Hydraulic fracturing, as many OGJ readers know, has been around for decades. Recently, its use has driven development of US natural gas reserves locked in shale. And it promises the same for other global areas.
In January, the prestigious Sundance Film Festival awarded Josh Fox's Gasland" a Special Jury Prize for documentary films. The film records Fox's visits to fracing locations to record the damage he alleges has resulted from its use.
Last month, TV cable channel HBO showed the film as one of its summer documentaries.
Coinciding with that showing, oil and gas producer organization Energy in Depth (EID) issued a 4,000-word, point-by-point rebuttal of virtually every allegation the movie makes against the technique and the industry that employs it.
With that as background, call what follows a point/counterpoint on, as it happens, a subject well known to many Journal readers.
EID vs. 'Gasland'
Fox: The 2005 Energy Security Act exempts the oil and natural gas industries from the Clean Water Act [sic], the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund law…."
EID: The oil and natural gas industry is regulated under every single one of these laws…. [H]ydraulic fracturing, to which Fox appears to be making reference here, has never in its 60-year history been regulated" under the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act.
Fox: When the 2005 energy bill cleared away all the [regulatory] restrictions," companies began the largest and most extensive domestic gas drilling campaign in history…."
EID: Never in the 60-year history of the technology, the 36-year history of SDWA, or the 40-year history of the US Environmental Protection Agency has hydraulic fracturing been regulated by SDWA. There were, therefore, no restrictions" in the 2005 ESA to be cleared away."
Further, EID cites the US Energy Information Administration that more natural gas wells were drilled in the US in 1982 than today.
Fox: Hydraulic fracturing blasts a mix of water and chemicals 8,000 ft into the ground. The fracking [sic] itself is like a mini-earthquake. …In order to frack, you need some fracking fluid—a mix of over 596 chemicals."
EID: The composition of fluids commonly used in the fracturing process" consists of a 99.5% mixture of water and sand. The remaining materials, used to help deliver the water down the wellbore and position the sand in the tiny fractures created in the formation, are typically components found and used around the house. The most prominent of these, a substance known as guar gum, is an emulsifier more commonly found in ice cream….
Fox graphically depicts the fracturing process as one that results in the absolute obliteration of the shale formation. In reality, the fractures created by the procedure and kept open by the introduction of proppants such as sand" are typically less than 1 mm thick.
Fox: To exemplify the environmental damage fracturing causes, the film shows images of dead fish along a 35-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek in Washington County, Pennsylvania.
EID: Fox's attempt to blame the Dunkard Creek incident on natural gas exploration is contradicted by an EPA report [that] blamed the fish kill on an algal bloom, which itself was fed by discharges from coal mines."
A local newspaper, according to EID, said: One glaring error in the film is the suggestion that gas drilling led to the September [1979] fish kill at Dunkard Creek…. That was determined to have been caused by a golden algae bloom from mine drainage from a [mine] discharge."
Fox: By far the most dramatic sequence in Gasland" is a flaming water faucet in a Fort Lupton, Colo., home, which the movie blames on natural gas development.
EID: According to the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, Dissolved methane in well water appears to be biogenic in origin. …There are no indications of oil and gas related impacts to water well." And EID notes the complaint was resolved in September 2008.
OGJ connection
Fox's Gasland" web site lists several press reviews," including one from OGJ: The film is 'well done. It holds people's attention. And it could block our industry.'—Oil and Gas Journal President of the Natural Gas Supply Association."
The web site, not surprisingly, takes out of context NGSA Pres. R. Skip Horvath's statement in an online article by Washington Editor Nick Snow as if it were a review of the film (OGJ Online, Mar. 24, 2010). The statement's presence on the Gasland" web site suggests OGJ has reviewed the film.
On the contrary, it hasn't, nor would it.
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