Now I’ve seen it all.
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| source: Colorado Independent |
This week, fractivists took their protests to a whole new level, trotting out their children and swaddling them in posterboard covered in catchy slogans decrying the wickedness of hydraulic fracturing.
What else is there to do when you want to grab the media’s attention, but lack any substantial evidence to support your accusations?
Who wouldn’t to listen to a six-year-old with a bullhorn?
A news director would have to be insane not to put these kids on the front page…
But it’ll take more than teaching a few children some slogans to convince me.
We’ve heard their goals many times since the shale boom started in the lower 48 states, the foremost being a pledge to stop hydraulic fracturing once and for all.
That, dear reader, is a pie-crust promise — easily made, easily broken.
I’d also wager there are one or two school-age children singing a different tune about fracturing.
Here’s why…
Take a Lesson from the Shale Leaders
Trying to push for a nationwide ban on hydraulic fracturing is as fruitless as trying to get every single American to abandon his or her gas-guzzling car by tomorrow morning.
An overall ban on the practice won’t happen. Hydraulic fracturing is simply too critical to our oil and natural gas industries right now, especially considering the overwhelming number of wells that require the method for production.
A ban would cripple our unconventional production overnight — as well as the huge benefits that have come along with it.
But to really see the kind of economic impact our shale development is having, all we need do is look at Texas and Pennsylvania, home to two of the largest areas in shale gas development today: the Barnett and Marcellus Formations.
We covered the birth of the shale boom weeks ago.
The nine trillion cubic feet of natural gas that have been produced in the Barnett Shale so far have come with rewards…
click image to enlarge
Revenue generated in the region totaled $1.6 billion in 2011 and almost $11 billion during the last ten years.
I wonder what elementary schools in Colorado could do with the extra $382 million their Texas counterparts enjoyed last year…
(And some have estimated the overall economic benefit from Barnett activity over the years to be closer to $80 billion.)
It’s practically the same story in the Marcellus. Marcellus Shale development last year pumped more than $12.8 billion in economic activity, including more than a billion in state and local taxes and bolstering over 150,000 jobs.
As a result, Pennsylvania’s gas production is expected to triple to more than 17 billion cubic feet during the next eight years — which alone would be enough to make it the largest natural gas-producing field in the United States.
If these fractivists weren’t so busy with sensationalist tactics (I’d say turning young kids into walking billboards qualifies), they could focus on the more important issues in the debate over hydraulic fracturing.
The problem is that they’re focusing on the wrong ones.
We’ve all heard the horror stories splashed in the media.
As it turns out, some of these are completely baseless.
One study released a few days ago showed EPA estimates on GHG emissions from natural gas production were sorely overblown. The report suggested methane emissions by these fracked wells were about half of what the EPA had stated.
Here’s a hint for our friends with the picket signs…
Concentrate on the real issue at hand: water.
At last count, there were about 15,000 producing wells in the Barnett Shale. Each one of those wells was hydraulically fractured using as much as nine million gallons of water.
That’s 135 billion gallons of water for this one formation.
If ever there was a potential game-changer for the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, it’s eliminating the millions of gallons of water required in the hydraulic fracturing process.
The very solution to removing water from the fracking equation could be developing right now.
Once the water problem is solved, it won’t matter how many children are paraded around on camera…
Until next time,
Keith Kohl
Check us out on YouTube!A true insider in the technology and energy markets, Keith’s research has helped everyday investors capitalize from the rapid adoption of new technology trends and energy transitions. Keith connects with hundreds of thousands of readers as the Managing Editor of Energy & Capital, as well as the investment director of Angel Publishing’s Energy Investor and Technology and Opportunity.
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