Fracking's Contribution to Greenhouse Gases Worse than Estimated

The argument for burning gas instead of coal goes something like this: burning gas is “cleaner” because it emits less carbon dioxide than oil or coal – even though methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas.

So if you can keep the gas you drill from escaping before it is burned as fuel, you might have an advantage. The problem is that gas escapes – from wells, pipelines, compressors. A couple years ago the federal Environmental Protection Agency had estimated that 0.8 percent to 1.6 percent of natural gas production escapes, on a national average.

Then last year the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) published a paper finding that as long as escaping methane was less than 3.2 percent of lifetime production, natural gas would be better than coal for electrical production.  According to EDF, 3.2 percent is the “threshold”;  methane emissions above that level would eliminate the justification for using gas as a “transition fuel” to replace coal for electricity generation.

Now, new research shows that more – much more – methane is escaping from gas production than thought. Studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Utah’s Uintah Basin showed that up to 12 percent of the gas produced could be going into the atmosphere instead of the pipeline. The basin serves about 6,000 wells and accounts for about one percent of the nation’s gas production.

A research team from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) flew over the basin at about 1,000 feet, gathering air samples and taking readings over a period of several weeks. They used a “mass balance” technique which follows an air mass at it moves into a region and then flows out of that area. During their Feb. 3 testing they found that the area leaked 60 tons of gas an hour. Some days it was far greater.

It’s not just the wells that are leaking; methane could potentially be leaking from processing plants, pipelines, and compressors. The problem with all this leaky methane is that it contributes to smog – and Utah has smog levels that rival Los Angeles on its worst days. An EPA report concluded that the oil and gas industry was responsible for about 99 percent of the volatile organic compounds found in the basin which, when mixed with sunlight, creates ground level ozone. The smog was so bad at times that the Salt Lake City airport has had to divert flights.

Add up the studies and you get a picture that shows drilling pollutes the air people breathe, creates smog, and adds a higher-than-predicted burden of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. Now US Fish and Wildlife Service say drilling is contributing to the loss of two plant species. The agency is asking for federal protection for two rare plant species, Graham’s beardtongue and White River beardtongue and is asking for them to be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

According to US Fish & Wildlife, both plants are endemic to the Uintah Basin and over the past few years their range has been reduced by oil and gas development, invasive species and grazing. The plants grow where oil shale deposits that are rich in calcium carbonate touch the surface.

Fracking the Farm Part 3: Impacts on Crops

What happens when gas drilling and organic agriculture collide? This series considers some of the issues. Posts are drawn from a 3-part series originally published in New York Organic News (NOFA-NY) in 2012. Research was supported with a grant from SEJ's Fund for Environmental Journalism.

Bradford County, PA

Healthy soil is vital for organic farming, but drilling and related activities can compromise soil health. Four years ago a nursery owner in Texas lost 500 oak seedlings when a pipeline used to transfer brine to an underground injection well leaked. Brine is the salty well waste fluid that flows out of shale after drilling. But there’s more than salt in brine; there’s also benzene, heavy metals and radioactive compounds. XTO Energy, the company responsible for the leak, ended up trucking more than 3,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil to a regulated landfill.

The shale oil rush in North Dakota has brought soil trouble to farmers, too. Like Marcellus, the Bakken shale must be fracked to release the hydrocarbons. Like shale gas wells, fracked oil shale wells produce briney waste fluids that must be hauled to underground injection wells. But recent data shows that a lot of that waste never makes it to regulated disposal sites – it is spilled or dumped along the way. Last year there were 1,000 “accidental releases” of waste fluids and additional unreported releases along the roads. These spills have sterilized acres of farmland. One spill alone covered 24 acres with 2 million gallons of brine. A year after remediation efforts, nothing grows on that land. Not even weeds.

Dimock, PA, famous for water contamination is now facing soil contamination. According to the July 7 Pennsylvania Bulletin, Cabot Oil and Gas will begin remediation efforts at one of their well sites. A study found the soil to be “impacted by VOCs (volatile organic chemicals), SVOCs (semi-volatile organic chemicals), metals, and ethylene glycol due to a release from the reserve pit and a release from the mud shelf.”

Leaking pipelines can impact crops, too. Methane and other hydrocarbons leaking into soil displace air, thus depleting the oxygen. That in turn can change soil pH, and influence the microbial habitat. The result is severe retardation of crop growth, and sometimes early senescence or death.

Air quality is becoming an issue in the gas fields. Rural areas of Wyoming and Utah have measured ozone levels as high as 125 to 140 parts per billion (ppb) – much higher than EPA’s standard of 75 ppb and exceeding the smog levels in Los Angeles. Down in the Texas Barnett shale ozone levels reach 135 ppb, and in Fort Worth gas drilling produces as much ground-level ozone as all the cars and trucks in the city.

Though we don’t have shale gas drilling, NY is not immune. Chautauqua County, home to about 6,000 gas wells, boasts the second highest ozone level in the state. Where is all this ozone coming from? Emissions from drilling pads, truck traffic servicing those pads, and the compressors and other equipment related to drilling. The Clean Air Act regulates ozone, but the oil and gas industry enjoys exemption from those regulations.

Up in the atmosphere ozone is beneficial, protecting the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. But at ground level it’s a major pollutant, causing more damage to crops than all other air pollutants combined. Each year it’s responsible for an estimated $500 million reduction in crop yields – and that’s just in the United States.

Ozone is created by chemical reactions between nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the presence of sunlight. It enters leaves through stomata during normal gas exchange, like oxygen, but is more reactive. It can cause spotting and bleaching of leaves, affecting plant growth, flowering, fruiting and yield. Ozone damage can make some crops unmarketable, as in the case of spotting on spinach leaves.

Grapes are particularly sensitive to ozone, says Art Hunt, owner of Hunt Country Vineyards on the north western shore of Keuka Lake. Before the Clean Air Act went into effect, air pollution caused spots on his leaves. That, in turn, affected vine growth, fruit ripening and yield. Large scale industrialized drilling, he says, could roll back the gains made from clean air regulations.

Ozone can also make crops more susceptible to pathogens and pests and, in the case of clover and other crops, retard root growth.  For farmers, high ozone levels may mean lower nutritive value of their forage crops. It may alter how well herbicides work, promote the growth of perennial weeds and create opportunities for invasive species to move in.

Crops sensitive to ozone:

beans (string and snap),

beets

carrots

corn,

grapes (wine and juice)

peas

pinto beans

melons (cantaloupes and musk melons)

peaches

potatoes

squash

strawberries

 tomatoes

turnips

watermelon

Ozone also affects grains, including wheat and rice, as well as tobacco, soybeans, alfalfa, sorghum and cotton.

LA Sinkhole Getting Bigger and Smellier

The sinkhole in Assumption Parish, LA just keeps growing. Now it’s about the size of six football fields- at least that’s the best estimate from the local police who took aerial photos at the beginning of the month.

The sinkhole formed when a salt dome (owned by Texas Brine) collapsed this summer. Recent earthquakes have contributed to further collapse. People living above the salt dome say they feel like they are “walking on jello”, and the USGS reported an average of a tremor a day earlier this month.

Now there are new concerns about rising concentrations of poisonous gas. Workers found high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide at a Texas Brine well near the sinkhole – they’re flaring these wells in an attempt to get rid of the gases in the salt dome. No high levels of the gas has been found in the community, yet, but state officials and Texas Brine representatives are monitoring the gas.

Unlike methane, hydrogen sulfide is heavier than air, and collects near ground level. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR), even brief exposures to high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide (greater than 500 parts per million) can cause loss of consciousness and possibly death. In many individuals, there may be permanent or long-term effects such as headaches, poor attention span, poor memory, and poor motor function.

Some residents living near the evacuation zone have reported foul odors and symptoms that reflect gas poisoning. But they have not received help with evacuation.

DEP to Study Air Quality in Marcellus Drilling Region

It took a while - but finally the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will be conducting a long term air quality study of Marcellus Shale development. The study will be in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

The data from the study will allow DEP to assess any potential long-term impact of air emissions from unconventional natural gas operations to nearby communities, and it will help DEP address the cumulative impact of the operations in the Marcellus Shale region.

The primary site of the long-term study will be downwind of the Houston gas processing plant in Chartiers Township, Washington County, where DEP will monitor for ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen sulfide and methane. The ambient air will also be tested for more than 60 volatile organic compounds, including hazardous air pollutants, and meteorological data will be collected continuously.

DEP will also monitor for volatile organic compounds and collect meteorological data at three additional sites in Chartiers Township and Hickory Township. One of the Chartiers Township sites is upwind of the Houston gas processing plant and the other is downwind of the Brigich compressor station. The site in Hickory Township will be located downwind of the Stewart compressor stations.

You can read the complete press release here.

You can read the study’s sampling protocol here.

Can Gas Drilling Emissions Cause Heart Attacks?

That's the question I raised a month ago when writing about the need for health impact studies. Anecdotal evidence in one Barnett Shale community found an increase in the rate of heart attacks and exposure to drilling emissions.

People living near wells are exposed to a whole host of potential pollutants, many airborne.  For example, they breathe in volatile organic chemicals much higher than what's considered "potentially harmful" to public health. And drilling sites aren't the only problem: airborne toxins from compressor stations are finding their way into people's lungs and bloodstream. They also breathe in more particulates.

But one of the real killers hiding in the emissions may be ozone - not an emission itself, but something created when nitrogen oxides combine with volatile organic compounds in the sunlight. It's such a concern that NY's Department of Environmental Conservation (and PA's Department of Environmental Protection)  issues "ozone alerts" on very hot days, warning people to stay inside.

Now new research shows that high levels of ozone can increase the risk for heart attacks and stroke. EPA toxicologist Robert Devlin exposed healthy young volunteers to high levels of ozone - levels that reflect the same cumulative dose they would receive had they been working outside for eight hours in a place like Los Angeles. Or the Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, where ozone levels can get as high as 124 parts per billion (ppb)  - that's way over the US federal limit of 75 ppm and higher than Los Angeles on its smoggiest day.

The problem boils down to inflammation. Ozone exposure triggers high blood levels of inflammatory agents that stick around in the blood for a long time. In turn, the body could perceive the inflammation as a wound and turn on a clotting response, potentially blocking blood flow. Ozone also changed the levels of some proteins involved in blood clotting and affected the heart rate.

Shale Boom leads to Increased Air Pollution

Billions of dollars worth of natural gas is wasted each year, says the World Banks’ Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership. Gas that could otherwise be used to heat homes, cook food or fuel local economies is instead going up in smoke – burned or flared at oil fields across the world. That flaring produces some 400 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.

Now, preliminary data from World Bank shows that the shale energy boom is fueling a rise in the burning of waste gas. Around the world, gas flaring crept up by 4.5 percent in 2011 – an amount “equivalent to the annual gas use of Denmark” according to a Reuter’s report published yesterday. The World Bank report is due out at the end of the month.

The data indicate that this increase is mostly due to the rise in shale oil exploration in North Dakota, an increase that pushed the US into the top ten gas flaring countries.

Flaring is used to eliminate gas at exploration sites and to test production of the well. The problem is that flaring gas releases a large number of pollutants into the air, including chemicals used to frack the well. In addition to the methane, flaring adds another five dozen chemicals into the air, including: acetalhyde, acrolein, benzene, ethyl benzene, formaldehyde, hexane, naphthalene, propylene, toluene, and xylenes.

Flaring is permitted, but companies could use “greener” technologies that would not only keep these chemicals out of the air but would save money (a savings of $9 for every $1 spent on these technologies according to Deborah Rogers). One tiny detail: these cleaner technologies usually require a gas pipeline to be in place first.

A 2009 report on green completions from SMU explains that companies could capture up to 70% capture of formerly released gases with green completions.

Toxins from Compressor Emissions Show up in Blood Tests

Compressor station on Federal Road in Erin, NY (Chemung County).

 When Calvin Tillman, mayor of Dish, Texas came to visit upstate New York in February, he talked about the air quality issues facing his small town. Dish is in the heart of the Barnett shale and at the crossroads where 11 high pressure natural gas pipelines converge. Five energy companies have installed a dozen compressors and associated gas treatment facilities; there are four gas metering stations in town and 18 gas wells within the corporate limits. Another 50-plus gas wells are located immediately beyond the town’s limits.

The problem, he said, is that toxic emissions from the compressors are causing health problems for residents in town. Finally the Texas State Dept. of Health took heed and, in January, they took blood and urine samples from 28 people in the little town. Today, Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe reports in the Denton-Record Chronicle that the same pollutants found in the air are also found in residents' bodies.

The health department found toluene, butadiene, and N,N-dimethylformamide in the samples. All three compounds are among 187 airborne toxic substances that the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to monitor, notes Heinkel-Wolfe. According to studies compiled by the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, dimethylformamide can cause liver damage, butadiene can cause cancer and toluene can affect the nervous system and the kidneys.

But while everyone has been focusing on the pollutants in the air, they've been overlooking the water contamination. Last August researchers found ethylbenzene and styrene air samples. Now the state health investigators have found both ethylbenzene and styrene in private drinking water wells.

While it's true that upstate NY don't have a 30-acre site with a dozen compressors like Dish has - at least not yet - we do have compressor stations scattered throughout our countryside. Near me, there is a compressor station up on Cooper Hill in Van Etten and another one on Federal Road in Erin (article, post). Both are located in rural areas, surrounded by fields, forest and the occasional house. But, says the Erin code enforcement officer John Mccracken, more will come with development of Marcellus shale. There are about 20 drilling applications for Erin (no permits yet) and Mccracken estimates that Erin might see another five compressor stations.

There's lots of evidence that urban air pollution harms human health. It's been harder for rural people to show that industrial activities harm their health. But now it looks like the evidence is finally showing up. The lesson NY needs to glean: Permits need to take into account the cumulative air quality, not just the individual station. Oh, and along with those noise-baffling walls, require the energy companies to install compressors with up-to-date vapor-capture technologies that result in negligible emissions.

Tillman goes to NY (and PA)

Two weeks ago Calvin Tillman, the mayor of DISH, Texas packed his bags and hopped a flight for the northeast. Why he'd want to spend his mid-winter vacation in frigid upstate NY is a mystery to those of us who leave our skis parked outside the door until April Fool's Day. But the fact is, he wanted to visit and he spent a week traveling through the Southern Tier of NY and the Northern Tier of PA - Marcellus Shale country.

What would make the mayor of a small Texas town spend his vacation – and his own pocket money – to fly all the way to New York to talk gas?

“I’ve seen what has happened in Texas,”  Tillman told the press on Saturday, February 20. “I believe New York has an opportunity to do it a lot better than we have.” 

Tillman's town, DISH, is small - a town of 180 souls scattered across two square miles situated 25 miles directly north of Fort Worth. It's in the heart of the Barnett shale and at the crossroads where 11 high pressure natural gas pipelines converge. Five companies have installed a dozen compressors and associated gas treatment facilities; there are four gas metering stations in town and 18 gas wells within the corporate limits. Another 50-plus gas wells are located immediately beyond the town’s limits.

That part of Texas has been oil and gas country for a long time, Tillman says. In fact, the process of hydraulic fracturing was tested just 15 miles away. Drilling started in the mid 1990s and by 2004 the pipelines were constructed and the compressor stations began moving in.

At first people noticed the noise; the companies constructed those early stations without noise abatement. But as the site continued to grow (it now covers 35 acres) people began to complain about the odor. 

  

Bad air

In Texas, compressor stations are “permitted by rule”, Tillman explained. That means a company simply needs to meet certain air emissions criteria for that particular compressor. There was no way to assess cumulative impacts of multiple gas-powered compressor stations – and the dehydrators and other facilities involved in preparing gas for commercial use.

“Sometimes the odor was overwhelming,” Tillman said. People also reported nausea, headaches, allergies and other symptoms that could be attributed to poor air quality. Tillman complained to state officials and to the companies for over 18 months. Finally, the pipeline companies agreed to do a study. They put a detector in the back of an SUV and drove around town for a couple of hours, Tillman said. Their conclusion: “no natural gas leaks were found that would be detectable to the human nose.”

The town decided to do their own study with an independent lab. Citizens supported the expense - 15 percent of their annual $70,000 budget – to hire Wolf Eagle to conduct the air quality analysis. Last August the lab collected air samples at seven locations in town and analyzed them for a number of volatile organic compounds.

Wolf Eagles results: “the compounds in the air of residential areas indicate quantities in excess of what would normally be anticipated in ambient air in an urban residential or rural residential area.” Of the seven locations samples, all but one contained toxic chemicals that exceeded air quality “Effects Screening Levels”.

The Effects Screening Level (ESL) for a chemical is based on exposure of a 35-year old healthy male to that chemical for 8 hours a day, five days a week. It does not address exposure to pregnant women or children, Tillman said, because pregnant women and children are not supposed to be exposed to those chemicals. “Especially not in their homes 24 hours a day,” he added.

According to the lab study, residents of DISH were being exposed to many times the ESLs for benzene, xylene, naphthalene, carbon disulfide and a number of other toxic chemicals.

The town also conducted a health survey – a 10-page questionnaire that people filled out on a voluntary basis. Thirty-one people responded by listing their health complaints: difficulty in breathing, chronic eye irritation, dizziness, fatigue, frequent nausea, muscle aches, severe headaches, sinus problems, throat irritation, and allergic symptoms.

Asthma is one of the impacts noticed in DISH and other towns in the Barnett Shale. “The asthma rate in DISH is three times the rate for the rest of the state,” Tillman told Broader View Weekly. About 7 percent of children in Texas aged 7 to 9 have asthma. But in DISH and other Barnett Shale towns almost 25 percent of the children that age have asthma, including Tillman’s oldest son.

It has taken dogged determination and money from their pockets, but now DISH has grabbed the attention of state regulators. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services is running tests on the blood and urine of close to 30 residents, and Tillman hopes he’ll get those results next month. The state has also installed some air quality monitoring, and Tillman hopes they will conduct additional air testing.

Green Solutions

If there was one mantra Tillman repeated over the week it was: “slow down; take the time to develop protective regulations.” Aside from the obvious – don’t drill in school yards and next to homes – Tillman listed some things New York State could do to protect health in a drilling region.

Topping his list is “green completions”. One source of emissions is open air pits for brine and fracking fluid. Closed loop systems would eliminate the escape of volatile organic chemicals into the air.

Eliminate flaring and add vapor recovery systems to condensate tanks. Instead of allowing gases to escape through the vent on top, a vapor recovery system puts gas back into the tank.

Some of the most notable contributors to DISH’s bad air are the glycol dehydrators. Dehydrators remove impurities from the gas, and newer “zero-emission” technology completes the process without releasing impurities into the air.

Valves leak as well, Tillman said. He suggested replacing old valves with pneumatic valves. “But these companies won’t make that upfront expenditure unless they’re made to,” Tillman said.

Fracking is Unhealthy for Children and Other Living Things

A hundred or so people filed into the Forum room at Tompkins Cortland Community College on Tuesday, Feb. 23 to hear a discussion on the unhealthy impacts of gas drilling. Of course, they had to walk right by a table loaded with healthy snacks whipped up by the environmental studies students... But a couple hundred calories and two hours later they'd heard enough to understand that the industrial nature of gas drilling harms human health as well as the health of crops, forests, livestock and other living things.  

Unlike the European Union, the US does not adhere to the "Precautionary Principle". That principle basically says that industry may not carry out operations that may potentially harm the environment or human health without first conducting tests to show their actions will have no deleterious effect.

Tomas Shelley, a chemical safety and hazardous materials specialist noted that when an industrial accident happens in the United States, it is the people affected by the pollution who must prove that an industry caused the contamination. By contrast, in the European Union the burden of proof falls on corporations to show that their products or procedures do not contain cancer-causing chemicals.

Companies drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale do not have to reveal the chemical make-up of their hydro-fracturing mixtures. Of the 207 fracking products listed by the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in their draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), only 48  have even partial disclosure of their chemical constituents.

“The names of products really don’t let you know what’s in them,” Shelley said. For example, "Opti-Kleen" - that sounds like it could be used clean your contacts, he said. 

Another problem is that many of these chemicals may cause serious health effects at low doses. One such chemical is  2-butoxyethanol, a solvent that affects the human endocrine system at doses as low as 0.02 parts per million.

Chemicals like 2-butoxyethanol are called endocrine disruptors. An endocrine disruptor is a man-made chemical that, when absorbed into the body, mimics hormones or blocks hormones disrupting the body’s normal function. It may change the level of natural hormones or stop production of hormones altogether. By changing the way hormones travel through the body, endocrine disruptors affect the functions that hormones control our health. Some of the problems that have been related to these synthetic chemicals include infertility, ADHD, autism, diabetes, thyroid disorders, and even childhood and adult cancers that have been found to be linked to fetal exposure to the chemicals. 

It takes only a small quantity of endocrine disrupting chemical to impact health said Adam Law, a physician who specializes in endocrinology. Concentrations on the order of parts per trillion are enough to alter gene expression. With concentrations so low and often no visible effects till much later – sometimes decades – it is hard to trace the chemicals causing the problems.

Law pointed to one study that showed 40 percent of the chemicals used in shale drilling are endocrine disruptors. Another problem is that fracking chemicals injected underground into the shale where the temperature is between 120 to 140 degrees, react, forming new chemicals such as trihalomethanes.

Given the complex chemistry of fracking, and the potential for chemical reactions underground, there needs to be more studies, Law said. He also said that it is time for the gas drilling industry to disclose what goes into their fracking fluids so state regulators can assess risk.

“We need to know what’s going into the ground and we need to know whether we can deal with the wastewater,” Law said.

But health is affected by more than the chemicals. Drilling activity and traffic create high levels of dust that will contribute to air pollution and respiratory problems of people living nearby. The diesel and natural gas emissions from trucks, compressors, pumps and other equipment contain a complex of benzenes, toluene, and xylene as well as other volatile organic compounds that contribute to respiratory illnesses such as asthma. Methane escaping from vents and flaring also contributes to the air pollution.

As with the chemicals underground, the pollutants in the air may combine to form new compounds. Diesel exhaust combined with nitrous oxides forms ground level ozone. Ozone in the upper atmosphere protects us from damaging ultraviolet rays, but at ground level it burns holes in the alveoli of lungs and in plant leaves.

See videos of the forum at Shaleshock