak into water as a result of fracking.

There was no evidence in peer-reviewed literature of pollution of water by methane as a result of fracking, he said, adding that the presence of the gas in US water supplies was likely to be natural. But a survey was currently being conducted in the UK, to establish a baseline of any gas naturally found in groundwater before drilling took place.

"If you don't know what the baseline is, you don't know if people are running a tight ship. There's natural methane in groundwater and you have to distinguish between what's there already and what might have leaked in."

He said two cases of methane pollution of water in the US, neither of which were due to fracking for shale gas, were the result of mismanagement. The UK has one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the world, he added.

Fracking by energy company Cuadrilla was halted in the Blackpool area last year, after two small quakes in the area which the geologists are certain were caused by fracking. Although they were felt by around 50 people in the area, they were too small to cause any damage.

 

2) Shale Drilling Won’t Start Dangerous Quakes, U.K. Scientists Say

Bloomberg, 10 January 2012

Kari Lundgren

Drilling for shale gas in the U.K. won’t cause dangerous earthquakes and poses little risk to the environment given appropriate safeguards, scientists said.

“Most geologists think this is a pretty safe activity,” Mike Stephenson, head of energy science at the British Geological Survey, said at a briefing in London today. “We think the risk is pretty low and we have the scientific tools to tell if there is a problem.”

Hydraulic fracturing, a process using water, sand and chemicals to open fissures in rocks and release natural gas, has made the U.S the world’s largest natural-gas producer while raising concerns the technique pollutes drinking water and causes earthquakes. Exploration was suspended in northwest England last year after fracturing gas wells caused two tremors.

Fracking, as the process has become known, is unlikely to start earthquakes stronger than magnitude 3.3 on the Richter scale, a level that typically causes no damage to property, and most will be around magnitude 2, said Peter Styles, a professor of applied and environmental geophysics at Keele University.

The U.K. could have more shale gas the previously thought, Stephenson said. The British Geological Survey is reviewing its estimates for U.K. onshore shale gas resources. The survey originally estimated that there is about 150 billion cubic meters of shale gas onshore, compared with about 300 billion cubic meters of conventional gas resources.

More Gas Than Iraq

Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. says it’s found more natural gas trapped in the shale rock around Blackpool in northwest England than Iraq has in its entire reserves.

“There is much more shale than we thought under Blackpool,” the British Geological Survey’s Stephenson said at the briefing, adding more research remains to be done on the impact of fracking.

Styles said he has examined seismic data from thirty years of coal mining in the English midlands to assess the threat from fracking. The research suggests there is a “low” probability of unconventional gas drilling operations causing major earthquakes, he said

The rock drilled by Cuadrilla, the company that caused last year’s earthquakes, is similar to that found at the country’s major coal-mining sites, suggesting potential tremors will be of a similar or lesser magnitude, he said.

“There’s not an exact analogy to coal mining, but the seismicity is remarkably similar,” Styles said at the briefing organized by the Science Media Center. “If there are going to be others, they will be about this magnitude and because they’re of that magnitude they’re very unlikely to cause damage.”

The first tremor set off by Cuadrilla was on April 1 and measured magnitude 2.3 on the Richter scale. A weaker quake of 1.5 was recorded in May.

The debate over shale drilling in the U.S. and Europe has intensified in recent months following tremors near wastewater disposal sites in Ohio and concerns about water pollution in Pennsylvania. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying the effects of fracking on drinking water with an eye on possible nationwide regulations.

3) Nick Grealy: Science At Last On UK Shale Gas

No Hot Air, 11 January 2012

Mike Stephenson of the British Geological Survey made an important and fairly definitive contribution to the shale debate yesterday. First the BBC report

It is "extremely unlikely" shale gas drilling in Lancashire could contaminate ground water supplies, a leading geologist has said.

Professor Mike Stephenson of the British Geological Survey said most experts thought the process, known as fracking, was a "pretty safe activity".

Also from the Press Association.

Professor Mike Stephenson, of the British Geological Survey, said most geologists thought it was a "pretty safe activity" and the risks associated with it were low.

He said the distance between groundwater supplies around 40-50 metres below the surface and the deep sources of gas in the shale a mile or two underground, made it unlikely methane would leak into water as a result of fracking.

There was no evidence in peer-reviewed literature of pollution of water by methane as a result of fracking, he said, adding that the presence of the gas in US water supplies was likely to be natural. But a survey was currently being conducted in the UK, to establish a baseline of any gas naturally found in groundwater before drilling took place.

"If you don't know what the baseline is, you don't know if people are running a tight ship. There's natural methane in groundwater and you have to distinguish between what's there already and what might have leaked in."

He said two cases of methane pollution of water in the US, neither of which were due to fracking for shale gas, were the result of mismanagement. The UK has one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the world, he added.

The only newspaper report is in the Guardian, although they mention it in passing:

The chief executive of the company pioneering shale gas "fracking" in the UK is to face his home county critics, as leading scientists urged closer monitoring of new drilling.

Note the language here, trying to sow doubt and controversy even if, as seven paragraphs later:

Peter Styles, professor of applied and environmental geophysics at Keele University, said the chemicals used in fracking in the UK were relatively common, including compounds close to those found in household detergents and contact lenses, and were unlikely to cause problems of pollution. He also said the seismic activity that had been prompted by the Cuadrilla drilling near Blackpool was very small, and similar to that found in coalmining areas. However, he urged monitoring of drill sites and said that if further earthquakes caused problems in the wells drilled – for instance, by cracking the cement casing – then the wells would have to be reformed, a very expensive process.

The Guardian also tries a Peak Oil tactic it's used in the past, casting doubt on the size of the resource:

The geologists also said Cuadrilla's estimates for how much gas could be recovered in the UK were many times higher than their own calculations. Last year, Cuadrilla put the potential shale gas resources in the Lancashire region alone at a massive 200 trillion cubic feet – an amount that could supply the whole of the UK's gas needs for more than five decades.

But over at Bloomberg, the story is entirely different:

The U.K. could have more shale gas the previously thought, Stephenson said. The British Geological Survey is reviewing its estimates for U.K. onshore shale gas resources. The survey originally estimated that there is about 150 billion cubic meters of shale gas onshore, compared with about 300 billion cubic meters of conventional gas resources.

“There is much more shale than we thought under Blackpool,” the British Geological Survey’s Stephenson said at the briefing,

I assume they were at the same briefing, although only Bloomberg thinks it's important enough to say who organised it, The Science Media Centre.

As far as I can see, every other newspaper including the alleged quality press such as The Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent and The Times didn't show up. The BBC story is local, not national and appears to be rewrite of the Press Association story. Surprising in that the SMC obviously is a major source of "background" to the press otherwise.  Background, to the uninitiated is research that in somewhere like the US, the press actually do themselves. Here in the UK, it's far simpler to rewrite background created by other people, catering it to your political outlook as we see in the discrepancy between the Guardian and Bloomberg.  We can expect the majority of the press to continue printing stories about the "controversial" fracking technique illustrated by flaming taps, earthquakes and Blackpool Tower. Why let a narrative be interrupted by those pesky little fact things?

Science at last. But if it doesn't get printed or gets distorted it shows how much further we still need to travel.

4) Shale And GHG: Cornell Vs Cornell

Natural Gas Europe, 6 January 2012

Newly published research by Cornell University scientists challenges the core calculations and conclusions of a paper by other Cornell researchers, led by Robert Howarth.

The publication of "Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations,” by Howarth and colleagues Anthony Ingraffea and Renee Santoro in Climatic Change Letters, disputed the wide circulated proposition that shale gas drilling was a positive development, because natural gas emits half the greenhouse gases of coal, and a third less than oil.

Howarth’s “life-cycle evaluation” of shale gas drilling, suggested that shale gas had a larger greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint than coal and that this larger footprint “undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over the coming decade."

The paper became a lighting rod for opponents of the hydraulic fracturing technique used in shale gas extraction.

An abstract from the new paper by Lawrence M. Cathles, Larry Brown, Milton Taam and Andrew Hunter concludes:

We argue here that their (Howarth et al.) analysis is seriously flawed in that they significantly overestimate the fugitive emissions associated with unconventional gas extraction, undervalue the contribution of “green technologies” to reducing those emissions to a level approaching that of conventional gas, base their comparison between gas and coal on heat rather than electricity generation (almost the sole use of coal), and assume a time interval over which to compute the relative climate impact of gas compared to coal that does not capture the contrast between the long residence time of CO₂ and the short residence time of methane in the atmosphere. High leakage rates, a short methane GWP, and comparison in terms of heat content are the inappropriate bases upon which Howarth et al. ground their claim that gas could be twice as bad as coal in its greenhouse impact. Using more reasonable leakage rates and bases of comparison, shale gas has a GHG footprint that is half and perhaps a third that of coal.

Howarth's conclusions were widely questioned.  The foe of hydraulic fracturing did acknowledge that his conclusions were based on limited data.

Read the new paper, by Lawrence M Cathles, Larry Brown, Milton Taam and Andrew Hunter - A Commentary on “The Greenhouse‐gas footprint of natural gas in shale formations” by R.W. Howarth, R. Santoro, and Anthony Ingraffea

5) Clark Whelton: Shale Game

City Journal, 8 January 2012

New York State is a lonely holdout against the natural-gas revolution.

From Australia and China to South Africa and Eastern Europe, the global economy is being transformed by the extraction of huge amounts of natural gas from shale rock. The United States has played a major part in this revolution; new “plays,” as fields of shale gas are known, are now producing in Texas, Louisiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Colorado, West Virginia, and other states. In the last three years, more than 3,000 gas wells have been drilled in western Pennsylvania’s share of the huge Marcellus shale formation. With more and more producers in the business, the price of natural gas has dropped steadily, and the U.S. has become the world’s leading producer of natural gas. A new age of clean, cheap shale-gas energy is about to begin—except, perhaps, in New York State, where influential environmental groups seem to be winning their struggle against shale.

One might expect a no-drill agenda to find few friends in New York, which desperately needs the revenue and economic growth that shale gas has brought to other states. The Empire State faces a $3 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2013. According to State Budget Solutions, a nonpartisan think tank, New York’s deficits, long-term debt, and pension obligations total $305 billion. High taxes, unemployment, and a burdensome cost of living make New York Number One in emigration to other states. Governor Andrew Cuomo has described the state’s financial outlook as “grim.”

Shale gas development would help turn things around, especially in rural areas where jobs are scarce. Much of upstate New York sits directly on top of geological features that hold the promise of an economic bonanza—including the Marcellus, one of the largest shale-gas formations in the world, and the Utica, an even larger formation beneath the Marcellus that extends from Kentucky to Ontario. The Marcellus and Utica formations represent an extraordinary opportunity for New York. Various studies agree that for decades to come, shale-gas development in the state could create billions of dollars in new economic activity and tens of thousands of jobs.

But in 2008, former governor David Paterson imposed a moratorium on shale-gas drilling in New York.  Full story

 

6) Peter Glover: A Shale-Fuelled Economic Miracle For 2012

Energy Tribune, 5 January 2012

Amidst the doom and gloom headlines presaging dire prognostications for the Western economies in 2012 there is the very real promise of a global economy re-directing miracle in the making. The impact and promise of shale gas and shale oil is probably the good news story as we step into 2012. Not that you would know it, given the media’s predilection for bad news.

Only two obstacles stand in the way. First, bad energy policies that do not prioritise cheaper fossil fuels – dumping countless millions out of jobs and into fuel poverty. Second, environmentalist campaigners implacably opposed to any hydrocarbon-fuelled energy development. It threatens their Disney-esque utopian blueprint.

But before we glimpse a rare ray of sunshine amidst the stretching economic gloom, we must first demolish a key widely held myth that is fuelling bad energy policy-making: that oil and gas prices will only go on rising, ultimately rendering their cost comparable to expensive and feeble renewable energy generation. As economist and professor of energy policy Dieter Helm’s recent excellent article pointed out, the UK’s current bias towards expensive renewables is a direct result of energy secretary Chris Huhne’s unwavering faith that the price of fossil fuels can only go on rising.

That’s precisely the mistake an incoming Conservative Government made in 1979. Then oil prices peaked at $39 a barrel (the equivalent of $150 today). In the mid-1980s, however, the bottom dropped out of the oil price ‘barrel’ taking over 25 years to recover. As Helm points out, it is the peak oil and gas brigade – today, a useful ally to the green lobbies – who assume depleting resources based on then known reserves. As Helm says: “Nonsense – and some of it dangerous nonsense”.

Helm rightly asserts, “The Earth’s crust is riddled with fossil fuels” adding “there is enough oil and gas (and coal too) to fry the planet several times over.” And his words echo Huber and Mills’ definitive quote on the subject, “Energy supplies – for all practical purposes – are infinite”. The issue is not (and never has been) too much or too little of a given resource. It has always been whether prices are too low or too high to make extraction viable.  Today, the shale gas and oil “miracle” – or rather man’s ingenuity in finding new ways to tap previously unrecoverable resources – has yet again blown a gaping hole in the peak-ist argument; as the end of year figures make only too plain.

According to EIA figures at the end of 2011, U.S. net imports of oil hit 45 percent from its high of 60 percent in 2005. That’s its lowest level since the mid-1990s. While reduced demand and greater energy efficiency played a part, a significant element is imputed to increased U.S. oil production, especially from shale-oil rich North Dakota. At the end of 2011 oil production in the ND Bakken formation hit a record high of over 600,000 barrels a day. In 2000, the formation was producing less than 100,000 barrels a day. Production here is now set to see the state outstrip California and Alaska early in 2012, making it America’s second largest oil producing state. While much of the United States is suffering economic hardship with employment at around 9 percent, North Dakota’s Bakken region has less than 2 percent joblessness. Further, the region has significant income levels, tax revenue growth, and the housing market is holding its own with the lowest number of foreclosures nationally.

The Eagle Ford oil shale field in Texas has generated 13,000 jobs and more than $500 million in salaries. All since drilling began in 2008. By 2020, Eagle Ford is projected to create up to 68,000 jobs as the formation hits the greatest oil boom in Texan history. The Tuscaloosa Marine Shale that stretches through Louisiana is estimated to hold around 7 billion barrels of oil. The impact of development on the local economy in the Baton Rouge area alone is expected to be “huge”.

Over in the north-east’s enormous Marcellus shale gas field, the economic outlook is just as dramatic. Since 2006, gas production has rocketed by 25 percent making the United States global top dog in gas production, eclipsing even Russia. U.S. natural gas prices have fallen significantly, with prices around the world holding steady as result. It doesn’t take a math professor to work out the economic benefit gained in a country seeking, in the case of oil, to break the yoke of OPEC’s dictatorial largesse, and, in the case of gas, enabling industrial electricity production to switch from coal to gas halving CO2 emissions. Not bad for a country vilified for refusing to sign the ill-fated and increasingly abandoned Kyoto Protocol.

Shale Gas: A renaissance in US manufacturing, a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, published in December 2011 projects a litany of associated benefits for the U.S. economy. Chief among them: greater energy affordability for industry (reducing fuel costs by as much as $11.6 billion annually through 2025), higher product demand (with evidence showing how shale gas developments have driven demand for industrial products) and, amazingly in the current downturn, around 1 million new jobs through 2025.

By the end of 2011, shale gas was directly starting to affect the markets as lower gas prices began translating into economic industrial growth; the U.S. petro-chemical industry being a significant beneficiary including the announcement of new plants Dow Chemical (two plants), Royal Dutch Shell and Norcor.

As if shale gas development wasn’t enough, in 2011 it became clear that shale and tight oil development in the ‘new Saudi’ of North Dakota even suggested the formerly unthinkable: the end of U.S. oil imports entirely. The fact is, Big Oil is in the process of re-drawing the global energy map. Upstream fossil fuel investments for some oil companies has already shifted to a 70 percent focus on OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada and Poland. The shift from a 50-50 split on investments between OECD and non-OECD countries already has the Saudis rattled. A recent report from energy consultants Wood Mackenzie confirms that Big Oil’s re-focus on the energy resources of the West places as much as a $1.7 trillion stake on the future value of hydrocarbon energy from the United States, Europe and Australia. And the headliner for the rest of the world is that shale development State-side is only part one of the broader good news story.

And all of it – and I have not even touched on deepwater prospects, oil sands, methane hydrates et al – in spite of, rather than due to, bureaucratic tinkering that persists in viewing hydrocarbons – the mainstay of energy for decades yet – as the old fuddy-duddy to be hidden in the attic. In the U.S. President Obama’s New Green Deal, as the Investor’s Business Dailyeditorializes, has delivered, “rancid politics, aching failure and tawdry scandal”. The Solyndra scandal merely revealed the level of corruption lending it credence. Equally, the new EU Energy Roadmap 2050 shows the EU is tenaciously holding onto its green dream in the vain hope that rising oil and gas prices will eventually make renewables commercially viable. But the shale gale is blowing an even greater hole in that hope.

While new processes allow vast new energy resources to permeate the world’s shales, the ‘biblical’ scale of the potential economic turnaround still has a way to go to permeate the mindset of policy-makers. Even so, the shale-fuelled miracle, able to part the sea of gloomy economic forecasts and reveal a path to a much happier 2012, is very real – despite the plague of bureaucrats.