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Daily Events...
Plentiful Fuel
by John Stossel
05/18/2011
I just learned I’m going to save money! My apartment building in New
York will switch from heating oil to cleaner natural gas. Gas is much
cheaper than oil now because energy companies found ways to get more of
it out of the ground.
Even more astounding is that by using this technique, America won’t run
out of natural gas for 100 years or more! Time to break out the
Champagne?
Not so fast, say environmentalists. To get gas out of the ground,
companies use pressurized chemicals to blow up rock. It’s called
hydraulic fracturing -- fracking. An Oscar-nominated movie, “Gasland,”
says that fracking contaminates our water supply with chemicals. In the
movie, some homeowners set their tap water on fire.
That got my attention. I’ve seen Michael Moore’s movies and
environmental documentaries, which I thought were nonsense. But
“Gasland” is more convincing.
Unfortunately, “Gasland” producer Josh Fox turned down my interview
requests, as did representatives of the big national environmental
groups that oppose fracking. I think I know why. The movie and the
left’s arguments against fracking are deceitful.
First, the movie implies that nasty chemicals get into the water table.
That seems logical, since they shoot them down into gas wells. But it
turns out that the shale gas wells are thousands of feet below the
water table. Do the chemicals flow up -- against gravity?
But then what’s the explanation for the most dramatic part of the
movie: tap water so laden with gas that people can set it on fire?
It turns out that has little to do with fracking. In many parts of
America, there is enough methane in the ground to leak into people’s
well water. The best fire scene in the movie was shot in Colorado,
where the filmmaker is in the kitchen of a man who lights his faucet.
But Colorado investigators went to that man’s house, checked out his
well and found that fracking had nothing to do with his water catching
fire. His well-digger had drilled into a naturally occurring methane
pocket.
“There are lots of ... naturally causing effects that occur,” says
Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation, a think tank in
Pennsylvania -- where much of the film was shot. “It’s really no
surprise. We find that 40 percent of the wells in Pennsylvania have
some sort of naturally occurring methane gas and other types of
things.”
John Hanger, former director of Pennsylvania’s Department of
Environmental Protection, who also appeared in the film, is less
sanguine:
“Gas can migrate ... from poor drilling into people’s private water
wells. ... We have had gas move from poorly done gas drilling through
the ground and reach people’s water wells. So there is a need for
oversight ... gas does have some impacts. It is not perfectly clean.
But compared to coal and oil, which are more dirty fossil fuels,
natural gas can be produced and consumed in a manner that is cleaner
than coal.”
Filmmaker Josh Fox concedes that the states concluded that the fire
wasn’t caused by fracking, but he says the government regulators
collude with industry, or don’t use good science. His movie portrays
Hanger as an indifferent bureaucrat. Hanger says the movie is just
inaccurate. “Josh Fox has a mission. ... He is trying to shut down the
gas -- drilling industry.”
Frankly, I’m skeptical of all of them: lefty moviemakers who smear
companies, companies with economic interests at stake and the
regulators, who are often cozy with industry and lack essential
knowledge. The surest environmental protectors are property rights --
and courts that assign liability to polluters.
But hydraulic fracturing is a wonderful thing. It’s not new. Companies
have done it for 60 years, but now they’ve found ways to get even more
gas out of the ground. That’s the reason gas is getting cheaper and
panicky politicians no longer rant about America “running out of fuel.”
Natural gas is not risk-free, but no energy source is. Perfect is not
one of the choices.
Read it at Daily Events
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