Brits Fail to Find Fracking Flaws

Disappointing fervent nature freaks

Public Health England (PHE) said in a review that any health impacts were likely to be minimal from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves the pumping of water and chemicals into dense shale formations deep underground….

“The currently available evidence indicates that the potential risks to public health from exposure to emissions associated with the shale gas extraction process are low if operations are properly run and regulated,” said John Harrison, director of PHE’s center for radiation, chemical and environmental hazards.

Don’t expect this to sway recalcitrant greens; one activist pointed out that “low risk is not the same as no risk,” which while semantically true, doesn’t belong in an energy policy discussion. Every energy source entails risks, from wind (bird deaths, anyone?) to coal, from solar (bird blindness) to, yes, shale gas. The goal, then, shouldn’t be to eliminate risk, but rather to minimize it. This new review suggests that that’s possible with shale gas.

As studies of fracking keep coming up with no substantial environmental harm, expect them to find increasingly strained excuses to oppose fracking. One recent attack that I have seen floated several time recently is the the water requirement for fracking.  A recent example from the Chesapeake Bay new feed:

Marcellus Shale fracking wells use 5 million gallons of water apiece

Forget about residents. Forget about fish. The streams and rivers of Pennsylvania and West Virginia are being heavily tapped to quench the growing thirst of the fracking industry.

According to a new report, each of the thousands of fracking wells drilled to draw gas and oil out of the Marcellus Shale formation in those two states uses an average of 4.1 to 5.6 million gallons of fresh water. That’s more than the amount of water used by fracking wells in three other big shale formations around the country.

Five million gallons sounds like a lot water.  It is a lot of water, if it's contained in a big tank.  But human beings use a lot of water, and only some of it is for drinking.  Most of it goes to washing, flushing and irrigation.  That's why the more commonly used unit of volume for water on an large scale is the acre-foot, the amount of water it takes to cover and acre one foot deep, 325,851 gallons.

In our small community, we have some 800 houses, and use approximately 5 million gallons per month, and we produce the water for something on the order of 0.1 cents per gallon.

I think that most of us in the community would happily trade 5 millions gallons of water for a lifetime supply of natural gas, with each well producing millions of cubic feet of natural gas.

Natural gas companies have begun to recycle the water used for fracking:

Chesapeake Energy Corp. CHK +0.14% has begun recycling 100% of the water it retrieves from wells in northern Pennsylvania. In addition to cutting the company's costs, recycling reduces the number of trucks on the road ferrying clean water to drilling sites, a sore point for local residents, said spokesman Michael Kehs.

After a well is fracked, contractors typically clean the water that flows back out of the well by filtering it or adding a chemical that attracts small solid particles, making it easier to remove these contaminants. Some companies treat water at the well, while others bring it to a facility built nearby.

Fourteen percent of water used to frack a well in central Pennsylvania is now recycled, up from less than 1% two years ago, according to the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, which monitors water usage.

This also eliminates a lot of the trucking around of water that environmentalist  object too.  What will be the next objection?