Drill Pickle

Have you seen those advertisements promoting “America’s Natural Gas,” you know, the ones in which folks are “excited” about the possibilities the energy source can bring? Bob Howarth watched one, and it made him curious. “I saw an ad on TV suggesting that natural gas had a lower greenhouse gas profile than other fossil fuels,” said the Cornell University professor, “and when I went to look for the scientific literature to back this up, I found that it wasn’t there.”

Howarth, who lives in Trumansburg and has been an outspoken critic of hydrofracking, is the David A. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell, where he has taught since 1985. He is the founding editor of BioGeoChemistry, a leading journal in his field. Last year he set out, along with colleagues Renee Santoro and Anthony Ingraffea, to measure the release of greenhouse gases from the production of natural gas, including gas from “fracked” wells. He believes that what he found out turns conventional wisdom on its head.

“Although natural gas is promoted as a bridge fuel for the coming few decades, very little is known about the greenhouse gas footprint of unconventional gas,” wrote Howarth in Climatic Change Letters, a peer-reviewed academic journal. Howarth analyzed the most up-to-date data available and reached the conclusion that methane leaks, mostly during gas drilling, create more potential for climate change than mining for coal.

His study “Methane and the greenhousegas footprint of natural gas from shale formations” suggests that the use of hydraulic fracturing, which pushes millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand deep into the earth to free up gas trapped in the shale, contributes significantly to the added methane leakage.

Most people who follow climate change issues, or anyone who has seen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, think of carbon dioxide as the principal culprit, but according to Howarth, methane can be even worse. Over 20 years, the same amount of methane (measured by weight) can trap as much as 105 times the amount of heat in the atmosphere as CO2, although in a century the impact of both gases is roughly the same.

According to Howarth’s study, published on April 12, with hydrofracking, “methane emissions are at least 30 percent more than and perhaps more than twice as great as those from conventional gas. The higher emissions from shale gas occur at the time wells are hydraulically fractured—as methane escapes from flow-back return fluids—and during drill out following the fracturing.” Unconventional sources of gas, including shale gas extracted by hydrofracking, now account for more than half of all gas produced in the United States.

If Howarth’s findings hold up, it could challenge the argument made by hydrofracking supporters that natural gas is the best available option to bridge the gap between today’s fossil fuel dependence and a future energy economy based on renewable resources. The study comes when gas companies and landowners across New York state await publication of a revised draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which the Department of Environmental Conservation now plans to release in late summer. Meanwhile, the state has imposed a moratorium on permits for high volume hydrofracking.

Don Siegel, a Syracuse University geologist who stars in one of those gas industry ads, finds some merit in Howarth’s work, but disagrees with the thrust of the study. “What I find positive is that he uses the most up-todate estimates” for methane loss, said Siegel, who supports hydrofracking. “Still, these are gross estimates. And the total environmental impact of coal has got to be greater than gas, even if the global warming impact of gas is greater. The environmental effect of gas is lighter by any measurement.”

Industry organizations have been critical of Howarth’s data. “We acknowledge that the data are sparse and low quality,” said Howarth, “and it’s because they {the gas companies} keep it private.” Howarth added that his findings are backed by a recent Environmental Protection Agency report on the impact of methane, released in November while his research was under way.

Others argue that Howarth errs by emphasizing that impact in a 20-year timeframe, instead of a 100-year timeframe—CO2 persists in the atmosphere far longer than methane. “Most of us who work on climate change,” said Howarth, “find that it is real, it is scary, and we need to get it under control sooner rather than later.”

Siegel doesn’t think that the timeframe of the analysis matters much. “Basically, it’s irrelevant,” he noted. “Whether we like it or not, America will be stuck with a choice between coal and gas. Nuclear is dead in the water. Oil has peaked. Large-scale solar and wind farms are being opposed by environmentalists for a variety of reasons. We’ve dammed all the rivers except the Grand Canyon {the Colorado River}. Conservation only goes so far. The bottom line is—we’re left with two choices.

“I’m a realist,” added Siegel, who appeared without compensation in the gas industry ads. “I don’t see us getting away from hydrocarbons any time soon, and I don’t want to see us turning to coal. I think it is utterly foolish to think that Americans will say, ‘I’ll reduce my standard of living to save energy.’ Polls show that less than 40 percent of people even believe that there is such a thing as climate change, let alone that it is human-caused.”

On this, both scientists agree: We have a long, long way to go.

—Ed Griffin-Nolan

Don Siegel: “I think it’s utterly foolish to think that Americans will say, ‘I’ll reduce my standard of living to save energy.’”