Shale Drilling is in Trouble, Part 5. “The Limits of Shale Drilling”
Original Article by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV
So far we have seen shale drilling, the subject of one of the world’s most ballyhooed public relations campaigns, has serious limitations: low rates of recovery, immense capital costs, low profitability (for the driller). It damages the world we live in and the one our children will have for the future. It makes people sick. It defeats agriculture, forestry, and hunting as well as the retirement industry and recreation. And it has adverse effects on politics, supplying money to influence voting.
We have seen there are good reasons for resistance, even though the force seems to be irresistible at present. It causes a legislative climate which has little consideration of the value of the environment or citizens who are not part of the corporations. The result is the shale drilling industry is aided by one-sided legislation and poor enforcement of even weak rules. Shale drillers would rather have diverse rules in each state than a single rule from the Federal Government, because state governments lack the capacity for research and are more malleable.
There is growing resistance as more and more people are affected. Some 15 million now live within a mile of a shale well. There is the unending resistance of rural people, farmers and the environmentally conscious. It even affects people in states that don’t have drilling and pipelines, because the waste sometimes goes out of state and the sand used is mined in the upper Midwest.
The jobs provided go mostly to out of state people and involve brutal working conditions. There is no supervision for safety, no Occupational Safety and Health coverage, and it has the highest fatality rate of any industry.
Shale drilling involves huge future costs. It is an unending capital sink. Soon it will face drilling in areas where the yield is less and less, so the price of gas and oil must go up and up to compensate. It must continue the environmental damage as more and more acreage is exploited.
Slowly it is dawning on many people that for hydrocarbon energy, “Production from shale is not a revolution; it’s a retirement party,” as Arthur Berman expresses it. As I have pointed out, shale drilling is no usual industry. It did not go through the normal development process for an industry – bench scale invention, scale up through pilot plants of increasing size, being carefully studied at each step for adverse effects, before building the full scale facilities.
Shale drilling techniques were researched by the federal Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC). The people who did it are still around! George P. Mitchell, who is sometimes called the “father of fracking,” although a hard worker, a risk taker, and a man of great persistence, used a federal government assistance to drill the wells that proved the method. “They (DOE) did a hell of a lot of work, and I can’t give them enough credit for that. DOE started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it. You cannot diminish DOE’s involvement.” – Dan Steward, former Vice President of Mitchell Energy.
Once proven, it was only a matter of many other existing companies shifting over to it. No research on negative effects. The attributes of earlier drilling were simply claimed for the new method. (There is a vast literature which says shale drilling is a triumph of private enterprise, though. Forget that! It was follow the leader who tried government research results.)
The lying about shale drilling is endless – to the public, to the press and to the government, and especially to industry people themselves. The wonderful narrative crafted by the industry brings to mind what critic Pauline Kael once said about art, “The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.”
The hydrocarbon industry is treading on people with the help of the courts and legislatures. Denying damage to rural people and assets has been facilitated by calling evidence “anecdotal” and denying it a place in reality. They like to hide behind “science” (bought and paid for by the companies), the way a crucifix protects a vampire hunter in grade B movies.
Now that is coming to an end. Peer reviewed science, published in professional journals, real science, is beginning to appear. Everything has been done to delay it. Access to sites to do their studies is routinely denied to independent researchers. Good thinking and action has made access in West Virginia and some other areas possible, including the WV Host Farm program.
Ways around the problem have been worked out by individual researchers in other states, too. Powerful research organizations, for example Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy, have become quite active.
Long established research organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists, are devoting time to the problems of fracking and linked phenomina. Here is a list of 59 peer reviewed studies. Here is one article, by a prominent scientist, not peer reviewed, which will help a lot in your understanding of endocrine disrupters, little understood chemicals which have very serious effects in very small quantities. This is an older article and drilling methods are different from what we have here in Appalachia, but the chemicals are the same.
Then there is the white elephant in the room. That often forgotten, but inescapable giant – the result of dumping carbon dioxide in the air by so many industries – global warming. There is a truly vast scientific literature showing how it is happening. It is complex, because the earth has winds, it has ice in glaciers and floating on the ocean. It has bare rock surfaces, vegetation, and an ocean that covers three fourths of the surface. Heat goes into these, too. Both the atmosphere and the ocean have complex currents well known to scientists, but unknown to most of us.
There is also a truly vast literature trying to debunk global warming. Most of it is written by people with no background to understand. But a small amount of it is sincere. Science does not have a grand poobah making pronouncements about what is true and what is not. It is a debating society, and like any consensus forming body, some take a long time to come around. But 97% have, and the large body of factual information sets out a clear message.
Extreme energy extraction makes the carbon dioxide problem worse. It soon will be even more of a problem. The old routine is: Exploit – Deplete – Abandon. This time it may be: Exploit – Crash. If America wants to be a world leader, it should lead to energy sustainability which includes environmental protection and respect for human health.
>>> S. Tom Bond is a retired chemistry professor and resident farmer active in central West Virginia near Jackson’s Mill State Conference Center. <<<
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Thank you for the list of 59 peer reviewed studies link above.