Natural Gas: Why the Frack Not?

Well Head by Paul Goyette via Flickr

Natural Gas: It's That Important
You need natural gas, and not because you ate a burrito last night. As a college student, you probably don't think much about your utilities, but it's time to start. Not about how you will pay for them, but where they all come from, and what it means for you. Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, provides consumers with cheap natural gas that heats your school and your home, powers your computers and electronics, and even gives you excellent job opportunities. Unfortunately for you, some groups of people, known as fractivists, think that fracking destroys the environment and even kills people. They claim that fracking poisons water, pollutes the air and even causes earthquakes. As engineers, we need to promote an understanding of fracking to protect our way of way of life and the environment.

Fracking is the process of injecting high pressure fluids into gas-rich shale to crack the shale and release the gas. It is cheaper than traditional methods because a single fracking well can retrieve gas from a larger area than a normal well and they can operate where normal wells cannot. Bruce Everett, former Exxon executive director in Hong Kong says the efficiency of fracking has brought the price of natural gas down. Way down. “We’re talking about prices going from $10 or $11 per thousand cubic feet 10 years ago down to $3.77 now” (Everett). Fracking works so well that natural gas-burning power plants generate 40% of America's electricity (Kever).

Animation of Fracking from Marathon Oil Corporation via YouTube

This graph by the Texas Railroad Commission depicts the massive surge in well number and production in the Fort Worth Basin in Texas due to the increased use of fracking after 1997.

Graph from the Powell Barnett Shale Newsletter

As you can see from the first graph, the production of natural gas skyrocketed when fracking became popular in 1997. With such a high supply, the price of natural gas plummeted, making natural gas a viable source of electrical energy.

What About Renewables?
As you know, natural gas is not the only source of energy, but it has unique advantages. If carbon dioxide emissions are your thing, then coal is out. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal creates between 2.02 and 2.12 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour, whereas natural gas creates only 1.12 (“How Much CO2”). Hydroelectric energy provides a staggeringly low price, but has significant drawbacks, biggest of which is its reliance on rivers. No rivers, no hydroelectric energy. Furthermore, the dams necessary to harness river power cause ecological problems, like preventing fish migrations. Nuclear energy is a solid alternative to natural gas, but you still can't put nuclear power into a natural gas home furnace. Wind power is marginally cheaper than natural gas, but  the location where it is used must have constant wind. Finally: solar power. Sounds good, right? Infinite free energy from the sun. Nope. Not free. According to NuclearFissionary.com, solar power costs a whopping $.22 per kilowatt hour (Morgan). Another drawback of solar power is the sun: it's  not always out.

Graph from NuclearFissionary.com

Even if we replace every natural gas power plant with completely renewable sources, we still need natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, only 34% of post-production natural gas was used to feed the electrical grid in 2011. The other 66% went to residential and commercial buildings, industrial plants and a small amount to vehicle fuel (Natural Gas Consumption). According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 50% of American homes used natural gas in 2009 (“What Percentage”). If fracking is banned and natural gas prices rise, 50% of Americans will have to replace their utilities with electrical ones. To put this in perspective, an electric kitchen range costs anywhere from $400 to $3600. Multiply that by half of American homes and we have a problem.

Our Jobs, Our Future
According to Aubrey K. McClendon, the co-founder and chief executive officer of the Chesapeake Energy Corporation, the “Marcellus natural gas development (in Pennsylvania alone) generated $11 billion in value-added regional gross domestic product last year (2010). That number will rise to $13 billion in 2011 and reach $17 billion in 2015.” Additionally, he states “Direct and indirect employment from this economic boom has already surpassed 140,000 jobs. Chesapeake alone has about 2,100 employees in the Marcellus (shale formation) and about 1,700 of them were hired regionally” (McClendon). These jobs are yours. Drilling companies are looking for engineers to work at and manage their operations. Additionally, fracking creates secondary jobs in transportation and service, often 3 support staff for each driller (Williams).

Safety First

Fractivists claim that fracking fluids leak into groundwater and rivers, and they link health problems in residents of drilling areas to the fracking process. NPR recounts the harrowing tale of Susan Wallace-Babb, a rancher in Colorado who was stricken with illness claimed to have been caused by fracking. According to reporter Abrahm Lustgarten, “she felt intense nerve pain in her legs, intense nausea, and eventually within a couple of days had skin rashes over her body. And her health got progressively worse from that point on” (Lustgarten). Fortunately, though, fracking only causes sickness when accidents occur. Cars kill thousands of people every year, but no one wants to ban cars.

Many reputable sources say fracking is not dangerous. An EPA study from 2004 “found no evidence that chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing have contaminated drinking water.” Again in 2011, an EPA study backed this up, leading researchers to conclude that there is no evidence of fractures reaching fresh water and contaminating it with chemicals (McGlynn).

In the 2010 movie Gasland, producer Josh Fox shows a man lighting his faucet water on fire (like this) and blames the fireball on methane released by fracking (Gasland). This seems to condemn fracking, but Travis Windle, a spokesperson for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, responds, saying “People have been lighting their faucets on fire since before I was born” (McGlynn). If people have been lighting their water on fire since before fracking in the area, then fracking couldn't be the cause of it. Granted, making cracks in the ground probably does not help the problem, but it is most certainly not the cause.

Diagram of a fracking well from hydraulicfracturing.com

Fracktivists do have a valid point, though: fracking is risky. Shale gas deposits often lie beneath aquifers, so drilling through the aquifer is potentially hazardous. Thanks to technology, consumers of natural gas can rest easy, as the Institute for Energy Research explains, “groundwater is protected during the process of hydraulic fracturing by steel and cement casing that is installed when the well is first drilled to isolate groundwater resources” (Millican). Furthermore, protecting ground water is fundamentally a direct interest of drilling companies. For fracking to create rock fractures, the high pressure fluid must reach the gas-rich shale and remain pressurized. Both pressure and fluid would be lost if fluid leaked into the water, rendering the drill site useless. As you can see from the picture above, the fracking well is encased in steel all the way down, with additional protection around aquifers (Diagram). Furthermore, shale fracturing usually occurs 5000 to 13000 feet below the surface, far from drinking water.

Fracking causes earthquakes? Oh really? Last time I checked, earthquakes are caused by shifting tectonic plates. TECTONIC PLATES. Tectonic plates are huge. There is no way a few million gallons of water and chemicals are going to move them.

The Future of Fracking
Even though fracking has been around since 1947, engineers are still making it better: enter superfracking. Superfracking is a series of recent industrial techniques to more effectively make bigger cracks in gas-containing shale that allow wells to access more natural gas. Schlumberger, a drilling company, has recently developed a technology called HiWAY, which involves adding fibers to fracking fluid, then pumping it down the well in pulses to create cracks. According to Kyel Hodenfield, HiWAY reduces the amount of sand and chemicals needed for a well by 40% and the amount of water by 20% to 50% (Callus). This process obviously saves Schlumberger money, but it also reduces fracking's environmental impact. Injecting less water, sand and chemicals means there is less of a chance for it to leak into water supplies, and less environmental impact from transporting the fracking fluid. Another innovation from Schlumberger involves seismic sensor equipment that can better target areas rich in natural gas, therefore reducing the necessary amount of cracks along a well (Callus). Less cracks means the necessary amount of fracking fluid decreases, further reducing fracking's environmental impacts.

Ask yourself: can we afford to ban fracking? Can we afford to lose 40% of our electricity? Can we afford to lose 1.7 million U.S. Jobs (Efsthathiou)? Can you afford to risk your job? What will we put in out gas ovens? Fracking does not poison water, it does not pollute the air, and it definitely does not cause earthquakes. Fracking creates jobs and promotes science and technology. Fracking provides cheap energy and efficient power. As engineers, we have a duty to educate the public about technology, and fracking is a technology worth promoting.

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