A Chance In Shale
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Energy: New drilling techniques may open up a 14-year supply of natural gas trapped in porous rock in the Northeast. That is, if environmentalists in New York and elsewhere don't keep it trapped in the ground.
Natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels, so clean that it is a key part of oilman T. Boone Pickens' plan to wean us off foreign sources of energy. Natural gas can fuel a new generation of automobiles that would help us achieve energy independence and at the same time contribute to a cleaner planet.
In the northeastern U.S., there is a massive expanse of porous rock called the Marcellus Shale Formation. It covers 54,000 square miles and stretches from southern New York to West Virginia. In the pores of this formation is trapped a huge quantity of natural gas. A nearby formation of Devonian shale is even more porous, with more trapped gas per volume of rock.
Penn State geologist Terry Engelder estimates that these formations could supply the nation's natural gas needs for 14 years. Advanced drilling techniques that shatter the 400-million-year-old rock and release the gas from its stone prison now make it more practical and economical to extract.
The latest technology, called "slick water fracturing," or fracking, blasts millions of gallons of water underground, opening and widening cracks that let the gas escape. Drilling has begun in Pennsylvania and West Virginia but is on hold until next year in New York, due in part to environmentalist opposition that is gathering in intensity and might spread to other states.
Since the technique uses a lot of water, environmentalists worry about possible groundwater pollution and the impact on local water supplies, rivers and streams. The proximity of the Marcellus formation to New York City's watershed has caused concern. Tracy Carluccio of Delaware Riverkeeper warns:
"This gas-well drilling could transform the heavily forested upper Delaware watershed from a wild and scenic natural habitat into an ugly industrial landscape that is forever changed."
Yet, as we have seen at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and with offshore drilling off the Louisiana coast, oil and gas exploration and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive. Alaskan caribou herds near oil fields have thrived, tripling in size by one estimate. Fishing boats head straight for the Louisiana rigs which, functioning as artificial reefs, attract the most fish.
The newest fracking technology allows access to deeper, denser shale. Its "surgical operations" utilize "the most advanced drilling technology known to man," Tom Price, Chesapeake Energy senior vice president, told New York lawmakers at a recent hearing in Albany.
Roger Willis, who owns a hydraulic fracturing company in the Pennsylvania town of Meadville, says thousands of frack jobs have been done in rock formations above and below the Marcellus shale in New York state with no aquifer damage.
U.S. shale formations not only hold vast reservoirs of natural gas, but immense inventories of oil as well. We sit on enough crude to make OPEC look like a mom-and-pop operation, much of it in the Green River Formation.
Covering parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the Green River Formation is home to the world's largest known oil shale deposits. A report from the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory states that "even a moderate estimate of 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from oil shale in the Green River Formation is three times greater than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia."
With current U.S. demand for petroleum products at about 20 million barrels per day, says the Argonne report, "oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, the estimated 800 billion barrels of (currently) recoverable oil from the Green River Formation could last for more than 400 years."
Energy independence? We're standing on it.
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