2020 Oct 22nd ENVIRONMENT RISKS OF SHALE OIL

 Environmental Risks of Shale Oil Development esp. in the US. (Shale Oil is NOT FOUND IN THE CANNING BASIN of the Kimberley BUT 'OIL SHALE' IS)

What is shale oil? 

Shale oil is a type of unconventional oil found in crude form. It’s trapped inside of shale rocks that requires hydraulic fracturing. In some cases the oil to be extracted from oil shales through a heating process. Oil shales refer to organic-rich sedimentary rocks that hold large quantities of kerogen, which can be turned into oil by combustion under high temperatures. 

This brief reviews the environmental risks associated with crude oil

A key driver for economic extraction of oil from shale formations was technological changes in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. 

Hydraulic fracturing process involves creating fractures in tight formations by injecting high-pressure fluids into the wellbore, which can be done at multiple points horizontally (See Figure 1 below). Horizontal drilling increases the contact area of the well with a shale oil reservoir that is hard to access. Hydraulically fractured horizontal wells are responsible for 69% of new wells drilled in the US, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). Figure 1: Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in shale formations

More than half of technically recoverable shale oil resources are located in the US, Russia, China, Argentina and Libya, the EIA estimates. 

Shale oil production in the Bakken Play (North Dakota, Montana), the Eagle Ford (Texas) and the Permian (Texas, New Mexico) placed the US as the world’s largest crude oil producer over the past decade. 

The shale revolution has been promoted by the industry as an energy game changer, reducing dependency on imported oil in the US.2 1 

Oil produced from shale formations and oil shales requires different processes, although they have similar-sounding names. 

Shale oil production from shale rocks is more common and less expensive than extracting oil from oil shales. 

To this date, oil shale production was piloted in Estonia, the US, and Jordan, but it is not economically feasible at large scale yet. 

Shale oil production has already been proven economic in multiple shale plays in the US, despite diminishing economic returns over the lifetime of oil wells. 2 See Hughes (2013) article published in Nature, debunking the economic potential of shale oil revolution. 

BNEF finds oil output is generally high immediately after the well is drilled but declines to 5% of initial production within 2 years. 

Environmental risks associated with shale oil production.

 Shale oil exploration and production stages can lead to a number of environmental damages in the vicinity of the drilling site. 

Key environmental considerations include 

blowouts and 

• spills at the drilling site, 
• increased methane emissions from flaring and venting, 
• water stress, 
• wastewater spills from containment ponds, 
• well casing failures and leakages to drinking water supplies.

 The following sections will focus on water quality issues and methane emissions associated with shale oil production. 

ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS ILLUSTRATED ABOVE

Water quality issues linked to fracked shale wells.

After the hydraulic fracturing process, wastewater flows back to the surface, containing brine (salt), toxic chemicals and radioactive materials. 

This flowback water is a mixture of fracking fluid and formation water, which is recycled to be reused in fracking, disposed at off-site storage facilities or injected into deep wells. 

Over the ground surface, wastewater treatment is a major issue as the scale of production increases. 

In 2011, a New York Times investigation found 1.3 billion gallons (4.9 billion litres) of wastewater was produced from fracked wells in Pennsylvania between 2008 to 2010, far above the reported amount disclosed by companies. 

Most of wastewater was carried to municipal sewage treatment plants not equipped to treat toxic materials found in flowback water, and some of this treated water was discharged into rivers that supply drinking water.

Below the surface, well integrity failures might result in spillage of flowback water, oil and gas to aquifers. 

Well cementing and casing prevents oil, gas and fluids from groundwater resources, if the well is constructed and maintained properly. 

A study of 8030 wells inspected between 2005 and 2013 in the Marcellus Shale found that 6.3% had issues with well integrity. A Duke University study found that four states - Colorado, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and New Mexico - experienced the most accidental wastewater spills from shale production. 

The magnitude of shale oil drilling in Nth Dakota - more than 9700 wells over the last decade - led to “the highest spill rate with 4,453 incidents, followed by Pennsylvania at 1,293, Colorado at 476 and New Mexico at 426”. 

75% to 94% of spills happened during the first three years of the well life, and 50% of spillage were related to storage and moving of fluids via flowlines, the study estimates more than half of hydraulic fracturing wells lies in 2 to 3 km proximity of domestic groundwater wells, increasing the risk of contamination in the case of well failure or accidental spills. 

As testing of private water wells is voluntary, contaminated drinking water goes unnoticed by the property owner. 

A Duke study of drinking water wells in the vicinity of fracked wells found elevated levels of methane contamination in Pennsylvania and upstate New York, while no evidence for drinking water contamination with brines and fracturing fluids was detected. 

Methane emissions and wasted gas from shale oil production.

 Shale oil and gas boom in the US and Canada led to a significant increase in global methane emissions over the past decade, a new Cornell study finds. 

More than half of the total increased fossil fuel emissions mainly came from shale gas production (and some from shale oil), it suggests. This spike in methane emissions matter because methane is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for a quarter of today’s global warming. Methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after it is released to the atmosphere. 

Deep reductions in methane emissions is needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C, according to the IPCC report. 

Natural gas is sometimes produced as an unwanted byproduct from oil production. Oil producers flare the unwanted gas or vent directly into the atmosphere, when there is not enough pipeline capacity. 

In 2018, global gas flaring grew by 3% to 145 billion cubic meters of gas due to a 48% increase in shale oil production in the US, equivalent to annual total gas consumption in the Central and South America, the World Bank finds. 

Gas flaring and venting become a common practice in the Permian and Bakken basins, with a combined 12 billion cubic meters of wasted gas per year, exceeding the annual gas demands of Israel, Colombia and Romania. In the Permian Basin, seven companies flare 5.1% of average gas output, with BP being the second worst offender after SM Energy, according to Rystad.

Spills associated with transportation of fracked oil.

Crude oil spills has detrimental impacts on land, water and air. 

Crude oil contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as benzene, that could evaporate into the air immediately after the spill, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which stays in the environment long after the spill and contaminate land and water resources. 

There is no safe way to transport oil. The industry claims that pipelines are the safest form of transporting oil. 

While pipelines are the second-worst when you compare the amount of oil spilled by trucks, they are the worst when it comes to environmental impacts to the land, wildlife and water resources. 

In the US, pipeline incidents spilled more than 76,000 barrels of oil per year between 1986 and 2013, resulting in almost $7 billion in damage. 

1327 pipeline leaks were recorded in North Dakota from 2006 through 2014, spilling 41,672 barrels of to the landscape. 

The largest pipeline spill of fracked oil occured in 2013, contaminating 13 acres of wheat field with over 20,600 barrels of oil - equivalent to about six football fields- in northwestern North Dakota. Yet, only a third of oil was cleaned in three years after the spill. The leaked segment of pipeline had not been inspected in eight years prior to the incident. 

Oil trains are not safe either. Derailment of train cars carrying fracked oil have increased since the Bakken production began. In 2016, the 96 unit Union Pacific train carrying Bakken oil from North Dakota derailed in Mosier, Oregon. 16 cars of the train were derailed and several cars caught fire, spilling 42,000 gallons of fracked oil.