I recently watched a video from the 2012 Natural Gas
Symposium at CSU that was on the role of water in fracking for natural
gas. Ken Carlson from CSU gave the talk
and you could tell he was slightly worried about having to respond to the
controversy around fracking and water use; he tried to be relatively unbiased
and give perspectives from both sides.
Water use in fracking is controversial because so much water is involved
in the fracking process that is 100% consumptive (not used again), plus there
is potential to pollute the groundwater. Dr. Carlson in fact stated that annual
water use in natural gas extraction is equivalent to serving 200,000 people in
the state of Colorado, which sounds like a large amount. This amount also equals less than 0.1% of all
our water, which doesn’t sound like much at all, so he explained that depending
on how you look at the statistics makes a difference in your reaction. This prompted
me to look around sites on the internet to see how water statistics are
reported from different companies/organizations, thus influencing their target
reader’s perceptions.
I started with the Western Resource Advocates since they
were sited in the talk. This group puts
out a fact sheet called “Fracking our Future: Measuring Water & Community
Impacts from Hydraulic Fracturing” and it contains a lot of the facts from Dr.
Carlson’s talk (http://www.westernresourceadvocates.org/frackwater/). These include that the annual water
requirements for fracking in Colorado is enough to serve 166,000 to 296,000
people for a year (the smaller estimate is still more than the population of
Fort Collins), water use for fracking is 100% consumptive (not reused after,
unlike domestic water use), and the fact that it takes 11,040 truck trips to
supply water to one well pad over the course of one year (3,000 of these trips
are for waste water removal). They also
include the fact that water use varies depending on the type of well, but in
general their fact sheet makes me worry about the state of Colorado’s water
supply in the face of expanding fracking operations.
For an opposite perspective I decided to look for water use
data from Halliburton. Halliburton has a
website called Hydraulic Fracturing 101 that contains data on the whole
fracking process (http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/Hydraulic_Fracturing/fracturing_101.html). They mainly highlight new technologies, job
creations, and benefits of providing a clean fuel source; reading this website
would make me think Halliburton is saving the world and we have nothing to
worry about. It takes more effort to
actually find data on water use or water quality issues here. You have to connect to a site from a third
party called FracFocus that’s a Chemical Disclosure Registry (http://fracfocus.org/water-protection/hydraulic-fracturing-usage). This website sources data from the USGS and
explains the situation from a top down approach, explaining how if you look at
all the water used in the United States over a variety of industries, mining
represents a small portion, and fracking is a small portion of that. These data definitely downplay the issue of
water use in fracking and make it sound insubstantial. FracFocus states another interesting fact
that relatively fresh water must be sourced for the fracking fluid because
impurities can reduce the efficiency of the additives used in the process.
Speaking of the water sourced for the fracking fluid, Dr.
Carlson mentioned in his talk that the most important part to him was water
acquisition; he thought re-using water could make a big difference in reducing
some of the negative views surrounding water use and fracking. As a little background, water, chemicals and
sand are brought to the well site and mixed to form the fracking fluid. Eleven
thousand truck trips of water are required for each well, with the vast
majority, if not all, of that being fresh water. After it is mixed on site the
fracking fluid is injected deep into the ground under very high pressures,
returning as produced water along with oil and gas. The produced water is contaminated upon
return and consequently most often disposed of without being reused. Dr. Carlson explained how due to the
saltiness and chemical contamination of the produced water, a lot of energy
would be required to clean that water to an acceptable level for most reuse,
thus further increasing the greenhouse gas impact. A better alternative he thought, and it makes
sense, is to use waste water in the first place. This prompted me to try and find out if
sourcing fresh water really is needed.
I found an article from Reuters entitled “Analysis: Fracking
water’s dirty little secret- recycling” that I expected to give an unbiased
view (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/15/us-fracking-water-analysis-idUSBRE96E0ML20130715). This article states that companies were initially
afraid to go away from fresh water sources for their fracking fluid, however,
due to outside pressure it is now more common to try reusing and recycling
water. The companies have been surprised
to find that even with the high salt levels of the produced water, reusing it
in frack fluid to extract oil and gas is working so far with good results. This kind of makes me wonder why they said
fresh water was needed in the first place, but at least changes might be coming
if we keep pushing the industry.
Natural gas does come with the benefits of providing a
cheap, easy to use energy source that burns cleaner than coal, however, costs
such as associated GHG emissions and other environmental impacts such as depleting
the regional water supply and potentially polluting the ground water do exist
and need to be accounted for if we want to be responsible about our energy
production and truly burn cleaner fuel.
The pro-fracking industry still seems pretty secretive and
unapproachable about what they’re doing but through people’s persistence we
have been able to learn more and more about the process. The more ‘good’ data we gather, the better
decisions we can make on the future development of the natural gas
industry. Colorado is an arid state and
water is a precious resource here. It’s
important we as citizens know both the pros and the cons of using water for
fracking so we can make well thought out charges for change against the
industry as need be, especially since current regulations don’t seem very
tight.
Sources:
FracFocus
Hydraulic Fracturing
Water Usage
Halliburton
Hydraulic Fracturing 101
http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/Hydraulic_Fracturing/fracturing_101.html
Reuters
Analysis: Fracking
water’s dirty little secret- recycling
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/15/us-fracking-water-analysis-idUSBRE96E0ML20130715
Western Resource Advocates
FACT SHEET: Fracking
Our Future: Measuring Water & Community Impacts from Hydraulic Fracturing
http://www.westernresourceadvocates.org/frackwater/
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