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Oil and gas companies invade states across the country in hopes of cashing in on newly discovered “black gold.” Some states are eager for the modern day Gold Rush but hurrying to develop policy on the controversial extraction method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.  

The U.S. Environment Information Agency (EIA) estimates that 827 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves are recoverable. That compares to Saudi Arabia’s natural gas reserves estimated to total about 275 trillion cubic feet, according to the Oil and Natural Gas Journal.  

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years,” said President Barak Obama in his 2012 state of the union address.

These formations are so large that experts say the U.S. can now become an exporter of natural gas in the next twenty years.

To put this into perspective, 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to heat 15 million homes or to fuel 12 million natural-gas-fired vehicles for one year, according to the EIA.

The U.S. reserves address key national goals for energy independence and security. 

Thanks in part to hydraulic fracturing and the ability to drill horizontally, natural gas and oil trapped thousands of feet below the earth’s surface can now be extracted.

Hydraulic fracturing involves some 750 chemicals, some harmless such as salts or citric acid and some extremely toxic ones, such as benzene and lead, according to a congressional report issue in April 2011. The report noted that unexpected components such as instant coffee and walnut hulls appear in the mix.

Water under high pressure and sand also are used in the mix to penetrate shale rock formations that trap the oil and natural gas, almost sponge-like, deep in the earth.

Using fracking technology to tap newly found energy supplies leaves states across the U.S. debating regulations and oversight policies for fracking.

In Michigan this debate is now taking center stage.

“With energy prices continuing to soar, it is important that we develop diverse energy portfolio that protects Michigan consumers and also creates thousands of energy jobs throughout our state,” stated a report from the Michigan House of Representatives subcommittee on energy and job creation.

At the same time, Michigan is looking for ways to regulate fracking to protect the environment and residents. 

“In Michigan, we are fortunate to have a rule-making environment where the Office of Oil, Gas, and Minerals within the DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality), producers and concerned citizens have worked together to make sure Michigan continues to vigorously defend one of our states most valuable resources: our water,” stated the Michigan report, issued in April.

With the unemployment rate in the U.S. at around 8.2 percent, many states can benefit from this industry, which has plenty of room for employment.

“Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade,” Obama said in State of the Union address. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, oil and gas workers may not need a high school diploma and the median pay for those workers are about $18.00 per hour.

The northwestern region of North Dakota has seen a rapid increase in drilling. As of July 7, Baker Hughes, a consultant service that counts major oil and gas drilling rigs in the U.S. and Canada, confirmed that there are 196 total rigs that are operational in the state.

Compare this to three years ago when only about 70 rigs were operational.

With such rapid growth, some companies are having trouble finding employees. North Dakota’s unemployment rates have been steady since 2009, ranging from 3 percent to 4 percent.

But an increase in drilling in other states where the unemployment rates are high can help reduce it.

Take Michigan, for instance, where foreign competition and economic downturns hit the thriving car industry.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2000 to 2006 Michigan felt the largest decline of any Midwest auto production state.

Some 73,600 jobs were lost, a decline of 32.5 percent. In terms of weekly wages, Michigan auto workers experienced a 13.9 percent decline on average.

Not only can the oil and gas industries bring new jobs to states, they can create a chain reaction in which all parts of states economy can benefit.

The Michigan House of Representatives subcommittee report stated that job creation from oil and natural gas generates $2 billion in economic activity and that it already provides more than 8,000 direct jobs in Michigan. 

Yet, the oil and gas industry can’t solve all of Michigan’s economic problems, but they can assure continued strength in the manufacturing industry that has the potential to increase jobs.

“Energy is the root of manufacturing and you need the energy for manufacturing capability,” said Hal Fitch of the Office of Oil, Gas and Minerals for the Department of Environmental Quality in Michigan. “A predictable energy supply is key for manufacturing.”

So far Michigan has established and set rules regulated and enforced by the department. State regulation focuses on the protection of property, wildlife and the environment, while ensuring good air quality and the proper disposal of waste from drilling.

Other states are taking action to regulate and even block oil and gas companies from fracking in their states.

For this reason and others, states are now entering a difficult balancing act: Tapping into natural resources, helping the economy and answering to public pressure from conservationists and residents who may be affected by hydraulic fracking.

New York State is struggling with this debate. New York is sitting on a large basin of natural gas deposits right near the border with Pennsylvania. 

Tapping into these new finds can help New York significantly reduce energy costs. However, residents in parts of the states are strongly opposed to any type of fracking that can potentially contaminate water supplies, according to New Yorkers Against Fracking, a lobbying site. 

New York is currently studying the impacts of fracking. In an email from the press office of the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation, there are currently no high-volume hydraulic fracturing operation in the state.

“Under state law, once it is determined that SGEIS (Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement) will be conducted,” said Emily DeSantis, director of public information for New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. “No permits can be considered until that process is complete,” 

In North Carolina, another state sitting on natural gas reservoirs, the state senate passed legislation to allow fracking recently but it was vetoed by Gov. Bev Purdue, a Democrat.

“It’s disappointing that the leaders in General Assembly would allow fracking without ensuring that adequate protections will be in place for drinking water, landowners, county and municipal governments, and the health and the safety of families in North Carolina,” Purdue said in a statement.
“I hope the General Assembly will re-visit this issue and strengthen the safeguards before fracking begins.”

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It’s tempting to focus mainly on the energy issues that have come up in the context of the presidential campaign, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, tax breaks for energy companies, and whether and how to regulate hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a “fracking”.  Yet whoever is inaugurated next January, and however he resolves these issues, he will also face a much wider array of energy concerns, including some that are outgrowths of current policies or have emerged after a long gestation.  Though not intended as an exhaustive list, here are a few such issues that merit close attention from the next president’s energy team.

They should begin by taking a fresh and objective look at the overall US energy posture and devising a clear and concise way to describe it to the public.  Big changes have taken place, with many of the issues that preoccupied us for the last decade or longer having become less relevant or out of date.  Topping that list is the sense of energy scarcity that has burdened us since the oil crises of the 1970s and early 1980s.  There’s a realistic possibility that the combination of “tight oil” and the gas liquids production from shale gas could push domestic US petroleum/liquids production back above its early ’70s peak of around 11 million barrels per day. At the same time, our net oil imports are declining, due in large part to the weak economy.  However, as the share of fuel efficient vehicles in our car fleet increases, it’s reasonable to think that we’ve already seen the peak of US demand for petroleum fuels, even after the economy returns to healthy growth.  The net result might fall short of energy independence, but it will put us in a much better position than our largest economic rivals in terms of real energy security.

Then there’s shale gas.  Not only has it reversed a worrisome decline in US natural gas production that prompted numerous projects to import liquefied natural gas (LNG), but it has upended our assumptions about future prices and emissions in the electric power sector, while completing the divorce of oil and electricity that began in the 1980s.  Now we’re talking seriously about exporting natural gas. When you combine all these changes with biofuels that are contributing roughly a million barrels per day to US supply (in volumetric, though not BTU-equivalent terms) the need to revisit some of our most basic assumptions about energy looks compelling.

Energy scarcity isn’t the only paradigm that needs to be rethought.  The current administration apparently took office with a view that was prevalent in the environmental community and among some in energy circles, that the solutions to climate change and energy security were effectively synonymous and synergistic.  That view predates the shale/tight oil revolution and was founded on the notion that renewable energy and efficiency were the only serious answers to both concerns.  That linkage was always oversimplified, because it ignored the trade-offs inherent in the shortcomings of every energy technology available.  And now, thanks to unexpected technological developments, we face an explicit choice between energy abundance based on hydrocarbons and a lower-emissions future based on renewables and electric vehicles that won’t reach the required scale for decades, despite promising early signs. The transition from the former to the latter appears long and largely unpredictable, nor will it be cheap.

The next administration also faces a set of practical issues, along with the big-picture reframing described above. Two of these issues involve urgent tasks.  The first is the growing need for a thorough evaluation of of the recent and current approach to incentivizing renewable energy technologies and projects.  Since early 2009 we’ve spent tens of billions of dollars on a constellation of federal grants, tax credits, and loan guarantees to stimulate the growth of a domestic renewable and advanced energy industry and the deployment of its products. There’s a lot of new hardware on the ground, but the sustainability of this industry looks uncertain. Although only a fraction of the companies that received federal support have failed, the tally has grown large enough–with the addition of Abound Solar last week–that it’s no longer acceptable merely to shrug off these losses as par for the course.  We need some hard-nosed, detail-oriented outsiders to conduct a comprehensive post-expenditure review and extract the major lessons learned.  That should be an absolute prerequisite before anyone contemplates renewing or expanding any of these programs, including the Pentagon’s $210 million “green fleet” program.

Another urgent clean-up task is the reform of the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).  This 2007 mandate was premised on the imminent arrival of cellulosic biofuel technologies that have turned out to be much harder than expected to transfer from demonstration to commercial scale.  That has resulted in drastic annual revisions to the cellulosic biofuel targets of the mandate, but even these lower targets have not been achieved.  Instead, the EPA imposes penalties on refiners and gasoline blenders for failing to blend non-existent volumes, with consumers ultimately absorbing the higher costs at the pump.  The attractive vision of abundant renewable fuels has thus turned into a bureaucratic game.  And while corn ethanol supplies 10% of gasoline and consumes nearly 40% of the US corn crop, it cannot more than double to meet the entire 36 billion gallon per year RFS target for 2022, nor should we wish it to.  Instead, the RFS must be updated to reflect reality, and the associated biofuel-credit trading system should be restructured to squeeze out the fraud that is infecting it, instead of leaving refiners and blenders–and again ultimately consumers–to pick up a tab estimated at $200 million.

These items don’t constitute an entire energy agenda by themselves, but together with a few higher-profile proposals from among those that both campaigns will announce and debate during the next four months, they could fill out a worthy first-hundred-days’ energy plan for 2013.

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U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman has announced 13 new cutting-edge research projects that will receive a total of $30 million to find new ways of harnessing America’s abundant natural gas supplies for cars and trucks and expand the use of natural gas as a vehicle fuel. Two California companies, OtherLab in San Francisco and SRI International in Menlo Park were selected for projects. Through its Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), the Department’s new program, titled Methane Opportunities for Vehicular Energy – or “MOVE” – aims to engineer light-weight, affordable natural gas tanks for vehicles and develop natural gas compressors that can efficiently fuel a natural gas vehicle at home.

“These innovative projects will leverage the ingenuity of U.S. scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to develop breakthrough technologies to fuel cars with natural gas,” said Deputy Secretary Poneman. “These projects could transform America’s energy infrastructure and economy by utilizing domestic energy sources to power our vehicles, reducing our reliance on imported oil, and increasing American energy security.”

OtherLab in San Francisco, California, will receive $250,000 to develop a high-pressure natural gas tank for light-duty vehicles using small diameter tubes tightly wound into a tank shape. Like human intestines, these small tubes will fit tightly into virtually any shape for efficient storage. Gas intestine storage tanks could be as light as today’s carbon fiber tanks at one fifth the cost.

SRI International in Menlo Park, California, will $875,000 to develop low-pressure natural gas storage tanks for light-duty vehicles using porous materials that enable low pressure storage at high energy densities. SRI’s unique approach using porous carbon materials will provide structural strength and high surface area for gas adsorption that will entirely eliminate the need for a costly external tank.

These projects build on President Obama’s call for a new era for American energy that benefits from the safe, responsible development of the near 100-year supply of U.S. natural gas resources, which has the potential to support more than 600,000 American jobs. Shale gas production in the U.S. has more than tripled since 2008. Over the past five years, it has grown from 5% to more than 30% of total domestic natural gas production. The Department of Energy sponsored early research that helped lead to this development, funding research and development jointly with industry and universities that was essential to the development of American shale gas resources.

Today’s natural gas vehicle technologies require tanks that can withstand high pressures, are often cumbersome, and are either too large or too expensive to be suitable for smaller passenger vehicles. ARPA-E’s new projects are focused on removing these barriers, which will help encourage the widespread use of natural gas cars and trucks. The projects will also focus on developing natural gas compressors that make it easier for consumers to re-fuel at home.

The investments announced Thursday build on efforts underway through the Clean Cities program and National Clean Fleets Partnership to help large fleet operators in the country, such as large companies, cities, and states, identify opportunities to transition to natural gas vehicles. Many commercial fleet operators nationwide have already begun to transition long-haul trucks and other commercial vehicles to run on compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The advances achieved under this latest set of research and development awards will help expand the use of natural gas vehicles, so that consumers nationwide can benefit.

Deputy Secretary Poneman announced the newly selected projects, two of which are located in Texas, at a meeting of the National Petroleum Council (NPC) in Houston, Texas. The NPC is a federal advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy that advises, informs, and makes recommendations on matters relating to natural gas and oil or to the natural gas and oil gas industries.

Selected projects are located in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Information on all projects announced Thursday is available HERE.

President Obama launched ARPA-E in 2009 to seek out transformational, breakthrough technologies that are too risky for private-sector investment but have the potential to translate science into quantum leaps in energy technology, form the foundation for entirely new industries, and have large commercial impacts. Demonstrating the success ARPA-E has already seen, the program announced last year that eleven of its projects secured more than $200 million in outside private capital investment after initial funding from its programs. To date, ARPA-E has attracted over 5,000 applications from research teams, which has resulted in approximately 180 groundbreaking projects worth nearly $500 million.

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DEEP IN THE rolling tree-clad hills of Pennsylvania, on a hilltop close to a group of barns and farmhouses, Chevron’s Kikta well pad can be found at the end of a narrow country lane. This is part of the Marcellus shale, 250,000 sq km (96,500 square miles) of gasfields stretching across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York state. The drilling rig is 30 metres high, so large that it is hard to imagine how it could have got to the site, but it comes apart and the components fit onto lorries. It sits on an acre of flattened hilltop, along with a million-gallon reservoir to provide the huge quantities of water needed for extracting shale gas. Vehicles and machines are poised for action. Four wells will be drilled from this one pad. The drill will first bore 2,300-2,600 metres (7,500- 8,500 feet) downwards; then the drill bit is coaxed to the horizontal and the drilling continues outwards. Gas will start rising to the wellheads, just a few metres apart, after the next task is performed: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Shale is a hard rock made up of sediments deposited on sea and lake beds hundreds of millions of years ago. To make it give up the gas held within, it needs to be broken up. Along up to 2km of horizontal pipes 14cm wide, holes open out onto the shale. Along small sections, water, fine sand (the “proppant”) and fracking fluid are injected under high pressure.

The fracking fluid, which makes up about 1% of the brew, is a combination of gelling polymers of the sort found in food and cosmetics, to keep the sand suspended in the fluid as it is pumped into the well; chelants (like kettle descaler) to break down the polymer and release the sand when it arrives in the fractured shale; friction reducer (as found in nappies) to keep the flow smooth; and biocide, a disinfectant that stops bacteria gumming up the well.

On reaching the shale, the mixture of water and fracking fluid bursts open the rock and the sand keeps the fractures open, allowing the gas to flow to the surface. The power for the operation is supplied by the engines of a fleet of trucks, so this stage of the process can be noisy. But it takes only five days to complete, and then the shale gas begins to flow and the trucks, portable offices and hoppers are taken to another site to start all over again.

After a little over a year of activity, at least half of which is taken up with planning and obtaining permits, most of the land is reclaimed, apart from a little pipework and a water tank on a small section of the original site. At Elias, a completed Chevron operation, the only sound to disturb the replanted clover meadow is a faint whooshing as gas passes to an underground pipe network. It is the sound of dollars clocking up, and it could go on for 30-50 years. The gas rushes out rapidly in the first year or so before tailing off quite fast to a third of the original flow and gradually declining thereafter.

The remarkable thing about extracting shale gas, says Bruce Niemeyer, Chevron’s regional boss, is “the absence of anything remarkable going on” above the ground. The Marcellus is not what you might expect a gasfield to look like: the views can be spectacularly beautiful. And not only is it good to look at, its gas is also cheap to develop and cheap to produce. The average cost per well is $6m-7m, against $7m-11m in the Haynesville shale, spread across parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Moreover, the Marcellus is close to the big markets of the Atlantic coast, so the gas is cheap to transport too. If only every gasfield were like that.

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Here’s a tester for you. Which raft of energy policies gets proven ‘greener’ results?

Is it the anti-fossil fuel, cap-and-trade regulatory regimes of socialist Europe? Or is it the path of technological innovation set by the ‘evil’ capitalists in the Kyoto-eschewing Bush White House?

In what has to be the irony of ironies, Europe’s consumption of coal grew by 3.3 percent in 2011. The increase was directly due to the glut of European Trading Scheme (ETS) emission allowances which made coal the most profitable electric power fuel.

Over in the United States in 2012, however, coal burning to generate power continued to decline, primarily due to America’s switch to shale gas. Natural gas emits around half the CO2 of coal. U.S. levels of carbon emission are currently plummeting; a feat Europe has no chance of matching, not least as coal use is on the increase.

It’s a situation that ought to bring the whole raft of EU market-interfering policies geared to reducing carbon emissions into sharper focus. Policies that can only be characterized by three S’s: sheer synchronized stupidity.

Not that the U.S. coal industry is suffering from the domestic switch to gas, you understand. America’s high-quality coal has had no trouble finding an alternative and lucrative market: Europe.  And U.S. coal exports to Europe are only set to increase further.

Europe’s lose-lose

Far from moving away from burning ‘dirty’ coal, global consumption is rising. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy released in mid-June, global energy consumption grew by 2.5 percent in 201l in line with long-term trends.

However, global coal production also increased last year by almost half a billion tonnes. That’s exceptional. It represents a 6 percent increase in a single year and tops an annual average growth rate of 4.6 percent a year over the last decade.

In short, King Coal almost edged out oil as the world’s leading energy resource in 2011 hitting 30 percent of global energy consumption. And it is set to surpass (and probably already has) oil as the world’s most important commodity in 2012.

In stark contrast to the U.S., Europe’s use of natural gas fell last year by 2.1 percent as gas-fired plants, which needed only half the number of carbon permits, became increasingly uncompetitive. Prices fell sharply by 17 percent to just 8 euros a tonne.

Indeed, so expensive has gas become in Europe that the major players like EON and RWE are considering shutting down their gas-fired plants entirely by 2015. Coal – the literal bête noire for all green politicos – is the only viable alternative.

The Eurocracy did not plan it to be this way.

You might think that European capitals would be falling over themselves to develop Europe’s own shale gas resources and share in the ‘green’ benefits of switching from burning coal; not least because another key EU energy policy is to diversify away from European dependence on Russian gas imports.

But the EU-imposed goals of CO2 targets for 2020 dictate that member states must bend the knee to the green lobbies that demand a ban on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), the technique singly responsible for the U.S. gas and oil revolutions. In effect, an EU-sponsored lose-lose situation has developed.

America’s win-win

Europe can only look with dismay across the Atlantic at how U.S. carbon levels are falling as a direct consequence of the switch to natural gas. Just for good measure, shale gas developments have already cut the cost of U.S. electricity generation by 15 percent and halved domestic gas prices.

On top of that, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), America’s energy-related carbon emissions fell by around 7.5 percent during the first quarter of 2012. U.S. carbon emissions are now approximately 8.5 percent lower than for the first quarter of 2010.

This year’s total emissions are predicted to be on course to fall back to 1990 levels. The reason is plain enough. At the beginning of the new millennia, coal-burning accounted for 52 percent of U.S. electricity generation. By 2008 that had fallen to 48 percent. In April this year, the use of natural gas (mostly from shale) and coal-burning in electricity generation were neck and neck at around 32 percent each.

By any measure, the U.S. carbon-lowering story is a striking one.

But there’s a much more basic economic lesson here for those able to remove their green-tinted ideological glasses. Eurocrat socialism, with its predilection for imposing regulatory cap-and-trade restrictions that inherently render industry less globally competitive, has contrived to achieve the very opposite of its chief goal: a new, high carbon-emitting, coal boom.

American capitalism, on the other hand, has not only seen technological innovation (fracking) promote a cheaper energy revolution and reduce dependence on foreign energy imports, it has also raised the very real prospect of energy independence. Just to rub salt in fast-developing European ‘green’ wounds, the U.S. way of ‘doing green’ is making EU energy policies look UP (unfit for purpose).

As the irony of Europe’s electricity increasingly set to be generated courtesy of U.S. coal sinks in (sending carbon goals up in smoke), Eurocrats should realise there is one marketplace regulation over which bureaucratic meddling has no competence: the Law of Unintended Consequences.

So if the ignominy inherent in European power being generated by American coal should become too great for bureaucratic EU sensibilities, I could suggest an alternative fuel source could include bundles of failed and discredited strategic policies.

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Oil prices are unlikely to fall much further over the balance of this year but could come under pressure in 2013 as the global economy falters due to slower US and Chinese growth, the IEA said Thursday.

The International Energy Agency, which advises developed countries on energy policy, said supply risks appeared to have put a floor under prices for this year even as global economic growth slows.

But for 2013, oil prices could fall in real terms by more than 7.0 percent, based on current models and futures contracts, it said, adding that such a downturn should marginally support demand.

Global economic growth this year will likely come in at 3.3 percent, down from the previous estimate of 3.5 percent as an “exceptionally challenging macroeconomic backdrop” forced the IEA to change its forecasts.

For 2013, the global economy should grow 3.8 percent, down from the previous 4.1-percent estimate based on figures in April from the International Monetary Fund, it added.

“Concerns are mounting on the sustainability of the eurozone, there has been a definite easing in China’s economic impetus and the US outlook has weakened,” the IEA said in its latest monthly report.

“Ongoing debt concerns across the developed world will likely see associated austerity measures curtailing government, business and consumer expenditure levels alike,” it said.

The IMF is expected to issue new economic growth forecasts shortly.

Oil prices were slightly easier, with New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in August, down 34 cents to $85.47 a barrel.

Brent North Sea crude for August shed 22 cents to $100.01, having fallen as low as $89 in late June after hitting highs in March of around $125.

In terms of oil demand, the IEA left its 2012 growth forecast at around 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) to around 89.9 million bpd, with 2013 gaining a “relatively muted” 1.0 mbd to 90.9 mbd, led by Asia.

The increase next year, while marginally more than the expected 2012 gain, was much less than would have been expected based on trends before the 2008 global financial crisis brought the economy to its knees, it said.

The eurozone debt crisis has since undercut growth further.

The IEA said that total global oil supply in June was down 500,000 bpd to some 90.4 mpd, with OPEC production slipping 100,000 bpd to 31.8 mpd.

Among OPEC members, the IEA noted that Iranian output had slumped to near 22-year lows at 3.2 mbd in June, down 100,000 bpd from May as US and EU sanctions ramp up from July 1.

However, despite the fall in output, the IEA noted that Iran exports to China had increased substantially by 300,000 bpd to 800,000 bpd and said it was now harder to track Iranian production and shipments.

The US and EU imposed tougher sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear energy programme, claiming it is a cover for atomic weapons development, a charge Iran consistently rejects.

On Wednesday, OPEC left its world oil demand forecast for 2012 unchanged at 88.68 mbd, putting 2013 at 89.50 mbd, up 820,000 bpd and compared to the 890,000 bpd gain expected in 2012.

Like the IEA, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries also cited the uncertain economic outlook for its cautious assessment.

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A new study being done by the Department of Energy may provide some of the first solid answers to a controversial question: Can gas drilling fluids migrate and pose a threat to drinking water?

A drilling company in southwestern Pennsylvania is giving researchers access to a commercial drilling site, said Richard Hammack, a spokesman for the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh.

The firm let scientists conduct baseline tests, allowed tracing elements to be added to hydraulic fracturing fluids and agreed to allow follow-up monitoring. That should let scientists see whether the drilling fluids move upwards or sideways from the Marcellus Shale, which is 8,100 feet deep at that spot.

“It’s like the perfect laboratory,” Hammack said.

Hammack said he believes this is the first time such research has been done on a commercial gas well.

“Conceptually, it sounds like a really great idea,” said P. Lee Ferguson, a Duke University civil and environmental engineering professor who is not involved with the project. “I have wondered about this since I started thinking about fracking. Which compounds are mobile and which aren’t?”

The Marcellus Shale is a gas-rich rock formation thousands of feet under large parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. Over the past five years, advances in drilling technology made the gas accessible, leading to a boom in production, jobs, and profits — and concerns about pollution.

The gas is pulled from the ground through a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which large volumes of water, plus sand and chemicals, are injected deep underground to break shale apart and free the gas.

Environmentalists have claimed the fluids associated with drilling could rise and pollute shallow drinking water aquifers. The industry and many government officials say the practice is safe when done properly, but there have also been cases where faulty wells did cause pollution.

Ferguson cautioned that no single study will answer all questions about fracking and the potential for pollution.

“The complicating factor is some of the compounds don’t act in the same way underground,” he said of fracking fluids, as well as the fact that there are substantial differences in geology throughout the Marcellus region.

Hammack said the study is designed to see whether the fracking fluids or naturally occurring salty brine from deep underground reach a testing area located at about 4,000 feet.

“We’re just looking for any indication of communication between the two zones,” he said.

If the fluids do rise, more research will be needed, he said. If they don’t reach the 4,000-foot level, there will be no need to test drinking water aquifers, which are closer to the surface.

Other researchers have asked the same question, but have done so using computer simulations or testing not involving commercial wells. Both methods mean there’s considerable uncertainty about the accuracy of the projections.

For example, a study released by other Duke researchers this week suggested that deep, salty brine fluids could migrate upwards through natural pathways, but made no estimate of whether that might take years, decades or centuries.

Hammack said the new project took off after he told someone in the industry about research DOE hoped to conduct.

“They said, `We have that exact situation,’” Hammock said of the response from the firm, which he didn’t identify.

Hammack said the monitoring will go on for at least a year, but that the department will release information earlier if there’s proof the fluids migrate to the upper testing level. Some background data from the research is also expected to be available later this year.

Patrick Creighton, a spokesman for the industry’s Marcellus Shale Coalition, said in a statement that the industry supports partnering with universities, government agencies and others to protect the environment.

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Several new short films, focusing on our nation’s energy situation, premiered Wednesday night in front of a sold out crowd at Sci-Port in Shreveport. The movies were shot and produced in the Ark-La-Tex.

The energy series came to life after Gregory Kallenburg’s first movie on Haynesville Shale. The movie opened his eyes to the vast difference between the way people think about energy. Kallenburg then produced 10 short films titled

Rational Middle: Energy Series.

“I think right now what we’re trying to get past is the polarized bias that exists in energy today,” said Kallenburg, who directed the series. “There is this one side having insults at the other side. What we’re trying to do is create this middle.”

Kallenburg said it was important for him to bring the movies back to his

hometown. The film was made in Shreveport by residents.

“It’s so easy for all of us to take or granted what’s around us. It’s an intellect in the United States. We flick on our light switch and lights come on. I think that once you’re able to see it’s really a privilege. That’s when you really get interested in the issue.”

The have already released three of the 10 films and Wednesday night they released another three. They expect to have all 10 released by the end of the summer.

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