Many, including President Obama and Hillary Clinton believe that natural gas can be a bridge fuel to a cleaner energy future for the world, even if fracking technology is used to extract this resource, so long as we take the right approach and put in the right safeguards to prevent fugitive methane from escaping into the atmosphere. They couldn’t be more wrong. Let’s dive into the details, shall we, starting with the massive fugitive methane emissions caused simply by extracting the stuff.
You might recall that last summer, a Harvard study suggested that U.S. methane emissions “increased by more than 30 per cent over the past decade.” They could not at that time definitively state that this rise in methane emissions resulted from the rapid increase in oil and gas production in the United States, and many industry spokespeople disputed the results of that study and others that strongly suggested U.S. oil and gas operations were the culprit.
“The release of these partially revised numbers is misleading,” said the American Petroleum Institute’s vice president for regulatory and economic policy, Kyle Isakower, in March. “We have every reason to believe that the final data, when issued, will still indicate a significant downward trend in emissions even as oil and natural gas production has risen.””
I know, it’s hard to take that statement, or any statement regarding the environmentally clean nature of natural gas production, seriously, considering the recent Aliso Canyon disaster in California, where “97,100 metric tons of methane,” the largest in U.S. history were released by a storage facility operated by Southern California Gas Company, which is wholly owned by Sempra Energy, a Fortune 500 company with revenues over $10 Billion per year.
Now we have direct evidence that a significant increase in atmospheric ethane came from the Bakken shale formation, not even the largest shale formation where natural gas is being produced.
A recent study found that two percent (2%) of all the world’s ethane emissions into the atmosphere came from a single oil field, the Bakken Shale, primarily located in in North Dakota, Montana and Manitoba. This is the very region where oil and gas operations, which often include hydrofracking, operations have risen tremendously over the past decade.
Uh, ethane? Did you forget the “m” in methane, Steven? Actually, no, I did not. While methane typically makes up 95 percent of natural gas, ethane, a hydrocarbon compound in the same family as methane, makes up a small component of natural gas. Ethane can range from 1%-6% of natural gas, and is commercially viable by itself, either as a byproduct or as part of the gas sold to consumers. Ethane is also a greenhouse gas, and studies at the end of the 20th century showed a correlation between ethane levels and the level of methane found in the Earth’s atmosphere.
From 1984-2009, ethane emissions were declining. However, in 2010, a European mountain sensor noticed a sharp increase in atmospheric ethane. Researchers came up with the hypothesis that this was due to increased oil and gas operations in the United States. To test this, researchers flew over the Bakken Shale “in a NOAA Twin Otter aircraft, sampling air for 12 days in May 2014.” The data they recovered should disturb anyone who does not believe the oil and gas industry’s spin that natural gas production, including the means to extract it from shale formations, is clean and environmentally safe.
The researchers found that the Bakken Formation, an oil and gas field in North Dakota and Montana, is emitting roughly 2 percent of the globe’s ethane. That’s about 250,000 tons per year.
“Two percent might not sound like a lot, but the emissions we observed in this single region are 10 to 100 times larger than reported in inventories. They directly impact air quality across North America. And they’re sufficient to explain much of the global shift in ethane concentrations,” said Eric Kort, U-M assistant professor of climate and space sciences and engineering, and first author of the study published in Geophysical Research Letters.
This is the very region where oil and gas operations, which often include hydrofracking operations, have risen tremendously over the past decade. In December, 2005, there were 219 oil producing wells there. As of the end of February, 2016, that number had increased by 4,658 percent to 10,420 producing wells.
Now the Bakken field is primarily an “oil play,” i.e., natural gas production is a much smaller component of what oil and gas companies in the area are extracting from their wells. As of 2013, many wells were flaring (i.e., burning off) natural gas from their wells because the infrastructure to recapture it for commercial purposes was not fully in place, although major efforts to increase natural gas production from the Bakken formation are underway.
Now if ethane, a gas that makes up no roughly five percent(5%) of natural gas extracted from drilling operations in the Bakken Shale resulted in 250,000 tons of fugitive emissions, how much methane do you think escaped? Let’s do a quick calculation. Methane represents about 95% of natural gas. Even though methane has a lighter molecular weight than ethane, lets assume it would escape these wells in the Bakken Shale in roughly the same proportions as ethane does. Since the methane composition of natural gas is 19 times higher than ethane, by multiplying the tonnage of ethane released, we would arrive at a figure of 4,75 million tons of fugitive methane escaping into the atmosphere per year from the Bakken field wells, which, again, I remind you are primarily oil wells.
And the Bakken field is relatively small compared to the largest shale formations in which far more fracking and other drilling operations are ongoing, and where the main fossil fuel that is being extracted and transported away to storage facilities and refineries is natural gas.
The largest shale formations in the USA, and those where where natural gas is the primary reason for drilling, would be the Marcellus and Utica Shale fields located, for the most part, in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. Wells drilled in those shale formations, primarily in Pennsylvania, represent 85% of the growth in the natural gas production in the United States since 2012. Overall, the EPA has determined oil and gas wells in shale formations such as the Marcellus, Bakken and Eagle (in Texas) fields equals 56% of all the natural gas produced in the continental United States.
Yet, few studies have been done to determine the extent to which the increase in methane emissions is related to oil and gas extraction operations in these massive shale formations. That is why this recent study regarding ethane emissions from the Bakken field is so important. Ethane is essentially a good proxy for methane, as both hydrocarbon compounds are found together in fields where natural gas is produced.
Even the EPA has been forced to admit that its previously rosy outlook on methane emissions from fossil fuel extraction were grossly underestimated.
With EPA’s next annual methane report due to be published by April 15, early signs suggest that the agency is taking steps to fix the methane mismatch. A preliminary draft of the report revises the agency’s methane calculations for 2013 — the most recent year reported — upward by about 27 percent for the natural gas and petroleum sectors, a difference of about 2 million metric tons. […]
EPA’s reports don’t just misjudge the scale of emissions, they also miss the long-term trend, recent work suggests. EPA reported that U.S. methane emissions remained largely unchanged from 2002 to 2014. But researchers report online March 2 in Geophysical Research Letters that emissions of the greenhouse gas rose more than 30 percent over that period. The United States could be responsible for as much as 30 to 60 percent of the global increase in methane emissions over the last decade, the study’s authors conclude. “We’re definitely not a small piece of that pie,” says Harvard University atmospheric scientist Alex Turner, who coauthored the study.
Yet, natural gas, particularly natural gas from shale field operations, is still being touted as the bridge to a cleaner energy future by both the Obama administration, and by the leading contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton argued at last night’s Democratic debate that supporting fracking during her years as secretary of State was necessary to help wean the world from coal power and to assist Europe in getting out from under Russian pressure. The subject of New York’s own fracking ban never came up at the debate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders brought back attacks that Clinton fostered fracking in other countries, an issue he’s highlighted to the delight of his green backers. “For economic and strategic reasons it was American policy to try to help countries get out from under the constant use of coal, building coal plants all the time,” Clinton said. “So we did say natural gas is a bridge. We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible … in order to deal with climate change.”
Except the experts don’t see natural gas, and fracking to extract it, as all that helpful in dealing with climate change. Quite the contrary:
“We cannot solely rely on abundant gas to solve the climate change problem. The climate change problem requires a climate change solution. Abundant gas could be great for any number of things, but it is not going to solve the climate change problem.”
This statement was made by Haewon McJeon, the lead author on a new study published last week by Nature magazine, which concluded that cheap abundant natural gas will actually delay any efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Again, Hillary Clinton is a good proxy for many politicians in both parties. Before she formally began her presidential campaign, she spoke in favor of increasing fracking and other drilling operations to extract natural gas. Her are some of her statements in 2014 regarding natural gas and fracking which she delivered at the National Clean Energy Summit, when she was far more open about her enthusiasm for natural gas to solve the climate change crisis.
At Sen. Harry Reid’s National Clean Energy Summit, Clinton called climate change “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of
challenges we face as a nation and a world.”
She also cited the potential benefits of producing and exporting natural gas and oil.
“Assuming that our production stays at the levels, or even as some predict, goes higher, I do think there’s a play there,” she said, noting it could help Europe and Asia amid continuing problems with Iran. “This is a great economic advantage, a competitive advantage, for us. … We don’t want to give that up.”
Unfortunately, the data is showing us that fracking and drilling for natural gas is not a good solution at all for transitioning to renewable energy, in light of what we now know about the increase in methane emissions since the fracking boom began in the U.S. and around the world. Methane is, after all, a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, eight-six (86) times more potent to be exact in the short term, i.e. over a twenty year period.
Then there is the entire issue of the damage these natural gas “plays” have on our fresh water supply. Using fracking to extract natural gas is extremely detrimental to our clean water supply.
The EPA estimates that 70 billion to 140 billion gallons of water were used nationwide in 2011 for fracturing an estimated 35,000 wells [22]. Unlike other energy-related water withdrawals, which are commonly returned to rivers and lakes, most of the water used for unconventional oil and gas development is not recoverable. Depending on the type of well along with its depth and location, a single well with horizontal drilling can require 3 million to 12 million gallons of water when it is first fractured — dozens of times more than what is used in conventional vertical wells [23]. Similar vast volumes of water are needed each time a well undergoes a “work over,” or additional fracturing later in its life to maintain well pressure and gas production. A typical shale gas well will have about two work overs during its productive life span.
Not recoverable means not treatable to make it safe for human consumption. In other words, not drinkable. Fracking for natural gas extraction is already having an impact in California, where it’s making the problems of drought even worse.
In California, where a drought emergency was declared last month, 96% of new oil and gas wells were located in areas where there was already fierce competition for water. The pattern holds for other regions caught up in the oil and gas rush. Most of the wells in New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming were also located in areas of high water stress, the report said.
The idea that we can avoid making climate change worse through methane emissions related to oil and gas extraction, even fracking, if we just put “the right safeguards in place” is frankly a myth. The EPA lacks the ability to enforce existing regulations, much less the ones President Obama is attempting to put in place before he leaves office.
What the latest data is showing us is that there are no right safeguards, short of turning away from fossil fuels and fracking altogether. All around the globe, people are discovering that fracking and drilling for natural gas is dangerous, both from the standpoint of ruining local groundwater resources, to an increased earthquake risk, to accelerating climate change due to the far great potency of methane as a greenhouse gas.
And guess what? After methane finally breaks down in the atmosphere, a large percentage of what it leaves behind is – Carbon Dioxide and water vapor, the two longest lasting greenhouse gases. So accelerating our efforts to drill deep underground to extract natural gas is accelerating climate change in both the short and long term.
So, why would anyone promote fracking around the world and celebrate the fracking boom in the US, knowing the devastation it is causing on both a regional and global scale? I mean, other than Big Oil whose appetite for profiting off environmental catastrophes knows no limits. It sure aren’t the scientists who are looking at ways to stave off the worst case climate change scenarios at this point.
Natural gas – and shale gas in particular – is not a bridge fuel when methane emissions are considered over an appropriate timescale.”
Dr. Robert Howarth, Cornell University
What we should be doing is taxing carbon with a steadily rising fee structure, as suggested by James Hansen, combined with efforts to increase the efficiency and viability of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. But a carbon tax or fee is critical.
Hansen said that a president committed to halting climate change would implement a gradually rising fee for fossil fuel extraction, collected from the fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. In order to keep the policy revenue-neutral, the fee would be evenly distributed back to US citizens in the form of a tax dividend, completely offsetting the rise in energy costs for most consumers. Those with large carbon footprints – like the very rich, with multiple large homes, for example – would bear the brunt. In that way, market forces would be allowed to let renewables compete and lower the cost of clean energy.
Unfortunately, no one in either party is talking about that solution, while also protecting us from the deleterious effects of fracking. Oh wait. Nevermind.
