Learning how to exploit the rich vein of natural gas buried in the Marcellus Shale beneath Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York has been a boon to the nation, but another remarkable discovery’s gone along with it. The Keystone State has devised a system of environmental-protection regulations that actually works.
Exploiting shale gas to its full capability has the potential to radically alter some fundamental economic and national-security equations. After all, oil imports account for about half of the total US trade deficit, and US policymakers suffer insomnia every time some random ayatollah starts making scary noises about the Strait of Hormuz.
Environmental ones, too. About half of US electricity comes from burning coal — which, on its best day, is a lot more environmentally problematic than natural gas (something to think about while tooling down to Trader Joe’s in your 45 percent coal-powered Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf).
Then there’s the jobs.
Since Marcellus production really picked up around 2008, tens of thousands of jobs have been created. (Want $60,000 a year to drive a water truck with a $2,000 signing bonus? Pennsylvania is calling.) What’s more, tens of billions of dollars in new wealth have been injected into the ailing US economy.
Pennsylvania and West Virginia saw 57,000 new Marcellus jobs in a single year. (New York, which still severely restricts gas development, gets none of that.)
So what’s not to love?
The problem is hysteria over the gas-drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
Fracking uses a blend of water and sand to create tiny fractures in the shale through which natural gas can escape. Critics have raised fears that the practice could contaminate aquifers (the main source of our drinking water), but there’s a mile or more of impermeable stone between the Marcellus shale and the water table.
There are real environmental concerns about gas drilling, says John Hanger, an environmental activist, former Pennsylvania environmental secretary and sometimes sharp critic of the gas industry — but the concerns have little to do with fracking.
Fracking is in many ways less likely to pollute groundwater than are other forms of gas drilling, because it happens so far from the groundwater, with so much rock in between — which isn’t the case with shallower wells and more traditional gas exploration.
“Prior to the Marcellus [exploitation], there have probably been 50 to 150 private water wells, out of more than a million in the state, that have had methane contamination as a result of mistakes in the drilling process — but that has nothing to do with fracking,” Hanger says. “Some in the industry deny that it ever happens, and that is false.
“But frack fluids returning from depth, from 5,000 to 8,000 feet under the ground, to contaminate an aquifer? When the industry says that’s never happened, that has in fact never happened. And fracking has had no impact on the public water supply.”
In fact, the advent of fracking actually moved Pennsylvania to crack down. The sudden sea change in industrial practices prompted the state Department of Environmental Protection to overhaul its regulatory regime, working closely with individual firms and industry groups to develop best practices and high environmental standards.
The real environmental challenge, it turns out, isn’t any exotic concern on fracking, but the age-old problem of disposing of wastewater.
“Drilling wastewater is highly polluted,” says Hanger. But “when the Pennsylvania industry was small, we were dumping drilling wastewater untreated into rivers and streams and hoping that dilution would keep concentrations below levels that would cause damage to aquatic life or drinking water. There is probably less water going untreated into the rivers today than before the first Marcellus well. It’s a success story.”
There’s also money to be made treating wastewater, as a number of Pennsylvania startups have found. By raising standards for water that can be discharged into streams, the state pushed drillers to start recycling their wastewater instead. The DEP estimates that most frackers in Pennsylvania today are recycling 70 percent to 75 percent of their wastewater, with some recycling 100 percent.
Says Hanger: “If you look at the top 10 things impacting water in Pennsylvania right now, the gas industry would not be on the list, and certainly not fracking. Industry, environmentalists and regulators all ought to be celebrating.”
Kevin D. Williamson, a deputy managing editor at National Review, adapted this column from his article in the Feb. 20 NR.