Opinion: Who are the enviroenergy hypocrites?

Listen to oil and gas industry executives and they will tell you that they are there to provide the country with energy for life and growth. But are they really there to make money for themselves? Are they in fact hypocrites?

Hypocrites by Gustave Dore

Listen to environmental campaigners and they will tell you that they are there to protect the environment for future generations. Yet their consumption is what makes the executives their money? Are they hypocrites?

Is it in fact fair to level these criticisms at either group. Everyone in the UK has to make money for themselves, and we all consume too much at the expense of the environment. We are like small children who always want more, and are now addicted to oil and gas.

The over-indulgent parents who allow us to behave this way are the government, any government. And why? Because we all want the love of our children and some are content to buy it with favours and so to nurture spoiled children. We are all spoiled children with regard to the environment, and love is counted in votes.

It is not surprising that oil company executives say the things they say or do the things they do. It is not surprising that environmental campaigners say or do the things they do, and no one ever expects governments to behave any other way than they do, sadly.

What is surprising is that environmental organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are not behaving as responsible surrogate parents. Look at their web-sites and you will find lots of encouragement to protest and to give money, but no strong encouragement for people to change, to consume less, to forego an iPhone, to give up your car and so on. The true environmentalists in these organisations sold their souls to pragmatism long ago because they see the true battle to reduce consumption as too difficult to fight.

We are all oil and gas addicts and hypocrites in the modern world, and before you say that it is all too big for me to make a difference, remember that small changes by many can be extremely significant. We each need to forgive ourselves a little less and consume a little less while doing a little more and forgiving others a little bit more too (including executives and activists).

A lightbulb moment?

Having a bizarre liking for lightbulb jokes, my favourite is

Q: How many crime mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two — one to screw it most of the way in and the other to give it a surprise twist at the end.

I would like to set a challenge for lightbulb jokes concerning shale gas and all who are involved. Shalegasophobes, Cuadrilla executives, the drilling roughnecks, the Balcombe softnecks - no drill holes barred.

I'll start with one:

Q: How many shale gas protestors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None — don't go near that bulb! It's full of toxic chemicals and gas.

Analysis: Hydraulic fracturing contaminates ground water: Critics vs. Experts

Talk to any environmental protestor and they will tell you that hydraulic fracturing contaminates ground water. Most, when asked, will offer no evidence. This post asks what is being said and what is the evidence?

Quotes from the critics

In the USA, critics of shale gas say quite clearly that hydraulic fracturing pollutes ground water:

• “Fracking is known to contaminate drinking water.” according to the Sierra Club.
• Hydraulic fracturing “…threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the communities we love and the climate on which we all depend.” according to Food & Water Watch .
• “Contaminated water” says the Center for Biological Diversity is one of the main criticisms of hydraulic fracturing.
• In his FAQ page, Gasland director Josh Fox says water contamination from fracking is “very serious.”

But when these same critics are asked to prove the claim, the evidence is far more elusive than their statements would suggest. At a major Senate hearing earlier this year, representatives from both the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, when pressed by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), could not name a single confirmed case of hydraulic fracturing contaminating groundwater.

In the UK, a selection of the critics say:

• “In the United States shale gas drilling has been linked to water and air pollution.” Friends of the Earth UK (25^th April 2013)
• “There is considerable evidence of contamination from both methane and fracking chemicals. One study of aquifers overlying the Marcellus and Utica shales in the north-eastern US found ‘systematic evidence of methane contamination of groundwater associated with shale gas extraction’. ” Friends of the Earth UK Briefing Report (May 2013)
• “In the USA, where fracking is an already established process, there have been reported surface, ground, and drinking water contamination due to fracking”  The Diocese of Blackburn, Church of England in Lancashire (14^th August 2013).
• “The time we spend thinking, praying and acting now to protect our drinking water, and the rest of God’s glorious creation cannot compare with the time succeeding generations could potentially spend trying to make good what will likely happen if we in the church remain uninformed and silent.” The Diocese of Blackburn, Church of England in Lancashire (14^th August 2013).
• “Fracking has been linked to contamination of water supplies and atmospheric pollution…” Line from a suggested letter to your MP from the Greenpeace website. It’s wrong, and they are putting into the ‘mouths’ of those who sign-up to Greenpeace with no evidence.

When asked for evidence for their 25^th April 2013 web-page claim, which was unsupported, their May 2013 briefing “Unconventional, unnecessary and unwanted” was pointed out. This briefing (quotation above) provides only one source for their claim that “There is considerable evidence of contamination from both methane and fracking chemicals”, which only concerns itself with methane, and suffers from the scientific flaw that there were no pre-drilling and pre-fracking measurements made. Hence, the paper cannot be used because it cannot conclude that hydraulic fracturing has caused the contamination with methane because the methane may have already been there naturally, thermogenic or not. See this post for a fuller analysis of two other papers suffering from the same flaws.

There are two quotations from a message to parishioners from the Church of England, who should know better than to peddle unsubstantiated scaremongering. The CofE do not support the first quotation by evidence, and would struggle to do so. There is nothing in their second quotation, which is by the way of a summary of the message, that one might take general exception to. I would particularly agree with the point about not “remaining uninformed and silent”. The trouble is, their message is badly uninformed - badly factually wrong again and again.

1. It is wrong over the ground-water contamination for this reason.
2. It is wrong over the amount of water required by hydraulic fracturing for this reason.
3. It is wrong over the reinjection of waste water because that is no longer carried out in the USA and would not be allowed in the UK and is discussed in my post on earthquakes.
4. It is badly wrong about the number and type of chemicals currently used by hydraulic fracturing, where the number of ingredients of a modern fracing fluid is about 12, of which two are water and sand.
5. t is wrong about burning shale gas being more or equally toxic as coal for this reason.

 My evidence to support these points can be found by following the links and throughout the posts of this blog.

There are other examples; it is perhaps the most erroneous document on shale gas I have ever seen, but I will not go on. None of this bland sermonising is supported by evidence; the CofE does not attempt to provide any evidence. The bottom line is the CofE have dressed their uninformed and incorrect opinions and presented them to their trusting flock. I am not against the CofE and praise their attempts at helping to inform people, but they must get some proper scientific advice and ensure that what they say is clear, balanced and above all backed up by proper scientific evidence. When I gave this blog the name “All Gas and Gaiters” and explained its origin, little did I realise that we might actually drift towards ‘gas’ ex cathedra.

As for the line from the Greenpeace letter of complaint, I just hope that most people are open-minded and intelligent enough to do some research into what they send and assure themselves that they can really substantiate ‘their own’ views. Otherwise they will be the dupes of Greenpeace.

So what do experts say?

• “Most geologists are pretty convinced that it is extremely unlikely contamination would occur.” Professor Mike Stevenson, British Geological Survey.

• “The risk of fractures propagating to reach overlying aquifers is very low provided that shale gas extraction takes place at depths of many hundreds of metres or several kilometres. Even if fractures reached overlying aquifers, the necessary pressure conditions for contaminants to flow are very unlikely to be met given the UK’s shale gas hydrogeological environments.” Royal Society report, 29^th June 2012.  

•  “The jury is out on there being a direct and causal link on environmental effects.”  Prof Kevin Anderson, a shale gas expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

•  “In fact, fracking is not new and has been used without previous controversy since the 1940s. A spokesman for Cuadrilla said that an existing gas well at Elswick, near one of its sites in Lancashire, was fracked 20 years ago by its then owners, British Gas, in “almost exactly the same way” as at Cuadrilla’s shale sites now.” Andrew Gilligan, The Daily Telegraph.

• “The Elswick site has been producing conventional gas without controversy since 1996. The spokesman accused Frack Off of using “misleading information” to scare people. Frack Off insisted that shale gas fracking was new and different because it would have to be done more often and at greater pressures.” Andrew Gilligan, The Daily Telegraph.

• “Wytch Farm has been fracked - see Royal Soc report p.17. Obv it didn't 'destroy' it.” Tweet (expanded) from Corin Taylor, Senior Economic Adviser at the Institute of Directors (19^th August 2013).

• “A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site” the Department of Energy told The Associated Press…. “Drilling fluids tagged with unique markers were injected more than 8,000 feet below the surface at the gas well bore but weren't detected in a monitoring zone at a depth of 5,000 feet. The researchers also tracked the maximum extent of the man-made fractures, and all were at least 6,000 feet below the surface.”. “This is good news," said Duke University scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved with the study. He called it a "useful and important approach" to monitoring fracking.

• “To my knowledge, I still have not seen any evidence of fracking per se contaminating groundwater.”  Ernest Moniz, Secretary of U.S. Dept. of Energy (Aug. 2013).

• “This new study is important in terms of finding no significant effects on groundwater quality from shale gas development within the area of sampling.” U.S. Geological Survey (January 2013).

• “[R]egulatory officials we met with from eight states – Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas – told us that, based on state investigations, the hydraulic fracturing process has not been identified as a cause of groundwater contamination within their states.”  US Govt. Accountability Office  (September 2012).

• “In no case have we made a definitive determination that [hydraulic fracturing] has caused chemicals to enter groundwater.”  Lisa Jackson, former EPA Administrator (April 2012).

• “I’m not aware of any proven case where [hydraulic fracturing] itself has affected water.” Lisa Jackson, former EPA Administrator (May 2011).

• “I have been working in hydraulic fracturing for 40+ years and there is absolutely no evidence hydraulic fractures can grow from miles below the surface to the fresh water aquifers.”  Dr. Stephen Holditch, Dept. of Petroleum Engineering, Texas A&M University; member of DOE’s SEAB Shale Gas Production Subcommittee (October 2011).

• “In this study, statistical analyses of post-drilling versus pre-drilling water chemistry did not suggest major influences from gas well drilling or hydrofracturing (fracking) on nearby water wells, when considering changes in potential pollutants that are most prominent in drilling waste fluids.”  Center for Rural Pennsylvania (October 2011).

• “Fracturing fluids have not contaminated any water supply and with that much distance to an aquifer, it is very unlikely they could.” Dr. Mark Zoback, Professor of Geophysics, Stanford University; member of DOE’s SEAB Shale Gas Production Sub-committee (August 2011).

• “Although an estimated 80,000 wells have been fractured in Ohio, state agencies have not identified a single instance where groundwater has been contaminated by hydraulic fracturing operations.” State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (January 2011).

• “A supporting study for this dSGEIS concludes that it is highly unlikely that groundwater contamination would occur by fluids escaping from the wellbore for hydraulic fracturing. The 2009 dSGEIS further observes that regulatory officials from 15 states recently testified that groundwater contamination as a result of the hydraulic fracturing process in the tight formation itself has not occurred.” N.Y. Revised Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS) (2011).

• “In the studies surveyed, no incidents are reported which conclusively demonstrate contaminationof shallow water zones with fracture fluids.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2010).

• “[B]ased on over sixty years of practical application and a lack of evidence to the contrary, there is nothing to indicate that when coupled with appropriate well construction; the practice of hydraulic fracturing in deep formations endangers ground water. There is also a lack of demonstrated evidence that hydraulic fracturing conducted in many shallower formations presents a substantial risk of endangerment to ground water.” U.S. Dept. of Energy and Ground Water Protection Council (May 2009).

• “Although thousands of CBM wells are fractured annually, EPA did not find confirmed evidence that drinking water wells have been contaminated by hydraulic fracturing fluid injection into CBM wells.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2004).

In this case, I prefer the experts view.

However, as a safety valve I always remember a quotation, though I cannot remember where it comes from - 

“Experts! When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed by experts”. 

I fancy it is something from John Le Carre.

Analysis: What interests readers?

After 22 days of this blog, and 15 posts, the top three blogs account for 22% of the total traffic. Since some of these posts were early and some recent, it is not a good quantitative guide to what interests or worries readers, but it may be a pointer.

The top issues are:

Water usage (7%), 
Increased volumes of road traffic (9.5%), and 
Earthquakes (5.5%).

All these issues are not, in my view, significant problems for shale gas development - but they concern readers, and we should take that concern seriously (I hope the politicians are listening).

Issue 11: Shale gas will be significantly delayed due to lack of equipment and expertise

Yes. There are very few rigs available and many more personnel would need to be trained. This will take years, and gives us the chance for mature reflection with clear, scientific data.

There is a set of extremely useful on-line tools for seeing on a monthly basis how many drilling rigs there are in the USA and around the globe from Baker Hughes, who have been keeping the tally for over 70 years. They are extremely accurate, and used by investors to judge how active the industry is.

At the end of July 2013 (last week) there were 1776 rigs active in the USA, of which 369 were drilling for gas as shown in the map below (oil in blue, gas in red and geothermal in green).

The red dots near the Texas coast (top map) represent drilling for shale gas in the Barnett shale, whereas those top right are the Utica and Marcellus gas shales, which are shown in more detail in the bottom map.

In the UK there was one, and we know where that is - Balcombe!

That is fewer than most European countries whether they have a shale gas moratorium or not.

There were 6 drilling for gas in Poland, where there are known shale gas resources, and other resources, notably in Argentina, where 21 of its 85 rigs are drilling for gas.

The effort, amounts of money and of time required to build and staff sufficient rigs for significant exploration on the UK mainland will be very large. A reasonable campaign of exploration will take at least 5 years to put together.

When the other European countries ‘wake-up’ to shale gas there will be a huge competition for rigs and trained personnel to man them, as well as scientists and technicians capable of analysing their data.

Issue 10: Fracking can and will release gas into the atmosphere

Yes. At the moment it is considered likely that there will be some gas leakage from wells but no one knows whether it will be insignificant, moderate or large. Despite this, the replacement of coal generation with gas generation has the potential for reducing methane emissions to the atmosphere considerably.

A pedant would say that this is a certain outcome of extracting the gas and using the gas in the first place: We extract the gas, burn the gas to extract its useful energy, and then vent the resulting CO2 to the atmosphere, where its presence contributes to global climate change.

An extremely environmentally sensitive individual would point out that we must stop burning fossil fuels altogether, but few eschew the advantages that fossil fuels provide, and those that do are perhaps among the most moral on Earth (but they won’t be reading this blog, or eating Mars bars as these behaviours require fossil fuels).

The government wants energy security, and that means its own sources of energy. Of course it would also like the price of gas to come down because that serves its political ends, but no one seriously expects that to happen.

What do most men and women in the UK want? Well, I think they want correct information, delivered clearly and used to make sensible decisions. They may be getting the sensible decisions, but many do not trust that to be the case because of the lack of evidence-based information delivered in a straightforward manner.

Coal vs. Gas

It has been pointed out that shale gas is a non-ideal solution, but one that is better than the current norm of burning coal. Indeed, a number of policy makers consider shale gas to be a bridge-fuel allowing us time to develop and roll-out renewables as well as smoothing the problem of demand when depending on intermittent solar and wind sources.

The argument is that for each megawatt hour (MWh) you get from shale gas much less CO2 is produced than if you used coal generation to provide it.  In fact an average coal would give about 975 kg of CO2 per MWh compared to about 550 kg of CO2 per MWh for natural gas. In other words shale gas is about half as bad for the climate as coal if burned efficiently to produce electricity.  The gain is significant because, in the unlikely event that we could replace all coal-fired power stations with gas-fired ones, we would be able to reduce annual CO2 emissions from 11 billion tonnes of CO2 to 6.2 billion tonnes of CO2, which is a whopping 4.8 billion tonnes of CO2. That saving of CO2 would also take place if we replaced the coal-fired generation by building over 851,000  wind turbines, each with a capacity of 5MW like those offshore UK, and having them work constantly all year!  This argument alone has led to claims that shale gas is a green-alternative. It is not ideal, but a step in the right direction.

Moreover, if we look at the lifecycle NO_x, SO_x, and mercury emissions, we find that those from coal are 1.3, 18, and 27 times higher than those from natural gas, respectively. The amount of freshwater consumed for coal production and electricity generation is over twice the amount consumed by natural gas. Yes, fracking uses a lot of water, but less than coal mining has always done on a per kilowatt basis.

There are also benefits to human health. According to a recent report from the Breakthrough Institute that was highlighted in an article by the energy collective, 

“Coal combustion releases toxic chemicals including arsenic, mercury, lead, and numerous others. In addition to CO₂, coal combustion also emits oxides of sulphur (mainly SO₂), and oxides of nitrogen (NO_x), which can cause adverse respiratory conditions. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN), sulphur nitrate (SNO₃), and other toxic substances are also produced. SO₂ reacts with atmospheric gases to produced sulphuric acid, which returns to the earth as acid rain, harming ecosystems and human health. Pollutant emissions from coal plants cause more than 20,000 heart attacks, nearly 10,000 hospitalizations, and more than 13,000 premature deaths annually in the United States.”

By comparison, gas is much cleaner, leading to less than 30% of the deaths per terawatt hour associated with coal, that is a saving of over 8000 lives per year in the USA alone.

If we could replace all of our coal burning power stations with clean gas burning power stations, then there would indeed be an advantage for the atmosphere. It is ironic to think that it is solely due to their development of coal gas that

(i)     the USA would have already met its Kyoto goals if it has signed-up to them,

(ii)    the USA now exports of the coal that it does not now need, keeping UK power stations burning dirty fuel, and

(iii)   the USA and Canada are converting most of its public transport systems (yes it does have some!) to run on gas.

Effect of CH4 on the climate

But perhaps there is a problem. If the shale gas leaks to the atmosphere directly, it provides a much greater contribution to climate change than CO2. The potential for methane to cause global climate change depends on the timescale because it is efficiently removed from the atmosphere by natural processes. However, it is a stronger green house gas than CO2, so its effects are nevertheless greater in general. Over a 20 year timescale the IPCC 2001 report (Scientific Basis, Chapter 4) calculates methane to be 62 times as damaging as CO2, dropping to 23 times after 100 years and 7 times after 500 years.

The current annual emissions rate of methane into the atmosphere is about 598 million tonnes per year, which adds to that already there, which is about 4850 million tonnes, and there is also an annual loss of methane from the atmosphere of about 576 million tonnes per year. Of the emissions no more than 200 million tonnes per year are from natural sources, leaving the rest caused by various human activities, amongst which mining is a large fraction, together with ruminants and rice farming. The difference between the emissions and the losses is about 22 million tonnes, so anything that can reduce this gap will be important, as we will see in the following sections.

Coal’s contribution to CH4

A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated that surface and underground mining of coal releases 1.91 grams and 4.23 grams of methane per kilogram of coal mined, respectively. In 2011 8.12 billion tonnes of coal was consumed. If we take 3 grammes of methane per kg as a convenient mean for both surface and underground mining, we get a figure of 22.1 million tonnes of methane released into the atmosphere as the result of coal power generation.

Coal vs. gas - Part II

Hence, if there were no methane losses associated with shale gas production and consumption to generate power, and we could replace all of the coal plants with shale gas plants, the amount of methane released to the environment would decrease to such an extent that we would solve climate change from that source.  This is clearly an incredible and heartening piece of information.

However, shale gas production and consumption will inevitably release some methane into the atmosphere, and if gas wells leak, it could be considerable. The question is whether they leak more than 22.1 million tonnes of it. If not, we are already in the black on the climate calculation, if not the green.

The figure 22.1 million tonnes of methane is incredibly difficult to imagine, but calculating its volume at atmospheric pressure and 25^oC is about 3.23 km³. It is also about 0.1% of the annual global natural gas production (3201 km³, data from 2010 and 2011 compiled from the 2012 CIA World Factbook ). In other words, it’s a huge leak, but equally it would only require a 0.1% of production to leak from each gas well (of all types) around the world!

Methane leaks from shale gas wells

So, reading the earlier posting on aquifer contamination, it is clear that shale gas wells can and do leak. There are leakage mechanisms between the cement and the casing, the cement and the rock, through the cement and occasionally through breaks in the casing.

The leaks seem small, but are difficult to quantify. It seems like they will become larger as the well ages, even if maintenance is carried out, and is due to casing rust and degrading cement. The question is whether these leaks are or ever will be significant enough to invalidate the advantage that natural gas has over the coal that it will replace.

Other pollutants from shale gas wells

There has been some concern that gases leaking from shale gas wells could carry with them toxic pollutants in the form of an aerosol. This could happen if there were a significant blow-out from a well. Fortunately, with modern technology and safety procedures these are vanishingly rare. The low slow leakage that may happen through casing and cement is not likely to carry significant aerosol-borne contaminants as these will stay within the pores of the cement.

Testing for leaks scientifically

My view is that there should be a scientific study into the potential problem that is presented in a transparent manner.  If the UK had a growing shale gas industry, it would be possible. However, the industry in the UK is simply too immature to carry out such a study. It is interesting to note that Cuadrilla have engaged an independent environmental consultancy to test the back-ground environmental levels at the Balcombe drill site, finding elevated natural levels of methane and ethane in the ground water environment. Only when we have post drilling and post-fracking measurements, over a reasonable period, will we be able to start quantifying the fraction, if any, of leaked gases.

My recent analysis and that of the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23724657 of two recent scientific papers shows how difficult it is to carry out this type on monitoring accurately. In general, the use of data from the USA is not possible because the sampling protocols skewed, and they do not carry out back-ground level checks which would be necessary to prove the leakage. The two scientific papers that I discuss in another blog posting represent the best of the studies from the USA. One reports a correlation between shale gas wells and methane in groundwater, but since there were no background tests, it is impossible to be sure.

What is certain is that it is absolutely necessary to ensure that all UK wells are monitored for atmospheric pollution and leakage.