Dear Shale Protestor,

Last week I was in a small group that met with an assemblywoman whom I’ll refer to as Ms. B.  Ms. B represents the district that is the most vocal critic of shale development in New York.  Activists in this district are responsible for funding the shale protest and masterminding the 90 bans and moratoriums on shale development that have been passed here. As her website states, Ms. B was first elected in 2002 and is now starting her fifth term.

Ms. B began the meeting by telling my group that climate change is her number one issue.  She declared that her reading tells her that the United States must completely de-carbonize its economy by 2020.  If it doesn’t, it will be responsible for catastrophic collapse of the environment.  Ms. B, who holds an M.A. in English and taught high school English before she was elected to the legislature, knows this because she reads it.  Unfortunately, she just doesn’t read anything that doesn’t agree with this view.

What’s more, Ms.B’s well-educated constituents –- the faculty, students and staff of a well-known university where my daughter will matriculate in the fall –- agree with her, which is why they keep re-electing her.  If her constituents get their way, hydrocarbons will be headed for the dumpster.  Forget the industrial revolution; never mind the cost or intermittency of alternatives; Mother Nature is terminally ill and can only be saved by drastic action!

Ms. B also demonstrated how she lives by her convictions.  She refused to turn on the lights even though her office was dark.  When one person reached for the switch, she muttered under her breath,  “We don’t do that around here.”  Instead, she tried to open the blinds, which would have been a good idea, except they didn’t work.

When I suggested she read Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by David J C MacKay in order to understand what de-carbonization will take, Ms. B said that she had never heard of it.  MacKay wrote the book for British policy makers when he became alarmed at the physical impossibility and excessively optimistic claims of most renewable energy.  He is professor of natural philosophy in the department of physics at the University of Cambridge and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate. The book is available for free at this link: http://www.withouthotair.com/.  I recommend it for any person passionate about de-carbonization like Ms. B.

In Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, MacKay shows that only nuclear power generates enough energy to replace hydrocarbons.  The world already knows this.  After 40-years of trying to replace hydrocarbons after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the only non-hydrocarbon source of fuel of any significance in the world is nuclear power.  Today nuclear power makes up 10% of the world’s fuel supply, while the other 90% is hydrocarbons. The figures are on the IEA (International Energy Agency) website.

Wind resources are simply not in the right place.  Turbine farms take up valuable land and generate most of their output at night when it’s not needed.  Solar is good for the desert, but if the panel is shaded, pitched or oriented in any direction except South, output declines significantly.  Bio-fuels raise food prices.  Wave energy is in its infancy.  Then there is my personal favorite: hydroelectric dams.  My great-grandfather lost his farm to one of these projects in the 1940s. 

So has Ms. B thought through the implications of her position?  She kept saying that the United States does not have an energy policy.  Does Ms. B have a coherent energy policy?  Does Ms. B support nuclear power? 

No.  In fact, she hates nuclear power, too.

Till Next Time,

Energy Mom

Dear Shale Protestor,

The desperate search for a smoking gun to shut down shale development has reached a new level of lunacy.  As if the combined fears of rural industrialization, rampant air and water pollution, and exposure to cancer causing chemicals were not enough, now it is earthquakes!  Oh please … what next?  Shale development increases the incidence of tornadoes?

At first glance the headline looks like another scary outcome associated with shale development.  A research paper by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to be presented April 18th at the Seismological Society of America’s Annual Meeting links oil and gas production to increased seismicity.  Alarm bells are ringing in all the usual corners.

Except that the authors, who are being interviewed this week in advance of presenting the paper, are saying something very different.  They are saying that increased seismicity is caused by over use of deep injection wells.  This is a decades- old, well- known phenomenon that can be avoided by curtailing injection into the offending well.*

Deep injection wells have been controlled by the EPA ever since Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974.  The program is known as the Underground Injection Control (UIC) program and its history can be found here:  http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/history.cfm.  Deep injection is used for waste disposal by many industries, not just oil and gas, and has ben in existence for the better part of a century.  An earthquake caused by injecting into one of these wells is not new, it’s not noteworthy and it’s not news.

I think the more interesting question is: why is the USGS hell-bent on stirring the pot?  What does the  USGS do anyway?  According to their website, "The mission of the Geological Survey is to provide geologic, topographic, and hydrologic information that contributes to the wise management of the Nation's natural resources and that promotes the health, safety, and well-being of the people."  Does Rodney Dangerfield work there?

Look at what happened after the USGS wrote up shale reserves.  In August 2011 when USGS revised their shale reserves upwards from 2 TCF to 84 TCF, their estimate was substantially less than the figure being used by the Energy Information Agency (EIA), causing the EIA to write down their estimate of reserves.  Countless shale protestors cite the USGS write up as proof that the gas isn’t there.  By writing up reserves, USGS effectively wrote them down.

Now USGS is releasing a research paper confirming that deep injection wells cause earthquakes and production wells don’t. Never mind that has been known for 50-years. Shale protestors will use the paper to “prove” that recent earthquakes would not have happened without the shale development boom, and therefore future development should stop. 

With the USGS on your side, you can't help but lose.

Till Next Time,

Energy Mom

*It’s critical to differentiate deep injection wells, which are disposal wells, from shale development wells, which are hydraulically fractured horizontal wells.  Mixing up these two types of wells is like confusing the faucet and the drain in your sink.  In this analogy the faucet is the production well and the drain is the injection well.

Dear Shale Protestor,

I sat in silence as the woman with the red beret and purple sweater waved a glossy postcard promoting an upcoming discussion on alternatives to natural gas. The woman and her cohort shouted: Stop natural gas!  It should be left in the ground where it belongs!  Don’t bring hydrofracking to New York!  Burn biodiesel  instead!  I was stunned. 

The woman and I were seated together at a meeting on natural gas conversions.  The meeting was held at a Catholic church in my neighborhood in New York City.  It was well attended because a lot of buildings, like the one that I live in, are required to stop burning fuel oil #6 (bunker fuel or resid).  The change must be made by  2015.  After that, buildings can chose to burn fuel oil #4 or #2 (diesel) or natural gas.  If they choose fuel oil #4, they have to convert to diesel or natural gas by 2030. 

As buildings figure out their options, a lot depends on where they are located.  Some buildings have already switched to natural gas, but in many locations the existing natural gas distribution lines are not big enough to supply building heat.  Con Edison (New York City’s utility) is offering to build larger lines at no cost if a revenue stream of 40% of the capital cost is guaranteed.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) senses that natural gas is the best option for places like New York City.  EDF has been working hard to bring all the stakeholders together.  EDF created the map which shows the "dirty fuel" buildings http://apps.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=49624.  EDF worked with the neighborhood association to organize the meeting that I attended.  EDF brought the utility, the fuel supply companies and the building owners together.  


This is a win-win-win. Energy and environment on the same side of the table. ConEd gets new business with a two-and-a-half year payout.  New York City gets cleaner air and better quality of life.  All the buildings have to do is form a cluster -- groups of users of sufficient size -- and they will replace expensive oil with cheap natural gas and keep the savings.  It seems that good energy choices and good environment choices are not mutually exclusive after all ... except that the program was not over.  

Red and purple woman and her cohort called for one more speaker.  Tri-State Biodiesel (TSB) came to the microphone.  TSB is a private company that produces biodiesel.  There is not very much information on their website, but they seem to have been around nearly a decade, won social responsibility awards and gotten press coverage.  TSB takes soybean oil, waste animal fat, used cooking oil or some combination of the three and converts them into heating oil.  Gathered from as many as 3,000 locations in NY, NJ and CT, many of which are restaurants, it sounds like it could have some potential.  Plus, the sales manager is a likable guy.  Likable enough that no one seemed to notice that biodiesel is priced the same as petroleum diesel, although the consumer gets a rebate from the government.

Once the rebate was mentioned, my skepticism began:  Can it scale?  Is it reliable?  Is it affordable?  Even if you pick up every gallon of waste oil, how much supply can there possibly be?  What happens during a cold snap in January when all the buildings simultaneously need to top off their fuel tanks?  What happens when the single processing plant goes down?  

Plus -- and this is the real sticking point for me -- if my building switches to biodiesel and oil prices go down, TSB goes out of business.  The environmental activists are so deadset against hydraulic fracturing that they promote continued reliance on diesel.  Don't they realize how conflicted their position has become?  Has anyone ever thought about whether a product that depends on high oil prices AND a government rebate is really going to go the distance?  Buildings only change fuels every 50 years.  The last, and only, time that my building changed was when it converted from coal to fuel oil in the 1960.

As I left the meeting with the postcard thrust into my hand, I couldn’t help but think, it might not be a good idea to trust my building's energy future to someone who wears red and purple at the same time. 

Till Next Time,

Energy Mom

Dear Shale Protestor,

In New York, towns are passing laws right and left to ban hydraulic fracturing.  Courts are upholding their ability to do so.  On the surface it sounds like self-preservation, but when you look at the facts, it reveals gullibility of historic proportions. 

Gripped with irrational fear being fed by opportunist environmental activists -- like Josh Fox and his seemingly rag-tag, but actually well-heeled crew from Gasland and Gasland 2 -- town boards have been led to believe that their drinking water is at risk from natural gas development.

That’s simply not true. The charge ignores the record of 70,000+ oil and gas wells that have been drilled in New York with production stretching back to 1821.  Every one of those wells reaches hydrocarbons by passing through an aquifer.  They have not poisoned the water supply.

Fox is famous for filming the flaming faucet, but if he would have turned his camera out of doors he would have found Eternal Flame Falls, Burning Springs, and many other places in NY and PA where methane occurs in shallow strata, mixes with water and seeps to surface.  Oil and gas drilling did not cause this to happen.  Nature did!

Environmental activists have conflated historical industrial pollution in New York with oil and gas development in order to stir up wild emotions.  Once again, it’s wrong.  New York has 220 sites listed on EPA’s Superfund and RCRA clean up website.  Not one of them was caused by oil and gas development.  Gowanus and Love Canals happened because of unregulated industrial waste disposal, not because of oil and gas development.

To be sure, environmental risks associated with development are not zero, but they are worth taking.  Comprehensive study of the 2008-2010 record of violations in Pennsylvania, which was done by the Manhattan Institute and released in May 2011, showed that the environmental cost over this period of Marcellus development was $4,500 per well.  That cost is more than offset by the benefit, which is estimated to be $2,800,000 per well.  Both figures are at the low end of the estimates.  Higher figures show an even more compelling cost/benefit trade off.

Towns that enact bans can be sure of only one thing.  They will never receive any of the benefits of oil and gas development. Let the New York Department of Environmental Conservation do its job, which is to protect the health, safety and environment of its citizens while ensuring the efficient extraction and conservation of valuable natural resources.

It’s time to board the airplane.

Till Next Time,

Energy Mom
New York, New York

Dear Shale Protestor,

So what exactly is the risk that shale development poses to drinking water?

The short answer is there is none. 

The longer, but more accurate answer is: there is no risk to drinking water if the wells are properly constructed, if the water used to drill and fracture is properly sourced when it is put into the ground, and if the water that flows back and is produced is properly treated when it comes out of the ground.

So let's examine the conditional statements one at a time in order.

1. Well Construction

Regulations exist for every step of this process.  They vary by state.  In states with a history of oil and gas development, well construction regulations are well defined, no pun intended, and have been for a long time.  In states with less history of oil and gas development, regulations are being rewritten to make sure that they provide the necessary protection.  New York, for example, if it goes forward with high volume hydraulic fracturing, will require two strings of casing cemented through the aquifer.

2. Source Water (Water Going Into the Ground)

Sourcing water for well fluids has been the subject of much scrutiny.  I had the pleasure of speaking with John Veil, head of Veil Environmental Engineering and former Manager of the Water Policy Program in the Environmental Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, who just last week made a presentation on this topic at the Society of Produced Water’s January conference in Houston, TX.  His estimates show that expected aquifer use for shale development is minimal compared to existing large users like electric power generation, irrigation, livestock and drinking water supply.  As industry works to recycle drilling and fracture fluids, there will be less demand for water and less potential for stress on the aquifer.

So that leaves the one concern that my East Coast friend voiced, which is legitimate in my opinion.  Where does all that water go when it comes back out of the ground?  This is really two questions:  Where does the flowback water go?  Where does the produced water go?

3. Flowback Water (Initial Water Coming Out of the Ground)

Flowback water is handled in three ways.  It is recycled, injected underground or treated and disposed of by a treatment plant. Recycling is a great option and companies are innovating constantly to do more of it. Underground injection is also a useful option, especially in the early going because it is highly regulated (beyond reproach) and readily available, although expensive. 

Option 3: treating and disposing of flowback using publically owned treatment works (POTWs) has not worked very well.  Pennsylvania tried it, but the public outcry was enormous.  POTWs are designed to take in wastewater and separate it into solids, which are sold as fertilizer or landfilled, and clean water, which is discharged into surface water via a federal permit (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System - NPDES - permit). 

Even though POTWs are designed to treat all kinds of things mixed into water like solvents, pesticides, paint, grease (such as food oil from restaurants), lead, copper, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl), benzene  and PERC (a dry cleaning fluid), the public is not convinced that they can handle flowback water.  The New York Times ran a series of articles, written by Ian Urbina, which called this practice into question, and that is when all the shouting started, common sense shut down and shale development took a black eye.

OK, so take option 3 off the table.  Pennsylvania effectively has because they banned flowback treatment at 15 POTWs.  It’s too bad because it was a source of income for the POTWs and cost savings for the ratepayers, but in a way, I agree with my friend.  The risks are too high, especially the risk of endless controversy.

That leaves just one unanswered question.  What happens to the water associated with the production of hydrocarbons which is unavoidable, produced water?

4. Produced Water (Water Coming Out of the Ground Over the Lifetime of the Well)

My last blog pointed out that oil and gas companies are highly skilled at processing produced water and using it in ways that have negligible environmental impact.  They have to be because many of them are really produced water companies, handling 10 barrels of water for every barrel of hydrocarbon in aggregate in the United States (individual company figures will vary widely). 

But here’s the real point I want to make.  For physical reasons, most hydraulically fractured shale wells will produce very little water and are expected to produce very little water over the life of the well.  Basically the gas molecules, which are very small, will flow, but the water molecules, which are large, will be blocked. 

All that nasty water which produced water companies -- I mean the oil and gas industry -- process every day could be a relic of the past … if we develop the shale.   That’s a game changer.

Till Next Time,

Energy Mom

New York, New York

Dear Shale Protestor,

A good friend of mine, a smart guy who has always lived on the East Coast, vehemently opposes hydraulic fracturing.  He summarizes his concern like this – “If the water is laced with chemicals when it’s injected into the ground and it comes back polluted, then what?  The short term benefits of shale development are not worth the possibility of polluting drinking water.”

I say, where has he been? 

In the United States, oil and gas companies produce more water than oil and gas.  For every barrel of oil they recover, they must produce 10 barrels of water.  Oil and gas is a byproduct of water production.  Not the other way around.  In other words, when oil and gas is produced, it brings a lot of water with it.  In the United States, oil and gas producers process approximately 2 billion gallons of water every day. That is the roughly double the amount of water New York City treats every day. 

Produced water quality varies widely.  Some is so clean that it can be drunk right from the well.  Think I’m kidding?  Water produced from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana is that clean. 

But that’s not the point.  Most produced water is not clean.  In fact it is seriously nasty stuff. Nobody would drink it.  It may contain any number of naturally occuring chemicals in any combination and concentration, including: salt (produced water is often referred to as brine), a variety of carbonate and sulfate scales, metals (zinc, lead, iron, manganese and barium are common), NORMs - naturally occurring radioactive material  like radium-226 and radium-228, and finely dispersed hydrocarbons. 

Produced water discharge is regulated by state because water usage issues vary by state.  For example, arid states in the West view produced water as beneficial, while temperate states in the East view produced water as waste.  In general, though, if produced water cannot be treated to pass a toxicity test -- requirements vary by state, but one test several states use is the survival rate of fish living in treated, produced water for up to 96 hours -- then it has to be injected underground. 

When produced water is injected underground, which most of it is, it never mixes with surface water. It is either injected back into the reservoir it came from, which serves to maintain pressure and increase oil recovery, or it is injected into disposal wells.  In either case, it is not discharged to surface and mixed with drinking water.

So here is my point.  In the United States, the oil and gas industry is really a produced water industry.  The industry is highly experienced and skilled at handling billions of gallons of produced water every day without polluting drinking water. Produced water is naturally nastier than fracturing fluid -- which although we may not know the precise formulation, yet, is basically water, sand and pool chemicals -- so why is there so much fear about oil and gas development polluting drinking water?

Till next time, 

Energy Mom
New York, New York

Dear Shale Protestor,

My apartment smells like a gasoline station. The fuel oil truck is making a delivery. Cold winter temperatures mean that the fumes released during the delivery accumulate at ground level near my apartment on the second floor. Cold winter temperatures also mean that my apartment building burns more fuel oil.  When it’s really cold, my building gets one tanker truck load every two weeks.

My building burns Number 6 fuel oil, also known as bunker fuel or resid or just plain old refinery bottoms.  Number 6 is what is left over after the more valuable cuts, like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, are refined out of crude oil. New York State burns 20% of the fuel oil that is used residentially in the United States, more than any other State in the country. The entire Northeast -- including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut -- burn 85% of the fuel oil used in the United States. This is a legacy system left over from the 1950s when America consumed domestic oil and prices were controlled by the government.

My building, which was built in 1907, originally burned coal.  Like many other buildings here in New York City, my building is a “pre-war," desirable because the design is classic and the construction is sturdy.  It has 55 apartments that are all heated with steam radiators.  The steam comes from a boiler, which was converted to fuel oil sometime after World War II.  Advances in catalytic cracking technology, which enabled the manufacture of high octane aviation fuel essential to the Allies war effort, fostered surging demand for gasoline after the war.

It was an efficient system when it was built. Fuel oil was essentially a waste stream leftover from refining gasoline. Burning it in ship boilers at sea, in electric utilities or in buildings seemed like a good way to get rid of it. Refiners priced it right, too, at only a few cents per gallon. But it’s not cheap or efficient anymore. Today crude oil costs $100/barrel and most of it is imported from other countries, including OPEC. In the winter a week’s worth of fuel oil costs my building $7500, which goes up or down depending on the latest foreign flare up.

My building is a good candidate for conversion to natural gas. However, that’s not going to happen easily or quickly despite abundant, cheap natural gas in the Northeast. New York City does not have enough capacity in the neighborhood natural gas distribution system to convert building heat from fuel oil to natural gas, and the grassroots support for such a system may never materialize. Shale protestors are making such a fuss about high volume hydraulic fracturing that many people are just avoiding natural gas altogether.

So here we sit. My building burns foreign oil because of a 50-year-old legacy system, which may never change because protestors think that oil and gas development will pollute water and ruin small towns. The last time the fumes were so overpowering in my apartment, the fill connection had a leak. The building never figured out how much leaked, or exactly where it went, but I guess it doesn’t matter because I get my water from the Catskills. It smells like the oil line is leaking again. 

Till Next Time,

Energy Mom
New York, New York