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"These problems are not unique to hydraulic fracturing"

So … what is this really saying? That there is nothing risky ‘outside of the ordinary’ for hydraulic fracturing compared to other drilling operations? “Many reports of contamination can be traced to above-ground spills or other mishandling of wastewater produced from shale drilling and not from hydraulic fracturing”.

I feel like this conclusion is somewhat misleading, or could potentially be misleading, if it is not explained properly. Hydraulic fracturing is the process by which the shale rock holding the natural gas is ‘fractured’, such that the gas can be extracted (compare this to conventional gas extraction, where the gas is contained within a permeable rock that doesn’t need to be fractured for gas extraction). I’m not sure that the ‘drilling’ or ‘fracturing’ problem itself is what people are concerned about, so declaring that the act of fracturing is ‘safe’ seems somewhat irrelevant.

Hydraulic fracturing in shale formations “has no direct connection” to groundwater contamination, a study released Thursday concluded.

The study, conducted by the Energy Institute at the

University of Texas at Austin, found that many problems attributed to hydraulic fracturing “are related to processes common to all oil and gas drilling operations,” such as drilling pipe inadequately cased in concrete.

Many reports of contamination can be traced to above-ground spills or other mishandling of wastewater produced from shale drilling and not from hydraulic fracturing, Charles “Chip” Groat, an Energy Institute associate director who led the project, said in a statement.

“These problems are not unique to hydraulic fracturing,” Groat said.

…

The UT Energy Institute’s report stands in stark contrast to a draft report released in December from the Environmental Protection Agency, which said its examination of a hydraulic fracturing site in Pavillion, Wyo., found hydraulic fracturing fluids and chemicals associated with natural gas production in deep water wells.

NYT: Judge’s Ruling Complicates Hydrofracking Issue in New York

New York: a hydraulic fracturing battleground state.

A state judge’s decision this week supporting the rights of individual towns to determine whether to allow hydraulic fracturing has added a new wrinkle to the fight over the natural gas drilling process in New York.

Parties on all sides are trying to figure out what the ruling will mean, but a consensus emerged on Wednesday that there will be further court challenges and delays over when, how and where the process, known as hydrofracking, will be allowed in the state, and by whom.

Officials of natural gas companies voiced concern that such local restrictions could render more areas of the Marcellus Shale off-limits to drillers in a state that is already proposing strict regulation of where the industry will be allowed to operate.

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Bberg: Oil Profits Slide Fastest Since Lehman Collapse on Gas: Energy

The ever-changing fuel situation continues to develop in curious ways….

Also, note how Albany is specifically mentioned -I’m going to assume, since the link doesn’t specify otherwise, they mean Albany, NY…. specifically New York’s current deliberation about how to best allow Hydrofracking in New York.

‘Hurt Themselves’

Chevron Corp. (CVX) and ConocoPhillips, the second- and third- largest U.S. energy companies by market value, also are expected to post their largest full-year profit declines in 2012 since 2009, when worldwide fuel markets were reeling from the collapse of demand in the wake of the financial crisis.

“In a sense, they’ve hurt themselves,” Leonard Coburn, president of Washington-based Coburn International Energy Consultants LLC and a former director of Russian and Eurasian affairs at the Energy Department. “But that’s why we’re seeing them shifting away from gas toward more oil.”

Shale formations will account for 49 percent of total U.S. gas production by 2035, up from 23 percent in 2010, the Energy Department said in a Feb. 14 report. When other geologic formations such as tight sands that require the same intensive drilling techniques are added in, unconventional fields will pump 77 percent of domestic supply by 2035, the department said.

The supply bonanza of gas and oil made possible with fracking means the U.S. will become increasingly independent of foreign energy producers at the same time as burgeoning economic powers such as China grow more reliant on overseas supplies, said Jonathan Chanis, managing member of New Tide Asset Management LLC in Torrington, Connecticut. That outlook assumes lawmakers and regulators at the federal and state levels won’t place expensive restrictions on drillers, he said.

“With the right policy decisions in Washington and places like Harrisburg and Albany, the United States will be in an extremely positive position,” Chanis said.

New York Post: Facing Frack Hysteria, Pa drilling is cleaner than ever

More in the battle for hearts and minds of the people.

John Hanger is described in the article as:

There are real environmental concerns about gas drilling, says John Hanger, an environmental activist, former Pennsylvania environmental secretary and sometimes sharp critic of the gas industry — but the concerns have little to do with fracking.

Who is John Hanger? Depends on who you ask, it seems. A quick search for John Hanger reveals a variety of those who think highly, and not so highly of him. The above quote is from the NY Post.

Yet elsewhere on the internet...

In a documentary about natural gas development that premiered this week on HBO, Pennsylvania’s secretary of the environment receives a decidedly unflattering portrayal at the hands of Josh Fox, who made the movie Gasland.

Fox portrays Hanger - a liberal who spent years in the mainstream environmental movement - as an equivocating tool of the natural gas industry. In one of the film’s signature moments, Fox pulls out a bottle of water he says was polluted by a Marcellus Shale gas well and challenges the state’s top environmental regulator to drink it.

As usual, it seems to depend on who you ask. A search for Hanger reveals this line of tags from Energy In Depth http://www.energyindepth.org/tag/john-hanger/ They seem to think fairly well of Mr Hanger.

For what it’s worth, Energy In Depth describes itself as…

Launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) in 2009, Energy In Depth (EID) is a research, education and public outreach campaign focused on getting the facts out about the promise and potential of responsibly developing America’s onshore energy resource base – especially abundant sources of oil and natural gas from shale and other “tight” reservoirs across the country. It’s an effort that benefits directly from the support, guidance and technical insight of a broad segment of America’s oil and natural gas industry, led in Washington by IPAA, but directed on the ground by our many affiliates — and IPAA’s more than 6,000 members — in the states.

Can think tanks sponsored by organizations devoted to the usage of one type of fuel be counted on to provide sincere and insightful criticism to that fuel? Is that a conflict of interest?

Nothing new in the realm of energy debates for NY’s hydrofracking decision.

Air sampling reveals high emissions from gas field

When US government scientists began sampling the air from a tower north of Denver, Colorado, they expected urban smog — but not strong whiffs of what looked like natural gas. They eventually linked the mysterious pollution to a nearby natural-gas field, and their investigation has now produced the first hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change.

Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study estimates that natural-gas producers in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. This is more than double the official inventory, but roughly in line with estimates made in 2011 that have been challenged by industry. And because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels.

“If we want natural gas to be the cleanest fossil fuel source, methane emissions have to be reduced,” says Gabrielle Pétron, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA and at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and first author on the study, currently in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research. Emissions will vary depending on the site, but Pétron sees no reason to think that this particular basin is unique. “I think we seriously need to look at natural-gas operations on the national scale.”

The results come as a natural-gas boom hits the United States, driven by a technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, that can crack open hard shale formations and release the natural gas trapped inside. Environmentalists are worried about effects such as water pollution, but the US government is enthusiastic about fracking. In his State of the Union address last week, US President Barack Obama touted natural gas as the key to boosting domestic energy production.

Marcellus Shale estimates cut by 66%

Cutting the potential output as being able to supply the US for 6 years instead of 18? Ouch. On the other hand, perhaps this will be good news for renewable energy R&D.

The U.S. Energy Department cut its estimate for natural gas reserves in the Marcellus shale formation by 66 percent, citing improved data on drilling and production.

About 141 trillion cubic feet of gas can be recovered from the Marcellus shale using current technology, down from the previous estimate of 410 trillion, the department said today in its Annual Energy Outlook. About 482 trillion cubic feet can be produced from shale basins across the U.S., down 42 percent from 827 trillion in last year’s outlook.

“Drilling in the Marcellus accelerated rapidly in 2010 and 2011, so that there is far more information available today than a year ago,” the department said. The estimates represent unproved technically recoverable gas. The daily rate of Marcellus production doubled during 2011.

The estimated Marcellus reserves would meet U.S. gas demand for about six years, using 2010 consumption data, according to the Energy Department, down from 17 years in the previous outlook.

The Marcellus Shale is a rock formation stretching across the U.S. Northeast, including Pennsylvania and New York. Shale producers use a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, which involves pumping water, sand and chemicals underground to extract gas embedded in the rock.

Water on fire.: /

Hey I get to combine Hydrofracking tag w music tag, go figure!

The best explainers are direct, concise and easy to understand. But investigative journalism is rarely any of those things, instead reflecting the messiness of real life. That’s why explanation is just the beginning, a gateway into the kind of deep-dives for which ProPublica is known and respected.

“My Water’s On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)” is not meant to take the place of the rich, detailed investigation done by Abrahm Lustgarten and the rest of ProPublica’s frack squad. It’s impossible to sum up a massive, immersive experience like “Buried Secrets” in a two-and-a-half minute song. Instead, the intent is to bring people in, to create an easily digestible package that compels news consumers to dig into the real meat of the story.

An explainer is not “everything you need to know about X.” It’s not a shortcut to becoming an armchair expert. But it is the starting point, the big picture, the tiny bundle of information that gives users the context to appreciate and understand the most challenging and rewarding works of journalism.

(Source: explainer.net)

Beyond Hype, a Closer Look at New York’s Choice on Shale Gas By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Close to home, definitely an important issue…

Beyond Hype, a Closer Look at New York’s Choice on Shale Gas

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

More than 40,000 comments have been submitted to New York State aimed at shaping how Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo deals with the huge natural gas resource locked in the state’s portion of sprawling geological formations known as the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale.

The comments are not publicly viewable at this point. (You can submit a Freedom of Information Law request for an eventual CD, I was told.) But any quick sift of the Web provides a pretty solid sense of the range of views — from environmentalists pursuing an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing and related processes, widely called fracking, to landowners seeking the freedom to benefit from their mineral rights. There was a fresh anti-gas rally in Albany this morning, focused on passing bills (sponsored by lawmakers representing New York City constituents far from the resource) that would limit the governor’s ability to move ahead.

Here’s some background behind the shouting:

The comments submitted to the state by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (online here) are particularly useful to explore. The E.P.A. stance could be characterized as concerned but supportive, which is a strong contrast from the agency’s tougher stance in 2009, as described in a recent post on the Politics on the Hudson blog. I also encourage you to read coverage from Brian Nearing of the Albany Times Union. One concern from the agency is over how the state and industry will work out how to pay for the cost of overseeing the gas extraction.

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The water-energy nexus: Spotlight (LEIF)

A nice overview/introduction to the Water / Energy nexus, via London Environmental Investment Forum…

The water industry is renowned for being risk averse and conservative. It’s understandable. No one wants people to experiment with their water.

But as fresh water becomes more and more precious and the cost of energy to get fresh water keeps on rising, the challenges of the water-energy nexus are getting bigger.  The industry needs innovative solutions but with innovation comes risk. This blog series will put the spotlight on technologies addressing some of the challenges and take a closer look at their markets and growth prospects ahead of our next water conference.

The water industry and the energy industry are fundamental to one another.  The water industry needs large amounts of energy to transport, store and treat water.  The energy industry needs large amounts of water (for boilers and cooling) to generate and distribute power.  Head upstream to the oil and gas industry and the problem is there too - the industry is producing increasing amounts of wastewater, and needing more and more energy to treat it. 

This last area – the treatment of wastewater produced by the oil and gas industry (known as ‘produced water’) – is one we think has particularly strong growth prospects, especially at the high level end of the process.  Using advanced desalination technologies, water can be treated to a standard whereby it’s no longer a waste product to be disposed of, but a resource which can be used again. But treating water to this level is expensive.  It can only work if it’s cheaper than the alternative or if the water can be sold on at the right price.  Technologies that can deliver the quality of water required while driving down energy costs are on the money. 

This market looks set for strong growth for several reasons. Conventional oil and gas extraction – which refers to the resources we have typically produced using onshore and offshore vertical wells – has likely peaked in some regions, North America being one of them.  Large quantities of water are present in oil reservoirs and are brought to the surface along with the oil during the extraction process.  As an oil field matures, there is more water in the reservoir and less oil, which means even more water is brought to the surface as the water to oil ratio increases.
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