A huge amount of methane, a residue of life lived long ago, is buried in many places deep in the earth, several thousands of feet below the surface, trapped under shale deposits. The shale is the end product of the mud and clay that sustained this life while on the earth’s surface as long as 500 million years ago. The impermeable nature of the shale traps the methane from escaping to the surface. Drilling through the shale into a pocket of methane acts like removing the cork from a bottle of champagne. A single drill hole, however, would not release enough methane to be commercially feasible but if many new passages, widely dispersed throughout the methane-trapping-shale, are created, the released methane can be funneled into a single channel leading to the surface. By this method, enough gas could escape to a single site on the surface to make money on the process.
Setting off explosions, making seismic measurements, and by other means I don’t really understand, the outline of the imprisoning shale can be determined. This information is then used to guide directionally controlled drills to penetrate that shale. These drills can go vertically and horizontally. Small well-placed explosions (using shaped charges) make holes at the right places in the flexible steel and concrete which line the drilled shaft to set up the next stage. Up to millions of gallons of water and particulate matter (sand and synthetic particles, containing a small proportion of a large number of chemicals which control the viscosity and other critical properties of the water) are jammed down the well at astoundingly high pressures to fracture the rock that is imprisoning the methane. The particles in the water (proppants) act to hold open the newly formed fissures, which otherwise might close back up again from the high pressure at these depths under the earth. When the pressure applied at the surface is released much of that water (produced water) comes back to the surface carrying with it, its original constituents, which are hardly benign, in addition to the debris picked up thousands of feet below the surface of the earth and flushed out. Produced water is nasty, toxic and dangerous.
The chemicals originally put into the water are supposed to be proprietary but a New York State report reveals the general purpose of many of these chemicals and toxic properties of some of them. There is much other useful information in this report. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:thmtau8w0y8J:www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_minerals_pdf/ogdsgeischap5.pdf+draft+SGEI
There are powerful reasons for producing methane. First, this gas has the potential, because of the very large amount of it under North America, to greatly reduce dependence on imported oil and on domestically produced coal, although estimates, as reported in the August 25, 2011 issue of the New York Times, question this essential reason for drilling/fracking. Second, because there are four hydrogen atoms per carbon atom, combustion of methane (CH4) produces less carbon dioxide per gram than the burning of other fossil fuels, which have a higher ratio of carbon to hydrogen (-CH2-), a plus from the view of global warming. Third, there is a chemical process, named Fischer–Tropsch, which was used by Germany and Japan during WW II to compensate for lack of oil, by which methane can be converted to the higher hydrocarbons otherwise obtained from petroleum. Gasoline and diesel fuel can be made from these higher hydrocarbons.
So what’s the problem?
You are dealing with enormous volumes of water laden with a mixed bag of chemicals, which have the potential for health and environmental damage both in the water used for the fracking and in the produced water. The record of fracking up to now has shown this potential to be realized all too often. There have been multiple situations where the produced water could not be properly contained and has drained into the ground and into streams and rivers. In other instances, the produced water has been left to evaporate from leaking lined depressions in the earth so that dangerous chemicals can enter sources of potable water or evaporate into the air. There have been times when the large tankers carrying these fluids have spilled their contents. There are records of when the release of the enormous pressures needed for the fracking have led to blow-outs of the produced water. There are examples where improperly applied concrete (used to line the wells) has allowed both the original water and produced water to leak near enough to the earth’s surface to contaminate potable water sources. In other cases, improperly constructed drilling sites have allowed large volumes of methane to escape into the potable water supply. You can find remarkable pictures of water apparently on fire and even, in one case, of a homeowner’s well exploding from a spark as its pump started up.
Last year a report appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) pointing to other ways that methane released by the fracking process can find its way into wells drilled for drinking water. The methane can percolate up to the surface through cracks in the thousands of feet of rock. The fracking industry’s claims that the problems arise from drilling practices, which the major players can take care of, is undermined by the PNAS report. It is widely recognized that self-regulation is not sufficient. In fact, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which gave the industry a free ride during the Bush years, has a study underway that will certainly increase regulation of the drilling and fracking industry. The report is due out within a year or so. The industry’s absolute certainty of this imminent regulation has already been factored in. Big commercial interests realize that even with increased well costs of up to half a million dollars for each well, considerable profit can still be made – that commercial viability is still there.
Finally we come to another point, which has been the focus of much discussion among people who love the rural pristine nature of the countryside and who profit from the tourism industry that depends on that characteristic. Reading and seeing photographs about this drilling/fracking industry, which the web is replete in, will demonstrate in words and pictures that this treasured character of a rural area will be greatly altered in the area where the wells are dug and for considerable distance around.
Wall Street knows that in order to make money you have to know the truth, but not necessarily tell the truth. Here is the web site of a hydraulic fracturing report put out by people greatly interested in selling advice to people who want to make money. It is worth reading and especially the conclusion that fracturing will be both regulated and wide spread but may be spared from the New York City watershed. http://www.scribd.com/doc/48255702/RISKS-HYPE-AND-FINANCIAL-REALITY-OF-HYDRAULIC-FRACTURING-IN-THE-SHALE-PLAYS-July-8-2010-A-Special-Report-Jointly-Presented-By-Ann-Davis
