What's Good for the Goose....

NPR ran a story this morning about the divide growing in environmental groups like the Sierra Club over natural gas extraction in places like the Marcellus Shale. I didn't listen.
This divide has been going on for some time now. If you're not up on it, the national Sierra Club has been touting the use of natural gas as a fuel over less clean fossils like coal. Local Sierra Club groups in places like New York, where members believe that if they keep saying the gas process has caused drinking water contamination somewhere it will have, disagree. Thats not the interesting part.
The interesting part isthe collection of comments from all kinds of anti-drilling folks on the NPR Web site. The number of missed points here on general energy issues is incredible coming from people who seem to be somewhat informed.
Many talk about the National Sierra Club's "lesser of two evils" approach. But that's not what the approach is at all.
The National group has apparently put the puzzle together -- the daily growing demand for energy, plus the need to reduce carbon emissions and still provide reliable energy for mission critical needs adds up to a world in which all viable energy sources are vital.
They must also know that the water contamination issue is overblown -- over a million wells, many more shallow than shale wells, have been fraced over a period of more than 60 years. Together with horizontal drilling, fracing can now make our untapped shale reserves an abundant home-grown supply of energy.
Water pollution incidents have been reported. Real scientists have studied them all -- not one has ever been attributed to a natural gas well. Even in incidents where there have been surface spills, drinking water has never been contaminated. Sure, for a time during cleanup, frac fluids may have been in a surface waterway -- but contamination dangerous to humans has never occurred. No matter how many newspaper and television reporters and "citizen" journalists tells us drinking water has been contaminated, its just not.
Anyway, having worked with environmental groups throughout the majority of my career I've seen them fail in pursuits over and over again for one reason: the inability to compromise to make things better, rather than perfect. Like it or not, humans live on this planet. We've developed a pattern of living it would take our absence to truly eliminate. Earth can most certainly be better -- we can all do things better, but we can't make Earth what it was before we got here. (And no I don't mean we continue to haphazardly pollute because its too late anyway. Neither does the industry -- current drilling techniques are more earth friendly than ever before, but thats a topic for another day.)
Here's where someone starts telling me the virtues of wind, and solar. Maybe nuclear. All great fuels. Like natural gas, all have serious problems.
Wind and solar both take massive tracts of land (but a gas well footprint goes from 7 acres to about 1 or so after reclaimation). They also take massive amount of pipeline to get energy where sun shines and wind blows to places where it doesn't. On the trip to the end user, a good portion of the energy it generates is lost (gas loses the least value in travel by the way). Also, both require a backup fuel more reliable than they, like natural gas. And gas is also a feed stock for making the materials necessary to build those towers and panels.
Solar panels need to be washed daily, due to dust build up that impacts their ability to channel the sun. In the western US where water is terribly scarce to begin with, there will have to be some way to ration the water needed for this. In the eastern part of the country -- and likely in other colder places where wind turbines have been installed, there are ice problems. Ice builds up on blades in cooler times, as it melts and loosens as blades that have stopped spinning start up again, huge chunks on ice become flying projectiles.
And nuclear. Probably don't have to tell anyone about the problems realted to that one. There's a town not far from where I live that once produced nuclear fuel rods -- recently enough that some of people who did so are still living, and the community is still dealing with an amazing cancer cluster and the notoriety of having a major contamination problem -- even AFTER the site has been reclaimed and cleaned up. Nuclear energy isn't just the plant itself. The manufacturing is also problematic.
Bottom line here folks is this: No energy is all good or all bad. Our world needs energy like never before if we're going to sustain long happy lives and continue to build those kinds of lives for others in our world. Energy is as big a need in poor countries as is clean water and sanitation. For Americans, if we want to see how Apple is going to improve the ipad or have perscription medications, or use the net to communicate this way -- we need reliable energy. All we can get.
Regardless of all the fighting and bellyaching about water contamination that hasn't occured and our societal instinct to use everything we term "Big Oil" as a whipping boy, natural gas is necessary and won't go away.
The real question is, will we allow baseless fear mongering to make this necessary fuel more expensive than it needs to be, and limit the number of jobs it can provide? Let's hope not.

Attacking Your Own: A Sign You May Not Know What You're Talking About Afterall

Congress, as I mentioned in my last blog post, is in the midst of wasting taxpayer money to study hydrofracing for the umpteenth time, likely only find once again, there is no evidence its as problematic as those not profiting from the shale gas boom would like you to believe.

Perfect case in point: the recent comments of Steve Heare, director of EPA's drinking water protection division. Mr. Heare is apparently on the record saying that he has absolutely no proof that the states (tasked with policing the oil and gas industry as it operates in their boarders) have not being doing their jobs as they should in terms of regulating hydraulic fractruing, as environmentalists and NIMBYs throughout the shale plays will have you believe. Poor Mr. Heare. He's doing his job, being honest about what he knows, and now he's about to be destroyed by the throngs of people out there who refuse to believe piles of scientific reports that show fracing has not been to blame for water contamination anywhere, regardless of being blamed for it on numerous occassions.

Ah, big bad oil and gas. Can't believe anything they say. Apparently now, anti-drilling factions can't believe the Obama Administration either, even though it seems determined to "forget" about natural gas everytime it comes time to talk about real solutions to our energy and air pollution problems. And, oh yeah, real good paying jobs.

It seems, according to anti-drilling groups, we can't believe anything Mr. Heare says beacuse his resume isn't good enough to be a ranking EPA official. He only has a bachelors degree -- how can we believe what he says?! Apparently activists will throw anything at someone, even someone in an Administration they love, to discredit the natural gas industry. The years of experience Mr. Heare has doing his job and his background in the field bear no weight at all. It seems people with no experience in environmental protection other than throwing stones know more about the state of regulation and contamination than people who deal with it everyday.

Interestingly enough, if they're able to get Mr. Heare's job, cleansing the Obama Administration of enemies will get decidedly harder. White House Environmental Tsarina Carol Browner -- respected by environmentalists, regulators, and yes, industry people all over -- is on record in a personal letter discussing hydraulic fracing, and stating straight forward that it has been shown to pose no real environmental threats and does not warrent any federal oversight.

What to do. Doesn't seem we can attack her credentials. Although isn't it interesting that, after the big celebration of her being on the Obama Team, we hear very little from her? Browner's a smart lady -- she knows an environmental threat from overbaked hype. So she'll likely stay quite on this one. If she's forced to take a side, she'll either soon be spending more time with her family, or say something publically like "Well, I said that before I knew we'd be producing this many shale wells."

Its interesting when the people who are supposed to be on "your side" know more about something than you do, and that something doesn't support your claims. Also intersting that anti-drilling activists find comments like Heare's more dangerous than reams of actual science that doesn't support them either.

Good luck to you Mr. Heare -- I appreciate your efforts to educate people about the facts of gas well drilling. You truly are a public servant. The kind that tells the truth, rather than forwards misconceptions that are politically popular.

Don't Like the Results? Then Study, Study Again

Congress has initiated a study of hydrofracing and the chemicals used there in. Politics, my friends, at their very worst.
The hydrofracing process has existed for more than 60 years. Before we knew we could extract major amounts of gas from shales, it was helping America to pull as much natural gas as possible from conventional wells to meet growing demand. No one complained.
Today, the US is an enviable energy position. Its recently passed Russia in the amount of natural gas it has available for energy use. Despite the brew-ha-ha the anti-everything crowd has whipped up over drilling, natural gas remains the most abundant, most reliable energy source we have -- and it produces 50% less carbon emissions than other fossil fuels.
About a year or two ago when the climate change sky was falling on us all, getting emissions down to the levels natural gas could bring them to, if used more widely for electric generation and transportation, would have been an amazing accomplishment against global warming.
But I digress. After all, we're talking about water pollution not air pollution.
So, allow me to say something I and numerous others have said many times before. In the 60 years that hydrofracing has been used in oil and gas extraction, there has NEVER been even one proven/documented case of drinking water pollution attributed to fracing. NEVER.
That doesn't mean cases have not been reported. They have been. And have been studied by proper authorities (experts in water pollution and contamination, not activists). Cases have been reported in Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming....none proven. Its been studied by groundwater groups, industry groups, third party labratories and consultancies and yes, even by various bodies of the federal government, including the Department of Energy and EPA.
Letters abound by some of the most respected people in the environmental protection field -- including President Obama's White House Environmental Csar and former EPA Director Carol Browner -- saying flat out that hydrofracing has never been shown to be a problem and does not require federal oversight.
If you get all those studies together, more than 30 organizations have studied hydrofracing and found the same results. Not a problem. Yet beacuse of the screaming coming from the general direction of New York City, where most people wouldn't know a gas well if they walked into a rig, taxpayer dollars are being wasted to study a process thats been studied to death.
Why? There are tons of reasons, but they basically come down to two, in my experience speaking with anti-drilling activists and groups.
The first is a ongoing issue with many environmentally concered organizations. Their hearts are in the right place, but they refuse to compromise on any issue, and cannot grasp the fact that human existence on earth and sustaining the lives we've come accustomed to, is going to mean some problems will exist. So -- all fossil fuels are bad an must be stopped. In some cases, people themselves must be stopped (self-extinction theory, anyone?). But if you have to realistically put up with something, wouldn't you rather take your chances on the one in 2 billion possibility water contamination will occur with fracing, or the known degradation - both to the environment and human health -- that comes from say burning coal? Thought so.
The second issue is even more simple. Its NIMBY. Not in My Backyard if your not familiar. One activist I talk to a lot, who speaks from the angle of being concerned about nature, once told me after we talked and talked that she burns heating oil to warm her house. I worked in environmental protection for years. I've seen more home heating oil spills degrade high quality streams and waterways when the delivery man fell asleeep filling someones tank than I saw of most pollution events. Not to mention the fact that heating oil - regardless of what the heating oil association will tell you -- is the dregs of the refining process. The stuff left over thats not good enough for our vehicles. I pointed this out to my friend. Turns out, she just doesn't want to hear a rig, see a rig or have to deal with a rig. Its not about the environment. Its about NIMBY.
So, our concerned Congressmen, no real science training behind them, are going to study fracing yet again, to appease these types of folks. Forget about the fact that drilling is providing good paying jobs in communities that need them. That farmers who want to keep their land are getting significant royalties for their leases, to fix up buildings, buy new equipment, whatever. Or that companies like Chesapeake, Range Resources and others are moving people in from other parts of the country who are enrolling kids in schools, buying homes and bolstering the economy in Pennsylvania, West Virgina and New York. Or that these companies are fast to spend money for charitable causes in drilling communities. Or that their product has the ability to release us from some of our dependence on countries like Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. And, oh yeah, it has the ability to significantly lower our country's carbon emissions totals like nothing else.
If I remember correctly, President Obama's numbers are down beacuse people want him to focus on jobs and stop wasting money on unnecessary ventures. If the administration and Congress would start thinking more clearly about natural gas, he could do that -- and help on the environmental front as well. Its a win win win win win. Unless you think playing politics is more important than America. And apparently, the folks in Washington would rather play games than get down to business.

Natural Gas Won't "Subside"

Mineral extraction industries, be it coal, gas, copper, whatever, all come with their own set of challenges.
Perhaps for those who aren't involved in the operations and daily processes of extraction related businesses, its easy to confuse those issues. Or maybe its easy to confuse other people by lumping them all together. Either way, challenges can't be "applied" across the board.
I had a moment of amazement yesterday reading a story from the Cornell University newspaper, in which the writer was talking about the possibilities of drilling coming to University property. But that wasn't the interesting part. The article quoted an anti-drilling activist in the last paragraph who insinuated that we may soon find out that hydrofracing leads to subsidence, ala coal mining.
It was one of those "not sure if I should laugh or cry" moments. Laugh beacuse of the absurdity and ignorance of the comment, or cry, beacuse someone out there will believe that, and a new gas drilling "urban legend" could well begin.
Lets explore the basics of the shale once more to see why this allegation just doesn't hold water - no pun intended. The Marcellus is between 5,000 and 8,000 ft below the surface. It is a tight shale -- using traditional drilling techniques to extract gas from it is not optimal, because the low porosity of the rock does not allow gas to easily flow to the well bore. Enter the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
We all know what those are. But let's consider their actual use. After a horizontal well is drilled, its is perforated with small charges to create a pathway to the shale for frac water through the casing. The frac water is forced into the well at high pressures. Sounds like that combination could create a large hole in the rock. Yet both the charges and the high pressure water create only fissures of various lengths (most not beyond 100 feet or so).
Sand is carried in with the frac water to "prop" the fissures open so gas can escape into the well. Think about that statement for a moment: Sand is used to prop open the fissures. Basic old play sand, for the most part. Not exactly the material one would use to prop open a large hole. The fissues created by high pressure fracing are quite thin -- they are not gaping holes in the rock formation.
Back in my environmental regulatory days, I used to respond to incidents of mine subsidence. Conisdering the extent of the coal mining in Southwestern Pennsylvania where I worked, you would have expected those instances to be more common than they are.
There was subsidence from the currently used longwall mining technique. That subsidence usually occurred in a few months of the longwaller undermining property. Longwallers shear coal in sheets from modern mines, leaving little or no support for the ground above. There is almost always subsidence and its almost always immediate.
Those living over older coal mines can experience subsidence as well. However, when that coal was extracted, the method used was called "room and pillar." In essence, miners worked by hand in large "rooms" to extract coal, leaving behind a series of "pillar" supports that held the ceiling -- some for longer periods of time than others. Some are still holding.
The hydraulic fracturing used to extract natural gas does not leave these kind of large voids underground. In fact, in most cases, beacuse of the pressure of 5,000 to 8,000 feet of soil and rock above them, fissures begin to close on their own, causing no subsidence on the surface.
Its scary to think of the ground giving way below your feet, or home, or business. But what maybe a reality of one extraction industry is not necessarily one of any other. This is one challenge that just doesn't apply to natural gas wells. Hydrofracing isn't going to cause subsidence events.

Weird Science

There's an interesting article on the Scientific American Web site about the importance of starting science education early. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=start-science-sooner.
Never having been one for science in my earlier days, I wish I would have paid more attention now. I've been lucky enough to have been placed in jobs where I was forced to re-learn science concepts, and to gain a better understanding of how those things impact real life.
But its evident that many have not had that opportunity.
I am convinced that much of the misunderstanding and outright fear that exists among the general public when it comes to drilling the Marcellus Shale is directly related to our cultural distain for the sciences. Lets face it -- most people have no interest in them. They're just too hard (or inconvenient) to understand.
A prime example is the ongoing Chicken Little attitude about hydrofracing. Its a process that is plagued by misunderstanding, but lets look at the "water" that stays in the formation. Many have expressed great concern that this water, or frac fluid, will find its way into drinking water aquifers and contaminate groundwater.
First, its important to remember that the Marcellus Shale formation being drilled lies between 5,000 and 8,000 feet below ground. For perspective, the Grand Canyon at the South Rim is about 5,000 feet deep. Drinking water aquifers lie around 1,000 feet, and most personal water wells are drilled more shallow than that.
Second, natural gas wells are cased in cement and steel. In most simple terms, wells are drilled to an area below the aquifer, drilling is stopped, the well is cased in steel, then cement is piped down into the well and forced back up outside the steel casing to protect the aquifer. Once the cement sets, drilling is resumed. This is all done to protect the water table.
When drilling is done, the completions process (which includes hydrofracing) begins. Because the Marcellus Shale is a "tight rock," or has little porosity, the gas contained inside it does not easily flow into the well. Hydrofracing, a process in which water, sand and chemical additives, are forced through the well and into the formation to create "fractures," is used to encourage gas to flow into the well. The pressure used to send the water into the formation is quite intense - yet in most cases, the created fractures a rarely more than a hundred feet or so long. Under the pressure of 8,000 feet of soil and rock above it, these relatively thin fractures don't stay wide open forever.
Most people who are interested in shale drilling know all of this in theory.
I've asked many geologists about why frac water doesn't rise to the aquifer level. Most refer back to the very reason hydrofracing is necessary to produce the Marcellus in the first place. They remind me that the gas, which we've known about for decades, has been down there for a long long time -- without finding a way to the surface' giving proof to the concept of natural geological seals between formations. They remind me about the amount of pressure they need to force water into the formation to create fractures in the first place -- its significant, yet still does not break the formation or create a pathway for gas to escape to the surface.
And that water that gets trapped down there? One geologist explained to me that for it to travel upwards to the aquifer, there would need to be an energy source "pushing" it, if you will. He asked me to think of it as water trapped between two panes of glass. Without help, or an energy source, it basically stays there. There is no source of energy to force it upwards at thousands of feet underground.
Seems to me, after having asked the questions and been tutored by expert geologists, that a lot of this is basic earth science. Which looking back, even to my high school years, I really never learned. Earth Science classes were the basic sciences for the "every kid." As an honor student, ironically, I never had a single class in earth science. It was all AP biology, physics and chemistry for me. All of which I learned little from as well apparently.
Our overall lack of science knowledge makes us all vulnerable to those who DO understand and want us to remain confused and scared of the unknown and complicated. Lots of what people fear about drilling could potentially be easily overcome with some simple geology 101. Now if we could just get people to care about science.

What Will Oil & Gas Companies Buy for You?

Despite all the bad news about the financial world, most of us planning to live beyond working age or planning to put children through college are, overall, still believers in investing money for the future. What does that have to do with natural gas? A lot potentially.
Energy Tomorrow, an information resource of the American Petroleum Institute (API) has a feature on its Wes site called "Do you own an oil company?" There's a pie chart breakout showing in simple terms, who owns stock in Big Oil. According to the site, 43% is owned by mutual funds, another 27% by other institutional investments, and about 14% by IRA's and personal investment accounts. Together somewhere around 84- 85% of oil and gas stock rests in our personal investment portfolios.
Industry information right? Maybe. But given the amount of regulation that goes into reporting such information, I'd guess its probably pretty close to accurrate, if not dead on.
About 53 million or so Americans (about 50% of us) have investments in mutual funds, mostly through company 401k's and what not. Most aren't vigorous investors who watch the market with a close eye. They're too busy. Thats what fund managers are for - in the most simple terms, they invest the money for us in the manner they think will result in the biggest return, which is what everyone involved wants, for the most part.
When those mutual fund and retirement account prospecti and summaries that usually hit the trash or go unlooked at in the growing pile of paper on my desk arrived this quarter, I thought I'd actually take a look. Turns out, every one of the funds I have investments with (including those from my acdemic days) included some kind of investment in energy stocks. Almost all were oil and gas companies. In fact, I was somewhat happy to see that I had my own little piece of XTO when Exxon decided to buy it. Thats not going to put my girls through college, but it certainly helped keep that fund on an even keel in this time of financial upheaval.
I'm not an economist, so I can't really say what that all means on a larger scale, but its an interesting little exercise. If you have personal or institutional investments that deliver those little books to your mailbox, take a look and see what you own. It might surprise you.
Knowing what I know about the Marcellus Shale, and other shale plays around the country, I was happy to see that my fund managers are investing wisely.

Where I'm Coming From

In the last year, I've spent a lot of time listening and talking to people about natural gas and shale gas drilling. Landowners, industry people, consultants, regulators, environmentalists, activists, politicians, academics, industry advocates and detractors. In person, online, on the phone. At conferences, in chat rooms, in board rooms, on the street, and at rig sites. By e-mail, Twitter, Facebook -- you name it.

In my career, I've worked in the industry, with environmental regulators, promoted the work of environmental professionals and college professors, ghost wrote articles for electric generation engineerrs, and blogged for an environmental web site.

I've heard lots of concerns, lots of explaination and lots of angles. Maybe not all of them, but likely most. I've started this blog to share what I've learned.