Serious Math

Time for some serious math. Don't like math? This math is particularly ugly, in my opinion.

I heard from a spokesman of the natural gas industry that the industry hopes or plans (not sure which verb is most accurate) to have 300 hydraulic fracture natural gas well pads in Geauga county. This is the county where I live but even if you do not live there, please read on remembering that the headwaters of the Cuyahoga, Grand, and Chagrin rivers are located in my county; This concerns us all.

Each well pad could have 6 or more horizontal drill bores. Let's work with 6.

Six times 300 is 1800 well bores.

Hydraulic fracturing, or simply fracking, utilizes chemical-laced water and sand at very high pressure (10,000 psi) to force open cracks in deep shale, where natural gas is locked. The gas flows from these crack into the well bore, which is located several thousand feet down. The horizontal portion of the well could extend a mile in subterranean distance.

The industry has recently been coaxed to make public what chemicals it uses in the process. As it turns out, independent investigation of the chemicals listed by the industry as ingredients in their fracking products reveals that many of them are toxic to certain organs, carcinogens, mutagens, and/or endocrine disruptors. The industry downplays the risk by pointing out that only 0.5% of the solution they pump through the water table into the shale is chemical additive. But let's get back to the math.

To frack one horizontal well bore requires millions of gallons of frack fluid – I've seen estimates ranging from 2 – 7 million gallons. Let's work with 3 million gallons.

0.5% of 3 million is 15,000 gallons of chemicals! Is that right? Let me try that again. Yep, got the same number.

So if each of the 300 well pads has 6 horizontal bores and each of those requires 15,000 gallons of chemicals then that's...27 million gallons of chemicals.

Ok now wait, the industry tells us that some portion of the fluid pumped into the shale comes back out and can be reused. Unfortunately, when this water does return, it often contains very high concentrations of salts, heavy metals, and radioactive elements like radium.

Nevertheless, some fluid can be pumped back through the water table and reused - so 27 million is probably a high estimate.

Note this, if 3 million gallons of fluid is used to frack a single well, that 95.5% water has to come from somewhere. For 300 well pads with 6 well bores the total amount of water we're talking about approaches 5.4 billion gallons of water. You might be asking yourself – where's all this water come from? Good question! Well in other gas extraction areas the water has come from local municipal water supplies, ground water supplies, or has been diverted from local streams and rivers. It has also been trucked in from other places. And don't forget, eventually all this radioactive, carcinogenic, salt water has to be disposed of.

On average, to drill and frack a single well bore requires round-trip deliveries and removal from around 1000 large, diesel-powered trucks (water, sand, and chemicals). If that's how it'll work in Geauga county, there might be (300 x 6 x 1000) 1.8 million truck deliveries around the county over the coming years. At 400 square miles, there should be – on average – one 5+ acre well pad every 1.3 miles in Geauga county, so maybe the traffic will be spread out.

But Geauga is not unique. The industry wants a similar number of wells in most counties of eastern and southern Ohio. In fact, it wants 500,000 such well pads tapping into shale under much of OH, PA, WV, NY and other adjacent states. The industry says this can all be done safely, but geology, engineering, and hydrology experts not hoping to strike it rich have explained how this fluid could migrate up to the water table, or close to it, via faults and nearby wells. There's even evidence that frack fluid has traveled “out of zone” by these routes. This is besides the inevitable truck traffic accidents and leaks. And this assessment also ignores the mathematical guarantees of air pollution.

Is this the future world we want to inhabit? Do we want to industrialize the American countryside? Would our children trade spring peepers for tanker trucks and generators? Fishing and swimming for community clean-up projects? The smell of cut hay for volatile organic compounds (VOC) and hazardous air pollutants (HAP)?

The gas industry and our state and federal governments - under the influence of gas industry money - says this is going to be great for the country and local communities. But who gets to decide the future of rural America? Local officials don't have much authority, although they do have an official voice with which to ask the state for a moratorium. There are five bills seeking stricter control over gas drilling stalled in the state legislature.

Beside that, it seems we locals will decide. We will each “vote” in our own strange and corrupted “democratic” process. The ballot of a “Yea” vote is a signed lease, which is rewarded with the delivery of a handsome check a few weeks later. A “Nay” vote is unaccompanied by financial reward but will still yield, for those who cast it, the same air pollution, water contamination, constant noise from truck traffic and compressor stations, loss of property value, and declines in health and happiness that those locals who are inviting the industry into the county will experience - whether they know it or not.


Shorter alternate:

I heard from a natural gas industry spokesman that the industry plans to have 300 hydraulic fracture natural gas well pads in Geauga county. This is the county where I live but even if you do not live here, please read on remembering that the headwaters of the Cuyahoga, Grand, and Chagrin rivers are located in my county.

Each well pad could have 6 or more horizontal drill bores. Let's work with 6.

Six times 300 is 1800 well bores.

Hydraulic fracturing utilizes chemical-laced water and sand at very high pressure to force open cracks in deep shale, where natural gas is locked. The gas flows from these crack into the well bore, which is located over a mile deep. The horizontal portion of the well could extend a mile in length.

The industry has recently been coaxed to make public the chemicals it uses in the process. As it turns out, independent investigation of these chemicals reveals that many of them are toxic to certain organs, carcinogens, mutagens, and/or endocrine disruptors. The industry downplays the risk by pointing out that only 0.5% of the solution they pump through the water table into the shale is chemical additive. Back to the math.

To frack one horizontal well bore requires millions of gallons of frack fluid – I've seen estimates ranging from 2 – 7 million gallons. Let's work with 3 million gallons.

0.5% of 3 million is 15,000 gallons of chemicals!

So if each of the 300 well pads has 6 horizontal bores and each of those requires 15,000 gallons of chemicals then that's 27 million gallons of chemicals.

The industry tells us that some portion of the fluid pumped into the shale comes back out and can be reused. Unfortunately, when this water does return, it often contains very high concentrations of salts, heavy metals, and radioactive elements like radium.

Nevertheless, some fluid can be pumped back through the water table - so 27 million is probably a high estimate.

The 95.5% water used has to come from somewhere. For 300 well pads with 6 well bores the total amount of water we're talking about approaches 5.4 billion gallons of water. Where's all this water come from? Well in other gas extraction areas the water has come from local municipal water supplies, ground water supplies, or has been diverted from local streams and rivers. It has also been trucked in from other places. And don't forget, eventually all this radioactive, carcinogenic, salt water has to be disposed of.

On average, to drill and frack a single well bore requires round-trip deliveries from around 1000 large, diesel-powered trucks. In Geauga county, there might be (300 x 6 x 1000) 1.8 million truck deliveries around the county over the coming years. At 400 square miles, there should be – on average – one 5+ acre well pad every 1.3 miles in Geauga county.

But Geauga is not unique. The industry wants a similar number of wells in most Ohio counties. In fact, it wants 500,000 such well pads tapping into shale under much of OH, PA, WV, NY and other adjacent states. The industry says this can all be done safely, but some experts have explained how this fluid could migrate up to the water table, or close to it, via faults and other nearby wells; in fact, there's evidence that this has occurred. We're ignoring the inevitable truck traffic accidents and leaks and the mathematical guarantees of air pollution.

Is this the future world we want to inhabit? Do we want to industrialize the American countryside? Would our children trade spring peepers for tanker trucks and generators? Fishing and swimming for community clean-up projects? The smell of cut hay for volatile organic compounds (VOC) and hazardous air pollutants (HAP)?

The gas industry and our state and federal governments - under the influence of gas industry money - says this is going to be great for the country and local communities. But who gets to decide the future of rural America?

It seems we locals will decide. We will each “vote” in our own strange and corrupted “democratic” process. The ballot of a “Yea” vote is a signed lease, which is rewarded with the delivery of a handsome check a few weeks later. A “Nay” vote is unaccompanied by financial reward but will still yield, for those who cast it, the big costs that always come with industrialization