Energy and the Environment

Published on: December 15, 2012

George Mitchell – The Man Who Figured Out Fracing

I recently heard an interview with George Mitchell, the independent operator who found the key for combining hydraulic fracturing technology and horizontal drilling to unlock vast reserves of gas in the Barnett Shale, the first shale play. And it only took him 17 years to figure it out. Now 93 years of age, Mr. Mitchell was interviewed by American Public Media’s Marketplace radio program. You can view the interview here.

Mr. Mitchell has some unorthodox views for a wildcatter. First, his foundation, the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, has given millions of dollars to support development of clean energy resources. And he supports a carbon tax on hydrocarbons.

Mr. Mitchell also supports tough regulation of independent operators. “I’ve had too much experience running independents,” Mitchell says. “They’re wild people. You just can’t control them. And if it doesn’t do it right, penalize the oil and gas people. Get tough with them.” Earlier this year, Mr. Mitchell told Forbes magazine that he is in favor of federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Published on: November 17, 2012

Sunset Advisory Commission Issues Report on Texas Railroad Commission

By John McFarland

Texas’ Sunset Advisory Commission has issued its recommendations for changes at the Texas Railroad Commission. The report can be found here.

The RRC was up for regular Sunset review in 2010, and the Sunset Commission issued a report recommending several changes then, including abolishing the three-member elected Commission and replacing it with a single appointed Commissioner. Largely due to debate over that recommendation, most of the Sunset Commission’s 2010 recommendations were not enacted, and the Legislature told the Sunset Commission to issue a new report for its 2012 legislative session.

In its current report the Sunset Commission no longer recommends replacing the three elected Commissioners. It recommends changing the Commission’s name to the Texas Energy Resources Commission; limiting the time when Commissioners can solicit campaign contributions and prohibiting a Commissioner from accepting contributions from any party with a contested case before the Commission; requiring a Commissioner running for another elected office to resign; and requiring the Commission to adopt a recusal policy rule.

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Published on: November 3, 2012

Keystone Construction, Shale Jobs and the Election, Wind Energy Credits, Shale Technology, and Range Resources’ Battles

By John McFarland

Guar, XL Pipeline Protests, and Hart on the Eagleford

By John McFarland

Three interesting stories:

Guar, a bean grown mostly in India, has become a hot commodity because of its use as an additive in frac fluid. See this CNBC Report. Indian farmers are getting rich, American farmers are looking into growing the bean, and Halliburton’s income is down “due to increased costs, particularly for guar gum.”

Protests are popping up all along the XL pipeline being built by Transcanada to transport heavy oil from Canada. Eight demonstrators were arrested in Wood County for chaining themselves to heavy equipment. Seven platforms have been built in trees and occupied by protestors within the pipeline right-of-way. Protestors appeared at the Texas Capitol. Actress Daryl Hannah has joined demonstrations along the pipeline route. See Austin Statesman article here.

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Published on: October 10, 2012

More Studies of Barnett Shale Activities’ Impact on Air Quality

By John McFarland

The debate about effects of Barnett Shale drilling and production on air quality in the Dallas-Fort Worth area continues. The debate started when Al Armendariz, then a professor at Southern Methodist University, published a study in 2009 concluding that increased drilling activity in the DFW area would greatly increase polllution and ozone levels. Armendariz postulated that in the nine counties included in the D-FW metroplex area, gas drilling produced about 112 tons per day of pollution, compared with 120 tons per day from vehicle traffic. His study was sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund, and was heavily criticized by industry. Armendariz was later appointed head of the Dallas office of the EPA, and resigned earlier this year amid Congressional criticism of remarks he made about EPA enforcement policies.

As a result of Armendariz’s study, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality installed automatic air monitors at locations within the Barnett Shale area. Eight automatic gas chromatographs now sample air twenty times each day for 46 volatile organic compounds. The monitors cost $250,000 each and cost $100,000/year to operate. Readings from the sample analyses are posted by the TCEQ and can be found here. According to an analysis by Powell Shale Digest, none of the 236,120 air samples taken by these devices have shown amounts of VOCs exceeding limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

There are also sixteen samplers in the DFW area that measure ozone. Powell’s analysis of that data shows that ozone levels in the Barnett Shale have been dropping even as drilling activity in the area increased:

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Published on: August 29, 2012

New Railroad Commission Rules

By John McFarland

The Texas Railroad Commission has been issuing new rules and proposed rules affecting oil and gas exploration activities that landowners should know about.

New Penalty Guidelines

The RRC proposed new rules earlier this year establishing guidelines for penalties for violations of RRC rules. This month, the RRC adopted those proposed rules. In the last Texas legislative session, the RRC was criticized by the Sunset Advisory Commission for not enforcing its rules more vigorously. The Sunset Commission said that the RRC’s current “voluntary compliance” policy contributes to “a public perception that the Commission is not willing to take strong enforcement action.” It said that operators must have a reasonable incentive, a realistic threat of penalties that are greater than the savings achieved by violating the rules. The Legislature did not act on the Sunset Commission’s recommendations, but postponed consideration of the RRC’s report until the next legislative session.

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Published on: July 26, 2012

New Energy Documentary by Scott Tinker

By John McFarland

A new documentary by Scott Tinker and Harry Lynch is now being rolled out at select screenings. http://www.switchenergyproject.com/aboutfilm.php#about Dr. Tinker was Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology, a joint organization of the University of Texas and the State of Texas, and a professor at UT’s Jackson School of Geology, as well as the State Geologist of Texas. Their film has won the award as best film at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival, and other film recognition. It is now being screened at selected cities across the country, and in Canada and Australia. I have heard Dr. Tinker speak, and he has a wide knowledge of energy issues. The film took three years to make. There are other good films at the Switch Energy Project website: http://www.switchenergyproject.com/topics/alltopics

Be sure to see the film if you get a chance.

Published on: July 11, 2012

Another Duke Study of Risks of Hydraulic Fracturing

By John McFarland

Last year, researchers at Duke University published a controversial study of groundwater in Pennsylvania showing that water wells in close proximity to Marcellus Shale gas wells had higher concentrations of natural gas in the water than more-distant water wells in the same aquifer. (See my prior post here.) The same authors have now published a new study, “Geochemical evidence for possible natural migration of Marcellus Formation brine to shallow aquifers in Pennsylvania,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study concludes that the data “suggests conductive pathways and specific geostructural and/or hydrodynamic regimes in northeastern Pennsylvania that are at increased risk for contaminaion of shallow drinking water resources, particularly by fugitive gases, because of natural hydraulic connections to deeper formations.” The authors suggest this as a reason that gas can be found more abundantly in water wells near recently completed Marcellus wells.

The study analyzed chemical content from 426 samples of groundwater and compared the salts present in those waters to the salts contained in brine water from the Marcellus formation. For some wells, they found that the salts in the groundwater had the same chemical composition as the salts in the Marcellus formation, indicating, they say, that the groundwater must be contaminated with saline water that migrated over time from the Marcellus. The authors suggest that, because there is no correlation between the salinity of these water wells and proximity to Marcellus gas wells, “it is unlikely that hydraulic fracturing for shale gas caused this salinization and that it is instead a naturally occurring phenomenon that occurs over longer timescales.” They conclude that, because of the “longer timescales” for migration of salt water into the aquifers, “the possibility of drilling and hydraulic fracturing causing rapid flow of brine to shallow groundwater in lower hydrodynamic pressure zones is unlikely but still unknown. By contrast, the time scale for fugitive gas contamination of shallow aquifers can be decoupled from natural brine movement specifically when gas concentrations exceed solubility … (i.e., bubbles).” The authors conclude: “the coincidence of elevated salinity in shallow groundwater with a geochemical signature similar to produced water from the Marcellus Formation suggests that these areas could be at greater risk of contamination from shale gas development because of a preexisting network of cross-formational pathways that has enhanced hydraulic connectivity to deeper geological formations.”

The authors cite two studies that they say document cross-formational pathways allowing deeper saline water to migrate into shallower aquifers in western Texas: Metha S, Fryare AE, Banner JL (2000 Controls on the regional-scale salinization of the Ogallala aquifer, Southern High Plains, Texas, USA. Appl Geochem 15:849-864; and Hogan JF, et al. (2007) Geologic origins of salinization in a semi-arid river: The role of sedimentary basin brines. Geology 35:1063-1066.

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Published on: June 27, 2012

Good Reading/Watching

By John McFarland

Here are some interesting articles I have found:

On Texas’ drought, from the PBS News Hour:

http://www.texastribune.org/texas-environmental-news/environmental-problems-and-policies/coping-climate-change-texas-drought/

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Published on: June 21, 2012

Another Hydraulic Fracturing Study

By John McFarland

The Pacific Institute has issued a study of issues related to hydraulic fracturing and water resources: Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Resources: Separating the Frack from the Fiction. The Pacific Institute is a non-profit research and policy organization based in Oakland, California. The study is largely a summary of interviews of environmental and industry experts and of research in the area; it provides a good summary of the present issues surrounding fracing and the literature on the subject.

The authors comment on the debate of whether hydraulic fracturing is the cause of any groundwater contamination by characterizing it as an issue of definition: those in the industry, they say, define the term narrowly as including only the actual process by which fluids are injected into the wellbore under pressure to fracture the formation. The authors elect to define the term more broadly, “to include impacts associated with well construction and completion, the hydraulic fracturing process itself, and well production and closure.” It is true that people outside the industry have tended to use the term “fracing” to include anything that can go wrong in the process of drilling, completing and producing a well and cause contamination. It is a mistake, however, to use the term to include risks of contamination from well construction, production and closure; those risks occur with all wells, whether they are vertical or horizontal and whether they are completed in shale or conventional formations.

The authors discuss the following issues surrounding “fracing,” as they broadly define it:

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