With the rising concern of the dangers associated with fracking, many North Carolinians are deeply uncertain about what lies ahead for the state relying on the questionable method of obtaining fuel and energy.
WCHL’s Ron Stutts spoke with Therese Vick of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, and with Martha Girolami, a citizen of northeast Chatham County that has found out recently that she lives atop of what is known as the “Triassic basin,” which is one of the potential locations that fracking companies may take advantage of.
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League is a “regional, community-based, non-profit environmental organization.” They focus on issues including “industry’s dependence on toxic chemicals, utilities’ refusal to adopt sound energy alternatives, industrial development and highway construction at the expense of public health, intensive livestock operations’ effects on agriculture and the environment, and huge waste dumps.”
When asked what she personally found so dangerous about fracking, Girolami says that her two biggest issues come from the health risks and how quickly the practice of fracking is being accepted despite a lack of real preparatory analysis.
“Fracking so bad because it’s so polluting,” says Girolami. “It’s so polluting to ground water, surface water, air, air health, and it’s been so rushed. So rushed we haven’t done a health study, we’ve done no air rules. The Energy and Mining Commission has been meeting for two years, but there are big gaps in the rules they put together.”
Vick reminds of the recent legislation created that states it is a misdemeanor to disclose what chemicals are used for digging. She says that this is not how the community should be treated when it comes to this form of resource gathering.
“The community has the right to know what is being injected into the ground under their feet,” says Vick. “Our organization just passed a resolution on chemical disclosure that we hope to share with other folks, but my feeling is that the reason they don’t want people to know is because of that potential liability.”
***Listen to the full interview here***
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
For more on the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, click here.
http://chapelboro.com/news/health/anti-fracking-response-interview/This is the conclusion of a three-part series inspired by the North Carolina General Assembly’s decision to make the disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking a crime here in the Tar Heel State, purportedly to protect the trade secrets of the drilling companies. In Part I, I reviewed why I do not believe that the identities of these chemicals qualify as trade secrets. In Part II, I gave my opinion on what I believe to be the actual motivations for the legislation. This week, I want to direct your attention to an important part of the fracking process that gets very little media attention: the fate of the water and chemicals that are extracted from the well after the underground rocks have been broken.
Before we proceed, let’s quickly review the fracking process. First, a drilling company locates what it believes to be an underground deposit of oil and/or gas contained within non-porous rock. (If the rock was porous, fracking would not be necessary.) A vertical hole is drilled straight down to the depth of the deposit and then multiple horizontal holes are drilled out from the bottom of the vertical hole. Next a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals is pumped into the horizontal holes where high temperatures and pressures combine to fracture the rocks. Approximately 40% of the water and chemicals are pumped back out of the well to the surface, while the sand and the remainder of the liquids stay underground forever. Once this is accomplished, extraction of oil or gas from the well can commence.
Hundreds of different chemicals are used in the fracking process, many of which are toxic and/or carcinogenic. (For a full list of the typical chemicals used in fracking and their functions, please open this link.) Much of the concern about fracking stems from the fear that these toxic substances could migrate underground from the zone where the fracking occurred into underground aquifers which are utilized for drinking water and/or agriculture. This risk is valid, and there have been a number of documented cases where this appears to have occurred, with a notable case in Pavillion, Wyoming. (1)
But what about the 40% of the fracking liquids which are pumped out of the well? Where do they go, and what sort of risks do they present?
When water is extracted from the well after the fracking process, it contains a portion of the chemicals it started with, plus others which are absorbed from the underground rock formations, particularly hydrocarbons and toxic heavy metals. Depending on the location of the well, some of the heavy metals may be radioactive. From here forward, I’ll refer to the mixture of liquids extracted from the well as fracking wastewater.
When fracking wastewater is extracted from the well, it is usually first collected in a temporary, open pond. Both of the adjectives describing the ponds should concern you. Since the ponds are intended to be temporary, there is an incentive to make them just sturdy enough to do the job, with little safety margin for the unexpected. In addition, open ponds often overflow in heavy rains. Spills of fracking wastewater from a pond have a far easier path to pollute our drinking water sources than the wastewater left underground.
Once the wastewater is contained in the pond, the drilling company needs to figure out what to do with it. Given that it is called wastewater, people often think we could send it to a municipal wastewater treatment plant. We can’t. Municipal wastewater treatment plants remove solids with filtration and then clean the dissolved organic material (poop) by letting bacteria eat it. Fracking wastewater includes many dissolved chemicals which bacteria cannot eat.
The fracking wastewater can be cleaned using an expensive, energy-intensive process, the details of which I will omit for the sake of brevity. Given that there are millions of gallons of wastewater produced from each well, the drilling companies are always on the look-out for less expensive solutions for its disposal. A common, less expensive approach is to inject the wastewater into either an old oil or gas well or into a new well drilled explicitly for wastewater disposal.
In Oklahoma, where fracking began in earnest in 2008, there are now thousands of fracked wells, and wastewater injection is a very common disposal technique. The combination of shattering the underground rock by fracking and pumping wastewater into disposal wells has had a dramatic effect on seismic activity. The graph below shows the absolutely stunning increase in the incidence of earthquakes registering 3.0 or higher on the Richter Scale since fracking began in Oklahoma, from a historical rate of one or two a year up to the current level of one or two a day! The geographic correspondence between the earthquakes and the drilling activities (they are in precisely the same places) is nearly exact, leaving very little doubt that fracking and the injection of the wastewater are the cause.
The implications for North Carolina are clear. Given that fracking in NC appears to be inevitable, we need to do our best to ensure that the regulations give adequate attention to the wastewater handling. Among other things, the wastewater storage ponds must be well constructed and account for the possibility of heavy rains. The drilling companies should be required to treat the wastewater in a thorough and responsible manner rather than simply injecting it back into the ground. Otherwise our experience with fracking is likely to be particularly unpleasant.
Have a comment or question? Use the interface below or send me an email to commonscience@chapelboro.com. Think that this column includes important points that others should consider? Send out a link on Facebook or Twitter. Also, please note that I am taking a rare vacation from writing. This will be the last Common Science until June 29th.
(1) Reports in the general media will usually cite higher rates of the incidence of drinking water contamination from fracking than you will see in my columns. I’d like to explain why. The vast majority of fracking-related water contamination events reported in the media are situations where the water has a higher than normal level of methane (the primary component of natural gas.) While I understand the rationale for including them, I do not.
First of all, since methane is everywhere, it is present at some level in all drinking water. Furthermore, it is biologically inert. So even if you are ingesting some in your drinking water, you body will not interact with it in any way. Therefore, it can’t hurt you.
Furthermore, since methane is not very soluble in water, your maximum exposure is limited. Due to this low solubility, I would like to note that I feel strongly that the famous scene in the movie Gasland where a man lights his kitchen faucet on fire was a fake. As far as I can tell, it is thermodynamically impossible.
I only count situations where a chemical added to the fracking process, many of which are quite harmful, ends up in drinking water. These situations have been less frequent than methane contamination, but they are far more troubling.
http://chapelboro.com/columns/common-science/fracking-gag-rule-part-iii-wastewater/As I write this column, Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) are fast tracking a new law which makes it a Class 1 felony to disclose the identities of chemicals used in fracking here in the Tar Heel State. The purported rationale for this law is that identities of these chemicals are closely guarded and valuable trade secrets for the drilling companies. In Part I of this series, I reviewed how and why chemicals are used in the fracking process ,and why I think the suggestion that the identities of the chemicals used represent valuable trade secrets is absurd.
If I am correct that the legislation is not really motivated by the need to protect the alleged trade secrets of companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger, what are the actual motivations for the drilling companies to advocate for this law? Below are my opinions.
I believe the oil companies and their lobbyists are pushing this gag rule legislation for four reasons, all of which are related to the use of petroleum distillates in the fracking process. If you want the full story on the use of petroleum distillates in fracking, please read Part I of this series. For the purposes of this column you need to know four things about petroleum distillates:
1. They are a low-value byproduct of the oil refining process.
2. They contain hundreds of different small-to-medium-sized hydrocarbons.
3. They are needed as a co-solvent to allow the other chemicals used in fracking to remain stabilized in the water and sand mixture which is pumped into the wells.
4. They contain small concentrations of known carcinogens.
Reason Number 1: Characterizing Petroleum Distillate is Cumbersome
The composition of petroleum distillates is complex, since they contain hundreds of different chemicals. Furthermore, the composition of the distillates continually changes based on the type of oil being refined as well as on changes in the operating conditions of the refinery. Therefore, if the drilling companies had to disclose the chemicals used in each of their thousands of fracking wells, it would require a lengthy and detailed laboratory analysis accompanied by a substantial amount of paperwork. They could do this work – they just don’t want to.
Reason Number 2: Benzene
All petroleum distillates contain benzene, a widely known and feared carcinogen which can cause leukemia. Public disclosure that a drilling company was injecting benzene into the ground beneath our drinking water aquifers would cause alarm.
The drilling companies could point out, correctly, that the potential exposure from the small amount of benzene used in fracking is significantly lower than the amount of benzene which one routinely inhales while pumping gas. (Benzene is used in gasoline to improve the octane rating, which makes your engine run better.) However, I suspect this sort of argument would fail in the court of public opinion. People would just stop listening after “benzene.”
Reason Number 3: Water Pollution Monitoring
If fracking really does take place in Lee and Moore Counties, government agencies and non-governmental organizations will test for water pollution in nearby streams, lakes, and wells. Since, as I pointed out in Part I, everyone already knows what chemicals are likely to be used in fracking, it will not be difficult to know what to look for.
For example, let’s say the Lee County chapter of the Sierra Club detects hexane in Oldham’s Lake outside of Sanford. If a comprehensive list of the chemicals injected into specific wells was available, then it would be fairly easy to locate the source of the pollution. You, my gentle reader, may think that’s a good idea. It would appear that the drilling companies do not.
Reason Number 4: Free Disposal
Of my four proposed “true reasons” for the gag rule, this last one is the most speculative, but to me, the most interesting. As I have explained, the petroleum distillates used in fracking are a low-value byproduct from oil refining. In fact, their value is so low that it is not really worth the effort and expense to try to sell them as paint thinners or fuel additives. Therefore, if you were an oil refinery owner and operator, you probably wish they would just magically disappear.
When the implementation of fracking took off in the U.S. around the year 2005, it created a new and (if you were a refinery owner) exciting outlet for petroleum distillates. So oil companies who are supplying the distillates to the drilling companies have an incentive to maximize the amount of distillate used in fracking, even if it is more than is required as a co-solvent. To the extent that the amount of petroleum distillate used exceeds the amount necessary as a co-solvent, it represents a kind of free and legal chemical dumping. Without having access to the data on the exact concentrations of the chemicals used in fracking, it is not possible for me to be sure that this is happening. However, the incentives to do it are clear and compelling.
Conclusion
There are so many things wrong about this gag rule, I find it hard to organize my thoughts. So please forgive me for resorting to bullet points:
• The reasons that legislators provide for any law should correspond to the actual reasons for the law. It seems abundantly clear to me that this gag rule law has nothing to do with shielding trade secrets. Rather, it seems clear that it is motivated by some combination of the reasons I listed above. Saying otherwise, as the Republicans are, is deceptive and dishonorable.
• With the exception of vital national security concerns, government should always be as transparent as possible. We all live here, farm here, and drink our water here. If the NCGA is going to allow the injection of chemicals underground, it should require full public disclosure.
• As a citizen of North Carolina, I am not at all comfortable with the NCGA deciding to utilize the criminal justice system to address a civil matter such as alleged financial harm to a corporation from disclosure of purported trade secrets. If any of my readers are versed in the law and policy in this arena, I would very much like to hear from you.
I’ll conclude this series next week with an exploration of an aspect of the fracking process which gets far less attention than it deserves: the fate of the water and chemicals that are pumped out of the well after the fracking process is completed.
Have a comment or question? Use the interface below or send me an email to commonscience@chapelboro.com. Think that this column includes important points that others should consider? Send out a link on Facebook or Twitter.
http://chapelboro.com/columns/common-science/fracking-gag-rule-part-ii-real-reasons/Three major, and controversial, decisions have been made in the North Carolina General Assembly this past weekend: the Senate’s new spending plan, teacher pay raises, and the fracking bill.
The Senate has decided upon a new $21.1 billion spending plan for 2014-15 this weekend. Democrats were displeased with how quickly the decision was made, as it allowed for minimal negotiation. They seemed to be in consensus that the Senate was only interested in hearing their own approval, rather than the perspectives of the general public.
As part of this new budget plan, legislators also desire to encourage teachers to give up their tenure in exchange for an 11% raise in pay. Teachers, in response, are disagreeing with the motion as they desire more protection from unfriendly politics that surround schools presently. These raises are also planned to be gathered from cuts that would come from public school spending.
Other states are allegedly not attempting this swap of pay raise for tenure. Democrats agree that this action is not for the benefit of the teacher’s, but more of a cover-up for legislators’ inability to manage money wisely.
The fracking bill, completely supported by the House Republicans, is now on its way to be signed by Gov. Pat McCrory, who is more than ready to help get it passed. While Democrats were clearly unhappy with the bill, they failed to halt the process. Instead, they were able to add a few minor alterations to the bill as compromise before being sent to Gov. McCrory.
Many North Carolinians fear what the fracking might mean for chemicals that could get into well water, as well as how the Senate now seems to have the ability to override local governments in relation to how the fracking will be carried out.
As of now, there seems to be a great deal of controversy with each major decision processed by the General Assembly of North Carolina this past weekend. The uncertainty regarding the decided amount of the budget has some questioning how things are going to get better now. The risky move of raising teachers’ salaries whilst eliminating assistants and tenure is causing a rift of displeasure from educators of North Carolina, and unfavorable fracking plans that may affect local businesses in a way that they are unwilling to comply with the Senate’s decision.
http://chapelboro.com/news/local-government/general-assembly-check/I was in the middle of writing a column about the unique benefits and properties of fertilizer made from seaweed when I got distracted by the North Carolina General Assembly. A Republican-led senate committee has proposed to make it a felony for a citizen to disclose the names of the chemicals used by drilling companies in the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) process. The purported rationale is that drilling companies claim that the mixtures of chemicals they use are confidential trade secrets. As I will outline below, this claim borders on the absurd.
I have written about fracking several times in the past. For a thorough review of the technology and potential environmental risks please read my previous column, To Frack or not to Frack. For the purposes of this column, here is a very brief summary of fracking. When companies drill for oil or gas, everything is much easier if the deposits are contained in underground rock structures which are relatively porous. The porosity makes it easy for the oil and gas to move from place to place and thus to be extracted to the surface. As time has passed in the United States and around the world, oil and gas deposits contained in porous rock formations have been significantly depleted and drilling companies have started to exploit deposits which are present in low-porosity formations. To extract the oil and gas from these low-porosity rocks, the rocks must first be broken by fracking.
Fracking involves first drilling a hole straight down to the depth where the oil and/or gas deposits reside and then drilling horizontally through the non-porous rocks. Next, millions of gallons of a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into the well. Since the temperature below ground is much higher than the surface, the water expands, which creates incredibly high pressures which then fractures the rock. The sand stays within the rock formation to help keep the smaller fissures created in the fracking process open. About 40% of the water and chemicals used in the process are pumped back out to the surface, while the other 60% remain underground.
The chemicals used in the fracking process have several purposes. A partial list includes:
• preventing the sand from clumping together too soon or too tightly,
• reducing the viscosity of the mixture so that it will flow through small cracks,
• preventing corrosion of the metal pipes used in the well, and
• killing bacteria in the water.
Many of the chemicals used in fracking are not soluble in pure water. If these chemicals can’t be dissolved or at least suspended in the water, the fracking process would not work. Therefore, in order to stabilize the chemicals in the water, it is necessary to add some hydrocarbons to the mixture as a co-solvent. Many of the issues and controversies surrounding the environmental risks of fracking are related to the hydrocarbon co-solvent.
The hydrocarbon co-solvent which is typically used is called petroleum distillate. Without going into a lengthy explanation of how an oil refinery works, petroleum distillate consists of a mixture of small to medium size hydrocarbons which were either present in the oil when it was extracted from the ground or created by “cracking” larger hydrocarbons into smaller ones during the oil refining process. Gasoline, kerosene, and diesel are all examples of petroleum distillates. Petroleum distillates generally contain hundreds of different types of hydrocarbon molecules, including known carcinogens such as benzene.
If you are running an oil refinery and want to maximize profits, you operate the equipment so that you manage to sell most of your petroleum distillate as gasoline, kerosene, or diesel. However, because of the nature of petroleum as well as the limitations in the specifications for products like gasoline, the refinery will end up with some distillate left over, for which there is no good commercial outlet. The refinery may be able to sell a portion of these leftovers as paint thinner, but much of it is effectively just waste. It is this waste distillate which is being used across the country as the co-solvent hydrocarbon for the fracking process.
With that background in mind, let’s first examine the claim that the recipes for these mixtures of fracking chemicals used by the drilling companies represent valuable, proprietary trade secrets. Our first hint that this claim is suspect stems from the fact that the technology involved in suspending sand in water and keeping pipes from corroding is neither novel nor complicated. There is certainly some art in calibrating the concentrations of the chemicals to adjust to local geology, but no esoteric or novel science is involved.
Our second hint is that the drilling companies do not invent or own the recipes for the fracking chemicals themselves. Rather, they rely on the one of the four large U.S. oil field services companies – Schlumberger, Halliburton, Flour or Baker-Hughes – who dominate the market. To the extent that a rationale might exist for maintaining trade secrets on fracking chemicals, it would presumably stem from protecting these four companies from one another. Given that all of these companies have been working on the same projects in the same places for decades, they already know exactly what each other are doing. Therefore, the suggestion that a citizen of North Carolina could cause financial harm to Halliburton by disclosing which anti-corrosive chemicals it is using does not pass the smell test.
So if Halliburton and the other companies don’t really need this to be protected by the North Carolina General Assembly, what is the real purpose of this proposed gag rule? I will give you my thoughts on that next week in Part II of this series. The week after in Part III, I will conclude the series by addressing the fate of the 40% of the water and chemicals which are pumped back up to the surface during the fracking process. It seems that the seaweed column will just have to wait.
Have a comment or question? Use the interface below or send me an email to commonscience@chapelboro.com.
http://chapelboro.com/columns/common-science/fracking-gag-rule-part-trade-secret/In last week’s column, The Case of the Missing Propane, I explained how the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of shale oil deposits since 2008 has led to a 30% increase in the production of crude petroleum in the United States. While that statistic makes for snappy headlines, it is not particularly meaningful to the overall world oil supply or the phenomenon known as Peak Oil.
If you are not familiar with Peak Oil, I published a column in June of 2011 called Peak Oil in Five Paragraphs or Less. Here are the key points:
• Peak Oil refers to the time at which we reach the global maximum rate of oil production, which is followed by decades of declining rates of production.
• Due to oil’s pivotal role as a transportation fuel and (as I explained in Everything Comes from Oil) the key raw material for most consumer goods, the global economy can only grow if oil supply continues to grow.
• In order to keep producing more and more oil, you must keep discovering more and more and more. This is not possible. Eventually you are exhausting oil fields at a rate faster than the new ones can be discovered.
• The global peak for conventional oil sources occurred in approximately 2005, requiring us to turn to unconventional sources such as shale oil and oil sands. These sources are expensive to exploit and will not last for very long.
• The economic disruptions cause by the impending oil supply constraints will be very challenging for the global community.
The graph below was the key feature of Peak Oil in Five Paragraphs or Less. This graph is pivotal to understanding both the history and economics of the last century as well as the challenges coming in the next; everyone should be familiar with it. Its peaks and valleys tell stories as varied and interesting as the growth of suburbia in the U.S. and the role of Saudi Arabia in the post World War II era. But I never see this graph in the papers. It’s not hard to understand. As you can see from the bars, the peak year for global oil discovery occurred in 1965, the year before I was born, and has been generally declining ever since. Due to extraordinary efforts by the oil companies, the rate of production has yet to start declining, but as those old fields continue to be exhausted, it will.
Beginning in 2007, you see a small, but temporary, increase in “discoveries” which corresponds to shale oils such as the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. I put discoveries in quotations because shale oil deposits have been known about for decades but were simply not counted as petroleum reserves due to their low quality. The oil sands in Alberta, for which the Keystone XL pipeline is intended, fall into this same low-grade category.
Before I show you some additional graphs (I love graphs), we need a brief aside on definitions and sources. The data I use below is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and is, therefore, reliable for past data. Different sources define “oil” differently, which can cause confusion. Some, such as this column, restrict the definition of oil to crude petroleum – think gushers from old movies. Other sources add in liquids that are collected during natural gas refining – we discussed those last week – as well as biofuels, resulting in larger totals.
The graph below shows U.S. crude petroleum production in millions of barrels a day since 1980. From 1980 through 2008, there was a steady decline from 9 million to 5 million barrels a day. In 2008, fracking of shale oil began in earnest, which has increased U.S. petroleum production from a low of 5 million to 6.6 million barrels a day, an increase of 30%.
Extracting petroleum from shale formations is an expensive business. After you go through all the effort and expense to drill downward and then horizontally, and break up the rock below with high pressure fluids (fracking), the production from the well falls off by an average of 65% during the first year. Therefore, in order to keep production going, you’ve got to keep drilling and drilling and drilling. In 2011, 16,000 fracking wells were drilled in the U.S. In 2012, it was 19,000.
While doing the research for this column, I decided to have a look at the Bakken Shale Field formation, which spans the North Dakota-Montana border just south of Canada, on Google Earth. I could not get a nice looking picture for you, but it is somewhat fascinating to see. If you use the satellite map feature, follow the existing rural roads, then look for secondary dirt roads which lead to dirt rectangles. Each rectangle will contain a well with a pump on top, four tanks for collecting the oil, and some other equipment. You generally will not find any people or vehicles, because these units run automatically. As you pan around, you can find them by the hundreds.
The increase in petroleum production in the U.S. has not provided any meaningful relief from high gasoline prices, which remain steadfastly above $3.00 per gallon. There are two main reasons for this: petroleum is a global commodity (more on that below) and fracking is an expensive technique. Consider that in 2004, oil sold for about $40 per barrel. The break-even price for a barrel of oil produced from fracking is $80.
The graph below shows world crude petroleum production along with the same data I showed for the U.S. in the previous graph. As you can see, petroleum production in the U.S. is only a small fraction of the global total. Therefore, the 30% increase in U.S. production has only increased the global supply by two percent. A two percent increase in global supply, especially an expensive supply, is not sufficient to result in a reduction in U.S. fuel prices.
So where does this leave us? Overall global supply of petroleum is being maintained near 76 million barrels a day based on the extraordinary efforts to extract unconventional oils. Sometime between now and 2025, the supply will begin to decline and cause social and economic dislocations. As we continue to exploit the unconventional sources during this time, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere will grow from 400 to 450 parts per million, causing even more dramatic changes in our weather patterns and challenging our ability produce enough food for eight billion people. Dealing with these parallel challenges will be the defining features of the 21 century.
Have a comment or question? Use the interface below or send me an email to commonscience@chapelboro.com.
http://chapelboro.com/columns/common-science/checking-peak-oil/Over the past few weeks, I have seen many stories about propane shortages in the United States. As a result of these shortages, prices for propane have nearly doubled from around $2.20 per gallon at the end of last year to over $4.00 per gallon this week. This situation struck me as quite odd. We should be nearly drowning in propane at the moment. So I decided to try to figure out what was going on.
As usual, let’s start with the background. Propane is a small, simple hydrocarbon with the chemical formula C3H8. At normal temperatures and pressures, propane is a gas. By applying a modest amount of pressure you can induce it to liquefy, which is what comes in the propane tank you may be using for the grill on the back porch.
Three quarters of propane production in the U.S. comes from the refining of natural gas. The primary component of natural gas is methane (CH4). Mixed in with the methane are larger hydrocarbons such as ethane (C2H6), propane and butane (C4H10). Before natural gas can be put through a pipeline (the only economical way that it can be transported long distances), most of the propane and butane must be removed, thus resulting in most of our supply of propane and butane. Butane is what is used in most cigarette lighters.
The other 25% of propane production in the U.S. comes from petroleum refining. In order to make fuels such as gasoline and diesel from crude petroleum, there is a processing step called cracking. Cracking is just what it sounds like, the breaking up of larger hydrocarbon molecules into smaller ones. Some of these smaller molecules are propane, resulting in the rest of our propane supply.
Propane is used almost exclusively as a fuel for heating. The breakdown of propane consumption in the U.S. is shown below:
Industrial heating 50%
Residential/recreational heating 42%
Agricultural (e.g. drying grain) 7%
Transportation 1%
Due to the implementation of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) as a drilling technology, production rates of natural gas and petroleum in the U.S. have both increased approximately 15-20% since 2008. Therefore, production of propane, which is recovered from both of these sources, has also increased by this amount.
The increase in supply has resulted in a dramatic decrease in the price of refined natural gas, which has inspired power companies all across the country to convert from coal to natural gas for fuel. So I set about trying to determine how there could be a shortage of propane and a surplus of refined natural gas at the same time.
I checked U.S. propane consumption to see if increases in demand were outpacing the large increase in supply. The U.S. Energy Information Administration data shows that propane consumption in both October and November of 2013 was slightly above normal while use in December had fallen back to within the norm. This small increase in demand last fall could have put some strain on supply, but not enough to explain the dramatic price spikes on its own.
Then the likely answer occurred to me. Since natural gas can only be transported in an economically feasible manner via pipeline, nearly all of U.S. production is consumed domestically. Propane gas can easily and economically be compressed to a liquid. Liquids are easy to transport and, thus, easy to export.
That turned out to be the answer to the mystery. In 2008, only 5% of U.S propane production was exported. By 2013, driven in large part by high demand in Asia, the amount exported increased to 20%!
Let’s work the numbers. In 2008, the U.S. produced an average of 1.8 million barrels a day of propane, exporting 0.1 million barrels and leaving 1.7 million for domestic use. By 2013, production had increased 20% to 2.16 million barrels a day, but now 0.43 million of these were exported, leaving just 1.73 million for domestic use. As you can see, essentially all of the production increase since 2008 has been allocated to export.
The consumption of all fuels in the U.S. increased along with the growth of both population and the economy. Therefore, while the 1.7 million barrels a day of propane met demand in 2008 – a year with a weak economy – the 1.73 million barrels a day allocated to domestic use were just barely enough for 2013. As a result, even the minor increase in demand which occurred last fall was enough to cause a large spike in price.
This chain of events which led to the propane shortage this winter warrants some additional reflection and analysis. Consider the following timeline:
• In 2004-2005, natural gas production in the U.S. from traditional extraction technologies was not keeping pace with the demand and resulting in dramatic price increases.
• The high price for natural gas was a primary driver in the dramatic expansion of fracking in the U.S., which significantly increased the supply of natural gas and, thereby, caused a drop in its price.
• Fracking also brought about a large increase in propane supply.
• Because drilling companies are compelled to maximize near-term shareholder return, the surplus propane is being exported.
• Ensuring that U.S. citizens benefit from the increased propane supply in the form of lower prices stemming from surplus domestic supply would require the type of government regulation of the energy sector which is vociferously opposed by Republicans.
• Most homes which use propane for home heating and kitchen cooking, the people who are most harmed by the price increases, are located in rural areas.
• Rural areas tend to steadfastly vote Republican.
When the Republican politicians who represent those harmed by these price increases are pressed to provide an explanation for why their constituents’ heating bills have doubled, they tend to offer a list of talking points about excess government regulation. They offer the libertarian vision that if only the oil companies were free of government constraints, all would be well. As I laid out for you above, this explanation is demonstrably false.
When I ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the CHCCS Board of Education in 2005, I campaigned on my commitment to data-based decision making. That phrase lacks “zing,” which may explain why engineers make for mediocre political candidates. To me, though, the current domestic propane price increase is a perfect example of the need for data-based governance. The data tells us that the propane shortage in the U.S. is the result of the rise in exports. Our lawmakers should make policy based on this data to ensure that American citizens reap the benefits of increased American energy production. For those of you I confused back in 2005, this is what I meant.
Have a comment or question? Use the comment interface below or send me an email to commonscience@chapelboro.com.
http://chapelboro.com/columns/common-science/case-missing-propane/Last week I set out my predictions for five positive science and technology news stories that I am expecting in 2014. This week I’ve got predictions for four negative ones. As with last week, each prediction begins with an imaginary headline.
1. Hurricane Cristobal to be Second Category 4 Storm to Hit Pensacola this Month
Every year tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic and make their way towards the southeastern United States. Over the past century, an average of six strong storms – categories 3, 4, and 5 – made landfall each decade. Just as simple statistics govern how often a single person will be struck twice by lightning, they also tell us that one of these years the same city on our coastline will be devastated by a category 3+ storm more than once. I predict that 2014 will be the year that Pensacola will be the city.
This sequence of events will convince all but the most ardent of skeptics that Global Warming is actually occurring. This will be particularly ironic since the events in question will not be related to climate change but are the simple outcome of math.
2. Food Riots in Liberia Enter their Third Week
The United Nations estimates that one in eight people around the globe suffers from chronic undernourishment. A disproportionate number of these hungry people live in under-developed countries. Human beings have a remarkable capacity to soldier on in difficult times, but watching one’s children go hungry often stirs strong responses. As such, hunger and increased food prices are at the top of the list of the most common catalysts for civil unrest throughout history. I think 2014 will bring such unrest in Liberia.
The recent sad arc of Liberian history began with food riots in 1980 which then led to a series of civil wars and upheavals, culminating in the brutal regime of Charles Taylor, which ended in 2003. Things looked encouraging in 2005 when Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected as the first ever female president in Africa. She continues to hold office and was awarded the Noble Peace Price in 2011.
Even considering the best efforts of President Johnson-Sirleaf, I see trouble for Liberia on the food security horizon. Liberia, despite its temperate climate, imports over 90% of its rice, a staple food for Liberians, particularly the poor. Part of the reason for this is that a staggering 57% percent of Liberia’s arable land has been leased to foreign countries and companies using an instrument called a concession (I am planning a fuller treatment of this phenomenon in a separate column). These factors combine to make Liberia extremely vulnerable to disruptions in food imports. When this next occurs (and, 2014 or not, it will), I suspect the Liberians will not sit idly by and watch their children go hungry while prime farmland in their country has been leased to foreign governments to grow oil palm for biodiesel.
3. Chicken Run
When you buy chicken at the grocery store, it is highly likely that it contains harmful bacteria. Recent studies have shown that 97% of chicken is infected with some combination of E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter, staphylococcus and other potentially harmful bacteria. To make matters worse, nearly half of the chicken in the store is tainted with bacteria that have some degree of resistance to antibiotics. The percentage of grocery store chicken containing drug resistant bacteria has been increasing dramatically over the last several years. As more people become aware of how pervasive this problem is, I expect chicken sales to drop during 2014.
4. Fracking, Not in Lee County but in the Ukraine
While local concerns about fracking are focused on the undue influence of the oil and gas industry on the ongoing formulation of regulations in Raleigh and the threat to water quality in Lee and Moore counties, we should also be paying attention to events in the Ukraine and understand how fracking relates to the recent and massive political protests which occurred there. Its strategic position between the European Union and the Russian Federation is at the root of most issues in the Ukraine. During 2013, the Ukrainian government was moving towards greater cooperation with Western Europe, which provoked a reaction from the Russians concerned about the potential loss of trade revenues and international influence. Since most of Ukraine’s natural gas supply comes from Russia, when the Russians wanted to stop Ukrainian-European cooperation, it threatened to shut off the gas.
Seeing an opportunity in this dispute, Chevron Corporation has approached the government of the Ukraine with a proposal to start fracking operations there in order to reduce their dependence on Mother Russia. I anticipate that the Ukrainians will agree.
As I have written about many times, any hope of maintaining a climate which approximates what we have seen these last 15,000 years will require keeping the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere at less than 450 parts per million. To do so will require leaving large portions of current, known fossil fuel reserves it the ground. Fracking in the Ukraine with be yet another step in the wrong direction and it will be a big one. Other nations will follow. In fact, as I was working on the final edits on this column today, I read a report on French oil giant Total proposing fracking in the United Kingdom. May our children forgive us.
Have a comment or question? Use the comment interface below or send me an email at commonscience@chapelboro.com.
http://chapelboro.com/columns/common-science/2014-predictions-part-ii-negative/RALEIGH – North Carolina lawmakers are honing rules that would govern underground natural gas drilling and encourage offshore oil drilling.
The Senate gave final approval Tuesday to legislation intended to spur the state’s energy. It now goes to Gov. Pat McCrory.
The measure removes an earlier idea to begin issuing permits in March 2015 for underground gas drilling using a method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The existing law directs state agencies to craft rules for oil and gas exploration by October 2014 and requires the legislature to act before issuing any permits.
The legislation also directs McCrory to negotiate an offshore energy alliance with the governors of South Carolina and Virginia.
Republican Rep. Mike Stone of Sanford says lawmakers want to tell the energy industry that North Carolina welcomes drilling.
http://chapelboro.com/news/state-government/nc-lawmakers-hone-rules-for-gas-oil-drilling/CHAPEL HILL – The community has a chance Tuesday night to participate in a discussion about the controversial subject of fracking in North Carolina. It’s happening at 7:00 p.m. at the Schley Grange Hall in Hillsborough.
Bonnie Hauser is the president Orange County Voice, the group that organized the discussion.
“The event is a chance for people to get just the facts,” Hauser said.
Last year, hydraulic fracturing—otherwise known as “fracking”— was formally legalized in the state. Since then, the N.C. Mining & Energy Commission has been charged with creating regulations for the procedure.
Dr. Rob Jackson of Duke University will lead the discussion. He’s a professor of Global Environmental Health and the director of the Duke Center for Global Change.
“Dr. Jackson and his group have been studying fracking sites all over the country, working with the US Geological Survey,” Hauser said. “They have the facts and they can tell us what has really been going on. It’s a chance for people who might not be engaged in the discussion– to engage.”
Hauser says the goal is not to tell people what their opinion on fracking should be—but rather to explain the basics of the complex topic.
“It’s easy for us all to jump on the anti-fracking advocacy. There’s a lot of risks involved with fracking and a lot of concerns especially with water quality,” she said.
Hauser says there will be a question and answer session following Jackson’s talk.
Schley Grange Hall:
3416 Schley Rd
Hillsborough, NC27278
- Off NC 57 about 6 miles north of Hillsborough
http://chapelboro.com/news/state-government/all-opinions-welcome-to-fracking-discussion-in-hillsborough/ 84.4°F |
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