Fracking the Future

Natural gas becomes a popular energy source in Lansing amid concerns about the unnatural methods for extracting it

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On a rainy May morning in Lansing’s REO Town, Gov. Rick Snyder congratulated the Lansing Board of Water & Light for moving forward on plans to start generating electricity from a source other than coal.

BWL’s new cogeneration power and steam plant to be based in the heart of REO Town is a nod to the future, Snyder and BWL officials said, because it’ll run on natural gas. Snyder said the BWL’s plant would be a model for innovation, efficiency and the environment. “This is a great project,” he said. “Go for it.”

Snyder neglected to mention that all of that innovation has proven environmental risks. 

Environmental groups nationwide point to potentially devastating consequences — some proven, some feared — of moving toward natural gas because of the way we get it: hydraulic fracturing. Or, in popular terms, fracking. 

And Michigan is a state “rich with natural gas,” Snyder said. While Michigan’s environmental regulatory agency says fracking is a tried and true method for capturing natural gas here and that Michigan’s regulations are some of the tightest in the nation, some environmental groups are calling for a temporary ban on the practice — at least until tighter rules are adopted.

The concern is this: Because modern fracking involves using millions of gallons of water and hundreds of types of chemicals (many of which are trade secrets) to free up natural gas in underground rock formations, there is the potential for this mixture to leak into drinking water supplies. Some want assurance that those millions of gallons of water are coming from sources that can stand to lose it and won’t decimate fragile ecosystems. And then there’s the lingering question of what to do with that water and chemical mixture that can never be reused.

The practice has garnered headlines in Pennsylvania and New York, though natural gas extraction is prevalent in Gulf states and western states like Colorado and Wyoming. When residents made the nightly news in Pennsylvania and Colorado because they could light their kitchen sink faucets on fire after gas had migrated into drinking water, fracking became documentary-worthy.

When BWL announced a year ago plans to start moving beyond coal, the underlying issues of natural gas as an energy source came forth: Is natural gas the future or simply a “bridge fuel” between coal and renewable energy? How sustainable is natural gas if the methods for extracting it pose serious environmental risks? And how loud can the governor boast about using natural gas while the state’s valuable water resources sit open to the elements?


All Eyes on REO Town

On July 16 last year, BWL announced plans to build a $182 million steam and electricity plant to run solely on natural gas. The utility said it would lower its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent compared to the existing Moores River Park steam plant, and cut the utility’s coal use by 139,000 tons a year. The plant is scheduled to be operational in early- to mid-2013.

George Stojic, BWL’s planning director, said the utility has a large stake in making sure fracking operations don’t wreak havoc on drinking water supplies.

“We wear two hats. We’re focused on doing this (producing energy) as environmentally friendly and as efficiently as possible,” he said. “We also pump, treat and distribute 8 billion gallons of drinking water annually. Protecting groundwater is very important to us.”

Stojic acknowledged documented instances outside of Michigan of fracking operations being “really problematic — maybe how some of the drilling was done and certainly the toxic chemicals used in it.”

While Stojic said the REO Town plant would produce 100 percent of BWL’s steam, he was unsure how much of BWL’s electricity would be generated from natural gas compared to coal. But it’s a start: “You have multiple issues with respect to coal: the ash, and air emissions. The natural gas is a much cleaner fuel.”


Home Grown

Fracking is not new. In Michigan, oil and gas companies have been fracturing rock thousands of feet below ground to get to natural gas for more than 60 years. 

However, the technique has been retooled to go deeper and to use more water and chemicals, particularly in the last five years. Terms like “large volume water withdrawal” and “high volume hydraulic fracturing well completion” are defined in state regulations that target these new methods. And deeper, horizontal-style drilling makes risks to drinking water even greater.

In Michigan, natural gas is typically drilled north of Clare County from the Antrim and Utica-Collingwood rock formations. The latter has piqued the interests of the oil and gas industry in recent years because of its natural gas reserves. However, those reserves are buried thousands of feet deeper than in the Antrim Shale and thus require more water and fracking fluid to penetrate.

As of June 6, the state Department of Environmental Quality approved 18 permits for Utica-Collingwood drilling. Of those, five were for horizontal wells. Another 13 permit applications are pending. Of the 31 current and pending permits, 19 are for the international oil and gas giant Chevron. Thousands of wells, mostly shallower and vertical, are active in the Antrim Shale. A Chevron spokesman did not return calls for comment.

Even though these new horizontal wells require much more water — between three and eight million gallons — oil and gas companies are exempt from Part 327, the state’s water withdrawal statute that regulates how water is extracted. However, the DEQ’s Office of Geological Survey requires companies to use the state’s online water withdrawal “assessment tool” for disclosing how much water will be used and where it’ll be extracted.

Hal Fitch, director of the DEQ’s Office of Geological Survey, said these reporting requirements exist because new fracking methods take on “sizable volumes” of water.

“That (online) tool will tell you if it’s likely to endanger the surface water supply or diminish the flow in a trout stream or something like that,” he said. “If there’s a red flag, they can move or withdraw less or have the department do a site-specific review.”

The state also requires cement lining on pipes as they pass through the water table.

Fitch, who has been with the DEQ since 1974 and head of the Office of Geological Survey since 1996, said his office processes about 400 applications a year for wells throughout the state. 

“Collingwood-Utica is the formation that’s raised a lot of the recent concern among people that are wary of potential adverse affects (of fracking). It’s raised some enthusiasm in the oil and gas industry,” Fitch said.

While natural gas is produced in Michigan, a majority of it is still imported. Fitch said Michigan produces about 150 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year, or about 20 percent of what is used here. That means about 80 percent of the natural gas used in Michigan is imported, mostly from Canada and Gulf states, Fitch said.

James Clift, policy director for the Lansing-based Michigan Environmental Council, said natural gas is primarily used in the home heating market — “it’s kind of the perfect fuel for that,” Clift said — which was historically dominated by coal. In Canada, natural gas also is used to process oil extracted from tar sands, which Clift calls “unfortunate.”

“It’s a crime at a certain level. They’re using a very clean fuel to process one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet,” he said. “It’s undervaluing and wasting natural gas.”

BWL’s Stojic said the utility is in the process of determining where it will get natural gas for the new facility. 


Proceed with Caution

David Hyndman, chairman of the Department of Geological Sciences at Michigan State University, said the two main concerns with fracking is “contamination associated with production” and the demands on the water supply.

“When you frack, the fractures can penetrate an aquifer and can release petroleum-related components and fracking fluids containing a variety of things,” he said. “Fracking also takes a fairly significant volume of water.”

When it comes to using natural gas as an alternative to coal, Hyndman said it’s important to balance positives and negatives: “With any new technology, it’s important to balance the positives — more production and clearly we need more energy — versus the risks — contamination of aquifers and directly into streams.

“I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing more of a connection if these activities are going to happen, more environmental monitoring and protection plans in place,” he said.

Even though there have been no major instances of groundwater contamination in Michigan as a result of fracking, environmental groups say it’s better to be safe than sorry.

For the past few months, some environmental groups — including the Sierra Club of Michigan, Clean Water Action and Food & Water Watch — have called on the state for a moratorium on new permits for horizontal wells. In New York state, a de facto moratorium on such permits has been in place since last year. That state’s environmental regulatory agency issued a set of recommendations two weeks ago that would ban the practice in certain areas to protect watersheds.

Rita Chapman, Clean Water Program director for the state chapter of the Sierra Club, said while Michigan has better regulations than other states when it comes to well construction, the water usage reporting requirements could be strengthened. Moreover, the public has a right to know the chemicals used in the process, she said.

“The public knows nothing. Some groups in the state are advocating full disclosure of all the chemicals up front — we’re one of those groups. We think it would be important for a homeowner surrounded by fracking operations to know that,” she said.

A few of the known chemicals include hydrochloric acid (commonly used to clean pools), ammonium persulfate (a bleaching agent), benzene (which is found in diesel fuel) and ethylene glycol (used in automotive antifreeze).

Fitch, of the DEQ, said anywhere from 25 percent to 75 percent of the fracking fluid comes back to the surface to be stored. And not all fracking chemicals are unknown. A certain additive may be made of “five or six” different chemicals and that “three or four” of them may be disclosed. “The rest are proprietary. Ideally, I would like to have that information. It is protected and there’s some limitations on what we can demand,” he said.

Chapman said: “I want the whole recipe that’s used in wells on my back 40.”

Clift, of the Michigan Environmental Council, said the council is working with “a coalition of groups to increase regulation” in “about seven or eight areas” on fracking.

“A main one is disclosure of the chemicals being used to make sure any of the chemicals released accidentally in a spill or that worked its way into groundwater (are known) so people would know what to look for,” he said. 

Also, the state does not require oil and gas companies to disclose any information about the drilling operation — like how deep the well is, what kind of rock its penetrating and what chemicals are being used — in the first 60 days of drilling. 

“The first 60 days kind of happens in secrecy,” Clift said. “Well-drillers didn’t want to give a heads-up to the competition where they were looking. Our concern is that this disclosure of chemicals is coming after the fact.”

However, the MEC stopped short of joining other groups on calling for a moratorium, Clift said.

“This is a practice Michigan has been engaged in for decades. We’ve done it up until now with relatively few instances of any releases at all — in the single digits with thousands of wells that have been drilled,” he said. “But they (fracking operations) have gotten larger, causing a little bit more of a concern now. And if the price of natural gas was to escalate, we’d see a lot more of this activity.”

Clift believes the fracking controversy isn’t as heated in Michigan compared to eastern states because “we have a history of regulating better than they have,” which includes better storage rules for leftover water. “Not to say we can’t do better.”


Bridge Fuel and Gimmicks

Natural gas is often referred to as a “bridge fuel” between coal and renewable energy like wind and solar because it has its benefits (it’s an abundant, domestic energy source) and its downsides (methane emissions and modern fracking techniques). 

“The positives of natural gas are still that it burns cleaner than coal. It’s more efficient than coal,” Chapman of the Sierra Club said. “For coal they’re blowing up tops of mountains (to get it). For natural gas, they’re blowing the bottoms out of water aquifers. Which is worse?”

Moving forward, Chapman and Clift each said modern energy policy should be centered around efficiency and conservation.

Clift said while Michigan is a relatively small player in the global natural gas market, the global demand and supply of it is growing — for now.

“We’re miniscule players in the global natural gas market,” he said. “For the most part, that market looks like there’s sufficient supply coming into it. People seem to be thinking prices are going to remain relatively low at least for the short term. After that, say in five to 10 years, all bets are off.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that by 2020, shale gas will make up more than 20 percent of the total U.S. gas supply. The EPA’s “Draft Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan” is in the works, which will detail the impacts of fracking on water supplies. Research results are expected by the end of 2012.

Hyndman, who has been at MSU since 1995, said when you look at energy supply, “there are very few if any safe alternatives. 

“Clearly petroleum has a lot of risks associated with it, like greenhouse gas emissions. The same for coal. Natural gas does still produce carbon dioxide and methane, which is still a greenhouse gas stronger than carbon dioxide,” he said. “It’s not an easy solution but one of the issues is: we clearly need energy and have to look at a wide range of options.”

Documentary filmmaker Josh Fox exposed fracking in his 2010 film, “Gasland,” after he was asked to lease his property for drilling. It takes shots at the lack of federal oversight and claims the industry gets to write its own rules when it comes to disclosing chemicals. And the film sets out in search of residents who can light their faucets on fire because of methane leaks into drinking water supplies attributed to fracking.

Fitch saw the movie “numerous times” and doesn’t think too highly of it.

“That so-called documentary is for entertainment purposes. It’s not conveying facts. Accidents happen,” he said. “I’d be the last to say, ‘Don’t worry about it (fracking),’ but the movie doesn’t connect cause and effect. It’s sensationalism. He purposely went out of his way to find problem areas. It’s like saying we had a plane crash three or four years ago so we shouldn’t have any more air traffic. It doesn’t mean would should cease all activity.”

Chapman said the goal of the moratorium is to see regulations “tightened up that would not turn us into another gimmick,” like Pennsylvania.

Clift said MEC supports BWL’s new cogeneration plant. “We think it’s part of the alternative energy plan we laid out for the utility,” he said.

When asked if a moratorium on new horizontal drilling permits would be beneficial, Stojic of BWL said: “I don’t think so.” He believes a widespread decision from federal regulators in the next year or two should chart the course of the fracking industry. But to step away from natural gas means possibly reverting to coal — a “trade-off,” he said.

“What I am interested in is prudent drilling,” he said. “Reasonable controls to protect the environment and absolutely protect our drinking water.”

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