June 15, 2013
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As the level of hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells in the
United States has intensified in recent years, much of the mounting
public concern has centered on fears that underground water supplies
could be contaminated with the toxic chemicals used in the
well-stimulation technique that cracks rock formations and releases
trapped oil and gas. But in some parts of the country, worries are also
growing about fracking’s effect on water supply, as the water-intensive
process stirs competition for the resources already stretched thin by
drought or other factors.
Every fracking job requires 2 million to 4 million gallons of water, according to the
Groundwater Protection Council. The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA,
has estimated
that the 35,000 oil and gas wells used for fracking consume between 70
billion and 140 billion gallons of water each year. That’s about equal,
EPA says, to the water use in 40 to 80 cities with populations of 50,000
people, or one to two cities with a population of 2.5 million each.
Some of the most intensive oil and gas development in the nation is occurring in regions where water is already at a premium.
A paper
published last month by Ceres, a nonprofit that works on sustainability
issues, looked at 25,000 shale oil and shale gas wells in operation and
monitored by an industry-tied reporting website called FracFocus.
Ceres
found that 47 percent of these wells were in areas “with high or
extremely high water stress” because of large withdrawals for use by
industry, agriculture, and municipalities. In Colorado, for example, 92
percent of the wells were in extremely high water-stress areas, and in
Texas more than half were in high or extremely high water-stress areas.
“Given
projected sharp increases in production in the coming years and the
potentially intense nature of local water demands, competition and
conflicts over water should be a growing concern for companies,
policymakers and investors,” the Ceres report concluded. It goes on to
say that:
Prolonged drought conditions in many parts of
Texas and Colorado last summer created increased competition and
conflict between farmers, communities and energy developers, which is
only likely to continue. … Even in wetter regions of the northeast
United States, dozens of water permits granted to operators had to be
withdrawn last summer due to low levels in environmentally vulnerable
headwater streams.
Another recent study
by the University of Texas looked at past and projected water use for
fracking in the Barnett, Eagle Ford, and Haynesville shale plays in
Texas, and found that fracking in 2011 was using more than twice as much
water in the state as it was three years earlier. In Dimmit County,
home to the Eagle Ford shale development in South Texas, fracking
accounted for nearly a quarter of overall water consumption in 2011 and
is expected to grow to a third in a few years, according to the study.
Moreover, an April
report by the Western Organization of Resource Councils
found that fracking is using 7 billion gallons of water a year in four
western states: Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, and North Dakota.
“Fracking’s growing demand for water can threaten availability of water
for agriculture and western rural communities,” said Bob Leresche, a
Wyoming resident and board member of the group.
The national oil and gas trade association, American Petroleum Institute, correctly
notes
that the “industry’s water use is small when compared to other
industrial and recreational activities.” But even though hydraulic
fracturing usually accounts for just 1 percent or 2 percent of states’
overall water use, the Ceres study notes that “it can be much higher at
the local level, increasing competition for scarce supplies.”
New ways to frack
Not
surprisingly, the oil and gas industry, along with companies drawn by
the opportunity to profit from a better way to frack, are all seeking
ways to reduce and even eliminate fracking’s thirst.
A new company in Texas,
Alpha Reclaim Technology,
sees using treated wastewater from municipal sewage-treatment plants as
part of the answer. Founded in 2011, the company has signed up cities
to provide about 21 million gallons of treated wastewater a day and is
negotiating with oil and gas exploration and production companies to
make the switch in the Eagle Ford shale play.
With regard to water
use and fracking, Jeremy Osborne, the company’s vice president and
general counsel, says, “We are really in a collision course here in
Texas”—a course he says is accelerated by drought and population growth.
But
Jillian Ryan, Alpha Reclaim Technology’s vice president for government
affairs, said changing longstanding practices in the oil and gas
industry can be a challenge. While the industry talks a good game about
conserving water, Ryan says, “We can have a hard time getting oil and
gas companies to live up to what they are talking about. Nobody wants to
change. It’s easier to drill a water well where they are drilling [for
oil and gas].”
Another player in this oil and gas niche is
GASFRAC Energy Services, a Canadian company that
says it has successfully fracked about 2,000 wells using liquid propane gas in place of water. Most of these wells are in Canada, but about 100 of them are in Texas.
Environmentalists
and fracking critics, however, are alarmed at the thought of fracking
with propane. Prompted by the possibility that GASFRAC would be employed
in New York state and could evade a state moratorium on fracking by
using propane instead of water, environmental groups, including the
Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council,
protested to the commissioner
of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. Similar to
water-based fracking, the groups said, fracking with propane also
requires “the addition of toxic chemicals.” Because GASFRAC’s method is
proprietary, the groups said in their letter that “there is little
publicly-available information on the process” and the exact chemicals
it uses.
Propane is also very flammable, and in
two cases in Alberta in 2011, fires broke out during GASFRAC fracking operations, injuring a total of 15 workers.
Cornell University engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea
is among those who are very skeptical of fracking in shale formations
with propane and other alternatives to water. Ingraffea has been
studying fracturing since doing research for his doctorate in the 1970s.
He finds that even modern fracking practices, using millions of gallons
of water per well to yield what he says is just 10 percent to 15
percent of oil and gas out, are “very inefficient and inelegant.”
Using
propane or a propane-butane combination, Ingraffea says, has a positive
side in that it eliminates a key problem with water-based fracking: the
disposal of vast quantities of flowback water that returns to the
surface after fracking is completed and is often contaminated with
things such as salts and radioactivity.
But, he added, no one has
yet clearly demonstrated that fracking with propane or some of the other
alternatives—such as using a nitrogen or carbon dioxide gel—can compete
on economics with water. Propane, he said, “is expensive and nobody
really knows how much it takes to develop a typical shale gas well with a
lateral that is a mile or two long.”
Oil and gas service
companies such as Halliburton and Schlumberger have thrown a lot of
money and bright minds at seeking efficiencies over many years, said
Ingraffea, and if there was a “silver bullet you would think those
companies would have hit it very hard.”
As the Ceres report concludes:
Shale
energy development highlights the fact that our water resources were
already vulnerable before additional demands were introduced.
Regulators, water managers and ultimately all significant economic
players who rely on abundant supplies of water must double-down their
efforts to better manage this limited and most precious resource.
Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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