Two interesting articles about developments in shale oil and gas.
The first is from the NYTimes, on the shale gas potential of Ukraine. This is really big for Europe- Russia basically has a chokehold on Europe via natural gas supply. Being able to get a significant amount from Ukraine would be a relatively cheap way of easing the Russian dominance. European countries are currently planning on spending a fortune on LNG terminals and long pipelines from the Caucasus.
The second is a New Yorker article giving a really good summary of the shale oil boom in North Dakota right now. The amounts of oil there are pretty large. Not enough for 'energy independence' (a solely political concept), but significant. Unfortunately, the link is just an abstract, but consider it another hint from me to subscribe to the New Yorker.
All of these shale developments are great news for the U.S., because we have the expertise in the area. We're the only ones who have succeeded in it, and the rest of the world is going to be hiring us to teach them. And it's good for world energy supply, because there are huge amounts of oil and gas in shale formations (well, good in the 'delaying Peak Oil' sense. Not so good in the 'hey maybe we should stop using petroleum sometime soon because it is polluting' sense).
Shale oil and gas has come under a lot of unwarranted environmental criticism, in my opinion. The main critique is that the fraccing fluids can somehow pollute groundwater. From my one Reservoir Engineering course, this makes no sense at all. The fluids are injected literally miles underground, into rock that is too impermeable to permit migration of fluids upwards (which is the whole point of a shale formation). Blaming groundwater contamination on the fraccing seems ridiculous. There can certainly be large-scale pollution (groundwater or otherwise) from the rush to drill, the larger amount of surface area needed for shale drilling, and from over-eager companies not responsibly handling their wells. These things need to be well regulated.
The most interesting critique to me, though, is that fraccing uses a ton of water. Seeing as my former favorite fuel (biodiesel, and ethanol by extension) gets criticized frequently for the amount of water needed to irrigate the fields, fraccing seems to get a free pass because people don't associate petroleum with water usage. But the amounts are immense. I have no idea how it compares to the amounts needed to irrigate enough fields for a comparable amount of biodiesel... maybe that will be the topic of my next post.
Fracking and the shale deposits have been a hot topic around my environmentalist friends/my own work with oil and gas rich tribes. As you've said, the groundwater critique is pretty 'shallow' but I hadn't thought of the amount of water used in this technique vs other oil recovery methods vs sustainable energy production. I think that the new techniques reopen long closed oil fields in PA and NY, more populated/enviro friendly states than ND, plays a role in the opposition.
ReplyDeleteThe groundwater question becomes an issue in places like west Texas. The groundwater resources are scarce and there is essentially no recharge. We're not asking the question whether gas or water should be the priority. Since the gas is worth more today it is being produced, but that is not a long term outlook.
ReplyDeleteA related issue... My limited understanding is that fraccing requires high quality (low total dissolved solids) water. In west Texas there is a fair amount of low quality water that cannot be used for drinking (without desal). It would make a lot more sense, from a water resource perspective, to use the bad water for fraccing and the good water for drinking. I don't know whether it is possible to develop new technology that would allow "bad water fraccing," but it would seem that we should at least be asking the question...