Fracking and the disingenuous environmentalists

Environmentalist-Funded Study Confirms Safety Of Fracking

Energy: A new study shows that little methane, a strong greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in ground water, is released into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing.

So it must be OK to frack now.

In the first "Gasland" movie, environmental activist Josh Fox trumpeted flaming water taps in a Colorado town as evidence of fracking-induced water contamination. In fact, the areas in question had reported naturally occurring methane in their water for decades.

Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value of producing huge quantities of clean-burning natural gas.

Now comes a study, conducted by scientists at the University of Texas and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — and co-financed by one of the highest-profile environmentalists in the country — that shows much smaller amounts of methane emissions associated with fracking, far less than environmentalists and the Environmental Protection Agency have contended.

Maybe we have more to fear from flatulent cows and other animals, which produced an estimated 137 million metric tons of methane in 2011.

The study, billed as the first to measure the actual emissions of methane from natural gas wells, finds these emissions were, in some cases, only about 2% of the most recent national estimate by the EPA in 2011. An upcoming EPA rule, effective January 2015, requires all methane to be captured when liquids are removed after drilling.

Seen by many as an attempt to stop fracking, which has boosted the economy through its ability to tap previously inaccessible oil and gas riches, the rule might be redundant. Two-thirds of the wells studied already were capturing or controlling the methane to reduce emissions.

"For those wells with methane capture or control, 99% of the potential emissions were captured or controlled," the study notes.

This proves once again there is no problem technology can't solve and that when decisions are made based on technology, rather than ideology, good things happen.

An interesting aspect of the study is that it was funded in part by Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist who has become highly active in national politics in the past year, backing environmentalist Democrats such as Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.

Steyer's support for the University of Texas came by way of the Environmental Defense Fund, which helped finance the study. He and his wife Kat Taylor are listed among individuals who provided "major funding for the EDF's 30-month methane research series, including their portion of the University of Texas study."

OK, so why does an environmentalist through a major green group fund a study saying that fracking can safely produce oil and natural gas from shale without harming Earth? Steyer, who, as we've noted, has actively opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, even though rail shipments of crude are more dangerous, hates coal and sees natural gas production as a way to stop it.

"I am one of the people who believes that we're going to end up fracking responsibly, and that it's not a long-term solution, but it's going to get us to kill coal," he said at a climate conference in April.

Whatever his motivation, he has helped confirm that fracking does not damage the air or the water.

Thanks in large part to fracking, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2012 were the lowest in the U.S. since 1994, at 5.3 billion metric tons. With the exception of 2010, emissions have declined every year since 2007.

Fracking, coal and deep-water drilling are not either/or propositions in our energy future. Each has a role in safely increasing production while making it possible for America to be truly independent.