Barnett Shale

Duke Power CEO says fracking is transforming utilities, cutting CO2

James Rogers, the longtime chairman of North Carolina-based Duke Power, said environmentalists should make their peace with natural gas and hydraulic fracturing because of its contributions to dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from power generation. Rogers said the substitution of natural gas-fired generation for coal-fired power plants has lowered U.S. CO2 emissions to 1990 levels and to 1960's levels on a per-capita basis. "Natural gas is transforming our industry," Rogers told an audience at the IHS CeraWeek energy conference in Houston. Natural gas production can be done responsibly and its contribution to lower carbon and other emissions outweigh concerns about natural gas' possible impacts on water and air in areas where it is produced.

-- Jim Fuquay

Frack Attack Summit comes to Dallas

Opponents of hydraulic fracturing plan two days of workshops and education on the hazards of the widely used oil and gas production technique this coming Saturday and Sunday in Dallas. On the agenda are sessions on community organizing, health effects, environmental and climate consequences and the local impacts of pipelines, compressor stations and other oil and gas production infrastructure. Among confirmed speakers are: Fort Worth resident Deborah Rogers, who was recently named to a U.S. Department of Interior advisory committee on natural resource development; Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell University professor who has done a number of studies on environmental impacts of drilling; and Wilma Subra, an environmental chemist who has been active helping Gulf Coast communities deal with petrochemical issues.

The Frack Attack National Summit is March 2-3 at the Best Western Plus Dallas Hotel & Conference Center, 8051 Lyndon B Johnson Fwy. The summit is open to the public, but there is a charge based on whether hotel, meal and other charges are included. For more information, click here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Drilling critics cite benzene emissions in Fort Worth, Dish

ShaleTest, a private effort that has been critical of natural gas operations, says two recent air tests showed "elevated" levels of benzene. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which conducted one of the tests, said the short-term measurements aren't necessarily a concern unless they prove to be long-term. The Star-Telegram has a report here.

Benzene, a human carcinogen, is fairly widely used -- it's a component of gasoline, for example -- and has varying levels of risk tied to different concentrations. Hence, it's one of the components of oil and gas operations that TCEQ tracks as part of its air monitoring in the Barnett shale. The concentrations found at a compressor station near downtown Fort Worth and a compressor station west of the Denton County community of Dish exceeded TCEQ's threshold for long-term exposure, but that is based on continuous exposure throughout a lifetime. Additional sources of information on the health effects of benzene can be found at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), here, and at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Another Barnett Shale monitor goes online at TCEQ

The latest air monitor in the Barnett Shale to start reporting its results on the website of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is in Rhome, in southern Wise County. It's the 11th active automated gas chromatograph (auto GC) monitor in North Texas. To see its exact locations and data, look for "Rhome Seven Hills Road" on the TCEQ's auto GC page.

The Star-Telegram on Sunday carried an extensive report on efforts by the TCEQ and Environmental Protection Agency to keep track of emissions in the Barnett Shale via a network of dozens of monitors. A link to the report is here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Shale critic Deborah Rogers named to advisory board

Fort Worth resident Deborah Rogers, who has been critical of natural gas drilling and the economics of shale gas production, has been named to a 21-member advisory committee to the Department of Interior. The group will "guide and oversee implementation of the United States Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative," which DOI describes on its website as "a voluntary, global effort designed to increase transparency, strengthen the accountability of natural resource revenue reporting and build public trust for the governance of these activities." DOI said President Barack Obama committed the U.S. to the international effort in 2011. Advisory committee members include representatives from environmental organizations, academia and industry.

Rogers, in a prepared release, called the committee's work "a tremendous opportunity to address financial issues with respect to natural resource extraction in this country." She was a 2008-2011 member of an advisory council to the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, serves on the committee that advised the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality as it located air monitors in the Barnett Shale, and is a board member of Earthworks' Oil and Gas Accountability Project, according to the release. The release said she will appear in the upcoming documentary "Gasland 2"

In 2011 she founded Energy Policy Forum, "a consultancy and educational forum dedicated to policy and financial issues regarding shale gas and renewable energy." In an October blog post on her site, Rogers argued that shale gas is a money-loser driven by Wall Street. "There is no doubt that the investment banking community has been the driving force behind shale production since the economic downturn. Shale should have unravelled long before now. But Wall Street saw an opportunity to generate massive fees and so shale was taken to new heights... ." In 2009 she paid for air quality tests at her Westworth Village farm that showed elevated levels of several chemical compounds associated with natural gas production and flaring. The same year, which saw a sharp decline in the price of natural gas as supply surged, she concluded that shale gas wells "are depleting so quickly that the operators are in an expensive game of 'catch-up,' " according to an e-mail quoted in a New York Times report.

 

 

 

Two views on what's killing coal

The good folks at the Sierra Club issued a news release Thursday trumpeting the decline of coal in the past year and attributing it to "an unprecedented coalition including Sierra Club and more than a hundred local, regional and national organizations." There are some interesting numbers, but as far as what's driving the change, the Energy Information Administration at the U.S. DOE, and National Public Radio, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Wall Street Journal, and the Houston Chronicle, with a more nuanced version, offer a different interpretation. But their answers basically come down to two words: natural gas. Make that three words: cheap natural gas.

A link to the EIA's report is here. NPR's print version is here. The San Francisco Chronicle's story is here, and the Houston Chronicle's report is here. The Wall Street Journal's pay wall will likely catch nonsubscribers, but the link is here.

-- Jim Fuquay

LNG-fueled rig in Eagle Ford called a first

A Canadian company says it ran frac pumps on liquefied natural gas to complete a well in Texas' Eagle Ford Shale, which it said marked the first time that's been done. Frac pumps are typically driven by big diesel engines, and Ferus L.P., based in Calgary, said it used a dual-fuel approach using LNG and diesel simultaneously. Ferus said it was a pilot project for an unnamed producer and used 10,000 gallons of LNG, which has fewer emissions than diesel. The report comes the same day Exxon Mobil, in its 2013 energy outlook, said LNG for over-the-road trucks would be an expensive conversion process, but could prove economic long-term.

RigZone has a report on the LNG frac job here. The Star-Telegram's report on Exxon's outlook is here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Environmental groups seek fracturing chemicals disclosure

Seventeen environmental groups on Wednesday asked the EPA to require the disclosure of all chemicals and emissions produced by oil and gas operations, including drillling, hydraulic fracturing and pipelining. Bloomberg News has a story here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Mansfield gets latest TCEQ air monitor in Barnett Shale

A monitor that automatically tests air quality around the clock and then posts the results online has started operations at a site southeast of downtown Mansfield, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality announced Tuesday. It's the second automated gas chromatograph (auto GC) monitor activated this year and is part of efforts by state regulators to keep tabs on emissions from natural gas operations in the Barnett Shale. The previous monitor went into effect this summer at a southwest Arlington site. Another is in place at the University of Texas at Arlington, but is not yet posting its results to the TCEQ's web page. Yet another monitor is scheduled to be installed in Fort Worth near O.D. Wyatt High School. When all those monitors are in place, there will be 12 auto GC monitors in North Texas, 11 of them in areas with natural gas production. The other monitor is near Dallas Love Field and dates to 1996.

-- Jim Fuquay

UT plans methane emissions field study

The University of Texas at Austin is leading a research team in what the school calls "a major field study to measure methane emissions from natural gas production," which it hopes to complete by January. The study, launched in May and including the Barnett Shale in North Texas, is directly measuring emissions at sites, including hydraulically fractured wells. "A greater understanding of the amount of methane emitted into the atmosphere can better inform sound policies and management of emissions from well sites," the school said in a news release Wednesday. Methane is the primary component of natural gas and is a powerful greenhouse gas. Investigators, initially Robert Howath at Cornell University, have asserted that natural gas can be a worse GHG source than coal, based largely on the impact of unburned methane emissions throughout the production and transmission process.

"This study is unparalleled in its scope and approach," said David Allen, principal investigator and director of the Cockrell School of Engineering's Center for Energy and Environmental Resources. Participating are nine gas producers, including Fort Worth-based XTO Energy, two environmental testing firms and the Environmental Defense Fund. The school said Allen has disclosed outside interests in accordance with UT's conflict of interest policies. The school was embarrassed this summer when it was learned that a study of hydraulic fracturing was led by professor Charles Groat, who did not disclose that he serves on the board of a large gas producer.

-- Jim Fuquay