fracking

Fracking

It may shock you to know that the anti-fracking campaign is as guilty as the pro-fracking oil and gas industry of being inaccurate. Rather than look at all aspects of fracking I am therefore going to concentrate on some misconceptions. There are plenty of other aspects I could write about, so this maybe just the first of a series.

Can fracking lead to contamination of drinking water?

In theory it can, but there are no proven instances. The oil and gas industry is less regulated in America than it is here, though even there liners are placed all the way from the surface to the shale being fracked. After all it is in no ones interest to loose oil and gas on the way up. I would like to think that drill-hole liners would be heavily regulated in this country, to ensure that under normal circumstances contamination of aquifers could not happen. Fortunately we don’t have earthquakes big enough to damage liners in this country. Much of the opposition to shale gas exploration has been generated by Josh Fox’s film Gasland which is marketed as a “documentary”. This contains the astonishing film of one Mike Markham, of Weld County, Colorado, setting fire to water emerging from a his bathroom tap. This has nothing whatsoever to do with adjacent shale gas production. The phenomenon was investigated by the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission in 2008 who concluded that the gas was biogenic methane. This conclusion was not as exciting as the film clip, and so has passed the media by. In Texas in 2010 year there were reports of groundwater contamination by shale gas. The Environmental Protection Agency slapped an emergency protection order on Range Resources’ production of gas from the Barnett Shale in Parker County. Subsequent investigation revealed, however, that the contamination predated the shale-gas fracking. The contaminating gas consists of a mix of methane and nitrogen, and nitrogen does not occur in the Barnett Shale gas. It is, however, characteristic of gas from sands in much shallower sediments.

What is used in the fracking?

Between 50,000 ad 350,000 gallons of fluid are used during a fracking treatment, plus 75,000 to 320,000 lbs of sand to hold the fractures open. There are also the nasty additives being used in fracking. This website gives a list: http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used

It sounds worse than it is because most of them are inert, and most of the liquid is water. BUT every company uses a different mix and some are much worse than others. Shell insist that they use very little apart from water, sand and gypsum, though this doesn’t let them off the hook, where is all the water going to come from? And all the sand? More holes in the ground to put our rubbish in?!

How leaky are the fractures?

Real data collected on many thousands of hydraulic fractures indicate that the fractures are almost unviersally contained within the shale being fractured, and do not extend into adjacent aquifers if present. This however doesn’t mean that fractures can’t and don’t extend into aquifers. There is also the question of natural faults, ie natural fractures along which movement has occurred in the past, causing a displacement of the rocks either side, they can either seal against or enhance lateral and vertical fluid movement depending upon the type of fault. This is one I have not heard anyone mention apart from a retired colleague, and if it had occurred to both of us it must have occurred to others. In the geological basins being fracked in the USA the natural fault density is low, in the UK it is high, not least in the Kimmeridge Clay (actually a shale) being investigated at Balcombe. What will happen if a faulted shale is fracked? We believe that the faults, or at least some of them, will be reactiviated, and may allow fracking fluids to extend much further than is suggested by the theoretical and experimental work. We also suspect that it was a fault reactivation that caused the (very minor) earthquake in Lancashire that has been linked to testing for shale gas.

The cost of gas and the value of Campaigning

While Quadrilla were being worried into reducing the scale of their operations around Balcombe I was discussing shale gas and shale oil with oil company geologists, and I thought you would find what they see in their crystal balls rather interesting.

In the 19^th century Oil Shale (when it is called oil shale rather than shale oil it means the hydrocarbons have not matured sufficiently to become oil or gas and therefore be able to flow) was quarried and burnt, causing horrendous pollution: no one wanted to repeat that. Twenty years ago getting hydrocarbons out of shale was dismissed as fantasy, utterly uneconomic. Then the price of oil rose steeply, and at the same time, country’s with highly developed oil technology such as the USA and the UK found themselves running out of hydrocarbons. Suddenly, even though vastly more expensive than conventional hydrocarbon extraction, shale began to look attractive, BUT, only onshore. Offshore shale gas/oil extraction is still considered too expensive. With enough campaigning and the continuing rise in the price of oil we will drive shale gas/oil extraction offshore. In an ideal world we would not be burning our precious oil and gas reserves, but using them in other ways (eg plastics), unfortunately that is simply not going to happen, at least not for a long time, but if we can drive the oil industry back off shore, we can at least protect our landscape and aquifers.

Jenny Huggett (updated 17/8/2013)

party funding

There has been much controversy recently about the role that the trade unions play in the operation and funding of the Labour party.

This has been sparked by the row over events in the Falkirk constituency with Unite being accused of paying the Labour party membership fees for some of its members. There have even been accusations of people being signed up without their consent. The latter, of course, is, if true, indefensible. And Len McClusky is reported (Guardian, 18/7/13) as regretting the former.

Surely more state funding of political parties as is common in mainland Europe would be better, although the PR aspects of such a policy don't look too good at the moment! And more state money in order to produce even more fatuous party political broadcasts would look bad too.

But hey! Let's get some balance in this debate. Let's consider the, usually unremarked on, donation of funds to, usually, the Conservative Party by public companies. These companies are owned by members of the public, directly as shareholders, or indirectly via their pension funds. The latter get absolutely no say on some of their income being diverted to the Tories. And even share holders can only tick, or not, a box regarding political donations. A contrary vote does not allow individual opt-out (as with some Labour Party donations from trade unions) and the totality of vote is only advisory.

So let's demand an end to individual political donations in excess of, say, £1000, and a complete end to donations from public companies and trade unions! We're told that austerity is good for organisations so let's put the two big parties on a diet too!

Roger Oliver (19/7/13)

Fracking, shale gas and climate change

There's been an interesting exchange of emails in the Guardian recently regarding climate change, shale gas and fracking.

July 2, 2013 had several letters for and against this source of energy for the UK. David England stated that methane is 200% as effective as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and that therefore methane leakage of shale gas reduces its low-carbon credentials. He mentions concerns in the US that as much as 16% of methane may be lost in fracking operations.

On July 3 David Hookes corrects England's figure of 200% to 2000% and quotes a figure from a study at Cornell University that suggests a leakage of only 5% would cancel out the apparent gain from using shale gas rather than coal.

On July 5 Peter Hansen confirms Hookes's figure (well; he quotes methane being 21 times worse than carbon dioxide which is 2100%  but let's  not quibble), and suggests that with 16% leakage of methane this fuel would cause over 50% more greenhouse warming than using coal.

So Hookes and Hansen are, roughly speaking, in agreement and the claim that using methane extracted by fracking as a fuel helps mitigate climate change looks pretty dubious.

Roger Oliver (8/7/13)