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Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Food and Water Watch (FWW) released a report today titled “U.S. Energy Security: Why Fracking for Oil and Natural Gas Is a False Solution.”
Gas from a shale deposit in Pennsylvania
It shows, contrary to industry claims, there aren’t 100 years of unconventional oil and gas sitting below our feet, even if President Barack Obama said so in his 2012 State of the Union Address. Far from it, in fact.
The report begs the disconcerting question: is the shale gas bubble on its way to bursting?
FWW crunched the numbers, estimating that there are, at most, half of the industry line, some 50 years of natural gas and much less of shale gas. This assumes the industry will be allowed to perform fracking in every desired crevice of the country. These are the same basins that advocates of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) claim would make the U.S. the “next Saudi Arabia.”
“The popular claim of a 100-year supply of natural gas is based on the oil and gas industry’s dream of unrestricted access to drill and frack, and it presumes that highly uncertain resource estimates prove accurate,” wrote FWW. “Further, the claim of a century’s worth of natural gas ignores plans to export large amounts of it overseas and plans for more domestic use of natural gas to fuel transportation and generate electricity.”
The race is on for the gas industry to export unconventional gas on the global market, implement a gas-powered utilities sector, and create a gas-powered vehicle market. Due to these races, FWW says that the resource is being depleted at a rate far more quickly than the industry would like to admit to the mass public, writing,
The oil and gas industry’s plans to export shale gas, America’s supposed ticket to energy security, reveal that the only thing the industry seeks to secure is its bottom line. But the oil and gas industry’s push to increase U.S. dependence on natural gas in the transportation and electricity sectors is perhaps even more insidious.
The unfortunate reality is that peak domestic production may have passed, and over the coming years, production rates will likely decline. This means short-term, profit-oriented thinking will lead to contaminated air, polluted water, human health impacts, and even the industrialization of university campuses. Most importantly of all, it means a continued assault on the global climate, which makes for deadly and expensive extreme weather events. Think Hurricane Sandy.All for a few decades of further fossil fuel addiction that doesn’t solve any of the problems that future generations will face.
FWW explained,
The United States consumed about 18.8 million barrels of oil per day in 2011, yet it produced only an estimated 0.55 million barrels of tight oil per day. The EIA does project that tight oil production will increase, but to only about 1.2 million barrels per day between now and 2020, peaking at 1.33 million barrels per day in 2029 before starting to decline. This peak would amount to only about 7 percent of the 18.8 million barrels per day consumed in the United States in 2011.
It’s these numbers that have moved analysts to discover that the unconventional oil and gas craze is a potential economic crisis rather than a blessing, not to mention the accompanying climate and ecosystem costs and consequences of fracking the future.
14 Comments
Perhaps their estimates are assuming the millions of deaths resulting from the concomitant pollution of our soil that will result from the fracking. Once you die you don’t use as much energy I am assuming. (unless you have a heated crypt)
Diane Rehm show today was on energy.
Looks like currently optimistically inflated appraisals of US energy production — relying on cheap fracked natural gas, as I understand it — have slipped under the radar. As have the not-so-great profile of industrial wind turbines.
Maybe we’ll get our act together. Maybe not. But there is the whole rest of the world, especially India and China , that may not give a hoot. And they are the future, we are told.
The Sierra Club guy who was on the Rehm show was great. The other shills were pimping the Keystone pipeline, which Sierra guy negated , to wit, British Co0lumbia wont tolerate it. Trucks through the US to the Gulf? Give me a break.
There plenty of innovative energy technology out there (read Gizmag), if there were development money to take it to the next stage.
Barry, where are you? The US industry sector needs you.
Ultimate economic recovery requires high
valuations for small royalty owners.
And some of their resources can be accessed
w/ minimal damage for bridge value to renewables.
But that’s different from stupidly piping and storing
shale oil from CAD by way of the XL Pipeline and in Cushing.
So, many of the very people most supportive of the Tea
Party, backed up by rich demagogues, are the most directly
shafted at the expense of the rest of the US too.
Also, small farmers got shafted in favor of monopolistically
controlled GMO’s expressing insecticide.
The pollution of ground water is a serious concern, and yes, they are not going to be allowed to drill and frack wherever they want. But the good side should be mentioned: the US carbon footprint is dropping, quite a lot, because natural gas is replacing coal for electricity generation.
The only way the public at large will go against fracking and the XL pipeline is if they are informed that gas and oil are being EXPORTED to other countries for corporate profit.
I am not an apologist for the nat gas industry but I don’t think you can trust the stats from Food and Water Watch. I think I would rather go with data from the Colorado School of Mines. Also if that picture of the tank field is nat gas from shale I will eat my hat!
Lets get real here. We all know the pond scum that is going frack, drill & mine every last therm from the Eaarth never going to stop. They’d sooner get rid of all of us first.
you knew it had to happen. Deep down you knew it.
They will say anything for a quick frack.
Steve, check this out (!):
http://oilprice.com/Interviews/Shale-Gas-Will-be-the-Next-Bubble-to-Pop-An-Interview-with-Arthur-Berman.html
Energetically, the remaining natural gas in the continental USA available with frakking looks like it’s just about equivalent to the amount of conventional oil that’s left in the world (44 years at current use rates). Of course, there will be waste, and if we convert any to oil, there will be energy loss. I’d guesstimate an extension of 30-35 years of energy supply in the USA if we diverted most of it to energy and transportation fuel.
“… they are informed that gas and oil are being EXPORTED…”
All of the Keystone XL is targeted for export. It would also help if more people realized that the tar sands oil is Chinese Oil, not Canadian.
One point for James Kunstler who’s been hopping up and down on this point for a while. I hope the rest of his analysis is still far-fetched.
One of the things that has not been reported is the fact that the rest of the world is no longer willing to accept the dollar as the primary reserve currency.
Per AntiSpin at SmirkingChimp:
“China and Russia have just recently concluded an agreement to conduct oil sales and purchases in their own currencies, and all over the world there are new, multi-national trade agreements that provide for trade in local currencies, and that exclude payment in dollars. The US simply cannot send bombers, drones or the Marines to all of those countries, which include Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa, along with quite a few other agreements between groups of smaller countries.”
My own conclusion is the part of our “elite” leadership saw the need to restart our domestic oil industry before the rest of the world had our economy us for lunch.