Fracking Dangers from Michael Brune's Blog

[John Mayo]

Hello Again,
For those of you having trouble loading the webpages from our website,
here is the text of Michael Brune's Blog on fracking. The discussions
at the end are worth reading.
John Mayo.

Michael Brune
The blog of Sierra Club Executive Director
Michael Brune

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08/11/2010
Frack Attack
Fracking. It's a word you probably hadn't heard a year or two ago.
This week the Environmental Protection Agency had to postpone a public
hearing on the subject in Syracuse, New York, because of concerns that
the venue might not be able to accommodate the 8,000 or more citizens
expected to show up and voice their passions on the subject.

I've been in New York and Pennsylvania in recent days, and I know how
important this issue is to people in these states and others that sit
on what's known as the Marcellus Shale -- a geological formation that
stretches north from West Virginia. In total, this shale contains what
may be the biggest natural-gas deposit in the world. To extract the
gas, companies first drill deep wells and then use a technique called
hydraulic fracturing -- "fracking" for short. It's a process that
injects, under high pressure, huge amounts of water laced with sand
and more than a hundred chemicals into rock formations deep under the
ground.

Chemicals and water -- there's your first clue to why people are
alarmed. A report released by the Pennsylvania Land Trust this month
showed that there have been 1,435 violations of the state oil and gas
laws in the past 2.5 years -- at least 952 of which affect the
environment. That's more than one a day.

The tiny town of Dimock, Pennsylvania, has more than 60 wells in a
nine-square-mile area. Fourteen families have had their drinking water
contaminated with methane gas after drilling on or near their
property. They'll probably never be able to drink the water from their
wells again.

Methane in your tap water is both creepy and dangerous. YouTube clips
of people lighting the water from their faucets on fire are bad
enough. But a couple of weeks ago, a man in Pennsylvania was severely
burned after his well exploded while he was setting up a waterslide in
his yard for his kids.

There's a drilling boom sweeping across the Marcellus Shale region,
and the gas companies are out of control. If we can't protect our
communities and treasured landscapes, then we should not drill for
natural gas.

I am cautiously hopeful, however, that strong regulation and
government oversight will make drilling safe, because we sure could
use the help of natural gas as we push quickly and aggressively toward
a truly clean energy future powered by wind, solar, and other
renewable resources.

In 2005, the Sierra Club's staff and volunteer leaders agreed climate
change should be our highest priority. And stopping climate change
requires that we transition from the dirtiest energy sources (coal and
oil) to the cleanest. Natural gas, while decidedly imperfect, burns
more cleanly than other fossil fuels and, thanks in part to the
Marcellus Shale, it's abundant.

But when I said that the gas companies are "out of control," I meant
it literally. If there's one lesson we all learned from what happened
in the Gulf of Mexico this year, it's that energy companies have to be
regulated. There's just too much money at stake for them to be trusted
to do the right thing on their own.

Thanks to the Bush/Cheney Energy Task Force, however, fracking is
specifically exempt from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking
Water Act -- what's known as "the Halliburton Loophole." Oh, and by
the way, Halliburton, is one of three biggest suppliers of hydraulic-
fracturing technology.

Some moves in the right direction are already being made. The New York
State Senate just passed a moratorium on natural-gas drilling until
next May to give its Department of Environmental Conservation time to
finish new permitting guidelines. And the EPA has begun a two-year,
$1.9 million safety review of hydraulic fracturing that could
ultimately result in a reversal of the federal government's abdication
of oversight over one of our most important energy resources.

But it's not enough. The gas companies are operating with the
arrogance of the pre-Gulf BP. They won't disclose the names and
concentrations of the chemicals they're injecting into the water
table. And they flat out refuse to admit that fracking is dangerous or
that drilling should be regulated.

The Sierra Club won't stand for reckless drilling anywhere, whether
it's the Marcellus Shale or the Gulf of Mexico. Already, the
Hydrofracking Team is one of the most active on the Club's Activist
Network. I encourage you to check out the work they're doing, along
with the Pennsylvania Chapter and the Atlantic Chapter.

We need to reach a clean-energy future, but let's do it without
destroying communities and ecosystems along the way.
Posted at 04:57 PM | Permalink
Comments

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Natural gas can only be effective in lowering climate changing
emissions if its production and use is significantly cleaner than
other fossil fuels it would replace over their full lifecycles. With
the gas companies out of control, as you put it, how do you know that
fugitive methane, CO2 and other emissions from the production and
transport, when added to emissions form combustion, don't make it a
wash with coal as a source of greenhouse gases?

Natural gas is worse than imperfect. It is not the answer.

Posted by: John Smillie | 08/13/2010 at 09:55 AM


I live in the Southern Tier of NY. I salute Michael Brune for
traveling to NY and PA to see firsthand how the gas companies have
been operating. And I am glad to see that Mr. Brune recognizes that
ecosystems and communities are at stake.

However, I also agree with John Smillie, who noted that we do not know
how much greenhouse gas emissions are being contributed by the shale
gas extraction and production processes. In addition to fugitive
emissions, we must also consider the GHG contributions of the very
energy-intensive process of shale gas drilling, which includes the use
of fleets of large tanker trucks just to fracture one well, involves
clear-cutting large swaths of forest in many cases, and produces
contaminated waste fluid that no one really knows how to dispose of at
this point and that may have to be treated at specialized not-yet-
constructed energy-consuming treatment plants.

I would also point out that no matter how carefully the gas industry
drills, it won't get much shale gas from the Marcellus unless it
drills thousands upon thousands of wells across PA and NY. It is
simply not possible to drill that many wells without forever altering
the ecosystems and communities in which the wells are sited.

After much research on this issue, I believe that shale gas is not the
answer: the trillions of dollars that are likely to be spent on this
stopgap temporary fuel source would be far better spent on permanent
solutions to our energy problems.

Posted by: Mary Sweeney | 08/13/2010 at 06:16 PM


The decline rate of high volume slick water hydraulically fractured
shale gas wells is exponential not a straight line decline. The
Chesapeake spring, 2010 stockholders report has exactly this
exponential decline rate on page 10. Individual wells show an 85%
decline in production in two years. Chesapeake's total production goes
up -How? - by drilling more and more wells.

The only way total green house gas from the complete life cycle of
ngas can be a positive measured against other fossil fuels is if you
ignore the emissions from some aspect of its initial production -
flaring, venting, pits -or from its processing, or pipelines, or
compressors, and only look at the final burning. Do we want to do
that?

The environmental costs of mining shale gas - just like the
environmental costs of mining coal or oil - are externalized to the
surrounding environment and communities including those downstream.
Exemptions from laws every other industry must follow, subsidies,
political favors and multi-million dollar ad campaigns want us to
believe that ngas is clean and ngas mining is a clean process. ... and
certainly the tons of chemicals and huge pressures used in the mining
processes would never impact our water supplies.

Do we want to trade our water for another dirty fossil fuel?

We can do better than ngas. Water is the bridge to the future.

Posted by: B. Arrindell- DamascusCitizens.org | 08/13/2010 at 08:17 PM


The FRAC Act, H.R. 2766, the Fracturing Responsibility
and Awareness of Chemicals Act, would eliminate the exemption of
fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act. I wrote my legislators
asking them to support this act, and then wrote again when I learned
from their websites and legislation proposed by them they were strong
supporters of natural gas drilling.

In my first letter, I wrote about the movie/video you can view online,
"Gasland." and then asked them to support the FRAC Act. In my second
letter I acknowledged that I knew they were supporters of gas drilling
but asked them to pass the FRAC Act because health and safety come
first. If I write again, (and I imagine I will) I will lean heavy on
the need to really redirect our energy focus to solar and wind, etc. I
did that in the other letters but not nearly so strongly as I feel.

What I am really mean by this comment is, maybe readers here could go
to your legislator's websites and leave them comments also? Your
really only need one sentence asking them to support "the FRAC ACT,
H.R. 2766,"--anything else is up to you.

Posted by: Joanne Baek | 08/14/2010 at 08:00 AM


"I am cautiously hopeful, however, that strong regulation and
government oversight will make drilling safe..."
QUESTION: How do you 'regulate' trillions of gallons of toxic fluid
injected underground?
"...stopping climate change requires that we transition from the
dirtiest energy sources (coal and oil) to the cleanest. Natural gas,
while decidedly imperfect, burns more cleanly..."

RESPONSE: "burns more cleanly" is industry spin - and only half the
story. Shale gas extraction is a highly polluting process. When
production and consumption are both factored in, shale gas may have a
bigger carbon footprint than coal. Please read: "Preliminary
Assessment of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions" by Cornell Professor
Robert W. Howarth. http://catskillcitizens.org/learnmore/HOWARTHASSESS.PDF

Posted by: BRUCE FERGUSON | 08/14/2010 at 03:12 PM


Michael Brune,

Thank you for the openness to reexamine this issue that you have shown
since you have begun your new post at the head of the Sierra Club.

I agree with the commenters that the burden of proof needs to be on
the gas companies to show that gas truly is the clean fuel they claim.
To do that they must release all those affected and bound by non-
disclosure agreements from their silence, and lay open this process
fully to examination by all fields.

Posted by: Jessica Helm | 08/14/2010 at 04:36 PM


While acknowledging that there are significant problems attendant to
the production of natural gas, in this case fracking, is a slightly
different tack for the Sierra Club, and a step in the right direction,
the concept of this being a clean fuel or bridge fuel or fuel of the
future needs to be dispelled. As per John Smilie's concerns about air
quality, a greenhouse gas emissions inventory specific to coal bed
methane production was done in La Plata County Colorado. The results
were based on industry data and industry calculation and showed that
80% of all GHG's produced in the county are directly attributable to
cal bed methane operations. Concerns about natural gas need to include
the full life cycle impacts of its production and use and that has
only begun to be analyzed. So before continuing to whip the horses
driving T. Boone Pickens' wagon that consecrate natural gas as our
salvation, for the sole reason that it is ours and it is not imported,
we need to continue the work Bruce Ferguson refers to, the Howarth
study, and understand what exactly we are extolling.

Posted by: Josh Joswick | 08/16/2010 at 10:40 AM


What many, particularly in upstate New York, do not realize is that
the Utica Shale, which is deeper and typically thicker, extends
further north and east than does the Marcellus. While it is reportedly
not as rich in Total Organic Content (TOCs) as the Marcellus, it is
still worth going after as far as the drilling industry is concerned.
It actually underlies the whole Mohawk Valley, inclusive of Onandaga
(Syracuse) and Oneida (Utica) counties eastward to Schenectady and
Albany counties and even up into Saratoga County. Going south from
there, down along the Hudson River it actually lies beneath the Hudson
River and crosses over to the east a little bit.

Both the Marcellus and the Utica Shale formations are reported to be
both deeper and thicker in their eastern reaches and the Utica is
therefore "safer" to go after than the Marcellus is in Otsego (Oneonta
and Cooperstown) and all along the Mohawk as described above where the
Utica is the only shale formation worth going after. The footprints or
fairways of these two formations are graphically displayed in the
dSGEIS.

Don't forget that in Texas the industry brags about drilling in cities
and proximal to childrens' playgrounds. This is a problem that affects
many more people than they realize because all of the fuss is focued
on the Marcellus. The Utica shale formation actually has another
seperate presence up in Quebec Province.

I cannot think of any significant extractive technology that is not
inherently and intrinsically disruptive, dangerous, and destructive
and this is inclusive of conventional (vertical) and unconventional
(horizontal) drilling, mines, quarrying, and mountain top removal for
both fuel sources and other raw materials. Aboriginal peoples and
other species do not claw and scrape things out of or off the top of
land or ocean bottoms. We best reconsider what we have already done
and continue to do to this fragile sphere that we have been but recent
inhabitants of, in geological terms.

Our agriculture practices have also evolved to a point where, instead
of rotating crops, we now practice monoculture farming and compensate
for the depletion of soil nutrients by using petroleum based nitrogen
and phosphate fertilizers. These are used to the point where they
leech off into watersheds and overload the soil which is also
depleted, particularly in the plains states, by ever larger pieces of
mechanical equipment compared to their predecessor tractors and, even
before that, draft horses and oxen.

The planet will survive our species but the end of our species will
not be pretty or pleasent. We are not only at Peak Oil but also at
Peak Soil, Peak Water, and Peak Minerals in an increasing number of
places on this planet.

Posted by: Tom Pritchard | 08/18/2010 at 01:49 AM


Thanks to M. Brune for weighing in on fracking. A quick comment on: "I
am cautiously hopeful, . . . strong regulation and government
oversight will make drilling safe . . . could use the help of natural
gas as we push quickly and aggressively toward a truly clean energy
future powered by . . . renewable resources."
Without a comprehensive national energy policy/plan based on a
complete analysis of technology and resources, review and
consideration of climate trends, and that includes objectives, target
completion dates, and assigned responsibilities, there is no
possibility of moving aggressively toward a renewable energy future.
The Fed Government must be forced to invest in this endeavor.

Posted by: Fred Gros | 08/18/2010 at 07:16 AM


Good article, disgusting topic and industry. Recall the old B&W
western movies when i was a kid, oil blow outs were considered a party
and the people actually enjoyed getting it all over their bodies. GS

Posted by: Glenn Showalter | 08/18/2010 at 09:15 AM


Pennsylvania is going full speed ahead with the drilling, especially
in my own county--Luzerne and those nearby. We cannot seem to get
people in government and the public to recognize the dangers, so eager
are they to collect revenues for depleted funds. This in the face of
many violations and the pollution of water wells in a northern county.
We have had public forums to no avail. The local zoning board has not
paid attention to citizes' outcries.
Posted by: Constance Kozel | 08/18/2010 at 01:36 PM


When I walk by my natural gas meter, I can smell a tiny bit of natural
gas. The Howarth study mentioned above suggests the leakage is 1.5%,
maybe more. Since methane, the main component of natural gas, is about
72 times more powerful in the atmosphere (over a 20 year span).
Although the green-house-gas production from burning is about 2/3 that
from oil, and roughly 1/2that from cola. But adding the leakage, this
advantage just about disappears, before estimating the additional
effects of the "fracking" process.

Renewable energy is a far far better solution. The solar panels on a
small part of our roof generated 69% of our electricity in the first
year, and are on track to do about the same this year. Installation
cost under 2% of the value of the house.

Posted by: Peter Bradshaw | 08/21/2010 at 06:16 PM


Oops, typos! Replace "Since" with "And" or remove, and "cola" with
"coal".

Posted by: Peter Bradshaw | 08/21/2010 at 06:31 PM

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