The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

“Drill, baby, drill” say the  property owners who have leased their land to gas mining. “Test, regulate, and tax” say the environmentalists. Some with insurance experience say make the gas companies post bonds so we can restore the environment to the idyllic rural landscape with pure well water we country bumpkins once enjoyed. A few folks — Chicken Littles all — don’t like the odds of safely drilling for gas, and they call for “Moratorium.” The say to wait till the EPA environmental study is released.

The Gadfly Revelry & Research team (GRR), met in urgent caucus, studied the facts, and declared all these people radicals. GRR opined that a true conservative would not take a chance on polluting the property we all own in common: the air, our pure well water, the streams that feed the Delaware River. A conservative would insist on a complete ban on “unconventional” gas drilling that uses the technique of high pressure/volume fracturing. Here is a cogent because list:

The “natural” gas they are going after is a mixture of gases, mostly methane, but also ethane, propane, butane pentane, and radon. Methane (CH4) is flammable — after all, natural gas lit the gas lamps of the gay 90s, and it is in use today in commercial kitchen stoves in Brooklyn and Manhattan restaurants. Not only flammable, it is also explosive. The explosion in the coal mine in West Virginia was a pocket of methane gas whose patience let out well before the 4th of July. The explosion of the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was not oil but methane that snuck up with the crude oil. Methane is colorless and odorless and, being explosive, is the favorite hydrocarbon of the goddess of unforeseeable consequences. If only the gas companies could turn these fearsome properties of methane on and off at will. Methane’s cousin, methyl (wood) alcohol (CH3OH), is also flammable though not explosive. It would be a more desirable energy resource if the methane molecule could just trade in an H for an OH. The gas drillers would have a rationale for pursuing their socially responsible work. Alas, the conversion requires successive chemical reactions in the presence of a catalyst. It’s not as simple as bubbling methane through water. Sorry, gas companies.

The unconventional mining method is variously called high volume slick-water fracturing, hydraulic shale fracturing, horizontal drilling, or (informally) fracking. It is the next reason that gas mining is inherently dangerous. The technology requires the use of several types of chemicals — lubricants, biocides, anti-rust agents, scale inhibitors, and thickeners (proppants), for starters. The gas drillers select strong chemicals to make sure the mission (maximum gas extraction) is accomplished. The trouble is the chemicals selected are mostly toxic and carcinogenic: volatile polycyclic hydrocarbons such as benzene, napthalenes, phenols, dipropylene glycol, zetaflow, Halad 344 … You may fairly ask why they don’t use extra virgin olive oil for lubrication and corn starch for thickening.

To reach the mile-deep shale layer, the drillers must penetrate the aquifer at about 400 feet. They use a pipe within a pipe with cement between them down past the water table — they are soo… careful to protect the precious aquifer. But, they seem to forget that when they fracture the shale with explosives and a million gallons of chemical broth under high pressure, the extent and direction of the fractures is in the realm of guesswork.  Fracking fluids may be kept within the drill casings as they pass through the aquifer layer, but methane and frack chemicals can reach the outside of the pipe via the deep fractures and then seep up right into our well water. The same through natural faults in the rock. Cumulative fracturing may even weaken the bedrock so badly that earthquakes are precipitated, as occurred around Fort Worth TX. Inadvertence happens.

The fracking fluid consists of 5,000 gallons of chemicals in 1 million gallons of water. One third to one half the chemical soup comes back up with the natural gas. The toxic bouillon is then held in a large pit lined with plastic sheeting. You may wonder whether the plastic sheet can be breached by a rogue groundhog, the hooves of deer, or the teeth of an alien alligator. Even more likely, a good rainstorm will overflow the pit and coat the surrounding land in a volatile soggy, soggy dew.

Occasional spills of fracking chemicals or the diesel fuel for the pumps may occur, contaminating the land and streams. Gas drilling is exempt from the Pure Drinking Water Act, but not from Murphy’s Law. Air pollution, however, is 100% guaranteed. Its sources are: a) the exhausts of the trucks bringing in the 1 million gallons of water per well, b) the diesel pumps that create enough pressure to fracture the shale, c) occasional venting and flaring of the natural gas, and d) the last gasps of any geese that land on the waste water ponds and breathe in the volatile chemicals therein.  With the certain air pollution, sensitive people will develop asthma. Then, an increased number of EMS trips to the hospital will worsen the air pollution, especially if the emergency requires driving fast. Further, if the methane escapes the pipes and pumps, the gas has 27 times the greenhouse effect of CO2.

All told, the explosivity of the “natural” gas is 100%. Flammability, too. But maybe the various motors at the drill sites will not produce sparks and none of the workers will smoke. The toxicity of methane is 100%, but only if it gets into our drinking water or the air we breathe. It is a good incentive not to waste a drop of the precious natural gas. Pollution prevention can be as strong an incentive as profits for the gas companies.

The chances that methane or the benzene gang of strong chemicals will get into our drinking water may be very low at each gas well drilled because the gas workers are careful and well trained — figure the odds of pollution as little 0.1% for an immaculately drilled well. But, 0.1% for each of the 10,000 wells the gas companies plan to drill means that the chances of the aquifer getting polluted rises to over 99.9%. You can do the math. With the experience of gas drilling in TX, CO, WY, and PA as a guide, the chances of spills, explosion, or water contamination with 10,000 gas wells is almost ipso facto.

Forget severance taxes, forget regulations. The gas companies can’t post a bond large enough to make up for an aquifer contaminated with volatile polycyclic hydrocarbons — pure drinking water is priceless. We must ban slick-water fracturing 100% until the next Devonian period. Meanwhile the gas drillers can be retrained in solar, wind, and tidal power.