Matt Ridley debunks five common myths about environmental issues with fracking:
The movie Gasland showed a case of entirely natural gas contamination of water and the director knew it, but he still pretended it might have been caused by fracking. Ernest Moniz, the US Energy Secretary, said earlier this month: “I still have not seen any evidence of fracking per se contaminating groundwater.” Tens of thousands of wells drilled, two million fracking operations completed and not a single proven case of groundwater contamination. Not one. It may happen one day, of course, but there’s few industries that can claim a pollution record that good.
Next comes the claim that shale gas production results in more methane release to the atmosphere and hence could be as bad for climate change as coal. (Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time and its concentration is not currently rising fast.) This claim originated with a Cornell biology professor with an axe to grind. Study after study has refuted it. As a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology put it: “It is incorrect to suggest that shale gas-related hydraulic fracturing has substantially altered the overall [greenhouse gas] intensity of natural gas production.”
Third comes the claim that fracking uses too much water. The Guardian carried a report this week implying that a town in Texas is running dry because of the water used for fracking. Yet in Texas 1% of water use is for fracking, in the United States as a whole 0.3% — less than is used by golf courses. If parts of Texas run out of water, blame farming, by far the biggest user.
Fourth, the ever-so-neutral BBC in a background briefing this week described fracking as releasing “hundreds of chemicals” into the rock. Out by an order of magnitude, Auntie. Fracking fluid is 99.51% water and sand. In the remaining 0.49% there are just 13 chemicals, all of which can be found in your kitchen, garage or bathroom: citric acid (lemon juice), hydrochloric acid (swimming pools), glutaraldehyde (disinfectant), guar (ice cream), dimethylformamide (plastics), isopropanol (deodorant), borate (hand soap); ammonium persulphate (hair dye); potassium chloride (intravenous drips), sodium carbonate (detergent), ethylene glycol (de-icer), ammonium bisulphite (cosmetics), petroleum distillate (cosmetics).
As for earthquakes, Durham University’s definitive survey of all induced earthquakes over many decades concluded that “almost all of the resultant seismic activity [from fracking] was on such a small scale that only geoscientists would be able to detect it” and that mining, geothermal activity or reservoir water storage causes more and bigger tremors.
Update: On Twitter, Nils Werner took umbrage with this post:
@nrusson That is not a well written article. The reason why there is no 'proof of contamination' is because evidenced is suppressed
— Nils Werner (@iNils) August 17, 2013
@nrusson And home owners are unable to prove that their water wasn't contaminated prior, since they didn't test it prior to contamination.
— Nils Werner (@iNils) August 17, 2013
@nrusson Here, have what is no doubt, an incomplete list of additives. https://t.co/qEuBPZ41B5
— Nils Werner (@iNils) August 17, 2013
Here is some really great investigative reporting by @ProPublica on fracking, @nrusson https://t.co/5wwjv0KRPh
— Nils Werner (@iNils) August 17, 2013
Update, the second: Coyote Blog on Californian regulators suddenly “discovering” that fracking has been going on in their jurisdiction for years:
What California regulators are really saying is that they have known about and been comfortable with this process for decades**, but what has changed is not the technology but public opinion. A small group of environmentalists have tried to, without much scientific basis, demonize this procedure not because they oppose it per se but because they are opposed to an expansion of hydrocarbon availability, which they variously blame for either CO2 and global warming or more generally the over-industrialization of the world.
So given this new body of public opinion, rather than saying that “sure, fracking has existed for decades and we have always been comfortable with it”, the regulators instead act astonished and surprised — “we are shocked, shocked that fracking is going on in this establishment” — and run around in circles demonstrating their care and concern. Next step is their inevitable trip to the capital to tell legislators that they desperately need more money and people to deal with their new responsibility to carefully scrutinize this decades-old process.
