Why is Exxon running ads saying natural gas is safe and clean and we have available supplies for the next 100 years? Before I answer that question lets have a little background on natural gas, shall we. Some of it is no doubt familiar to many of you, but bear with me, please.
You may not have seen the new ads Exxon is running, but I have. The ads are very upbeat. They feature a man who is allegedly an Exxon Geologist extolling the virtues of vast new deposits of natural gas that can supply “clean burning” energy for the next 100 years. He says the gas deposits are thousands of feet underground and that the gas can be “safely” extracted. He never mentions hydraulic fracturing (i.e., “hydrofracking” or just fracking) as the means by which this natural gas will be produced. He never mentions where these new deposits are located, but I know exactly what he is talking about and the location of reserves he claims will provide us 100 years of glorious clean burning natural gas.
I live in Western NY, under which lies part of the vast Marcellus shale formation.
The Marcellus shale is the largest known shale deposit in the world and lies under much of the Appalachian basin from upstate New York, as far south as Virginia, and as far west as Ohio. While estimates of natural gas reserves should be considered imprecise at this early stage, Engelder (2009) finds that recent production data suggest recoverable reserves could be as large as 489 trillion cubic feet.
Here is a map which shows the extent of the Marcellus shale:
Several thousand of feet beneath the Marcellus Shale formation is the “Utica” shale formation, another potential source of natural gas. The Utica Shale covers roughly the same general area as the Marcellus shale. Here is a graph which shows the relative depth of the Utica Shale versus the Marcellus shale.
The Utica shale extends farther than the Marcellus, and even underlies portions of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. No one is certain exactly how much oil and gas might exist in the Utica shale but conservative estimates place it at around 20 trillion cubic feet of gas, along with perhaps 5 to 10 Billion barrels of oil. The total value of the Utica shale reserves easily exceed $600 Billion at today’s prices. The Marcellus Shale reserves are worth far more than that. A study by the American Petroleum Institute suggest a value of $2 TRILLION for the oil and gas companies with drilling rights in the Marcellus shale.
I suspect those estimates may be conservative. However, even if they are not, even if the recoverable reserves are only half the current estimates, oil and gas companies, such as Exxon, have a great deal of incentive to drill in the Marcellus shale formation using existing technology, rather than take their massive profits and invest in alternative, renewable energy technologies. Indeed, given the subsidies they have been granted by the Federal government to drill for oil and gas, it is in their interest to oppose the development of clean renewable energy technologies since renewable energy companies are their direct competitors. In any event, it certainly explains why oil and gas lobbyists are spending millions of dollars to convince state legislatures in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to allow full scale drilling employing fracking as soon as possible.
In terms of lobbyist spending, the Common Cause/NY report shows that the dirty energy companies and industry front groups fighting against the [New York] moratorium on fracking outspend environmental organizations and others supporting the ban by a margin of 4:1.
Three gas companies in particular, Chesapeake Appalachia, Fortuna Energy and The Williams Companies, and their trade group, Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York (IOGA) lobbied against the moratorium bills.
Chesapeake Appalachia, the second largest gas producer in the U.S. spent the most ($1,090,051) lobbying for fracking interests in 2010. All told, in 2009, industry spent $1,231,673 in lobbying, and a further $1,564,428 in 2010.
You see, in order to make production from most wells drilled in these shale formations economically feasible, hydraulic fracturing is a necessity. And though Exxon ads I’ve seen state baldly that these underground reserves of natural gas can be removed safely, the fact is that hydraulic fracturing is far from safe..
Fracking, as the practice is commonly called, is a means of extracting natural gas by pressure-drilling a mix of water, sand and chemicals more than a mile vertically and horizontally into the earth. The sand and chemicals break up the dense rock to release methane, the compound comprising natural gas, which is pumped back up along with the fracking liquid, now infused not only with the chemical additives but heavy metals and radioactive material as well. The problem is that these materials are leaching into our water supplies, sickening people, vegetation and animals.
By design, hydrofracking causes miniature underground explosions – fracturing rocks and consequently releasing gas, along with radioactive and other carcinogenic and highly toxic substances from deep within the earth. These carcinogens, along with radioactive materials and the toxic sludge known as frack fluid, can contaminate aquifers and spoil water supplies.
A New York Times investigative report on hydraulic fracturing, dated February 26, 2011, laid out in more detail the concerns that many people have with oil and gas companies that use “fracking” to extract natural gas.
But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.
While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.
The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.
Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.
The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.
So, studies by the EPA and inudtry consultants have shown that hydrofracking can release radioactive and carcinogenic elements into our rivers and lakes. It also often results in the release of methane (a/k/a “natural gas”) into the water supply and into the atmosphere. Methane, though it doesn’t last as long as CO2 emissions is a far more efficient heat trapping greenhouse gas, and thus accelerates the effects of global warming.
Here’s the report of the study by Cornell scientists that found fracking operations by oil and gas operators release much more of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere than coal operations or traditional drilling methods:
Extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale could do more to aggravate global warming than mining coal, according to a Cornell study published in the May issue of Climatic Change Letters (105:5).
While natural gas has been touted as a clean-burning fuel that produces less carbon dioxide than coal, ecologist Robert Howarth warns that we should be more concerned about methane leaking into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing.
Natural gas is mostly methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas, especially in the short term, with 105 times more warming impact, pound for pound, than carbon dioxide (CO2), Howarth said, adding that even small leaks make a big difference. He estimated that as much as 8 percent of the methane in shale gas leaks into the air during the lifetime of a hydraulic shale gas well — up to twice what escapes from conventional gas production. […]
The study is the first peer-reviewed paper on methane emissions from shale gas, and one of the few exploring the greenhouse gas footprints of conventional gas drilling. Most studies have used EPA emission estimates from 1996, which were updated in November 2010 when it was determined that greenhouse gas emissions of various fuels are higher than previously believed.
“We are highlighting unconventional gas because it is a contemporary problem for us in upstate New York, and because there is a big difference between developing gas from an unconventional well and a conventional well, for the mere reason that unconventional wells are bigger,” Ingraffea said.
He noted that the hydraulic fracturing process lends itself to more leakage because it takes more time to drill the well, requires more venting and produces more flowback waste, he said. […]
“We’ve tried to be conservative all along; we’re not trying to be hyperbolic in our statements,” Ingraffea said.
If that weren’t bad enough, there is also evidence that under certain circumstances hydrofracking can also result in earthquake swarms. An earthquake swarm happened in Northern Arkansas earlier this year, causing a temporary cessation of fracking in the region.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Two natural gas companies agreed Friday to temporarily cease operations of injection wells in an area of central Arkansas that has seen more than 800 earthquakes during the past six months. […]
Shane Khoury, deputy director and general counsel for the commission, said Arkansas Geological Survey researchers had found enough evidence to request an immediate shutdown of the two well locations. He added that the emergency order would not affect the five other injection wells currently operating in that region.
“We believe preliminary data from the moratorium study shows a potential connection between injection operations and earthquakes at one or both of those wells,” he said.
Yet, the friendly face of Exxon’s geological engineer continues to appear on my TV, assuring me everything about the production of natural gas is just hunky dory and we should consider ourselves lucky Exxon is taking the lead in producing this clean burning energy source. Why, I asked myself, would Exxon spend money on ad buys in my community (and doubtlessly across many other communities in the multi-state region covered by the Marcellus and Utica shale formations)? Why does Exxon want to assure me (and other members of the public) that natural gas production is safe and environmentally friendly when by all appearances there are grave and legitimate concerns about the safety of hydraulic fracturing, which will be the dominant method employed by oil and gas companies to extract these resources?
Well, I think the reason can be found in this Bloomberg news article from February 15th of this year:
The portion of Exxon’s reserves comprised of gas rose to 53 percent at the end of last year from 49 percent a year earlier. Exxon’s $34.9 billion purchase of Fort Worth, Texas-based XTO last year gave it access to proprietary technology used to get gas trapped in rock formations previously considered too hard to crack.
The jump in reserves is “certainly a big number,” said Allen Good, an analyst at Morningstar Investment Services Inc. in Chicago who rates Exxon at three stars out of five. “Like the rest of the industry, Exxon is becoming more reliant on gas as crude gets harder to access.”
In short, Exxon is heavily invested in natural gas. It sees the in the future its profits will come primarily from natural gas production. It’s placed a big bet on natural gas production, a bet that will likely get even bigger in the future. If I had spent $34.9 BILLION to acquire a company with rights to natural gas and “proprietary technology” to extract gas trapped in “rock formations” (i.e., shale formations) I’d be doing my best to convince people that natural gas is “clean” and that producing it is “safe.” And I sure wouldn’t mention the terms “hydraulic fracturing” or “Hydrofracking” in any of my TV ads about the wonders of natural gas either.
It wouldn’t be good for Exxon’s business, after all, to point out the uncomfortable facts that call into question the safety of extracting natural gas, when the company is pinning its hopes on drilling gas wells into shale formations and using fracking to produce the gas upon which the future profitability of Exxon so heavily relies. Better just to tell the unwashed masses that Exxon is a looking out for all of our collective interests by drilling for natural gas even when that is pure propaganda, at best.
