Fracking Message from Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy

STUDY: FRACKING DOESN'T CONTAMINATE DRINKING WATER, SHALE GAS WELLS DO

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined eight clusters of drinking water contamination (seven in Pennsylvania and one in the Barnett Shale in Texas) and determined that in each case the underground injection of fracking fluid was not responsible for the elevated levels of methane, ethane, and propane in the drinking water. Instead, the contamination was traced to problems with the construction of the gas wells themselves. These problems include defective cement jobs, defective steel casing, and in one case, well failure. Lead author Thomas Darrah of The Ohio State University characterized this finding as "relatively good news," because improvements in well integrity could potentially reduce the number of contamination incidents.

But this raises an important question—does the industry know how to ensure the integrity of horizontally drilled shale gas wells? Maybe not. Another study (also published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), examined compliance reports for the tens of thousands of gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania between 2000 and 2012 and found that shale gas wells had cement and casing problems far more often than conventional wells. It "predicted cumulative hazards exceeding 40%."

Another caveat: A single study of several water contamination clusters doesn't prove that fracking per se never contaminates drinking water. In the areas of Pennsylvania and Texas that were studied, the fracked gas formations are more than a mile underground. In other parts of the country where there have also been water contamination incidents, fracking has occurred within just a few hundred feet of nearby water wells. For example, in Pavillion, Wyoming, fracking occurred within 1,000 feet of the surface near water wells that are over 750 feet deep. Stanford University's Robert Jackson, coauthor of the water contamination study, told the Billings Gazette "Pavillion is a much more complicated place than where we looked at. The biggest difference is how near the surface the fracking occurred, and how close to people's water it was."

Read more about well integrity.

WHAT'S FRACKING? LOOK IT UP

The oil and gas industry has been using the term fracking for more than fifty years, but it has only recently found its way into dictionaries. In fact, it took Merriam-Webster until this month to include the word, along with hashtag and selfie. Fracking, of course, is the abbreviated form of hydraulic fracturing and is defined as "the injection of fluid into shale beds at high pressure in order to free up petroleum resources (such as oil or natural gas)." Merriam-Webster doesn't recognize the term as shorthand for the entire process of unconventional oil and gas extraction, which also includes wellpad construction, drilling etc. Words such as fractivist, which clearly connote opposition to all aspects of unconventional drilling, have not yet found their way into the dictionary.

BRIEFLY NOTED:

• The effect of natural gas supply on U.S. renewable energy and CO2 emissions, a study conducted by University of California, Irvine, Professor Christine Shearer and others and published in Environmental Research Letters, concludes that "increased natural gas use for electricity will not substantially reduce U.S. GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, and by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies, may actually exacerbate the climate change problem."


• Peter Mantius reports on a little-known loophole that permits corporations to avoid paying taxes on their fossil fuel investments. Because these structured investments, known as Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), are only available for income derived from "depletable" natural resources, wind and solar energy are ineligible. For that reason, Mantius calls MLPs a "reverse carbon tax." The combined market value of these MLPs is now more than $500 billion.


• At the end of August, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released a list of 243 private water wells that were damaged by oil and gas extraction.

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