18 July 2013
The Approaching Perfect Storm in Agriculture and Energy
About 60 years ago, US petroleum producers developed a new method for drilling into very deep oil deposits. By injecting high volume, high powered water jets into the wells, oil was much easier and more economical to extract from the earth. This same technology has developed for extracting oil from shale deposits, natural gas from reservoirs and other deep well operations. Fracking is one aspect of this drilling and extraction technology that has fostered the current boom in accessing the huge natural gas reserves within North America.
The Keystone pipeline from Canada to the Caribbean Sea would transport oil and natural gas from Canadian shale deposits. Ironically, the Canadian oil producers cannot build their pipeline from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia due to political opposition from First Nation groups and others reluctant to grant the easements needed for this pipeline. The pressure being applied in Washington and in the transit States is enormous; billions of US and Canadian dollars are at stake for the oil industry. What has not been demonstrated, however, is the refining capacity in Texas and Louisiana for this influx of product. Nevertheless, unrefined product could be shipped overseas to other refineries--adding cost and foreign governmental control risks for shipping the refined products back to the US--or risking our economic well-being should we become dependent on the income from selling natural gas and petroleum to foreign buyers.
To date, opposition to fracking in various communities focuses on the potential for polluting the underground water supplies from which we obtain potable water for drinking and cooking in addition to our rivers and lake supplies of fresh water. In the current newsletter ProPublica, Abraham Lustgarten reports that Mexico City is planning to access drinking water from an aquifer that is being polluted by US drilling companies. See http://www.propublica.org/series/injection-wells for extensive reporting on this subject. Lustgarten points out that the dumping of toxic liquids into very deep wells is intended to go deeper than any water resources we would ever use. Our state and federal regulators have not been inspecting these wells for several years, which I attribute to industry and Congressional resistance to funding sufficient inspectors and auditors within the environmental protection agencies.
Many persons believe that natural gas is a "clean" substitute for gasoline, diesel and other refined petroleum products. Therefore, they reason, we should maximize our use of this abundant resource because we can become entirely reliant on domestic energy resources and no longer held hostage to the international petroleum market. Furthermore, they reason, allowing producing companies to use fracking for extracting natural gas from shale, is an acceptable method based on the extensive information and data provided by the petroleum industry over the years.
I do not support fracking or the energy strategy of considering Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) or natural gas in its gaseous state as an acceptable means of solving our dependence on oil and its products. It was no coincidence that T. Boon Pickens was seen on numerous television talk shows and testified to Congressional committees over the past three years. He owns or controls most of the natural gas reserves in the United States and probably in much of Canada. That fact alone does not disqualify natural gas as a substitute for petroleum energy products and use. His efforts have influenced public opinion and the attitudes of many in Congress. I cite Pickens merely as a source of favorable public opinion on using natural gas.
There are other reasons for opposing facking in particular. The method breaks up shale deposits several thousand feet below the Earth's surface allowing natural gas to go where nature had not intended it to be. The Earth's populations should be conserving and improving resources of potable water and fighting technology that threatens the future of water resources.
One underground resource vital to the survival of the human being is water in the aquifer. It is easy to forget how delicate human beings environmental boundaries are. For example, our body temperature limits survival within only seven (7) degrees Fahrenheit. We consider a normal, healthy temperature at approximately 98.6°F and we consider ourselves to be ill whenever our body temperature varies by more than a degree or two from that norm. Fevers in infants can rise to 104°F as a function of establishing its own immune system, yet a fever of that measure in an adult can cause serious injury or be a predictor of imminent death. Likewise, the human body cannot tolerate lowered body temperatures without risk of permanent damage to vital functions. Quite often, variations in body temperature are indicative of serious deficiencies of electrolytes, minerals and salts caused by dehydration, or serious imbalances in same that can manifest as extreme personality changes, inability to orient oneself where one is, and other effects on the functioning of vital organs.
As I have written in another post, there is a danger for human life and the food and water we consume should energy policy dictates cause contention among agriculture, human water consumption, and extraction methods such as fracking for our energy needs.
While this year's (2013) extreme heat waves over much of North America do not establish a trend, over time scientists see this year's weather patterns as part of a long-range warming trend, aka global warming. Winters are shorter and extreme weather patterns seem to be greater in winter; in the other seasons, the patterns of water replenishment of arable soil by melting ice and snow plus rain seem to be more localized with flooding and drought trending over several years. Severe storms seem more destructive and more frequent.
The complexity of variables entailed in setting local, state and federal policies for agriculture, energy and natural resources management should cause our centers of government to be less tied to a single lobby's or industry's interests and more open to the idea of the interdependent nature of our exploitation of and planning for using our water, petroleum and natural gas resources. At the moment, the public needs to ensure the policy makers and regulators understand this complexity.
The Keystone pipeline from Canada to the Caribbean Sea would transport oil and natural gas from Canadian shale deposits. Ironically, the Canadian oil producers cannot build their pipeline from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia due to political opposition from First Nation groups and others reluctant to grant the easements needed for this pipeline. The pressure being applied in Washington and in the transit States is enormous; billions of US and Canadian dollars are at stake for the oil industry. What has not been demonstrated, however, is the refining capacity in Texas and Louisiana for this influx of product. Nevertheless, unrefined product could be shipped overseas to other refineries--adding cost and foreign governmental control risks for shipping the refined products back to the US--or risking our economic well-being should we become dependent on the income from selling natural gas and petroleum to foreign buyers.
To date, opposition to fracking in various communities focuses on the potential for polluting the underground water supplies from which we obtain potable water for drinking and cooking in addition to our rivers and lake supplies of fresh water. In the current newsletter ProPublica, Abraham Lustgarten reports that Mexico City is planning to access drinking water from an aquifer that is being polluted by US drilling companies. See http://www.propublica.org/series/injection-wells for extensive reporting on this subject. Lustgarten points out that the dumping of toxic liquids into very deep wells is intended to go deeper than any water resources we would ever use. Our state and federal regulators have not been inspecting these wells for several years, which I attribute to industry and Congressional resistance to funding sufficient inspectors and auditors within the environmental protection agencies.
Many persons believe that natural gas is a "clean" substitute for gasoline, diesel and other refined petroleum products. Therefore, they reason, we should maximize our use of this abundant resource because we can become entirely reliant on domestic energy resources and no longer held hostage to the international petroleum market. Furthermore, they reason, allowing producing companies to use fracking for extracting natural gas from shale, is an acceptable method based on the extensive information and data provided by the petroleum industry over the years.
I do not support fracking or the energy strategy of considering Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) or natural gas in its gaseous state as an acceptable means of solving our dependence on oil and its products. It was no coincidence that T. Boon Pickens was seen on numerous television talk shows and testified to Congressional committees over the past three years. He owns or controls most of the natural gas reserves in the United States and probably in much of Canada. That fact alone does not disqualify natural gas as a substitute for petroleum energy products and use. His efforts have influenced public opinion and the attitudes of many in Congress. I cite Pickens merely as a source of favorable public opinion on using natural gas.
There are other reasons for opposing facking in particular. The method breaks up shale deposits several thousand feet below the Earth's surface allowing natural gas to go where nature had not intended it to be. The Earth's populations should be conserving and improving resources of potable water and fighting technology that threatens the future of water resources.
One underground resource vital to the survival of the human being is water in the aquifer. It is easy to forget how delicate human beings environmental boundaries are. For example, our body temperature limits survival within only seven (7) degrees Fahrenheit. We consider a normal, healthy temperature at approximately 98.6°F and we consider ourselves to be ill whenever our body temperature varies by more than a degree or two from that norm. Fevers in infants can rise to 104°F as a function of establishing its own immune system, yet a fever of that measure in an adult can cause serious injury or be a predictor of imminent death. Likewise, the human body cannot tolerate lowered body temperatures without risk of permanent damage to vital functions. Quite often, variations in body temperature are indicative of serious deficiencies of electrolytes, minerals and salts caused by dehydration, or serious imbalances in same that can manifest as extreme personality changes, inability to orient oneself where one is, and other effects on the functioning of vital organs.
As I have written in another post, there is a danger for human life and the food and water we consume should energy policy dictates cause contention among agriculture, human water consumption, and extraction methods such as fracking for our energy needs.
While this year's (2013) extreme heat waves over much of North America do not establish a trend, over time scientists see this year's weather patterns as part of a long-range warming trend, aka global warming. Winters are shorter and extreme weather patterns seem to be greater in winter; in the other seasons, the patterns of water replenishment of arable soil by melting ice and snow plus rain seem to be more localized with flooding and drought trending over several years. Severe storms seem more destructive and more frequent.
The complexity of variables entailed in setting local, state and federal policies for agriculture, energy and natural resources management should cause our centers of government to be less tied to a single lobby's or industry's interests and more open to the idea of the interdependent nature of our exploitation of and planning for using our water, petroleum and natural gas resources. At the moment, the public needs to ensure the policy makers and regulators understand this complexity.
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