Part Four of a four-part series by Wes Wilson, former Environmental Engineer for the EPA.
In this series, Wilson presents his answers to six challenging questions that were a sked by students in a Pennsylvania middle school science class attended by his nephew.
5. Do you believe that there is a safer, more eco-friendly method of natural gas extraction that could replace fracking? If so, how would this method work?
Yes, fracking can be done with using non-toxic chemicals.[1] Drilling and fracking can be made safer by better well casing and cementing requirements. Currently, about 7% of new wells fail to seal their methane leaks properly.[2] Fracking can be regulated so it does not occur within communities or near residents. Testing can be required to make sure that spills and pollution doesn’t occur. Instead of disposing the frack flow-back water in deep injection wells, it needs to be treated and the cleaned water returned to the rivers. For example, there is new technology that uses algae to treat the frack flow-back water to make it clean enough to return water to a river at the same time collecting some of the petroleum products in the frack flow-back water.[3]
We need to get to the point where fracking does not release any toxic gases.
Last year, EPA announced new rules that would limit the amount of toxic gases that can be released during fracking.[4] These rules would require drilling companies to install equipment called ‘green completions’ to capture most of the toxic gases and either burn them off or allow the methane to be sold. These EPA rules are planned to be required of all fracking operations by 2015.
Fracking can be done without using vast quantities of water. To solve this problem drilling companies in Canada are experimenting with the use of propane to frack the rock.[5] This technique has a high risk of explosion, however, and may need to be done with robots to protect the workers and any nearby community.
We need laws that preserve and protect local communities rights to regulate fracking, including banning it if they choose to do so. Local governments should play a strong role in the regulation of fracking and while some state laws expressly preempt local government control, the issue is far from settled.[6]
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund located in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, has guided dozens of communities to ban fracking by asserting their right to local self-government and the rights of nature. [7]
However none of the above should be taken as a backhanded endorsement of fracking. This responds to the question of whether it can be made better; not an answer to whether it is good. Fracking is not good for the reasons I stated in response to the previous questions.
6. How has fracking changed over the years?
Both drilling and the fracking operations have changed in the last decade. Last century, drilling with limited fracking was done vertically to find a natural trap for oil and natural gas. If that drilling was just to one side or the other of an oil and gas trap it would be a dry hole. With horizontal drilling combined with fracking in this century, the industry is able to drill down vertically first and then turn the drill bit to go horizontally through the shale. Then holes are opened up in the horizontal part of the well bore and the fracking fluids and sand are injected. This not only allows the well bore to access more rock, it also provides for oil and gas to be recovered where the oil and gas were originally sourced. This means that the hydrocarbons are still locked in the same rock they formed in and as a result there’s almost never a dry well anymore. The water used to frack a horizontal well is 10-20 times more than needed to frack a vertical well; the complex mix of toxic chemicals requires about 5 tons of chemicals for each horizontally fracked well, and each horizontal well releases 2.5 times more methane than a vertical well. Because of this clever albeit harmful technology, the United States has reduced its imports of oil of the nation’s total oil needs from 60% in 2005 to 45% in 2010.[8]
The following diagram shows the difference between ‘conventional’ oil and gas deposits, also known and ‘oil and gas traps’ and the ‘unconventional’ deposits where the oil and gas remain in the same original rock where the hydrocarbons were formed.
Weston Wilson was an environmental engineer at the EPA for 37 years before leaving the agency in January, 2010. In 2004, Wilson sought whistle-blower protection based on his report to Congress about EPA’s study of hydraulic fracturing. His findings questioned EPA’s conclusion that there was no evidence that hydraulic fracturing posed a threat to drinking water. “EPA produced a final report … that I believe is scientifically unsound and contrary to the purposes of the law,” Wilson wrote to lawmakers. Wilson is now a board member of three grass roots organizations concerned about the effects of fracking: Be the Change – USA in Colorado, Stop Drilling-Save the Bridger Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability in Pennsylvania.
[1] CNN Money, “Clean Fracking, Moving to Replace Chemicals” By Steve Hargreaves, November 16, 2011, http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/16/news/economy/clean_fracking/index.htm
[2] Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, “Well Casing Failures Explained” with data provided by Dr. Tony Ingraffea, Cornell University, November 4, 2012, http://www.damascuscitizensforsustainability.org/2012/11/well-casing-failures-explained/
[3] E&E TV, “OriginOil’s Eckelberry says algae can ease fracking chemical concerns”, http://www.eenews.net/tv/2013/01/28/
[4] ProPublica, “The EPA’s First Fracking Rules — Limited and Delayed”, by Lena Groeger April 19, 2012, http://www.propublica.org/article/the-epas-first-fracking-rules
[5] Living on Earth, “Fracking with Propane Instead of Water”, June 22, 2012, http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=12-P13-00025&segmentID=3
[6] The Urban Lawyer, “Oil and Gas Fracking: State and Federal Regulation Does Not Preempt Needed Local Government Regulation”, by Dr. Robert Feilich and Neil Popowitz, Summer 2012, http://www.freilichpopowitz.com/siteerror404.html
[7] Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, http://celdf.org/section.php?id=220
[8] New York Times, “U.S. Inches Towards Goal of Energy Independence”, March 23, 2012, by Clifford Krauss and Eric Lipton, http://www.gasandoil.com/oilaround/2012/03/us-inches-towards-goal-of-energy-independence-1
