If the sign says 'Do not drink this water'...would you?
While this website has covered the debate about shale gas and the methods of extracting it before now (namely, fracking. See: “Fracking – Not Just a Sci-Fi Swear Word“) there are yet more opinions and views to be examined, given that the water pollution in Pennsylvania in the US has reached desperate levels.
WHAT’S HAPPENING AND WHY?
Ten years ago, people did not know about this gas, let alone how ‘easy’ it would be to extract from the ground. Easy, maybe, but with such an impact on the environment and on human and animal life, is it really the way to go?
Speaking to the BBC, Professor Rob Jackson of Duke University in North Carolina, said; “We found some extremely high concentrations of methane: 64 milligrams of methane per litre of drinking water, compared with a normal level of one milligram or lower[…]” Given that the difference is so low – over sixty-four times what it would normally be – what then can we assume is going to be the impact of the rising concentrations of methane? Certainly worry about the levels reaching explosive hazard levels is one such impact, according to Professor Jackson. As the Nicholas Professor of Global Change for Duke University, Professor Jackson recently co-authored a paper entitled “Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing” in which he, along with Stephen G Osbourn, Avner Vengosh and Nathaniel R Warner, published their findings from a series of experiments on drinking water in the north-eastern states of Pennsylvania and New York. The scientists took sixty-eight samples from private water wells; the majority came back contaminated by methane and similar toxic substances above the norm.
Indeed, samples taken from ground water supplies near shale gas drilling sites indicate that methane concentrations are increasing to seventeen times above normal. Given that methane is poisonous, it is easy to see why people are starting to panic.
WHY ARE WE STILL MINING SHALE GAS?
If shale gas mining increases the contamination of the atmosphere and the water supplies with methane, why then is it still being used as a way to obtain cheap fuel? And there is the answer. Comparatively, shale gas is cheaper and quicker to obtain from the ground than its counterparts. As well there is, as of yet, no indications that methane can directly poison people through the water we drink. The greatest risks from shale gas mining seem to be in the explosive factor of the operation. Professor Jackson has stated that he cannot find any “[…]peer reviewed literature on the health effects of low level methane on people[…]” but that he and his colleagues are calling for a medical review of chronic and/or low-level exposure to methane.
The rising methane concentrations in the ground water supply can probably be attributed to ‘leaky gas well casings’ – it is certainly the simplest explanation, but it does lack any semblance of reassurance to the public; if it is simply an issue with faulty equipment, why has the equipment not been replaced and why are the concentrations of methane in the water supply still rising? There is another possibility, but one that strikes Professor Jackson as being less likely – that the gas escapes into the water through fissures in the bedrock that could possibly be caused by the process of fracking; that is, the method of extracting shale gas by funnelling five million gallons of liquid through fissures to, essentially, push the gas out from each hidden well underground. After all, as Professor Jackson has pointed out, there is no evidence yet of contamination in the drinking water supplies from liquids used in the fracking process.
Clearly, this debate is far from over. Professor Jackson and his team have published a paper outlining their recommendations and highlighting what must absolutely be addressed in examining whether the industry of shale gas mining needs to be readdressed. However, when there are videos appearing on the web that show people setting fire to water coming from their kitchen taps, it is difficult to imagine how there could ever be an advantage to such a product.
