Frack in Haste...

The United States is enjoying a renaissance of natural gas exploration with the increased use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract the gas. There is now a glut of natural gas (methane) on the American market, and prices are way down from what they were a few years ago.

Thus, natural gas is becoming a bigger component of our energy future. It's more efficient and cleaner than coal, producing less CO2 and other toxic waste products like mercury and ash. It's a lot easier to distribute and is much more flexible: it can be used to heat homes, power vehicles and even as a fuel for high-efficiency fuel cells. Because natural gas-fired power plants can be turned on and off almost instantly, they are a necessary adjunct for wind- and solar-generated electricity to balance load. Finally, methane can be produced by biological processes, which means it could eventually become a renewable energy source. So, methane-based technology has great potential.


But this natural gas renaissance is starting to look like the dark ages for some. People who live near fracking operations have had their well water contaminated by methane and carcinogenic chemicals, and many earthquakes have occurred in these areas.


The other day an earthquake occurred in Ohio near a fracking operation. The biggest earthquake ever recorded in Oklahoma occurred Nov. 5 near a fracking operation. Another series of earthquakes occurred in England, and the company says fracking was the cause.

That fracking causes earthquakes is now a well-established fact. Scientists have even developed a model that predicts the size of the earthquakes caused by fracking: basically, the more fluid you inject into the earth, the bigger the quake.

Earthquakes are a relatively new concern with fracking. The best-known problems occur when methane or fracking fluids get into the aquifer and contaminate well water. Sometimes the methane reaches such high concentrations that water coming out of a faucet will burn (as shown in Gasland).

Fracking typically involves injecting huge quantities of fracking fluids into shale beds at high temperature and pressure. The shale breaks up and releases the methane. The fracking fluids consist of water and sand, and the fracking companies' "trade-secret-protected" mix of chemicals, which often include carcinogens like benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, and naphthalene. Many people who live near fracking operations blame their unusually high incidence of cancer and other diseases on fracking.

Fracking companies continue to insist that fracking is completely safe, and doesn't contaminate ground water. However, it's already been proved that fracking has contaminated ground water in some cases in Wyoming.

An article in Scientific American entitled "The Truth about Fracking" goes into the subject at length. (Note: Scientific American gets a ton of ad revenue from Shell Oil and car companies, so they're probably giving their sponsors a fair shake editorially.)

The frackers' argument is that fracking is completely safe because natural gas beds are far below aquifers, often separated by thousands of feet of rock. Their contention is that it's impossible for fracking fluids to contaminate aquifers because there's just no way to get there.

The problem with this argument is that it ignores practical realities. Fracking involves punching a hole through the earth into a shale bed, much like an oil well. Just like an oil well, a fracking well needs to be cemented. But fracking wells frequently pass right through an aquifer. If the cementing job is done poorly there will be leaks, like the bad cement job on the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. That caused millions of gallons of crude oil to spill into the ocean. When fracking fluids are injected into a poorly cemented well, the high pressure can force toxic fluids and methane into the aquifer.

But there are causes other than bad cementing: fracking often occurs in areas that have already been drilled for oil or natural gas, often for more than a century. Many of the older wells have cement jobs that have failed, and the oldest wells have no cementing at all. Fracking fluids and methane can find their way up through the older wells, many of which no one even knows are there.

Additionally, vertical faults occur in the earth naturally. These aren't a problem normally, because the methane is bound in the shale and won't seep into the aquifer. But when fracking fluids are injected and the shale is broken up, the fluids and the methane can travel up through the natural faults, poisoning well water.

And sometimes, as was the case in Wyoming, the shale beds are shallow and the aquifers are deep and fracking occurs right in the aquifer.

It isn't fracking that causes the contamination, these frackers say, it's a problem caused by someone else doing a bad cementing job, not sealing old oil wells properly, or that they just didn't know that there was an old well or a vertical fault. They can't be blamed for their ignorance.

Now they're saying that fracking didn't cause the Ohio earthquake:

The brine wastewater comes from drilling operations that use the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale. But Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Jim Zehringer said during a news teleconference that fracking is not causing the quakes. 

"The seismic events are not a direct result of fracking," he said.

That is, the earthquake was caused by injecting used fracking fluids into the ground. They do this to get rid of the highly toxic fluids, because they can't dump them in a river, or spray them onto the land. And they don't want to spend the money to actually purify the contaminated water.

The companies are still insisting that fracking is completely safe and doesn't cause earthquakes or well water contamination. Instead they blame bad cementing, unknowable geology and drilling history, or fracking fluid disposal. Therefore they shouldn't be held responsible for poisoned water, cancers and earthquakes.

That's like the guy who says fracking, in the Battlestar Galactica sense, doesn't cause pregnancy. It's the broken condom, the woman's fault for not using a diaphragm, or the sperm's fault for traveling an unknown and circuitous path through the cervix and uterus, or the egg's fault for appearing at the wrong time. Therefore he shouldn't be responsible for child support.

To say that fracking doesn't cause earthquakes or aquifer contamination is the worst kind of lying by technicality. If they weren't fracking, there would be no earthquakes and poisoned groundwater.

Fracking should be limited to areas where it's safe and won't contaminate groudwater. Fracking fluids should not contain carcinogens and should be uniquely tagged so we can determine the source of contamination. Frackers should be required to post bonds before drilling to cover potential damages, because they'll just declare bankruptcy if  they screw up. Used fracking fluids should be purified so the cleaned water can be safely returned to the environment without having to inject it deep into the earth where it can never be used again, and incidentally cause earthquakes.

Yes, all of these things will make fracked gas cost more. The price of fracked gas should reflect its total cost to society, so that its costs can be better compared to other sources of energy. Right now fracking is another example of companies making private profit with a socialized risk. (Because mineral rights and land ownership are frequently decoupled, many people whose land is being fracked aren't even getting paid for it.)

In many states there has been a big push to get fracking as fast as possible, without making annoying regulations to prevent people from getting cancer. Some of these frackers claim to have a hundred years of natural gas reserves. If that's the case, then what's the rush? Why not take the time to do this right?

But some are questioning the size of the claims of U.S. reserves. There may be only a half to a fifth as much gas in the ground as these frackers are claiming. But why would they lie?

In addition to the uncertainty about shale gas resources and productivity, there are other lingering questions. For one thing, on an averaged annual basis, shale gas has been unprofitable since 2008. Wildcatters—those who explore and sink the first wells in a new location—have been taking on a great deal of debt and risk to discover the plays and produce them at a loss, in hopes that larger, well-funded players will buy them out later. It’s not clear that this gamble will ever pay off.

In other words, these frackers have every incentive to cut corners and lie about the size of their reserves in order to cash in quick and leave someone else holding an empty bag.

But just because we need natural gas doesn't mean we should let these frackers rape our land, poison our water, and turn the very earth beneath our feet into jello.

We should take the time to develop our natural gas reserves the right way. Technology will continue to develop and we may be able to develop fields safely in the future that we'd only screw up if we tried to exploit them now.

If we frack in haste, we won't be able to repent at leisure.