At a seminar titled “Staying Ahead of Federal and State Regulations: A Partnership with Academia and Government,” officials from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Texas described how gifts from companies like ExxonMobil allowed their universities, along with the Colorado School of Mines, to offer state regulators free classes on oil industry best practices, travel and accommodations included.

“We’re targeting inspectors – oil and gas inspectors – who have three years or less of experience, although we do have lots of inspectors with different experiences on the course,” Dr. Hilary Olson, director of Education, Training and Outreach at the College of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas told attendees at Shale Insight 2015.

The program showcases the industry’s technical prowess as it conveys detailed information about the science involved in oil and gas drilling and fracking. “We don’t teach them about regulations specific to their state or talk to them about policy; what we’re interested in teaching them is the engineering, the science, the technology and how to communicate about that technology,” Dr. Olson explained.

The five-day TopCorp course includes both time in the classroom and visits to working oil and gas sites, taught by professors from many disciplines. Sample lesson footage reveals an online course featuring slick CGI graphics as professors lecture on topic ranging from basic principles of geology to complex technological advances that the industry has made in recent years.

All three universities involved have made national headlines in the past for their “frackademia” scandals.

In 2009, a Pennsylvania State University study, which claimed Pennsylvania alone could create 175,000 jobs by promoting fracking in the state, made headlines because the study’s lead author, Timothy Considine, had concealed the fact that the research was funded by the shale industry.

In 2009, questions of academic freedom were raised at the Colorado School of Mines when Prof. Geoffrey Thyne said his job was threatened after he made comments that the fracking industry found objectionable (the school’s president serves as a director of a number of shale-industry companies).

And in 2012, the University of Texas found itself in hot water after the lead investigator in a study disclaiming a connection between fracking and groundwater contamination was forced to resign and had the paper retracted by the university because he failed to disclose that he sat on the board of directors of a company engaged in fracking.

In this case, the universities involved are upfront about the fact that TopCorp is company-funded. “So these different organizations gave us gifts to develop this program,” Dr. Olson explained. “When a university receives a gift, it means there are no specific deliverables, so we maintain our autonomy and our independence on what material goes into the curriculum and how we deliver that.”

But scientific research funded by companies tends to slant favorably towards the funder, experts say.

“[E]ven though the vast majority of scientists would never consciously allow the potential for personal financial gain or loss to influence the outcome of their research, that potential should be disclosed to the reader so that the readers can decide for themselves whether to discount the reported results,” University of Texas law professor Thomas O. McGarity told The New York Times in the wake of the frackademia scandal at that university. “In that regard, dozens of studies have shown strong correlations between sponsored research and favorable outcomes for the sponsors.”

The TopCorp curriculum seems to anticipate that there could be an appearance of unseemliness. “Discuss ways to react to accusations of alleged regulatory coziness” is one learning objective in a sample class module posted on TopCorp’s website.

Generally speaking, scandals surrounding “frackademia” have centered on cases where new research is financially connected to the fracking industry, but those ties are concealed. Last week, a Boulder Weekly investigation, built from documents and emails obtained by Greenpeace, revealed that a University of Colorado Boulder paper was not just funded by the American Petroleum Institute, but also that API was allowed to edit the report and to write up quotes attributed to a researcher at the school.

The TopCorp program represents an entirely different tack. Instead of funding research showing fracking to be benign, the TopCorp program communicates directly with the field personnel responsible for policing the industry, helping to shape their understanding of complex – and controversial – topics like whether and how drilling and fracking can cause groundwater contamination. And while the shale industry has for years taken an aggressive approach to beating back regulators, this new program adopts a more collegial tone.

Of course, state regulators who are aware of the program’s funding can be expected to take the industry’s “educational” programs with a grain of salt. But TopCorp reps told Shale Insight attendees that many regulators who start out with doubts can be won over.

“It was almost a conversion experience,” said Pennsylvania State University’s Jim Ladlee, describing how one skeptical government official changed her views on the course after attending. “And that’s what happens with many of our regulators. They come into the class, they’re slightly skeptical of what might be going on in the class. But after we start, we involve somewhere between 15 and 20 different faculty for each of the sessions that we do. We involve a lot of faculty. And as we do that, we start to see that people begin to trust what it is.”

At the Shale Insight conference, the ability of academics to gain trust was emphasized repeatedly.

“You know, when you look at a lot of surveys of whom the public trusts to give them information, many times, academia is at the top of that list,” Dr. Olson told the gathered oil executives.

A long list of oil and gas companies, including Anadarko, Shell Appalachia, and Halliburton, have provided resources to TopCorp and even made areas of drilling sites that are usually off-limits to visitors accessible for the program’s photographers and videographers.

“Exxon Mobil and GE were the founding sponsors of our program and they helped us really spectacularly in the development phase,” Dr. Olson explained.

While oil and gas companies have contributed millions of dollars to TopCorp, which Olson described as a “Cadillac version” experience, a contribution from the Environmental Defense Fund of $125,000, announced July 16th, allows program administrators to describe TopCorp as a collaboration between environmental groups, industry and academia.

“Oil and gas inspectors need to be prepared to meet the challenges presented by the complexity and scale of industry operations,” Scott Anderson, senior policy director for EDF, said in a TopCorp press release when that funding was announced. “Effective training will equip inspectors to enforce the regulations that protect our environment. That’s why programs like TOPCORP are so important.”

The program disclaims the idea that the oil and gas industry decides what goes into the course or how it is taught.

“What role do funding corporations or other entities have in setting the detailed curriculum content?,” a Frequently Asked Questions section on TopCorp’s website says. “None, the detailed curriculum is at the sole discretion of the three universities (principal investigators and instructors).”

As the shale rush swept across the U.S. into areas with little recent history of oil booms, often-underfunded and under-staffed state regulators have repeatedly been forced to scramble to learn to police a highly complex industry with vast resources.

So far, TopCorp been very successful at attracting newly hired regulators from across the country.

“We’ve had people from different state agencies, we’ve had young people who have 18 months of experience, maybe 6 months of experience. We’ve had people go through who have several decades of experience with us,” Dr. Olson explained. “We’ve had people go through from state agencies as well as from federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency or the Bureau of Land Management.”

“We also invite our sponsors to come to our training so that they can see what we are doing,” she added.

The reception from many new inspectors has been enthusiastic, according to teasers for the classes posted on TopCorp’s website.

“I feel like I’ve got a little bit more of an educated opinion, and I know my colleagues will benefit from what we’ve learned here,” one attendee says in a promotional video for the program.

At the Shale Insight luncheon, TopCorp officials touted their ability to promote a friendly connection between the industry and those charged with policing it.

“The other thing I’d like to say is – they’re all smiling,” Mr. Ladlee said as he showed pictures of attendees at a recent TopCorp training. “So, great to see regulators smiling for a change.”

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/10/05/new-kind-fracademia-environmental-inspectors-offered-free-industry-funded-classes-fracking-and-drilling

Chemicals company Ineos said on Thursday that it is planning to invest $1 billion in shale gas exploration and appraisal in the United Kingdom.

On top of that, substantial further investment would be made by the company if it moved into development and production.

In recent months, Ineos has been awarded two shale gas exploration licenses in the U.K. and decisions are awaited on a number of others, most of which are in Scotland and the north of England. If the company wins all of the licenses it has applied for it expects to become the biggest player in the U.K. shale gas industry.

This announcement comes at a time when the government is assessing applications made by operators for new onshore licenses to explore for shale gas, the BBC pointed out. Other industry players could make similar statements over the coming weeks and months.

Ineos currently owns two shale licenses in Scotland comprising over 120,000 acres. It is also investing £400 million ($626 million) to build a new import terminal, storage tank and associated infrastructure at its Grangemouth refinery to import shale gas from the United States.

Commenting on Thursday’s announcement, Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos chairman, said: “I want Ineos to be the biggest player in the U.K. shale gas industry. I believe shale gas could revolutionize UK manufacturing and I know Ineos has the resources to make it happen, the skills to extract the gas safely and the vision to realize that everyone must share in the rewards.”

http://www.processingmagazine.com/articles/128263-ineos-plans-1-billion-investment-in-uk-shale-gas-exploration

Two academic studies exploring health and water issues in the gas drilling industry on Wednesday painted very different pictures of its potential impact and brought rebukes from advocates on both sides.

A Yale University survey supported by environmental groups including The Heinz Endowments found increased reporting of certain health issues by people who live within a kilometer of working wells in Washington County.

A Penn State University study funded by industry groups found that fracking water that remains deep underground after a well is finished will stay trapped in shale, far away from groundwater supplies.

Both studies added to research that has yet to conclusively link the blossoming shale gas industry to health dangers or rule out such fears. The Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Protection are conducting larger studies on air and water quality.

“There is a real need to do more,” said University of Washington’s Dr. Peter Rabinowitz, lead author of the Yale survey published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The survey of 180 households in 2012 is “the largest study we’re aware of,” he said, conceding it did not conclude that gas wells caused health problems for anyone.

Researchers must complete testing on subjects and their environment before drawing conclusions, Rabinowitz said.

Penn State’s geosciences professor Terry Engelder, whose study was published in the Journal of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources, said his research shows injecting frack water into deep shale is safe.

“The practical implication is that hydro fracture fluids will be locked into the same ‘permeability jail’ that sequestered over-pressured gas for over 200 million years,” he said.

Critics pounced on the funding sources for both studies.

Travis Windle, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition in North Fayette, said the Yale survey was “done in partnership with a local activist group, and was designed to put selective and unproven data behind a pre-determined and biased narrative.”

It was supported by the Heinz Endowments, which has taken a strict anti-drilling stance in the past year, withdrawing support of a collaborative between the industry and environmental groups. Rabinowitz said the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, a Heinz-funded effort to find people with health issues in Washington County, helped researchers but did not participate in the survey.

Environmentalists said the Penn State study, funded by the drilling industry and including a researcher from Royal Dutch Shell plc, could not be trusted.

“That’s a big red flag for us,” said Sam Bernhardt, a senior organizer for Washington-based Food and Water Watch.

Myron Arnowitt, state director for Clean Water Action, said the Penn State study focuses on the narrow issue of water trapped in shale, instead of potential contamination by water that flows back to the surface during drilling and fracking.

Last month, reports released by state regulators on the drilling of about 20,000 gas wells in the past decade identified 243 wells with potential problems. Only two were in Washington County, the area Yale studied.

That Yale survey was based on questionnaires about health problems and found 39 percent of those living within a kilometer of a working well reported upper respiratory or skin problems, compared with 31 percent of those living between 1 and 2 kilometers, and 18 percent of those living farther away.

There was no increase in reporting of other health issues, the researchers said, and the surveys did not look at other potential sources of air or water pollution, such as coal mines and power plants.

Participants received $25 each.

http://triblive.com/business/headlines/6772348-74/health-state-studies#axzz3D0Lz4A3U

A sudden and extreme spike in neonatal mortality in Utah’s rural Uinta Basin is most probably related to the toxic air pollution related to the fossil fuel drilling/fracking frenzy in Eastern Utah. And the local poobahs want to kill the messenger.

Donna Young is a midwife in Vernal, Utah, with 20 years experience managing home births in Idaho and Utah. She lives in the Uinta Basin, the heart of the fossil fuel drilling/fracking frenzy in Eastern Utah. On May 8, 2013, she had her first stillbirth. At the funeral service a few days later, she noted what seemed like an extraordinary number of infant graves with recent dates at the cemetery. She decided to investigate.

She didn’t get any help from local authorities, but eventually information gleaned from obituaries and mortuaries revealed 12 cases of neonatal mortality (most of them stillborn, or death shortly after birth), in 2013. Looking back to 2010 revealed a modest upward trend, but then a huge spike in 2013. This is sparsely populated rural Utah. Vernal is a town of fewer than 10,000 people. But per capita, this is a neonatal mortality six times the national average. It is actually worse than it appears. National infant mortality rates have been dropping slowly and steadily for almost 50 years, including about a 10 to 15 percent drop in the last decade. Furthermore, most of Utah is about 50 percent Mormon, so the rate of drinking and smoking is less than the national average throughout the state. The minority population in rural Utah, like Vernal, is very low, and the percentage of Mormons is even higher, both of which should lower the infant mortality rates, all other things being equal

What is going on in Utah’s Uinta Basin to explain newborn babies dying? An abrupt surge in teenage mothers, drug, alcohol use? No evidence of that. Is there a genetic explanation? Genes don’t change that quickly. Is there a sudden onset of medical incompetence by the area’s health-care providers? No reason to think so. That leaves one other possibility. Is there something happening in the environment? As a matter of fact, yes.

Major cities with pollution problems have either high ozone, like Los Angeles, or high particulate pollution, like Salt Lake City, depending on the time of year. But the Uinta Basin has both simultaneously, making it unique and the most polluted part of the state. Studies suggest that the two may act synergistically to impair human health. Add to that high levels of the by-products of every phase of the oil and gas fracking extraction process – diesel emissions and hazardous compounds like benzene, toluene and naphthene, and you have a uniquely toxic air pollution brew in Vernal.

Inhaling air pollution has the same systemic health consequences as cigarette smoking, only to a lesser degree – unless you’re doing your inhaling in Beijing, China, then eliminate the “lesser.” The signature physiologic consequence of air pollution, be it from smoke stacks, tail pipes, fracking or cigarettes, is an inflammatory response that reduces blood flow. Diseases of virtually every organ system can follow. Strokes, heart attacks, every type of lung disease, cognitive impairment, cancer, accelerated aging and sudden death, including infant mortality, all occur at higher rates among people exposed to air pollution. In the case of a pregnant mother, the placenta is compromised for the same reason, and it should be easily understood then that pregnancy complications and impaired fetal development – think birth defects, miscarriages and stillbirths – can be the result. Many epidemiological studies show that to be the case. That increased infant mortality in the Uinta Basin could be the result of the increased air pollution is suggested by medical research. It is not only plausible, but very likely.

But there is more to the story, much more. If you do a Google search for “pollution in Vernal, Utah” you will see a picture of a man at a street corner holding up a sign that says, “Honk if you love drilling.” Vernal politicians certainly do. With jobs, increased tax base, new community recreation centers, burgeoning store fronts on Main Street, people with money to spend – what’s not to like? Well, dead babies perhaps. What else is not to like? Someone who calls attention to the dead babies – a concerned midwife for example.

Young has been targeted by the community’s power brokers as whistleblowers often are. She received a threatening “legal” letter from the local hospital. She’s been told by one of the local doctors that everyone wants to take her down “politically” and ruin her career. She has also received ominous, threatening phone calls. But others are starting to speak out with worrisome observations of their own.

Since Young stepped forward, a mother in Vernal contacted us about a rare birth defect her six-month old has that threatens her baby’s ability to breathe. Two houses away, her neighbor’s three-month old baby has the same birth defect. Checking with the local pediatrics clinic has revealed 30 patients with the same rare birth defect. It amounts to a prevalence rate of at least seven times the normal rate of one in 2,100 live births.

This drama is also a larger metaphor with global implications. Eastern Utah could be considered ground zero for the battle to keep the world’s fossil fuels in the ground. In addition to the fracking frenzy for oil and gas in the area, Utah is also “blessed/cursed” with the largest unconventional fossil fuel reservoir in the United States and perhaps the world – oil shale and tar sands deposits are 25 times larger than those in Alberta, Canada. Using geology-based assessment methodology, the US Geological Survey estimated a total of 4.285 trillion barrels of oil in the oil shale of the three principal basins of the Eocene Green River Formation, near Vernal, Utah.

If those deposits are extracted and burned (and the process would be much more carbon intensive than conventional oil and gas drilling), Utah would become home to the largest known carbon “bomb” on the planet. More “game over” for the planet than the Keystone pipeline.

The international medical community has called the climate crisis, “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century and . . . could put the lives and well-being of billions of people at increased risk.” Throughout the world the most vulnerable will be infants and children.

Apparently that is just fine with Utah’s governor and the majority of our legislature. It is certainly not only fine with, but enthusiastically promoted by, Uinta County commissioners and local politicians. It is also fraught with irony because numerous projections on global warming predict that Utah will become North America’s greatest warming “victim” outside the Arctic. Projections from 2008 suggested that temperatures may rise by 9 degrees F in Utah by 2100. Global warming calculations have only become more alarming since.

A rise of this magnitude will decimate the ecosystems that are necessary to support human life – it means dramatically more drought, shrinking snow pack and water resources, more wildfires and dead forests, unsustainable agriculture, and apocalyptic dust storms – a complete collapse of the human carrying capacity of the Western United States. And it means more dead babies, a lot more.

25 May 2014

Dr. Brian Moench, President, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, is a member of the radiation and health committee, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The opinions expressed are his own and not an official position of UCS or PSR.

ReWire has reported previously on a form of oil well enhancement in California that doesn’t get much attention from the press, namely, offshore fracking. At least 12 rigs off the coast of California inject proprietary mixes of potentially dangerous chemicals into undersea rock formations at high pressure. They do this in order to break those rocks up which makes it easier to pump out the crude.

That’s the process commonly known as fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing. The fluid pumped into the wells usually gets pumped back out again as wastewater. And if you suddenly have an uneasy feeling about where those offshore rigs dispose of that wastewater, you may well be correct. About half of the state’s offshore rigs pump at least some of their wastewater right into the Santa Barbara Channel.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, oil rig operators have federal permits to dump more than nine billion gallons of fracking wastewater into California’s ocean waters each year. That’s enough wastewater to fill more than 100 stadiums the size of the Rose Bowl brim-full of toxic waste. And CBD wants the Environmental Protection Agency to do something about it.

In a legal petition filed Wednesday, CBD is urging the EPA to rewrite those federal wastewater dumping permits to keep fracking waste out of the ocean, and to develop national guidelines for offshore rig wastewater disposal that address the threat from fracking chemicals.

“It’s disgusting that oil companies dump wastewater into California’s ocean,” said Miyoko Sakashita, CBD oceans director, in a press release. “You can see the rigs from shore, but the contaminated waters are hidden from view. Our goal is to make sure toxic fracking chemicals don’t poison wildlife or end up in the food chain.”

Fracking wastewater contains more than just the chemicals used by oil and gas companies to break up the rocks, including toxic substances like methanol, benzene, naphthalene, and trimethylbenzene. It can also include nasties that it picks up from those deep rock formations, including lead and arsenic. And while safely disposing of such substances isn’t easy in the best of situations, ocean disposal poses special risks for those who play in, live near, or eat fish from the sea.

Not to mention the risks to the California coast’s beleaguered wildlife — an issue that’s prompted staff with the California Coastal Commission to urge an end to fracking wastewater dumping.

“It came as a complete surprise to learn that oil companies are fracking in waters off the coast where I let my kids swim and play,” said Sakashita. “The toxic chemicals used for offshore fracking don’t belong in the ocean, and the best way to protect our coast is to ban fracking altogether.”

26 Feb 2014

A former British Petroleum (BP) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing with it the danger of “continuous recession” and increased risk of conflict and hunger.

At a lecture on ‘Geohazards’ earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008.

Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that “peaking is the result of declining production rates, not declining reserves.” Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year:

“We need new production equal to a new Saudi Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply… New discoveries have not matched consumption since 1986. We are drawing down on our reserves, even though reserves are apparently climbing every year. Reserves are growing due to better technology in old fields, raising the amount we can recover – but production is still falling at 4.1% p.a. [per annum].”

Dr. Miller, who prepared annual in-house projections of future oil supply for BP from 2000 to 2007, refers to this as the “ATM problem” – “more money, but still limited daily withdrawals.” As a consequence: “Production of conventional liquid oil has been flat since 2008. Growth in liquid supply since then has been largely of natural gas liquids [NGL]- ethane, propane, butane, pentane – and oil-sand bitumen.”

Dr. Miller is co-editor of a special edition of the prestigious journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, published this month on the future of oil supply. In an introductory paper co-authored with Dr. Steve R. Sorrel, co-director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex in Brighton, they argue that among oil industry experts “there is a growing consensus that the era of cheap oil has passed and that we are entering a new and very different phase.” They endorse the conservative conclusions of an extensive earlier study by the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC):

“… a sustained decline in global conventional production appears probable before 2030 and there is significant risk of this beginning before 2020… on current evidence the inclusion of tight oil [shale oil] resources appears unlikely to significantly affect this conclusion, partly because the resource base appears relatively modest.”

In fact, increasing dependence on shale could worsen decline rates in the long run:

“Greater reliance upon tight oil resources produced using hydraulic fracturing will exacerbate any rising trend in global average decline rates, since these wells have no plateau and decline extremely fast – for example, by 90% or more in the first 5 years.”

Tar sands will fare similarly, they conclude, noting that “the Canadian oil sands will deliver only 5 mb per day by 2030, which represents less than 6% of the IEA projection of all-liquids production by that date.”

Despite the cautious projection of global peak oil “before 2020″, they also point out that:

“Crude oil production grew at approximately 1.5% per year between 1995 and 2005, but then plateaued with more recent increases in liquids supply largely deriving from NGLs, oil sands and tight oil. These trends are expected to continue… Crude oil production is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries and a small number of giant fields, with approximately 100 fields producing one half of global supply, 25 producing one quarter and a single field (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) producing approximately 7%. Most of these giant fields are relatively old, many are well past their peak of production, most of the rest seem likely to enter decline within the next decade or so and few new giant fields are expected to be found.”

“The final peak is going to be decided by the price – how much can we afford to pay?”, Dr. Miller told me in an interview about his work. “If we can afford to pay $150 per barrel, we could certainly produce more given a few years of lead time for new developments, but it would break economies again.”

Miller argues that for all intents and purposes, peak oil has arrived as conditions are such that despite volatility, prices can never return to pre-2004 levels:

“The oil price has risen almost continuously since 2004 to date, starting at $30. There was a great spike to $150 and then a collapse in 2008/2009, but it has since climbed to $110 and held there. The price rise brought a lot of new exploration and development, but these new fields have not actually increased production by very much, due to the decline of older fields. This is compatible with the idea that we are pretty much at peak today. This recession is what peak feels like.”

Although he is dismissive of shale oil and gas’ capacity to prevent a peak and subsequent long decline in global oil production, Miller recognises that there is still some leeway that could bring significant, if temporary dividends for US economic growth – though only as “a relatively short-lived phenomenon”:

“We’re like a cage of lab rats that have eaten all the cornflakes and discovered that you can eat the cardboard packets too. Yes, we can, but… Tight oil may reach 5 or even 6 million b/d in the US, which will hugely help the US economy, along with shale gas. Shale resources, though, are inappropriate for more densely populated countries like the UK, because the industrialisation of the countryside affects far more people (with far less access to alternative natural space), and the economic benefits are spread more thinly across more people. Tight oil production in the US is likely to peak before 2020. There absolutely will not be enough tight oil production to replace the US’ current 9 million b/d of imports.”

In turn, by prolonging global economic recession, high oil prices may reduce demand. Peak demand in turn may maintain a longer undulating oil production plateau:

“We are probably in peak oil today, or at least in the foot-hills. Production could rise a little for a few years yet, but not sufficiently to bring the price down; alternatively, continuous recession in much of the world may keep demand essentially flat for years at the $110/bbl price we have today. But we can’t grow the supply at average past rates of about 1.5% per year at today’s prices.”

The fundamental dependence of global economic growth on cheap oil supplies suggests that as we continue into the age of expensive oil and gas, without appropriate efforts to mitigate the impacts and transition to a new energy system, the world faces a future of economic and geopolitical turbulence:

“In the US, high oil prices correlate with recessions, although not all recessions correlate with high oil prices. It does not prove causation, but it is highly likely that when the US pays more than 4% of its GDP for oil, or more than 10% of GDP for primary energy, the economy declines as money is sucked into buying fuel instead of other goods and services… A shortage of oil will affect everything in the economy. I expect more famine, more drought, more resource wars and a steady inflation in the energy cost of all commodities.”

According to another study in the Royal Society journal special edition by professor David J. Murphy of Northern Illinois University, an expert in the role of energy in economic growth, the energy return on investment (EROI) for global oil and gas production – the amount of energy produced compared to the amount of energy invested to get, deliver and use that energy – is roughly 15 and declining. For the US, EROI of oil and gas production is 11 and declining; and for unconventional oil and biofuels is largely less than 10. The problem is that as EROI decreases, energy prices increase. Thus, Murphy concludes:

“… the minimum oil price needed to increase the oil supply in the near term is at levels consistent with levels that have induced past economic recessions. From these points, I conclude that, as the EROI of the average barrel of oil declines, long-term economic growth will become harder to achieve and come at an increasingly higher financial, energetic and environmental cost.”

Current EROI in the US, Miller said, is simply “not enough to support the US infrastructure, even if America was self-sufficient, without raising production even further than current consumption.”

In their introduction to their collection of papers in the Royal Society journal, Miller and Sorrell point out that “most authors” in the special edition “accept that conventional oil resources are at an advanced stage of depletion and that liquid fuels will become more expensive and increasingly scarce.” The shale revolution can provide only “short-term relief”, but is otherwise “unlikely to make a significant difference in the longer term.”

They call for a “coordinated response” to this challenge to mitigate the impact, including “far-reaching changes in global transport systems.” While “climate-friendly solutions to ‘peak oil’ are available” they caution, these will be neither “easy” nor “quick”, and imply a model of economic development that accepts lower levels of consumption and mobility.

In his interview with me, Richard Miller was particularly critical of the UK government’s policies, including abandoning large-scale wind farm projects, the reduction of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, and support for shale gas. “The government will do anything for the short-term economic bounce,” he said, “but the consequence will be that the UK is tied more tightly to an oil-based future, and we will pay dearly for it.”

23 Dec 2013

Mary Catherine Sexton has been rattled enough.

This fall her neighborhood in the northeastern part of this city has been shaken by dozens of minor earthquakes. “We would just have little trembles all the time,” she said.

Even before a magnitude 4.5 quake on Saturday knocked objects off her walls and a stone from above her neighbor’s bay window, Ms. Sexton was on edge.

“People are fed up with the earthquakes,” she said. “Our kids are scared. We’re scared.”

Oklahoma has never been known as earthquake country, with a yearly average of about 50 tremors, almost all of them minor. But in the past three years, the state has had thousands of quakes. This year has been the most active, with more than 2,600 so far, including 87 last week.

While most have been too slight to be felt, some, like the quake on Saturday and a smaller one in November that cracked a bathroom wall in Ms. Sexton’s house, have been sensed over a wide area and caused damage. In 2011, a magnitude 5.6 quake — the biggest ever recorded in the state — injured two people and severely damaged more than a dozen homes, some beyond repair.

State officials say they are concerned, and residents accustomed to tornadoes and hail are now talking about buying earthquake insurance.

“I’m scared there’s going to be a bigger one,” Ms. Sexton said.

Just as unsettling in a state where more than 340,000 jobs are tied to the oil and gas industry is what scientists say may be causing many of the quakes: the widespread industry practice of disposing of billions of gallons of wastewater that is produced along with oil and gas, by injecting it under pressure into wells that reach permeable rock formations.

“Disposal wells pose the biggest risk,” said Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, who is studying the various clusters of quakes around the state.

Oklahoma has more than 4,000 disposal wells for waste from tens of thousands of oil and gas wells. “Could we be looking at some cumulative tipping point? Yes, that’s absolutely possible,” Dr. Holland said. But there could be other explanations for the increase in earthquakes, he added.

Scientists have known for years that injection wells and other human activities can induce earthquakes by changing pressures underground. That can have the effect of “unclamping” old stressed faults so the rocks can slip past each other and cause the ground to shake.

The weight of water behind a new dam in China, for example, is thought to have induced a 2008 quake in Sichuan Province that killed 80,000 people. In Australia, a 1989 quake that killed 13 people was attributed in part to the opposite effect — the removal of millions of tons of coal during more than two centuries of mining.

In other places, including California and Switzerland, enhanced geothermal projects, in which water is pumped into hot rocks deep underground to produce energy, have caused quakes.

In Texas, some earthquakes have been connected to the industry practice of “water flooding,” increasing the yield of older oil wells by pumping water into nearby wells to force the oil out, said Cliff Frohlich, a University of Texas scientist. In other cases, Dr. Frohlich said, just the extraction of oil and gas from a long-producing field has been seen to induce quakes.

The practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — injecting liquid at high pressures into shale rock — causes very small tremors as the rocks break, releasing trapped oil or gas. The technique has also been linked to a few minor earthquakes — in Oklahoma about a year ago, and in England and British Columbia. Yet unlike the continuing clusters of quakes elsewhere, the fracking-related earthquakes occurred only over short time periods, scientists say.

Of greater potential concern, scientists say, is wastewater disposal — from fracked or more conventional wells. Disposal wells linked to quakes have been shut down in a few states, including Arkansas and Ohio.

Along with oil and gas, water comes out of wells, often in enormous amounts, and must be disposed of continuously. Because transporting water, usually by truck, is costly, disposal wells are commonly located near producing wells.

The oil and gas industry points out that many of Oklahoma’s disposal wells are in areas with no earthquake activity, and that the practice of injecting wastewater has been going on for years.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time and it hasn’t been an issue before,” said Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association.

But Dr. Frohlich said that what had changed was where the disposal was occurring. With the boom in production of oil and gas from shale formations, he said, “People are disposing of fluids in places they haven’t before.”

Still, it is difficult to show a definitive link between a group of quakes and nearby disposal wells, and Dr. Holland thinks there may be other explanations for some of the recent quakes, including the largest one, which occurred on a known fault line about 50 miles east of Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma does have natural seismic activity, he noted, and has had a few powerful quakes in the past, including one with a magnitude of 5.5 in 1952 and one estimated at about a magnitude of 7 that the geological record shows occurred 1,300 years ago. He also thinks changes in the water level of a large nearby lake may be responsible for some of the quakes around Oklahoma City, although he says this is not the most likely explanation.

The swarm of quakes has state regulators concerned, but cautious.

“We have to look at what data and scientific evidence supports some connection,” before deciding on steps to manage the risk, said Dana L. Murphy, a commissioner with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Theoretically, at least, the commission could order some wells to be shut.

Already the commission has reached an agreement with a disposal well operator in Love County, about 100 miles south of Oklahoma City, to reduce the amount of wastewater injected into his well. The facility had been operating for only two weeks, injecting up to 400,000 gallons of water a day from nearby fracking operations, when earthquakes started occurring in September, including one that toppled a chimney and caused other damage.

All the shaking in the state has people talking about what to do if a bigger one were to hit. “I’ve been through a lot of tornadoes — you can go hide from them,” said Bill Hediger, whose home in Edmond, just north of Oklahoma City, shows cracks in the walls from the magnitude 5.6 quake. “But you can’t hide from an earthquake.”

Dr. Holland said that given the geological record, he could not rule out the possibility that a larger quake may occur in the state.

Ms. Sexton said she was not against the oil and gas industry, but added that if the quakes in her area were definitively linked to disposal wells, they should be shut down.

“It would hurt oil and gas,” she said. “But it’s oil and gas hurting homeowners and making people fearful.”

12 Dec 2013