Nine thousand feet beneath the surface of 34 US states lie vast deposits of shale impregnated with natural gas. Unlike the concentrated reservoirs of earlier eras, most of which have now been tapped out, this gas is trapped in hairline cracks in the shale itself.
It can only be tapped through an energy and water intensive process called hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) recently developed by American geologists and mining engineers. Toxic chemicals are injected two miles deep and another mile in all directions to break up shale rock and release the gas.
“Clean Energy. What are we waiting for?” ask ads blanketing national and regional media. Fracking is being promoted by gas and oil industry executives, their Congressional allies, and some energy analysts as the ultimate ‘bridge fuel’ between a dangerous dependence on foreign oil and a post-petroleum age of renewables like wind and solar.
But for skeptics, this new gas rush is a bridge to nowhere good, a speedway leading away from energy efficiency and renewables. They charge that it's just the latest delaying tactic in the oil industry's endless postponement of an essential transition to an energy-efficient, carbon-free society.
The scale of the gas industry’s ambition is staggering. “The potential for natural gas is enormous,” says Obama, presenting it as a central feature of his energy policy. In the three years since being broadly launched, fracking-based gas production in the US has reached half a million barrels a day and is projected to reach three million a day by 2020.
Politicians promote natural gas as a national security imperative and job creator in an era of oil-nation instability and high unemployment.
Game-changer
Recent discoveries of deeply buried oil shale layers containing natural gas or oil are being reported in Australia, Canada, Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, France, India, China, North Africa and the Middle East. Taken together, say some energy analysts, these ‘plays’ could become a game-changer, making Australia and Canada into new Saudi Arabias. At the same time, critics note, they would postpone development of renewables and energy efficiency measures and place new pressures on natural environments already stressed by climate change.
Given the potent array of natural gas promoters in industry, government, media, and academia, until recently skeptical voices have found it hard to be heard. But as fracking has hit the ground in regions where the ravages of resource extraction haven’t been a common occurrence, reports of water contamination, deceptive recruitment practices, and other abuses have begun to gain traction.
On a recent visit to northeastern Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York State, this correspondent heard from residents of a neighbourhood where a dozen neighbours on a single country lane adjacent to fracking operations had found extreme methane contamination of their water supplies.
A film called ‘Gasland’, the recounting a Pennsylvania resident’s road trip across the US gathering disconcerting testimony from those affected by fracking, garnered an Academy award nomination. In a series of in-depth front-page reports, The New York Times has raised serious questions about the safety and environmental hazards of fracking. France recently became the first nation to ban fracking and the UK is considering a similar measure.
To dislodge the gas trapped in hairline cracks, several million gallons of precious fresh water must be injected into each of thousands of well-heads. Once mixed with toxic chemicals, most of this water is unrecoverable. Though natural gas burns cleaner at the tailpipe, the drilling process and leaking well casings release methane into the air and water table. As a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon, leaking methane could actually worsen climate change.
Rapid resource extraction is characterised by boom and bust cycles that often decimate the social fabric of communities and deface landscapes in their wake. The oil industry and its allies have been deft at deflecting pressures to shift to energy efficiency and conservation. They have debunked climate science and talked the talk without walking the walk toward a more sustainable future.
For communities and countries battered by recession, unemployment and rising energy costs, the prospect of a gas rush seems heaven-sent. But in our haste to develop this resource with new, more hazardous methods, we are making more problems for ourselves without confronting our core challenge —learning to live better using less energy in all its forms. This transition is not so much a techno-fix as a culture shift, a simpler yet still harder challenge. Are we up to it?