Opponents slam fracking policies
Long-term effects still not known
“I THINK IT’S PROBABLY NOT A VERY GOOD IDEA UNTIL WE KNOW A LOT MORE ABOUT IT,”
JOHN GIESY
John Giesy knows the “witch’s brew” of chemicals contained in fracking fluid used in the U.S., having participated in a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency science advisory board committee that looked into shale fracking in Pennsylvania.
He can’t disclose what those chemicals were, but “I can tell you there are a lot of things in there, and some of them are actually pretty nasty chemicals. And the volumes were the problem,” he said.
Giesy, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said fracking is an irreversible process and the long-term effects aren’t known.
“I think it’s probably not a very good idea until we know a lot more about it,” he said, noting Saskatchewan doesn’t have a lot of surface water, “so if we muck it up, it’s going to stay mucked up for a long time, and I’m worried about that.”
The technique of fracking, which has undergone significant advances over the past decade, promises access to long-buried oil and natural gas.
But opponents fear the environmental and health effects of the chemicals injected into the ground.
Canadian legislation doesn’t currently require companies to disclose what’s in their fracking fluid — they say that information is a trade secret.
The Bakken oilfields in Saskatchewan, which pair horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing, produce 60,000 barrels of oil per day, Kent Campbell, deputy minister for economy, said earlier this week.
The oil and gas sector typically provides around $1.5 billion in annual revenue to the province, he added.
“So it’s important from an economic development perspective; it’s obviously been one of the sectors that’s really been driving Saskatchewan’s growth over the past few years, and we expect that to continue.”
The province has a “strong regulatory regime” and a history of producing oil from fracking, “so I think people should feel comfortable with the activity in Saskatchewan,” Campbell said.
Fracking is conducted one to three kilometres below the surface and the water table in Saskatchewan, he noted.
“And so some of the issues you’ve seen get raised in other jurisdictions is where it’s much shallower formations, where the fracking is taking place much closer to the water table. For us, we’re talking hundreds to thousands of metres below that, and between those two, you have solid rock, so that’s one thing to think about for the Saskatchewan context.”
The province also doesn’t allow surface storage or disposal of fracking fluids, he said.
The oil and gas industry uses less than one per cent of the province’s usable fresh water resources, “a pretty small amount relative to our overall allocation of fresh water usage, and when people want to use water in a fracking operation, they do have to get permission through our Ministry of Environment and the watershed authority,” Campbell said.
At a news conference in Saskatoon on Friday, documentary filmmaker Josh Fox and the Council of Canadians said they support a moratorium on all fracking in Saskatchewan.
The province’s rationale supporting fracking carries no weight with Fox.
“I’ve heard that all before,” he said. “This is an industry that very clearly can’t be trusted.”
The fact that wells are drilled deep underground isn’t relevant, because the weakness in the structure is the concrete casings around the pipes that run from the well to the surface, he said.
“We know from the industry’s own science on this that five per cent of those cement barriers fail immediately upon drilling, and 50 to 60 per cent of them fail over a 30-year period. What we’re seeing in Pennsylvania right now is gas migration and chemical migration in approximately eight to 11 per cent of wells that have been drilled in the last three years.”
It’s not true that fracking in Saskatchewan uses less than one per cent of available fresh water, because unlike other activities — like watering golf courses — fracking permanently removes water from the hydrologic cycle, Fox said.
“They made this argument in Texas, where certain towns are facing drought conditions — towns are completely out of water. So over 15 years, in some parts of Texas, you’ve got 15 per cent total reduction in water … You’re talking water bankruptcy over time.”
The deep underground storage wells are also problematic, Fox said.
“Injection wells are also subject to the same leakage and cracked case statistics, and in many cases worse than the gas wells themselves. So you’re now taking this toxic waste and injecting it through injection wells that can leak in the very same way that the fracking wells can. Plus, that water does migrate eventually.”
Fox said investments in wind and solar energy create more jobs than oil and gas. He said oil and gas workers are far more likely to be killed on the job than workers in other sectors, and there is an “epidemic” of illness from handling chemicals.
Giesy also promotes alternative energy.
“To me, the bigger picture is we’re going after more and more marginal fossil fuels when we really should be putting our efforts into developing technologies, into alternatives. I’d say just turn around and put that into something that’s going to be more sustainable. This is not sustainable.”