On Jan. 25, 2011, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Gasland, a documentary about fracking by New York theatre and film director Josh Fox, had been nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature of 2010. This ignited a war of words between Fox’s supporters on the one hand and partisans of the natural-gas industry on the other. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a technique in which water, sand, and chemicals are injected underground in order to crack open rock formations and allow liberated gas to flow to the surface for capture. Fox, a self-styled “natural-gas detective,” had created a film record of the polluted tap water, health problems, and releases of explosive methane that he was convinced were caused by fracking. The gas industry retorted that Gasland was so biased that it ought to win a prize for propaganda. As it turned out, the Oscar was awarded in February to another documentary, but by then it was too late: Fox’s scene of a kitchen faucet bursting into flames in Fort Lupton, Colo., had defined fracking for many people around the world.
Old Gas, New Technology
The technique of hydraulic fracturing has been known since the 1940s, but it entered its modern phase only in the 1990s, when steerable drill-bit motors and electronic telemetering systems allowed developers to exploit previously inaccessible deposits of shale gas. Shales are fine-grained sedimentary rocks that were laid down hundreds of millions of years ago as organic-rich mud at the bottom of ancient seas. Over time, heat and pressure transformed the mud into shale and the organic matter into gas. Enormous quantities of gas are locked in the hard, dense rock; the problem is how to get it out.
The most productive method is horizontal drilling followed by fracking. In this combined technique, a borehole is drilled straight down through thousands of metres of rock to the shale. This portion of the well is lined with one and sometimes two cemented steel pipes called casing. At a predetermined “kickoff point,” the borehole is turned to the horizontal; from there drilling can continue for thousands of metres more. When this lateral section is done, the entire borehole is lined with yet another casing, which is perforated by a series of small explosive charges.
At this point fracking commences, typically with the arrival of a fleet of tanker trucks at the drilling pad. The amount of fresh water used in fracking a single shale-gas well varies greatly: industry and regulatory sources give figures ranging from approximately 7.5 million to 20 million litres (2 million to 5 million gal)—roughly equivalent to the water contained in three to eight Olympic-size swimming pools.
A fluid is blended that consists of some 90% water, less than 10% sand “proppant” to hold open the fissures in the rock, and 0.5–2% chemical additives, including borehole-cleaning acids, corrosion-preventing stabilizers, and petroleum-based friction reducers. The fluid is pumped at high pressure down the borehole and through the perforations in the casing. Once fracturing has completed, production tubing is inserted into the well, and gas flows to the surface. Fracking fluid returns along with the gas, in some cases mixed with brines from the shale formation. These liquids are diverted for further treatment to steel tanks or to settling ponds that have been excavated out of the ground and lined with plastic. A finished production site may eventually be denuded of all but a network of valves called the “Christmas tree,” connections to a gas pipeline, tanks for storing condensed liquids, and support and maintenance equipment.
Since the 1990s fracking has opened up vast natural-gas deposits in the U.S., mainly in traditional oil- and gas-producing regions of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana but also as far afield as Colorado and North Dakota. In the early 2000s, gas developers began to drill in the Marcellus shale, a huge basin they called the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas” that lay under most of Pennsylvania but also extended into New York, Ohio, and West Virginia. This sudden influx of development brought much-needed jobs and tax revenue to depressed areas of Pennsylvania during the recession of 2008–09. At the same time, it triggered concerns about the environment.
One frequently expressed fear was that hydraulic fracturing would allow shale gas and contaminated liquids to migrate upward into water tables. Industry officials insisted, and environmental officials agreed, that this was extremely unlikely, as fracking was typically done at 1,500–2,500 m (5,000–8,000 ft) below the surface. A more likely scenario might be the diffusion of shale gas through old, unused wells that had not been adequately cased or plugged. Also, well operators had frequently been cited for defective casing that had allowed production gas and liquids to pass into an aquifer.
Drilling of all kinds was known occasionally to disturb gas pockets close to an aquifer, enabling methane gas to permeate well water. The flaming faucet in Gasland inspired a number of imitation videos on the Internet. The gas industry conceded that some of these events could be traced to drilling but insisted that they almost certainly had nothing to do with fracking.
Recovered fracturing fluid contained not only the original additives (some of which could be carcinogenic) but also subsurface brines as well as minerals that might include toxic barium and radium. In some areas such as the Marcellus, flowback water was commonly taken to wastewater-treatment plants—some of which, environmentalists warned, were not equipped to treat fracking water and might be releasing dangerous chemicals into aquatic ecosystems. Partly in response to environmental regulations, producers were developing various methods for recycling fracking water.
In other oil and gas basins, used fracking water was routinely pumped into disposal wells deep underground. According to some geologists, this threatened to alter pressure balances or even lubricate existing faults in rock formations that were already liable to slip. During 2011, in locations as far apart as Arkansas and England, fracking or disposal operations had been halted after unusual seismic activity was noted in their vicinity.
Regulation and Further Study
These environmental concerns called into question the value and practice of shale-gas exploitation—especially in the Marcellus, a region blanketed by the scenic Allegheny Mountains that was home to powerful environmentalist groups long before anyone had ever heard of fracking. Using records kept by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, conservationists found that gas drillers in that state had been cited for violations of environmental regulations more than 1,600 times from January 2008 to August 2010. In July 2011 the New York Department of Environmental Conservation recommended that horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing be banned within the watersheds supplying drinking water to New York City and Syracuse.
Such moves were well received in western Europe, where, in the words of an adviser to a shale-gas company in Britain, “Gasland really changed everything.” In June 2011 France became the first country in the world to ban the exploration and extraction of gas and oil by hydraulic fracturing.
Meanwhile, the safe exploitation of shale gas remained a pillar of U.S. Pres. Barack Obama’s energy policy. On instructions from Congress “to better understand any potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water and groundwater,” the Environmental Protection Agency announced in June 2011 that it would conduct detailed case histories of seven well sites around the U.S. A preliminary report was to be issued in 2012 and a final report in 2014.