It was only a matter of time before fracking technology would spread to other shale deposits around the world like a new conspiracy theory spreading at a Tea Party convention. The Chinese fracking boom is just getting underway and it could spell trouble for the Chinese and the Global Climate.
So how is it that the Chinese fracking boom is just taking off now? Is it because they've made a technological breakthrough?
the state oil and gas giant Sinopec (SNP) announced "significant breakthroughs" at its Fuling shale gas field in the country's southern Sichuan province.
Orrrrrr, maybe not;
Most importantly the government raised the prices paid to Sinopec and others for new gas supply by up to 40% and tied future increases to global oil prices. The price of natural gas for nonresidential users in Chinese cities rose by 15%. Fuling's gas headed to China's eastern markets like Shanghai now has a profit margin, says Nate Taplin, energy analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Hong Kong. Just a couple years ago it was a money-losing proposition.
...
all natural gas pipelines would be made open to third-party drillers, the small operators that dominate the landscape in the U.S. Before, smaller Chinese drillers weren't guaranteed transport for their gas from drilling sites.
So is this going to be a quick and dirty effort to extract the little shale gas that's available in China? Probably not.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration is more aggressive than its Chinese counterpart, estimating that China's shale gas reserves are 68% higher than those in the U.S.
I know we've had a hard time regulating our drillers, pipelines and distributors, so the Chinese must be seeking outside help to make sure they develop their NG resources responsibly?
Over the longer-term, CNPC and multinationals will all help China realize its shale gas potential. Shell (RDSA), Chevron (CVX), and ConocoPhillips (COP) are circling China's massive shale fields.
But the best way for a society to advance is to learn from the mistakes of others. We've certainly had our safety issues with fracking, so I'm sure the Chinese government has taken safety seriously. Just because government officials are more corrupt than a Republican clown car parade at a Sheldon Adelson circus, I'm sure that
China fracking safety will be a top priority.
JIAOSHIZHEN, China — Residents of this isolated mountain valley of terraced cornfields were just going to sleep last April when they were jolted by an enormous roar, followed by a tower of flames. A shock wave rolled across the valley, rattling windows in farmhouses and village shops, and a mysterious, pungent gas swiftly pervaded homes.
....
Villagers said that employees at the time told them that eight workers died when the rig exploded that night. Sinopec officials and village leaders then ordered residents not to discuss the event, according to the villagers. Now villagers complain of fouled streams and polluted fields.
Now many people in the U.S. might ask, what's this got to do with American exceptionalism? A fair question I guess. If you don't mind having a climate where the bread basket of the world is building Sahara desert type sand dunes one decade, and looking like an ancient inland sea making fossils for future paleontologist to discover 60 million years from now the next decade, I guess it doesn't matter much. But if you think leaking methane into the air not only doesn't smell good, but it just might impact the climate, then maybe we should look a little closer.
There's a big debate in science right now about how much all that Natural gas they're drilling for actually escapes into the atmosphere. It's really, really hard to measure how much leakage you have from the well head to the consumer. The concern is that methane is a pretty darn potent greenhouse gas.
the latest research puts the pound-for-pound greenhouse potency of methane at about 105 times that of CO2 over a 20 year timeframe. Consider the difference over a century, however, and the multiplier drops to about 33 times.
So the debate about methane's impact on the climate, and whether it's better than coal, is going to go on for some time (time we don't have) but what do we get when we try to measure the methane in the atmosphere directly?
What I find interesting about this graph is the little pause between about 1998 and 2007, and then how it takes off again just as the fracking binge starts. It's just an observation and by no means a proven fact.
But this whole methane business sure brings up a couple of questions. We really suspect that the ocean has been acting like a battery and storing some of the heat that the atmosphere has been trapping. And we know that methane doesn't last very long in the atmosphere, so it's heat trapping ability is temporary. So I'm just wondering, while the methane is trapping heat at the rate of 105 times that of CO2, how much of that heat is charging the ocean heat battery, only to come back and haunt us at some time in the future?
And then there's those damn earthquakes.
Ohio geologists have found a probable connection between fracking and a sudden burst of mild earthquakes last month in a region that had never experienced a temblor until recently, according to a state report.
Ya just gotta wonder, if all that high pressure fracking is strong enough to trigger earthquakes that can be felt at the surface, then how many little tiny fissures are forming in the cap rock, and how hard is it going to be to measure that leakage?
But wait! There's more! Not to be outdone in the fossil fuel MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) race, the U.S. has upped the ante! With China's, we're going fracking crazy approach to getting Natural Gas, the U.S. has just started a new arms race for methane hydrates!
The U.S. Department of Energy is soliciting for another round of research into methane hydrates, the potentially huge energy source of "frozen gas" that could step in for shortages of other fossil fuels.
...
A Minerals Management Service study in 2008 estimated methane hydrate resources in the northern Gulf of Mexico at 21,000 trillion cubic feet, or 100 times current U.S. reserves of natural gas. The combined energy content of methane hydrate may exceed all other known fossil fuels, according to the DOE.
Now what could possibly go wrong with a deep sea methane well in the Gulf of Mexico?!
But the ultimate question here is; Why in the heck are we even talking about which fossil fuel is worse than the other, when we know they're ALL very, very, bad? The best way to end this senseless debate is for our government to give the incentives to alternative energy so we cross the ALT-E threshold where fossil fuels are no longer economically viable. According to the most recent IPCC climate disaster warning (how many warnings do we need?);
The costs of renewable energy like wind and solar power are now falling so fast that their deployment on a large scale is becoming practical, the report said. In fact, extensive use of renewable energy is already starting in countries such as Denmark and Germany, and to a lesser degree in some American states, including California, Iowa and Texas.
President Obama and the Dems in congress need to wake up and fight tooth and nail to provide the incentives to push alternatives to fossil fuel across the ALT-E economic threshold, before our climate gets fracked, hydrated, and tar sand to oblivion!
UPDATE: I think I may have not been very clear about the danger of accepting Natural Gas as a solution to Global Warming. There may be a misunderstanding that the "explosion" of fracked Natural Gas would substitute for coal and cause coal production to drop. From the chart below, it appears emerging economies are not substituting for coal, they're just getting hooked on NG and adding to our Climate crises.