Unless you have closed out all forms of news media in your life, you’ve probably heard about “fracking” for natural gas in this country and around the world.
The conventional method of drilling for oil and gas utilizes a vertical or diagonal pipeline directed into prospective oil or gas pockets. However, since hydraulic fracking came along a decade or so ago, exploration companies have been able to drill to different locations in the earth and then turn their drills horizontally to follow a desired rock stratum such as shale. Millions of gallons of water are shot down the pipe at extreme pressure, which fractures open, or “fracks,” the rock, releasing trapped gas. Because of this unconventional technique, natural gas has undergone a boom in supply to the point of depressing its own market.
If this natural gas bonanza was actually the country’s answer to becoming more independent of foreign energy sources, and thereby avoiding international conflicts, then why would the gas industry not keep this energy supply within our borders rather than selling it in the world market? Probably the answer is, in reality, the industry is more interested in topdollars than all of their homeland security boasting indicates.
Patriotic fl ag-waving about energy independence has not slowed down in-trade advertising campaigns, and the reality of where loyalties lie will show up when homeland prices begin to soar. The industry is self-inducing competition for their supply as large quantities of liquefi ed gas are sold globally at rates three to five times domestic prices. Resulting increasing costs will become especially painful in this country if the promotion of natural gas conversion for trucks, buses, cars, power plants, factories, etc., is as successful as folks such as T. Boone Pickens plan it to be. (Remember, Mr. Money-Above-All-Else is also buying up water rights and aquifer areas - “the new oil” of greatest human value and necessity.)
The complexities of the gigantic fossil fuel industry are beyond the scope of most of us to understand in great depth and detail, but fortunately some folks, who are independent from industry infl uence, can and do challenge claims regarding resource reserves, production peaks andprojections, jobs creation and environmental damage denials. One such driving force for industry honesty and disclosure is Deborah Rogers of Fort Worth, Texas.
Rogers, a former fi nancial analyst, researcher and founder of the Energy Policy Forum, will be in Fayetteville Thursday (reception at 6 p.m., program at 6:30 p.m.) at the Pat Walker Senior Center (corner of North Hills Boulevard and Appleby Drive). Sponsors of Rogers’ talk, which is free and open to the public, are the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology, the Ozark Headwaters Group of the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters and Arkansas Interfaith Power and Light. More information is available at 479-527-2777.
Her program, “Shale and Wall Street,” will explain her fi ndings of how industry claims and real world numbers are not matching and how investors and public policy makers need to comprehend their responsibility for the nightmare these inconsistencies are creating for the economy and the environment. Just as it was diftcult for people to see what ramifi cations the bursting housing bubble would have to the U.S.
and world economies, it is also hard to foresee what an exploding energysupply bubble, which has been puffed up far out of proportion to reality, will have on global economies.
Rogers often points out our country is being drilled to meet the debt service private industry owes to their banks (Wall Street), which have allowed them to borrow against unproven and unstable resources. Sound familiar?
Richard Heinberg, author of “Snake Oil,” put it this way:
“The promise of economicfossil energy abundance is a mirage. Like a thirsty desert castaway, we chase the mirage even though it lures us to our doom. Dazzled by the prospects of a hundred years of cheap natural gas or oil independence, we embrace an energy policy of ‘all of the above’ that is hardly distinguishable from having no energy policy at all. With every passing year, the fossil fuel industry consumes a larger portion of global (gross domestic product), reducing society’sability to fund an energy transition. And every year the environmental costs of continued fossil fuel reliance compound.
Everything depends upon our recognizing the mirage for what it is, and getting on with the project of the century.” FRAN ALEXANDER IS A FAYETTEVILLE RESIDENT WITH A LONGSTANDING INTEREST IN THE ENVIRONMENT AND AN OPINION ON ALMOST ANYTHING ELSE.
Opinion, Pages 13 on 10/13/2013