The days of cheap abundant natural gas from US shale gas ‘fracking’ operations are most likely numbered, three experts testified before the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). Far better for Ontario to increase energy efficiency and look elsewhere to meet its natural gas needs.

“If (US and state) governments respond with effective regulatory and economic measures to the environmental challenges facing the shale gas industry, the cost of shale development will certainly rise, and in some cases is likely to become uneconomic,” says Lisa Sumi, one of the three experts and a environmental consultant, in a recent report The Regulation of Shale Gas Development: State of Play.

Ontario’s gas distributors Enbridge Gas and Union Gas want to expand the Greater Toronto Area’s natural gas delivery network and import natural gas from the surging shale gas industry in the US northeast (primarily the Marcellus shale and Utica shale gas reserves).

“The first step in any energy strategy should be looking for ways to conserve energy, not increase energy consumption,” Mark Calzavara, Ontario-Quebec organizer for the Council of Canadians, told DeSmog Canada.

Lisa Sumi, along with geoscientist David Hughes, and Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, professor of engineering at Cornell University warned the OEB importing US shale gas will increase Ontarians’ household heating costs in the future. And using shale gas from fracking operations will put more global warming greenhouse gases (GHG) into the planet’s atmosphere.

“The large GHG footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming,” says Ingraffea in his report.

Fracking Has Dirtied Natural Gas’ Clean Energy Name

Hydraulic fracturing or fracking to get access to unconventional sources of natural gas like shale gas involves digging underground wells 200 to 3,000 meters vertically and another 1,000 meters or more horizontally to penetrate the rock-like shale. Pressurized water laced with toxic chemicals is shot down the well to break apart the shale and push the natural gas to the surface.

Poorly constructed or cracked fracking wells have led to fracking chemicals and methane (natural gas is mainly methane) contaminating drinking water. A study of 141 drinking water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania (home to the Marcellus shale) published last June found 82% of water samples taken within a kilometer of fracking wells contained levels of methane six times higher than samples more than a kilometer from fracking wells. 

Fracking operations also leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading scientific body on climate issues, methane has 84 times more global warming potential over twenty years than carbon dioxide.

“This does not justify the continued use of either oil or coal, but rather demonstrates that substituting shale gas for these other fossil fuels may not have the desired effect of mitigating climate warming,” concludes Cornell's Ingraffea.

Ingraffea was named one of TIME Magazine’s “People Who Mattered” in 2011 for his research on methane emissions from shale gas. A study published last August by the US’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicates fracking wells may leak anywhere between 6 – 12% of the methane they produce. A 2% methane leakage rate is already too much according to the Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

These ‘fugitive emissions’ from fracking operations remain largely unreported or under reported by the gas industry as DeSmog Canada revealed in an exposé on British Columbia’s gas industry last May.

Shale Gas is Becoming Uneconomical

“U.S. supply growth assumptions made by Enbridge and Union Gas are overly optimistic at the natural gas prices assumed,” wrote geoscientist Hughes in his critical report on the GTA project.

Hughes has spent four decades studying energy resources, and says many of the projections for the US shale gas industry are overblown.

“Four of five shale gas plays comprising 80% of shale gas production in the U.S. are in or near decline,” states Hughes.

Fracking wells tend to produce a lot of natural gas in the first three years, but then head into a steep production decline afterwards. Hard-to-access shale gas is expensive to produce and reduced supplies of shale gas will increase the price of natural gas coming from the US.

The Pushback Against Fracking

According to environmental consultant Sumi, the US is introducing regulations that are slowing the production of shale gas and making it less economic for producers. Sixty bans and one-hundred and twelve moratoriums on fracking have been introduced in New York alone, which is part of the Marcellus shale.

Public pushback against fracking in the US alone could make shale gas uneconomical. And the bans and moratoriums go beyond New York.

France and Bulgaria have banned fracking and Germany has been very hesitant to endorse the method. Quebec’s moratorium on fracking is still in place and indigenous and non-indigenous residents of New Brunswick have locked horns with their government to stop fracking exploration in their province.

Fracking has created a new type of environmental movement that has brought rural farmers and environmentally conscious urbanites together. In pro-mining countries such as South Africa and Australia the fracking industry has come up against surprisingly stiff public opposition in the Treasure the Karoo and Lock the Gate movements.

On October 19th, the second annual Global Frackdown will be held “to challenge fracking” worldwide. Last year’s Global Frackdown took place in over 200 communities in twenty countries.

Ontario may be betting on the wrong horse by locking their energy future into ‘frack gas’ imports to warm the homes of the most populous province of Canada.

Image credit: Global Frackdown, Fracking Resources, Council of Canadians

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Early scientific analysis predicted that the risks associated with hazardous waste injection wells would be negligible. Unfortunately, experience has indicated that disposing of hazardous waste deep underground has been linked to water contamination, destroyed ecosystems, toxic leaks and earthquakes.

Now we are learning that there is a difference between scientific analysis and scientific evidence.

In a recent extensive report by ProPublica, John Apps, leading geoscientist, who advises the Department of Energy for Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, said that the science used to go forward with disposal wells was not sound.

"Every statement is based on a collection of experts that offer you their opinions. Then you do a scientific analysis of their opinions and get some probability out of it. This is a wonderful way to go when you don't have any evidence one way or another… But it really doesn't mean anything scientifically."

Perhaps the scientific projections behind the disposal well operations would be sound under ideal conditions: uniform rock structure, stability of toxic materials, predictable reactions and seismic activity. But, scientists say, no amount of speculation can take into account all of the variables of deep underground environments.

"Geology," according to geologist Ronald Reese, "is never what you think it is.”

Only practical data and experimental research can offer any insight into the possible risks of hazardous waste injection wells. And since many disposal wells have gone unmonitored for years, regulators are unable to make informed decisions about their safety.

According to ProPublica, the EPA “has not counted the number of cases of waste migration or contamination in more than 20 years.”

Up until the 1960’s most toxic waste was deposited in lakes and rivers, which led to obvious, unbearable pollution of eco-systems and drinking water in the United States. As an answer to this pressing problem, oil companies developed hazardous waste injection wells as a solution.

Disposal wells use high-pressure pumps to force toxic and non-toxic waste down cement and steel pipelines to dumping zones about two kilometers deep in the earth. Wells can be shallower if the waste is less offensive. The waste is then released into the porous rock beneath several layers of earth. 

The idea, according to a recent report in the Scientific American, is that “underground waste is contained by layer after layer of impermeable rock. If one layer leaks, the next blocks the waste from spreading before it reaches groundwater. The laws of physics and fluid dynamics should ensure that the waste can't spread far and is diluted as it goes.”

Each disposal well could deposit more than millions of gallons of waste into the ground using tremendous force. Once the waste is deposited, it is not tracked and scientists have no real idea of how far it can travel. The ProPublica report points out that, “rock layers aren't always neatly stacked as they appear in engineers' sketches. They often fold and twist over on themselves. Waste injected into such formations is more likely to spread in lopsided, unpredictable ways.”

In light of recent research and evidence of leakage, hydrologist Tom Myers says that more knowledge is needed to understand the implications of deep disposal wells as “natural faults and fractures are more prevalent than commonly understood.”

Scientific projections were unable to foresee the ways that injection wells would impact the environment. The three major ways are:

Water

In many cases, liquid waste has traveled horizontally and migrated up to ground water through abandoned water and oil wells. This unanticipated phenomenon has been linked to hundreds of water contamination cases throughout the United States and Canada. 

There are currently thousands of unplugged and abandoned wells in the United States and Canada. In 1989, the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) investigated and concluded that current safeguards aren’t preventing contamination from injected oil and gas wastes. Their report states specifically that “brines from Class II wells can enter drinking water supplies directly, through cracks and leaks in the well casing, or indirectly through nearby wells.”

Canada too has had its share of disposal well-related contamination due to insufficient research. The Canadian government blames events like the contamination of groundwater in Lambton Count, Ontario, in 1977 on a “lack of knowledge.” According to Environment Canada, “[d]isposal wells were constructed and waste injected following the regulations and best knowledge at the time. However, it was not realized that waste fluids would migrate to the surface through abandoned oil and groundwater wells, causing a major problem that still exists today.”

Earthquakes

Even basic regulations are supposed to include a seismic survey within a two-mile radius of the designated drilling area. Yet, “in 1961, a 12,000-foot well was drilled at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, northeast of Denver, for disposing of waste fluids from the Arsenal's chemical weapons operations. Injection commenced March 1962, and an unusual series of earthquakes erupted in the area shortly after.” According to the USGS, over the course of time that the Rocky Mountain Arsenal waste dumping practice went on, the area sustained a dozen earthquakes.

The earthquakes were prompted by the destabilization of a seismic fault line due to the drilling of the well and the pressure of materials being forced into the ground. The Arsenal stopped injection operations November 26, 1967 after a 5.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the area a few months earlier.

This isn’t an isolated case.

In 2011, A magnitude 5.7 earthquake rocked the area surrounding Prague, Oklahoma. Scientists say the "largest earthquake in Oklahoma history was likely triggered by a waste injection well." According to a report in National Geographic, "[a]s pressure builds in these disposal wells, it pushes up against geological faults, sometimes causing them to rupture, setting off an earthquake."

In a report released by the scientific journal Geology earlier this year, "Significant earthquakes are increasingly occurring within the continental interior of the United States." These quakes are being directly linked with injection well operations.

Land Value

In Texas many farmers are unable to use their land for farming or livestock due to contamination. Texas is riddled with abandoned and unplugged oil wells, which play a role in the leaks caused by injection wells.

The abandoned wells present a pathway for injected wastes to migrate upward into ground water and onto farmland. If a field is flooded by an injection well leak, the land is not suitable for farming of any kind. The resale value of the land is also affected.

As ProPublica reports, in 2003, "Ed Cowley of the EPA got a call to check out a pool of briny water in a bucolic farm field outside Chico, Texas. Nearby, he said, a stand of trees had begun to wither, their leaves turning crispy brown and falling to the ground." 

The pool of water was due to a salt-water leak from a nearby injection well. Salt-water brine is used in various oil production techniques and is known to contain dangerous chemicals like benzene. "It was frustrating," Crowley said. "If your water goes, what does that do to the value of your land?"

A major contributor to the deficit of knowledge surrounding waste injection wells could be the lack of sufficient monitoring and documentation. And this negligence doesn't appear to be accidental. In the 1980’s, an abundance of leak and water contamination reports brought waste injection well regulations into consideration with federal regulators proposing stricter rules. At the time the oil and gas industry complained they couldn’t afford to uphold such high standards of inspection. The amount of money needed to conduct the inspections would force them to close down they said.

Oil and gas exploration and production waste is now exempt from federal hazardous wastes regulations in the US. 

According to ProPublica, “[o]perators are required to do so-called 'mechanical integrity' tests at regular intervals, yearly for Class 1 wells and at least once every five years for Class 2 wells. In 2010, the tests led to more than 7,500 violations [in the US], with more than 2,300 wells failing. In Texas, one violation was issued for every three Class 2 wells examined in 2010.”

In some cases, operators aren't required to comply with what regulations do exist. Many operational wells were built before current regulations were put into place. These “grandfathered” wells are not, and will not be, subject to the same regulations as new wells.

Even with new wells, the standards are not being met. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, new permits are being issued “without evidence that the pressure tests were conducted.”

Inspection regulations in place are habitually ignored or sidestepped. Perhaps because regulations are, according to some experts, “outdated at this point.”

*images courtesy of Wiki

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.