A Revolution Underground: A Sneak Peek

by CAEPLA














2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations
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2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations
Unconventional natural gas has been called a geopolitical game changer, a low-emission bridge fuel so
abundant that it could meet energy needs for the next 100 years, enabling a smooth transition from
higher-carbon fossil fuels to clean alternatives such as wind and solar. In the words of Aubrey
McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy( one of the largest producers of natural gas in the U.S.),
unconventional gasspecifically shale gas 1
MC u u n
Copenhagen.
Just four or five years ago, the industry was having to look at importing gas simply to satisfy the
1 P CLC 8 Today the situation is very
differenta quiet revolution has occurred in the gas fields of North America. New techniques such as
hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling are accessing deposits of unconventional tight and shale gas,
and coal bed methane.
But those new techniques reveal a more troubling side to this quiet revolution. Unconventional gas is
accessible only because of technological advances in hydraulic fracturing, or fracing (pronounced
fracking, the word is now commonly spelled with a k, though the industry has long spelled it without a
k), a process which involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and a proprietary mix of
chemicals deep underground at a pressure level high enough to fracture rock. This enables trapped gas
to flow into the long wells that have been drilled down vertically and then turned horizontally through
the shale at lengths of up to three kilometers or more.
Throughout the United States and Canada, a growing number of farmers, ranchers, landowners, and
others are claiming that hydraulic fracturing and related processes are the cause of health and
environmental impacts ranging in severity from headaches and skin rashes to contaminated water and
dead cattle to neurological disorders, tumours, radioactive wastes, and earthquakes. The oil and gas
ty that hydraulic fracturing is to blame, and to
dismiss as ignorant those who would stand in the way of unconventional gas development.
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Chesapeake CEO A MC ! l

CAEPLA (Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations), an organization that
believes in the importance of environmental stewardship and private property rights while at the same
time being pro-development, decided in 2010 that it was uniquely positioned to investigate the issue of
hydraulic fracturing. With the anecdotes of frustrated landowners on one hand and the in
blanket denials on the other, an open and honest debate on the issue has been lacking. Such a debate is
sorely needed. In well-developed areas such as the Barnett Shale of Texas, drilling and fracing are
happening in proximity to airports, community colleges, and elementary schools. With tens of
thousands of unconventional gas wells projected to be drilled and fraced in areas such as the Horn River
Basin of British Columbia and the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, New York, and other states, the
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2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations
potential consequences are too great for landowners and government regulators to accept such
development without a thorough investigation of hydraulic fracturing.
A CALLA ts on
hydraulic fracturing and related processes, and determine whether fracing could in fact be responsible
for groundwater contamination and other health and environmental impacts. 1 CALLA
investigation is a book, A Revolution Underground: The History, Economics & Environmental Impacts of
Hydraulic Fracturing, which offers an in-
safety of hydraulic fracturing, the volumes of water that fracing requires, the chemicals used in the
fracing process, and the methods used to dispose of fracing wastes (including injection wells, which have
been an alleged cause of groundwater contamination and elevated seismic activity).
Though CAEPLA is a Canadian organization, fracing originated in the U.S., and unconventional gas
development in the U.S. is several years ahead of Canadian development. A Revolution Underground is
thus focused primarily, though not exclusively, on the development of fracing in the United States. The
book also covers the rapid and massive expansion of unconventional gas exploration and development
worldwide, an issue that has generally received insufficient attention outside of the oil and gas
media publications.
Much of the information contained in A Revolution Underground comes from original sources, and has
not appeared elsewhere. The following are just some of the questions and industry claims that were
investigated by CAEPLA, and that are covered more extensively in A Revolution Underground.
CLAIM: Hydraulic fracturing is 60 years old, and has been performed on more than one million wells.
d
There have been hundreds of thousands of hydraulic fracturing procedures performed on wells in the
United States and globally, and there have been essentially no instances of groundwater contamination

--ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson in May 2010
From A Revolution Underground:
1
L
jobs with current fra
comparison. According to Hydraulic Fracturing by George Howard and C. Robert Fast, which was
1
first decade in which fracing was primarily used to increase recoverable reserves in tight formations.
P l
were performed every month; by 1966, the rate had declined to about 2,000 fracs a month.
P Surface Operations in Petroleum Production, Volume II
by George Chilingarian, John Robertson, and Sanjay Kumar, reveal that a typical frac job in 1955 used
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2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations
about 600 hydraulic horsepower [hhp] and 10,000 gallons of fluid. By 1972, it was roughly 1,250 hhp and
40,000 gallons of fluid. In other words, the half a million hydraulic fracturing jobs performed before
1970 used pumps with about as much horsepower as a Suzuki Bandit street motorcycle, and just enough
fluid to fill the swimming pool at a bed and breakfast. In contrast, in March 2005, Oil & Gas Journal
8 lage of

1 W L l ! P 8 8C A
258,888,611 gallons of fluid. Finally, only over the past decade has hydraulic fracturing technology been
combined with horizontal drilling, multi-well pads, and slickwater fracturing. Multi-well pads and cluster
drilling were introduced in 2007, and the multi-stage slickwater fracturing of horizontal wells was
introduced in 2002.
CLAIM: Hydraulic fracturing has never been the cause of groundwater contamination.
^
high as 2 percent, resulting in thousands upon thousands of environmental disasters. To reiterate the
facts, there has not been 2 percent, .2 percent or.0000002 percent failure rate. The correct failure
percentage resulting in USDW contamination is 0 percent.
--Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission Associate Executive Director Gerry Baker in June 2009
From A Revolution Underground:
Buried in a three-volume report to Congress by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from
u M W L, Development, and Production of Crude
C n C C L W v
u LA
be produced, allowing migration of native brine, fracturing fluid, and hydrocarbons from
the oil or gas well to a nearby water well. When this happens, the water well can be permanently
damaged and a new well must be drilled or an alternative source of dr
The water well contamination occurred when Kaiser Gas Company drilled and fraced a gas well on the
! 1
LA 1 M
depth of 416 feet), according to an analysis by the West Virginia Environmental Health Services Lab of
well water samples taken from the property. Dark and light gelatinous material (fracturing fluid) was
found, along with white fibers. (The gas well is located less than 1,000 feet from the water well.) The
chief of the laboratory advised that the water well was contaminated and unfit for domestic use, and
that an alternative source of domestic water had to be found. Analysis showed the water to contain high
levels of fluoride, sodium, iron, and manganese. The water, according to DNR officials, had a
hydrocarbon odor, indicating the presence of gas. To date Mr. Parsons has not resumed use of the well

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2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations
The EPA account concluded with a now-startling admission from the American Petroleum Institute (API),
uS Al
water well] resulted from a malfunction of the fracturing process. If the fractures are not limited to the

QUESTION: Does the oil and gas industry have scientifically credible evidence that hydraulic fracturing
has never caused groundwater contamination?
From A Revolution Underground:
P -repeated industry
S P ed the first commercial fracturing treatment in 1949, over 1 million
wells have been successfully fractured by the industry in the United States. Operators now fracture
about 35,000 wells each year in the U.S. with no record of consequent harm to groundwat
The asterisk is an informal citation of an article published in Oil & Gas Journal on November 17, 2008.
1 u uS C
seeking to further regulate hydraulic fractur l -
OGJ A
C 8 l C & Gas
Compact Commission [IOGCC] completed a survey of the subject, nearly 1 million wells had been
hydraulically fraced. US producers now apply the technique to about 35,000 wells/year, regulated by
states. There is no record of consequent harm to groundw
1 lCCCC S L P l l -page
lCCCC 30 member
and seven associate states that produce virtually all the domestic oil and natural gas in the United
S 1 lCCCC

The single-page survey results listed each state, the year in which the state began regulating, whether
fracturing was done in state and for how long, the types of wells in the state (gas, oil, natural gas from
coal seams), approximate number of wells fractured annually, total number of wells fraced in state, the
percentage of wells fractured, and whether any impacts had been reported. The last column simply
PA8M nC
The level of scientific rigou lCCCC
states surveyed, only four were able to provide a specific year in which fracing was first performed in
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In essence, Halliburton, the company which pioneered hydraulic fracturing, cited as its best source for
the safety of hydraulic fracturing a single-page, non-scientific survey of state governors and regulators in
when hydraulic fracturing was first conducted in their
state. The survey also pre-dates the explosion in shale gas development and the use of high-volume
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2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations
contemporary fracing techniques and frac fluids: the results were released in 2002, the year in which
horizontal wells and multi-stage slickwater fracs were first widely introduced.
The integrity of some state regulators had also been questioned prior to the survey. In 2000, Sheila
McClanahan of Buchanan Citizens Action Group of Buchanan County, Virginia, submitted a statement to
the U.S. EPA in which she alleged that over 100 documented complaints of adverse effects of hydraulic
fracturing of coalbed methane wells had been received by the state, but were intentionally misclassified
and filed as impacts of long-wall coal mining.
QUESTION: Is there scientifically credible evidence that unconventional gas development has caused
groundwater contamination?
From A Revolution Underground:
Cases of groundwater contamination related to hydraulically fractured natural gas wells have been
documented in academic journals as far back as 1983, when Groundwater Journal published the article
L S C-Water Contamination Hazards Due to Gas-Well Drilling on the Glaciated
A S S Harrison, then a professor of geology at Allegheny College in
Pennsylvania.
l
S M C P
8 M
1
permits developers to market Medina gas at approximately double the normal price for new gas, making
Medina wells profitable despite high drilling and development costs. Because of the significant increase
in drilling activity, there has been limited but increasing ground-
QUESTION: Is hydraulic fracturing a precise science and can fracture behaviour be controlled?
From A Revolution Underground:
The following slide was featured during a presentation at a Society of Petroleum Engineers luncheon in
Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2008:
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2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations


CLAIM: Hydraulically fractured gas wells use about as much water as a golf course.
t
to fracturing. Any new water use in an area would create similar impacts a new golf course, shifts in

--Energy in Depth Executive Director Lee Fuller
From A Revolution Underground:
Using the low-end estimate of three gas wells per spacing unit rather than eight, and conservatively
assuming that P 8 8
P88 P
River play have together leased about 1.7 million acres, and are not the only operators in the region),
the estimated water usage totals are still difficult to comprehend. With 8,125 gas wells using 90,900
cubic meters of water per well (90,900 m
3
/well is the num S
hydrogeologist), the total water use for shale gas development in the Horn River Basin would be
1
11
in U.S. gallons or 738,562,500,000 liters.
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2012 Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations
Continuing with the golf course analogy suggests a province taken over by a monomaniacal combination
of Tiger Woods and Kim Jong-il: 738,562,500 cubic meters is enough water to meet the daily needs of
1.4 million golf courses or the annual water needs of 3,835 golf courses. A search C
provides 3,269 private golf courses in all of the United States, a country which has more than ten times
the total land area of British Columbia and about 68 times its population.
Using the same land usage figure (50% of the Horn River Basin), but switching to the high-end estimate
of eight gas wells per spacing unit, the estimated shale gas development water usage in the Horn River
Basin would be 1,969,500,000 cubic meters of water, which is 3.7 million daily golf courses or 10,200
year-round golf courses in British Columbia. There are about 17,000 public and private golf courses in all
of the United States.
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and water use estimates, refer only to water use in the Horn River Basin. They do not include potential
water usage in the Montney formation. Even if unconventional gas development in the Montneya
land area seven times larger than the Horn River Basin with the same amount (700 TCF) of estimated
unconventional gas reservesuses 30% less water than is needed in the Horn River Basin, shale gas
development in British Columbia would still require more water than is used in a single year by all of the
public and private golf courses in the United States combined.
For more information on A Revolution Underground, please contact CAEPLA staff by phone at 306-522-
5000 or by e-mail at admin@caepla.org.