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Is Natural Gas the Answer for Electricity Generation? Issues and Considerations October 14, 2011

Is Natural Gas the Answer for Electricity Generation? Issues and Considerations October 14, 2011. Bruce Baizel Staff Attorney Earthworks Durango, Colorado bruce@earthworksaction.org 970.259.3353. How do we use natural gas in the U.S.?.

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Is Natural Gas the Answer for Electricity Generation? Issues and Considerations October 14, 2011

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  1. Is Natural Gas the Answer for Electricity Generation? Issues and ConsiderationsOctober 14, 2011 Bruce Baizel Staff Attorney Earthworks Durango, Colorado bruce@earthworksaction.org 970.259.3353

  2. How do we use natural gas in the U.S.?

  3. Colorado: Energy Sources for Electricity Generation - 1999 and 2009

  4. The issues associated with natural gas production and consumption • Production • Working harder to produce less • It’s an industrial process • Rigs and trucks • What’s in that fluid • How much water will we use • Consumption • The air we breath • As things get hotter

  5. The Rat Race: drilling more just to keep up

  6. Colorado regulatory efforts

  7. The historical data on spills and incidents: what is the magnitude of the risk? • Data from 1990 through 2008 in Colorado and New Mexico indicated that 6% of natural gas wells have spills and that there is an average rate of 1.2 to 1.8 incidents per 100 gas wells that impact groundwater. • Data in West Virginia show a 1.5 per 100 well incident rate. • Recent data from Pennsylvania showed a 7 per 100 well incident rate.

  8. Spills related to oil and gas development in Colorado (2005-2010).

  9. Spills reported in Colorado: 2011 • Of the 343 spills reported this year through Sept. 2, Colorado groundwater was contaminated in 58 spills. Streams were contaminated 18 times. • Among the spills reported to state health officials this year, about 54 were related to oil and gas operations and released about 2.1 million gallons of "produced water" extracted during drilling, along with gas and fracking fluids, diesel fuel, oil and other chemicals. • Among spills reported by companies to COGCC regulators, the most occurred in Weld County, 114, followed by 55 in Garfield County, 34 in Las Animas County, 30 in Rio Blanco County and 12 in La Plata County.

  10. Water quality Issues Chemical Components Appearing Most Often in Hydraulic Fracturing Products Used Between 2005 and 2009 •Methanol (Methyl alcohol) 342 •Isopropanol (Isopropyl alcohol, Propan-2-ol) 274 •Crystalline silica - quartz (SiO2) 207 •Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (2-butoxyethanol) 126 •Ethylene glycol (1,2-ethanediol) 119 •Hydrotreated light petroleum distillates 89 •Sodium hydroxide (Caustic soda) 80

  11. Use of diesel in hydraulic fracturing • Between 2005 and 2009, oil and gas service companies injected 32.2 million gallons of diesel fuel or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel in wells in 19 states. • Diesel-containing fluids were used most frequently in Texas, which accounted for half of the total volume injected, 16 million gallons. The companies injected at least one million gallons of diesel-containing fluids in Oklahoma (3.3 million gallons), North Dakota (3.1 million gallons), Louisiana (2.9 million gallons), Wyoming (2.9 million gallons), and Colorado (1.3 million gallons.

  12. Water quantity issues • Estimates of the water quantity needed: • There are no reliable estimates statewide on the amount of water needed to drill and fracture either permitted or estimated wells. • This uncertainty is due to: • the absence of a coordinated state evaluation of water needs for natural gas production; • the variability in the number of wells that will actually be drilled; • variation in the ability to use recycled fluid instead of fresh water; • the uncertain legal availability of water for this use; and • geological variation by formation and water basin

  13. COMPARISON OF ESTIMATED WATER NEEDS FOR HYDRAULIC FRACTURING IN DIFFERENT REGIONS Water needed per fracture operation (gallons/well) •Fruitland coal 50,000 – 350,000 •Niobrara 1 – 5,000,000 •Barnett shale 2,300,000 •Haynesville shale 2,700,000 •Marcellus shale 3,800,000 ------------------------- Note: 5 million gallons is approx. 15 acre-feet of water

  14. Rigs, trucks and worker safety • 2001 – 2005: 11 fatalities in the oil and gas industry in Colorado • 2005 – 2010: 18 fatalities in the oil and gas industry in Colorado • 6 related to transportation • 8 related to work on the rigs • 2001 – 2010: U.S. average of 32 fatalities/year at coal mines • 3 fatalities at Colorado coal mines during this ten year period

  15. Gross Environmental Damage by Fuel Type-based upon use in power plants Note that the damages from coal are mainly due to mortality from direct pollutant emissions: SO2, PM2.5 and SOx.

  16. The data from the La Plata County emissions inventory • 49% of all GHG emissions in La Plata County are related to natural gas production. • Of these, 36% are methane. • Another 36% are from vented CO2. • The remaining 28% are largely from consumption of fuel during production. • So more than 70% of GHG emissions are simply released during production of natural gas.

  17. Coal vs. shale gas: how you produce it matters

  18. Coal vs. Shale gas in the climate debate: it also depends upon how you burn it

  19. Any questions?

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