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In 2011, Fracking Was #2 In Causing Greenhouse Gas In US

Posted by timothy on from the with-a-little-ambition-it-can-rise-to-the-top dept.

eldavojohn writes "According to Bloomberg, drilling and fracking results in greenhouse gases second only to coal power plants in the United States. From the article, 'Emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011, second only to power plants, which emitted about 10 times that amount.' According to Mother Jones, we now have more giant methane fireballs than any other country in the world and we can now see once dim North Dakota at night from space."

27 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. fræk by alphatel · · Score: 3, Funny

    fracking / fræk*ing /
    1. The number two contributor to global warming in the U.S.
    2. The leading cause of throw-downs on Battlestar Galactica.

    --
    When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
  2. Left out the important qualifier... by cirby · · Score: 5, Informative

    "from stationary sources"

    Kinda forgot automobiles and other vehicles.

    Not to mention that once you exclude cars and power plants, third place is pretty far down the list.

    1. Re:Left out the important qualifier... by hallkbrdz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hydraulic fracturing does not release CO2, burning fuels does. It just helps get about 30% of what is trapped in rock, out of the ground for our use. However they are accurate when they state that “This report confirms that major carbon reductions from power plants wouldn’t be possible without a reliable and affordable supply of domestically produced natural gas," Yes, carbon-based energy sources do release some CO2, although Natural Gas by quite less a margin than Coal or Oil. Now if you want to write a story on something worthwile, how about one on the worthless DOE and NRC. They should be encouraging the use of Atomic energy with new generation breeder reactors that can use up of the "spent" fuel from old-style light water reactors instead of having it lie around parking lots in rusty containers. And meanwhile also continue research on Fusion reactors. But no, we have to push minor energy sources such as wind and solar. And then even negative energy sources (actually drains) like Ethanol. But to be honest, what I really want to know is - why I never see articles on banning soda pop, beer, or champagne? They also release mass amounts of CO2 when consumed. I know - Science has nothing to do with this - it is all political (AKA who's paying me the most to tear down their opponents). Sigh...

    2. Re:Left out the important qualifier... by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hydraulic fracturing does not release CO2, burning fuels does. It just helps get about 30% of what is trapped in rock, out of the ground for our use. H

      Fracking releases methane. That's the greenhouse gas they're talking about.

    3. Re:Left out the important qualifier... by IdolizingStewie · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hydraulic fracturing does not release CO2, burning fuels does.

      OK, I work in the industry. I am pro-hydraulic fracturing. But, how exactly do you think hydraulic fracturing works? It's a very energy-intensive process. On a fairly low end frac in a gas shale, you're trying to force 2500 gpm down a 2 mile long 4.5" ID pipe against 8000 psi of pressure. You burn a lot of diesel doing that. A ballpark number for a well in my field (which is much more difficult - higher rate, longer pipe, smaller ID, and higher pressure) is 80 kgal of diesel. Luckily, it only happens once for most wells, so if you average it out over the 20 year life of the well it's not bad, but it's actually all happening in about a week.

      Don't ruin a good comment with glaringly obvious incorrect facts.

    4. Re:Left out the important qualifier... by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2

      When you loot toward the future, and gas is getting scarce how stupid will this look in retrospect?

      Nice insightful typo :)

      I think I'll adopt the phrase "future looters" to describe such practices from now on (wasting sidestream resources because it's not currently cost beneficial to preserve them while using others).

    5. Re: Left out the important qualifier... by Woldscum · · Score: 2

      http://tptenergy.com/

      My day job is building gas turbine powered frack pumps. We run on field gas direct from the ground with only a dryer and compressor.

    6. Re:Left out the important qualifier... by guises · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The purpose of fracking is to collect natural gas, not to release it. The problem isn't necessarily fracking itself, just the sloppy unregulated fracking that we have now.

  3. Incorrect Headline by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 5, Informative
    Everyone in the comboxes of the second article points out this error. From TFA:

    Natural gas and oil production is the second-biggest source of U.S. greenhouse gases, the government said, emboldening environmentalists who say tighter measures are needed to curb the emissions from hydraulic fracturing.

    [Emphasis mine]

    1. Re:Incorrect Headline by Entrope · · Score: 2

      You don't even have to get that far, you just have to minimally comprehend the bit that the blurb quotes from the article: "Emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011, second only to power plants".

  4. Misleading Post and 2nd Article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Comments posted in 2nd article:

    "The reference article is based on the oil and gas industry as a whole being the number 2 CO2 contributer. The study didn't look into the contributions of fracking operations seperately. The title of this article is misleading."

    "The post misrepresents the report. The 225 million metric tons of CO2e is for all oil and natural gas production, processing, storage, and transport (it does not include refineries). It is not just fracking. Furthermore, that's only 6.8% of emissions. Power plants top the list at 67.4%. The next two after oil and gas, refineries and chemicals, tie at 5.5%. So even if the 224 Mt were all from fracking then it would still not be a significant contributor relative to other sources."

    1. Re:Misleading Post and 2nd Article by 605dave · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A couple of points. First off the link is to the Motherboard site, not Mother Jones. And there are no links in that article to Mother Jones.

      Secondly, I am not sure why you think Mother Jones has no credibility. As a board member of that organization I am proud of our journalism, and the many awards we have received over the years.

      http://www.motherjones.com/about/press/awards-accolades

      --
      Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
  5. Why do we still flare ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why not use that energy to do something useful with it ? Apparently energy is still too cheap if we can afford that.

    1. Re:Why do we still flare ? by olsmeister · · Score: 2

      I've always thought it strange they don't use a gas turbine or something similar to generate electricity, either to help power the drill site or to feed back into the power grid.

    2. Re:Why do we still flare ? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Informative

      Cost money. A fair amount of money.

      In North Dakota, they are starting to do exactly that - build out a compressor / filter plant and hook it next to a turbine to run the rigs. Economically viable only in areas that are 1) starved for power and 2) have enough infrastructure density to make spending a half a million on the plant sensible.

      Remember, places that don't have pipelines are often the same places that don't have high voltage feeder lines. The Middle of Nowhere.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  6. And the #1 by rossdee · · Score: 5, Informative

    And the #1 reduction in US emitted greenhouse gasses is due to coal power plants being replaced by less Co2 emitting natural gas electricity generation.

  7. Mooo! by noelhenson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Or cows?
    http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html

    1. Re:Mooo! by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 4, Informative

      As a cautionary tale though, I checked with the EPA website, and their figures indicate that electricity(40%) and transportation(31%) are the largest contributors to U.S. CO2 emissions from 1990-2010. It may indeed be determined one day that the sacrifice in land and water resources is too great to sustain the First World luxury that is the ribeye steak (sorry about that, grandchildren), but I would grudgingly eat lab-grown protein way, way, way before I would be willing to live without power and a horseless carriage.

      CO2 is non synonymous with greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases include CO2. Methane is 21x more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas according to this EPA methane page . Therefore it's possible (at least theoretically) that the effects of leaks of natural gas can exceed the effects of burning that gas.

  8. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  9. Mother Jones?! by Walzmyn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After all the whining and complaining that goes on this site when Foxnews is cited, we're posting articles from Mother Freaking Jones?

  10. More politics on /. by jmichaelg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the article:
    > “We know how to fix many of these problems; we just need to make the decision to do it.”

    From this article, U.S. CO2 emissions are at a 20 year low

    Combine the two ideas and you have to wonder if there are people with an agenda to kill fracking no matter what the facts are as opposed to ensuring fracking is done sensibly.

  11. Not just fracking by jamesl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From TFA ...
    In its second-annual accounting of emissions that cause global warming from stationary sources, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the first time included oil and natural- gas production. Emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011, second only to power plants, which emitted about 10 times that amount.

    1. From stationary sources -- how about planes, trains and automobiles.
    2. Fracking is just part of what is included in "oil and gas production."
    3. "The EPA report showed the benefits of fracking, as it attributed the reduction to cuts in coal use and increased use of gas as fuel by electricity generators."

  12. Good grief. by rayvd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slashdot has become entirely too political. This isn't even close to being accurate and with all the shots the site takes at Fox News and such you'd think there'd be some pot calling ketlte black type self-awareness when throwing this sort of thing out there...

    I'll miss the true technical stuff, but time to yank the site out of the ol RSS reader and find something better.

  13. Re:America largest Co2 contributer to the planet by SunSw0rd · · Score: 2

    America largest Co2 contributer to the planet

    No supprises there.

    Actually, that would be China.

  14. Re:Yep it's true by kick6 · · Score: 2

    I follow this closely. It's true. It's unfortunate because natural gas has the potential to be key player in reducing CO2 emissions. See this for how we can leverage today's, existing technology into an effective response to global warming.

    http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/

    We need to speak with ONE voice- "fracking" needs to be the most tightly regulated industry in the history of humankind- all but nationalized in fact. No secret formulas. No fracking without studies on everything from earth quakes to CO2 emissions to groundwater contamination and constant detail monitoring. The companies will make their profit, but there is NO room for laissez-faire jack shit.

    If you're into exciting unregulated industries with 1000% profit margins, fuck you, go invest in next year's Xmas toy fad. This industry needs to have all the excitement of a yearly WD-40 shareholder stock dividend event.

    There's some good, even essential, baby in that bathwater - don't throw it out; regulate the holy fuck out of the entire industry.

    So what is it, exactly, that you follow closely? Cuz so far you've demonstrated very little knowledge of the O&G industry. Well, beyond environmentalist boilerplate. So is that what you follow closely?

  15. Watch the numbers by redelm · · Score: 2

    ... figures don't lie, but liars figure.

    In this case, it looks like they've added all the natgas pipeline losses & emissions -- both the fugitives (methane at high CO2 equivalence multiplier) and the turbocompressor stations. Nevermind that most are on conventional gas.

    Frac'ing * drilling most certainly have some emissions (mud outgassing) but these are too small to make a nice headline.

  16. Re:Nobody wants to live near a wind farm? by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2

    Personally, I wouldn't mind living near a wind farm; however, I've seen all the feedback from people who actually live near them, and it tends to be negative.

    They really aren't much like windmills; partly because there are so m any turbines.

    Here's some actual reports though:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/david-dodge/living-near-a-wind-farm_b_1910707.html
    http://mywinddiary.blogspot.ca/
    http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbines-health.htm
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/07/11/pol-cp-wind-turbines-health-canada-study.html