A fairly even-handed introduction to how Hydrofracking is affecting the global energy market.
I wonder though if it will be more a gilded than golden age.
In its World Energy Outlook 2011 , the IEA remarks that “in all the scenarios examined natural gas has a higher share of the global energy mix in 2035 than it does today”.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Close to home, definitely an important issue…
Beyond Hype, a Closer Look at New York’s Choice on Shale Gas
By ANDREW C. REVKINMore 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.
…
NYT: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS BEHIND HYDRAULIC FRACTURING
CAPTION: A “fracking” operation near Big Wells, in which water and chemicals are injected deep underground to extract oil and natural gas.
By KATE GALBRAITH
Published: January 14, 2012
Starting Feb. 1, drilling operators in Texas will have to report many of the chemicals used in the process known as hydraulic fracturing. Environmentalists and landowners are looking forward to learning what acids, hydroxides and other materials have gone into a given well.
But a less-publicized part of the new regulation is what some experts are most interested in: the mandatory disclosure of the amount of water needed to “frack” each well. Experts call this an invaluable tool as they evaluate how fracking affects water supplies in the drought-prone state….
We’ll have to return to this on FEB 1 to see what is revealed…
