Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future by Richard Heinberg Read Free Book Online

what’s been promised with this new technology.

SNAKE BITES
    1. THE INDUSTRY SHILLS SAY:
    Thanks to new technologies we have a 100-year supply of natural gas here in the United States.
    THE REALITY IS:
    That 100-year figure is arrived at by extrapolating results from the very best wells to entire regions and ignoring future demand trends. It’s grade-A snake oil.
    2. THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM SAYS:
    Fracking is a “game changer” for domestic oil and gas production. “We can drill our way to energy independence in the United States.”
    THE REALITY IS:
    Shale gas and tight oil, like all fossil fuels, are finite resources. The rate of supply from both will rapidly decline in the near future. If we don’t develop long-term renewable energy alternatives now, we will be caught short.
    Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have increased production of natural gas and oil by tapping vast shale deposits. But the industry has made extraordinary claims about the extent and longevity of the shale boom—claims that the evidence does not support.

Chapter Two
    Technology to the Rescue
    F racking will end America’s reliance on imported oil. The United States can look forward to a hundred years of cheap natural gas. The US will soon become energy independent and will surpass Saudi Arabia to become the world’s foremost petroleum producer.
    These are extraordinary claims, but they are not entirely without basis. To quote a gas exploration company representative’s repeated assertion at a presentation I attended in 2009, “The proof is in the production.” 1 Just a few years ago, US natural gas production was declining and apparently set to go off a cliff. Instead, today’s gas-in-storage is at or near record highs, the price of natural gas has recently retreated to historic lows, and there is serious talk of exporting liquefied natural gas to other nations by ocean tankers.
    Similarly, US oil production—which had been generally declining since 1970—is now on the rise, primarily because of the application of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in tight reservoirs. In 2012, US oil production soared by 766,000 barrels per day, the biggest one-year boost ever; domestic production is at its highest level in 15 years.
    Nevertheless, claims that have recently been made for the potential of fracking technology to produce spectacular amounts of shale gas and tight oil for decades to come have drawn skeptical responses from some geologists. The boom has been going on for a few years now—long enough to generate data and to permit reasonable observers to gain some perspective.
    In this chapter, we will review the long history of the technology behind the shale gas and tight oil booms in the United States, and the short history of the booms themselves. Then, in Chapter 3, we’ll drill into data to see whether the facts really support the industry’s claims.
    A Brief History of Fracking
    The essential purpose of hydrofracturing is to create and maintain fractures in oil- or gas-bearing rock; these fractures enable oil or gas to migrate toward a well bore so it can be extracted from the ground.
    The idea of fracturing rock to free up hydrocarbons goes back almost to the beginning of the oil industry. In 1866, US Patent No. 59,936 was issued to Civil War veteran Col. Edward Roberts, who developed an invention he titled simply, “Exploding Torpedo.” Roberts would lower a n iron cylinder filled with 15 to 20 pounds of gunpowder into a drilled borehole until it reached oil-bearing strata. The torpedo was then exploded by means of a cap on top of the shell connected by wire to a detonator at the surface. Roberts also envisioned f illing the well bore with water to provide “fluid tamping” to concentrate the concussion and more efficiently fracture the rock.
    The invention worked. The Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company went on to “shoot” thousands of Pennsylvania oil wells with explosives, and production from the