There’s Gold in Them Thar Marcellus Shales

Marcellus brine pit (photo embedded from a blog at donnan.com)

The Philadelphia Eagles have just announced that by using a combination of solar panels, wind turbines, and a generator that runs on natural gas and biodiesel fuel, their stadium will be the first to generate its own electricity. The Eagles will also be using non-toxic cleaning supplies and more environmentally friendly paper products, and the team has already doubled its rate of recycling since 2008.  The team now composts over 25 tons of organic waste, and ships tons of grease and used kitchen oil to processors that convert it into biodiesel. The Eagles have also dramatically cut back on their use of water used in urinals. All of these moves are saving them money—they’ve already saved $3-million since 2005—and seems to be making them very, very green. Right?

No, not right. There’s a side to all of this that’s not so green—namely, “clean” natural gas.  To extract the “clean” natural gas we see advertised in such a flower-friendly way on television—the gas for the Eagles’ generator—requires a controversial drilling method known as high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), otherwise known as “fracking.” Fracking shoots hundreds of toxic chemicals, combined with millions of gallons of clean water drawn from publicly owned rivers and streams, thousands of feet down to where the gas is trapped in pockets in the shale. Unfortunately, there is no science proving that fracking is safe, let alone any science even assessing the risks and costs associated with the procedure.

Everywhere frack drilling takes place it leaves behind devastated terrain, as well as tons of toxic wastewater—often stored in large open pits. In Pennsylvania, where frack drilling is proceeding at a hefty pace, there have been multiple instances of polluted drinking water wells and polluted rivers. Pittsburgh recently became the first city to actually ban gas drilling within its city limits. It’s also important to remember that frack drilling requires thousands of trucks (consuming thousands of gallons of gasoline) to haul equipment to the drill sites and then afterwards haul away the wastewater. In short, natural gas may burn clean, but extracting it is extremely filthy.

Although no one knows exactly how much natural gas lies in the Marcellus Shale (running from Ohio through New York), everyone agrees that there’s a whole lot of the stuff—enough to help wean us from dependence on foreign oil. But in the state of New York, a fierce battle now rages between those who are “gas-friendly” (the gas industry, along with farmers and large landowners whom gas drilling companies offer lottery-like winnings for signing leases permitting drilling on their land) and those who oppose fracking (environmentally aware skeptics, along with smaller property owners who realize their property, as well as their whole way of life in rural New York, is threatened by this invasion of industrial-scale gas drilling). The city of New York, drawing water for its nine million citizens from its unpolluted reservoirs in the Catskills, is also against frack drilling. The EPA has yet to finish its study on the safety of gas drilling, which doesn’t stop pro-drilling advocates in New York from insisting the time has come to follow Pennsylvania’s lead and just plain drill-baby-drill.

Today, the EPA subpoenaed records from Halliburton, a mega-force in gas drilling, asking for an exact list of the chemicals the company has used in fracking. Up until now, Halliburton has refused to release this information. (Does the fact that some of the chemicals are radioactive have anything to do with their insistence on the right to company secrets?)

While the Eagles are to be commended for their efforts to go green, there’s a dirty, dangerous back-story to “clean” natural gas. There may be gold in them thar Marcellus Shales, but there’s no free lunch in natural gas.