There have been reports of methane bubbling out of kitchen taps.Īn earthquake of 3.0 magnitude occurred in March 2014 in Ohio within 1km of active fracking operations. Methane is flammable, so can cause explosions. For example, researchers found evidence of dissolved methane in drinking water wells in New York and Pennsylvania associated with shale-gas extraction. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b05503 ( About DOIs).Fracking has been linked to a number of issues including: And it comes down to techniques used and equipment integrity-a leaky valve is a leaky valve regardless of what kind of well you connect it to.Įnvironmental Science & Technology, 2016. Of course, less leakage is always better.Īlthough this comparison isn’t perfectly apples-to-fracked-apples, it does indicate that leakage is a problem common to all natural gas production. That’s low enough that natural gas still beats a coal-fired power plant handily, in terms of climate impact. Add it all together, and that’s about 1.4 percent of the area’s natural gas production. The roughly 3,400 fracked wells-which produced almost twenty times as much natural gas-leak an estimated 490 billion grams per year. There over 88,000 conventional natural gas wells active in Pennsylvania and West Virginia with their high fraction of leakage but low production, they add up to an estimated 660 billion grams of leaked methane per year. The researchers carefully attempted to scale these results up to the total number of natural gas wells in the region. The techniques required by the new regulation make a big difference. All four were among the leakiest fracked sites, but the flared site was significantly worse than the other three. Yet three of the four flowback sites were already doing it, with the fourth burning off the gas. Advertisementįurther Reading Measuring the heck out of shale gas leakage in TexasAnd what about the fracked wells going through the sputtering “flowback” process? New regulations requiring capture of that natural gas hadn’t yet kicked in at the time the researchers were out making measurements. The researchers brought along an infrared camera that makes methane gas about as visible as steam, and they spotted a number of leaks from rusty pipes and fittings, as well as broken pressure regulators, at these older sites. Regulations on equipment and maintenance have been tightened in recent years, and some of the conventional well sites had seen better days.
![demographics around fracked natural gas wells demographics around fracked natural gas wells](https://i0.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/100/131/GN160113THOMASEAN_tnb_2.jpg)
That’s the first complication for our leakage comparison. While some of these fracked wells are shiny and new (the average age was just 2.5 years), the conventional gas wells are considerably older.
![demographics around fracked natural gas wells demographics around fracked natural gas wells](https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/frackedwellchildren.jpg)
This is the phase with the greatest potential for leakage, depending on how the process is handled-gas can be carefully captured, or it can simply be burned off until the water clears out. By checking their measurements of those gases downwind, they could calculate the true natural gas leak rate.įour of the fracked sites were in the “flowback” stage where the water used to hydraulically fracture the rock is being sputtered back out of the well by the initial flow of natural gas. Right next to the gas wells, they set up tanks of nitrous oxide and acetylene and opened the valves to leak at a constant rate. To control for the dilution of the leaked gas as it spread and swirled in the wind, they added a leak of their own.
![demographics around fracked natural gas wells demographics around fracked natural gas wells](https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/GP0STPZQ2_Medium_res_with_credit_line-1024x683.jpg)
Between 100 meters and a kilometer downwind, they made methane and ethane measurements.
![demographics around fracked natural gas wells demographics around fracked natural gas wells](https://crooksandliars.com/files/primary_image/14/01/11932002616_9fe52f7d58_z.jpg)
The researchers visited 18 conventional natural gas sites and 17 fracked sites (including 88 fracked wells, which are commonly drilled down from a central pad before splaying out horizontally). A study by a Carnegie Mellon University group led by Mark Omara measured leakage at both conventional and fracked wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But “conventional” natural gas wells-vertical wells drilled through porous rocks that give up natural gas without the need for new fractures-have always leaked. methane leaked: Fracking’s impact on climate changeThe public debate has treated this leakage issue as specific to the process of fracking.