BLOG: On “fracking” and, Safe and Just Operating Spaces (SJOS)
By Farai Tererai
The world is facing an energy challenge with much debate around replacing fossil fuel energy with cleaner and renewable sources. Natural gas is believed to be a cleaner-burning and logical alternative to brent crude oil-based and coal energy because of escalating prices and the environmental pollution associated with them. Natural gas has received a lot of attention because of its perceived abundance and relatively successful production in the United States. However, while it is lauded as a cleaner-burning fuel than either coal or oil, extracting natural gas from the ground can be a dirty process, especially given the widespread adoption of the process known as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) (Weinhold, 2012). The likely impacts are still poorly understood, with some scientists describing fracking as a big experiment without any actual solid guiding scientific parameters. Meanwhile, humanity faces a major global challenge in achieving well-being for all (Raworth 2012), while simultaneously ensuring that the biophysical processes and ecosystem services that underpin well-being, are exploited within the boundaries of sustainability (as informed by science) (Rockström et al. 2009a,b). While Rockström et al. (2009a, b) and (Raworth 2012) conducted their work on a development framework known as “safe and just operating spaces” (SJOS) for humanity at the planetary scale, this concept can be downscaled to continental, regional, national, provincial, district or even programme or project scale. In this blogpost, I consider fracking (large scale) and its potential implications for keeping within the SJOS. I argue that in the face of scientific uncertainty on the impacts of fracking, the use of the SJOS framework has potential to ensure that fracking is conducted in a sustainable manner.
Figure 1: The fracking process illustrated. Adapted from Mooney (2011)
The fracking process
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, is the process of drilling and injecting fluid (water, sand and chemicals) into the ground at a high pressure (600 bar or more) in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside (Westra and Vilela 2014) (Figure 1). This controversial process has been introduced in the 1940s to gain access to fossil energy deposits previously inaccessible to drilling operations. Modern drilling technology allows the drill to extend horizontally at depth from the vertical drill hole, enabling gas to be extracted from a larger geographical area than before. Drawing on the experiences of this practice in the United States, it is estimated that each gas well requires an average of 400 tanker trucks to carry water and supplies to and from the site (making about 2000 trips). It takes up to 30 million litres of water to complete each fracturing job. Up to 600 chemicals (about 150 000 litres) are used in fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as methanol hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, mercury and uranium. A well can be as deep as three kilometers, the fracking fluid is then pressure injected into the ground through a drilled pipeline. A single well can be fracked up to 18 times. The mixture reaches the end of the well where the high pressure causes the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures where natural gas flows into the well. At the end of the process, the fracking companies would have to deal with chemical laden “flowback fluid”. “Flowback fluid” often contains a cocktail of chemicals, radioactive materials and salts from underground layers. Most companies use open-air lined (with synthetic materials) pits to store the “flowback fluid” but there is a risk of leakage and overflow in times of heavy rains.
The South African context
Fracking is likely to be a game changer on the energy scene. South Africa has the fifth largest estimated shale gas reserves. International oil companies, notably Shell SA, Bundu Gas & Oil and Falcon Gas & Oil, applied for shale gas exploration permits in the Karoo in 2010 (The Economist, 2011, Vecchiatto, 2012). Shale SA’s application covers exploration rights for 90 000 km2 in the Karoo. South Africa has no history of shale gas extraction and currently has no legislation and regulatory frameworks in place to specifically deal with shale gas and hydraulic fracturing. The challenge of the South African government is to draw lessons from other experienced shale gas-producing countries such as the USA. Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG), an environmental pressure group which believes that fracking will cause irreparable damage to the Karoo's biodiversity and ground and surface water reservoirs, fiercely contest shale gas production. TKAG opposes shale gas production on the basis of insufficient scientific evidence. The speculation and scepticism about the environmental externalities and economic benefits clearly indicates a lack of scientific consensus. There isn’t even consensus on the size of the shale gas reserves in the Karoo.
Mining companies are often accused of quickly reciting the socio-economic benefits while completely ignoring the environmental costs. Though buoyed by the economic windfall, residents fear that regulators would not have capacity to keep up with the pace of development. In this post, I don’t get into the argument of which impacts will occur or not, but I highlight the pool of potential impacts based on the history and experience of fracking in the United States. I then explore the potential implications for keeping within SJOS.
Impacts
The effects of fracking are not yet fully known, but according to its opponents, enough is understood to consider the method problematic (Westra and Vilela 2014, Keranen et al. 2013). Many undesirable outcomes such as seismic movement (fracking-induced earthquakes), lowering of the freshwater table (large volume water-use in water-deficient regions), degraded aquifers, methane pollution and its impact on climate change (Weinhold, 2012), blow outs due to gas explosion, waste disposal, and infrastructure damage have been linked to fracking. Below I discuss impacts on selected environmental and social dimensions.
Freshwater
Water is probably the central issue – in particular finding it, but also disposing it. During this process, methane gas and toxic chemical leachates contaminate nearby groundwater (Lyster 2012). Methane concentrations have been found to be 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells. There have been over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling as well as cases of sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water. Only 30-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable. The recovered waste fluid is left in open air pits to evaporate, releasing harmful VOC’s (volatile organic compounds - benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, mixed xylenes, n-hexane, carbonyl sulfide, ethylene glycol, and 2,2,4-trimethylpentane) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone (Weinhold, 2012). Chemical laden wastewater ponds can leak or overflow during heavy rains. Several options exist for dealing with contaminated water including storage in evaporation ponds, pumping back into the earth, sale to nearby agricultural developments, discharge to rivers and/or portable use (Westra and Vilela 2014), all of which have potential secondary effects. Many have argued that portable water contamination is not likely because of the depths at which fracking occurs. There is evidence in the US of portable water well contamination, likely as a result of well casing and concrete work failure. However, methane gas migration and structural failure could be attributed to fracking if there is a standard definition of fracking – one that considers it as a process incorporating the conveyance system. An analysis of well water samples in Pennsylvania and New York revealed that 85% of them contained methane – and this was thermogenic (from deep underground), rather than biogenic (found in relatively shallow geological formations) methane.
It is generally accepted that fracking uses extremely large amounts of water. While the fracking water-use is not consumptive, the end of process water quality limits reuse. South Africa is projected to be water scarce by 2025, and fracking will potentially exert significant pressure on already limited water resources. Potential surface and ground water contamination also threatens access to freshwater by communities, not just within the vicinity of the mining operations, but also in distant locations through river and groundwater flow.
Biodiversity
With the coming of fracking into once relatively quiet rural locations, much terrestrial and marine ecological disturbance is expected. The major disturbance is likely to come from the opening of road networks, vehicular traffic transporting materials to the sites, clearing of well sites, and building construction. All this, coupled with the associated noise will disturb natural habitats for fauna and flora. There is potential for loss of biodiversity and vegetation change. The water pollution will degrade marine habitat quality, likely leading to migrations or even extinctions of marine life. The dimension “landuse change” is also affected.
Air pollution
Methane is a main component of natural gas and is 25 times more potent in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (Weinhold, 2012). Toxic emissions are of concern (Weinhold, 2012). Natural gas is cleaner, cheaper, domestic, and it is viable now, but the drilling is an energy intensive business using diesel engines and generators running around the clock to power rigs, and heavy trucks making hundreds of trips to drill sites before a well is completed. It is suggested that an escape would be to use natural gas to power equipment, though uptake has been slow. The planetary boundaries of “climate change”, “atmospheric aerosol loading” and “ozone depletion” are also affected.
Implications for keeping within Safe and Just Operating Spaces
Figure 2: Potential interactions and effects of fracking on the safe and just operation space for humanity. Red dotted arrows and boxes depict negative impacts, green shows positive impacts and orange shows that effects depend on the opportunity cost of discontinuing the current activity and replacing it with fracking. I did not show all components of SJOS in this schematic – just the ones perceived to be most affected by fracking
Mining transnational companies are often quick to cite the social (jobs, household income) and economic (affordable and clean energy) benefits (green and orange arrows pointing to the social dimensions in figure 2), but downplay the environmental impacts (air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, contribution to climate change). Figure 2 clearly illustrates the likely chain reaction of environmental and social effects that result from “fracking”. The impacts associated with the anticipated environmental damage relate to health problems (due to pollution) and reduced access to clean water for domestic and commercial use (Figure 2). The anticipated positive impacts of fracking require closer interrogation – for instance, how many jobs are created, are they decent and sustainable? What is the social, economic and environmental opportunity cost of replacing the current landuses with fracking – e.g. does the country benefit in the context of safe (sufficient mitigation for air and water pollution, acceptable biodiversity loss) and just (more decent and sustainable jobs, more income, improved access to energy) operating spaces by replacing agriculture and ecotourism with fracking? What I present here is just a framework (SJOS) for assessing the feasibility and development of fracking, as well as ensuring sustainability. Its application at this scale of course requires more thinking on how to quantify the environmental and social dimensions.
Conclusion
The fracking industry is gaining momentum globally and certainly in South Africa (see News24: Karoo fracking by winter 2016; 28-10-2014), but several economic and social arguments in favour of shale-gas extraction remain, at best, weakly supported by science. If shale gas extraction is to get a greenlight without much controversy, it is important to wait for a considerable body of better science. However, waiting is highly unlikely given the target to begin exploration by 2016 (News24, 2014). Scientific evidence is urgent and there needs to be significant investment in research addressing areas of uncertainty. There is need to develop a comprehensive fracking-related legal framework (Raviv 2014). Economic benefits must not be the key driver of legal reform; otherwise a sustainable future will be threatened (Westra and Vilela 2014). There needs to be regulations promoting transparency, especially from fracking companies e.g. disclosing the cocktail of chemicals they use for fracking.
Thumbnail: 2 Oceans Vibe News. [Online]. Available: http://www.2oceansvibe.com/2012/09/07/fracking-gets-the-governmental-green-light/ [29 October 2014].
Further reading
Asadourian, L. 2012. Health Effects that May Result From Fracking. Lehigh Edu pp. 1 - 25.
Brake, W. and Edward, A. 2014. Tourism and'Fracking'in Western Newfoundland: Interests and Anxieties of Coastal Communities and Companies in the Context of Sustainable Tourism. International Journal of Marine Science 4, 16 - 41.
Editorial. 2011. Safety First, Fracking Second Drilling for natural gas has gotten ahead of the science needed to prove it safe. Scientific American :12.
Holzman, D. C. 2011. Methane found in well water near fracking sites. Environmental health perspectives 119(7):A289-a289.
Howarth, R. W., Ingraffea, A., and Engelder, T. 2011. Natural gas: Should fracking stop? Nature 477(7364):271-275.
Keranen, K. M., Savage, H. M., Abers, G. A., and Cochran, E. S. 2013. Potentially induced earthquakes in Oklahoma, USA: Links between wastewater injection and the 2011 Mw 5.7 earthquake sequence. Geology 41(6):699-702.
Lyster, R. 2012. Coal Seam Gas in the Context of Global Energy and Climate Change Scenarios. Environmental and Planning Law Journal 29(2):91-100.
Mooney, C. 2011. The truth about fracking. Scientific American 305(5):80-85.
Raviv, D. 2014. Fracking the Karoo: Mitigating environmental damage. Oil, Gas & Energy Law Journal (OGEL) 12(3).
Raworth K. 2012. A safe and just space for humanity: Can we live within the doughnut? Oxfam Discussion Paper. (Oxford, UK).
Roberts, J. A. 2013. A comparative analysis of Shale Gas Extraction Policy: potential lessons for South Africa. MA thesis, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å, et al 2009a. Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and society 14(2) .
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, et al 2009b. A safe and operating space for humanity. Nature 461:472-475.
Schmidt, C. W. 2011. NY DEC takes on fracking. Environmental health perspectives 119(12):A513-a513.
The Economist 2011.'Breaking new ground: A special report on global shale gas developments', Economist Intelligence Unit, , http://www.cfoinnovation.com
Vecchiatto, P., 'Cabinet lifts moratorium on shale gas fracking in the Karoo', Business Day Live, 7 September 2012, http://www.bdlive.co.za
Vegter, I., 'Fracking gets green light, but here's the risk', Daily Maverick, 11 September 2012, http://dailymaverick.co.za
Weinhold, B. 2012. The future of fracking. Environmental Health Perspectives 120:A272-A279.
Westra, L. and Vilela, M. 2014. The Earth Charter, Ecological Integrity and Social Movements Routledge.