"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
The Red Queen, of course, was talking about fracking. In the looking glass world of the fracked hydrocarbon fields, drillers must frantically drill, thousands of wells per year, simply to stay exactly where they are.
Swarms of new oil and gas wells are taking over regions of the United States. And the reason is not because the wells are performing so well.
The reason is that the wells are performing so poorly.
When a fracked well strikes, it looks like a bonanza. The oil or gas flows out and fill everyone's minds with cash flow sugar plums and financial fairies. Based on the performance of conventional wells, the hydrocarbons are expected to flow for many years, declining only a few percent per year.
Reality quickly sets in. The yield of the well goes down, every month. Within as few as 4 years, the amount of oil or gas flowing from the well is typically well below 10% of the initial yield, sometimes as low as 5% within 5 years. The decline has to be replaced quickly, before the entire house of cards collapses.
These steep declines are thoroughly researched in a remarkable report at shalebubble.org, a project of the Post Carbon Institute and Energy Policy Forum.
If you like drilling, the answer is simple - move over and drill another one. And then another, and another. Pretty soon your home county looks like this:
Of course, that's not what it actually looks like. That's just a map with dots on it.
Your home county actually starts to look like, for instance, the image below. There is no way that is ever going to leak. Besides, you don't really need drinking water any more, because they have it in bottles now.
The more declining wells they have, the more they have to drill in order to keep the hydrocarbons flowing. As Business Week
describes:
In the fields, this incessant need to drill is known as the Red Queen, after the character in Through the Looking-Glass who tells Alice, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
David Hughes, a geoscientist and president of Global Sustainability Research, has examined the life span of shale wells. “The Red Queen syndrome just gets worse and worse and worse,” he says. “The higher production goes, the more wells you need to offset the decline.”
Consideration of the steep decline curve, as well as complex geology, is a potential contributor to why the estimate of recoverable oil in the Monterey Formation in southern California was just
reduced by a whopping 96%
Still, the drilling frenzy goes on. One big reason may be to snag money from unwary investors. As Bloomberg reports:
Consider Griffin Perry, 30, a former banker and Texas Governor Rick Perry's son. Perry and partners at Grey Rock Energy Partners are taking minority stakes in shale wells. They've raised $40 million so far, and Perry has threatened to grow a mustache if that number hasn't hit $200 million by August.
Or consider 27-year-old Mark Hiduke, who just raised $100 million to build his three-week-old company, according to a story by Isaac Arnsdorf of Bloomberg News. "I know just the place to find oil," Hiduke said. "Just the place. Invest with me, for I know just the place. I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."
The pattern looks just a little like Internet stocks in late 1999. Except that in this case, the damage isn't only financial.
Quickly declining yields that leave impacted landscapes and polluted groundwater behind. What are they thinking? A prescient 1996 movie, which featured kindred spirits of our present-day frackers, may provide an answer.
Act today - protect your planet!
|
California Fracking Moratorium Blogathon
May 20-May 23, 2014
Key votes will be held this week on California SB 1132, which imposes a moratorium on fracking. If the bill fails, the legislative process toward moratorium must restart next January.
Please join us for a blogathon May 20-23 in a campaign to tell lawmakers to support this bill. This is a coordinated effort with a coalition of more than a dozen NGOs, including Earth Works, Sierra Club, and Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment.
And please call key lawmakers, ASAP. Tell them YES on SB 1132!
Sen. Darrell Steinberg: (916) 651-4006
Sen. Kevin De Leon: (916) 651-4022
Sen. Ricardo Lara: (916) 651-4033
Sen. Ed Hernandez: (916) 651-4024
Sen. Cathleen Galgiani: (916) 651-4005
Sen. Ben Hueso: (916) 651-4040
Sen. Lou Correa: (916) 651-4034
Sen. Carol Liu: (916) 651-4025
Sen. Richard Roth: (916) 651-4031
Sen. Norma Torres: (916) 651-4032
Please Help Pass a Moratorium on Fracking in California!
Photograph Credit: EarthWorks.
|
|
California Fracking Moratorium Blogathon: May 20-May 23, 2014
Diary Schedule - All Times Pacific
5:00 pm: Blogathon announcement diary - CA Fracking Moratorium Blogathon: SB 1132 in Suspense! by boatsie.
1:00 pm: If Texans can't live with fracking, Californians can't either by Txsharon and Jhon Arbelaez.
2:00 pm: SB 1132 Blogathon — Letters, Comments, Talking Points, Environmental Wisdom, and Music by WarrenS.
3:00 pm: Fight Back, Don't Frack! by Senator Holly J. Mitchell (D-Los Angeles/CA).
5:00 pm: A fracking ban might just have to start at home by Daniel Kessler.
1:00 pm: Letterman passes fracking torch, Colbert blows it up. SB1132 Blogathon gets comic relief! by citisven.
3:00 pm: Ca Fracking Moratorium: A little Boat, So Many People by boatsie.
4:00 pm: U.S. Cuts Monterey Shale Oil Potential by 96%: Don't frack California by FishOutofWater.
5 pm: CA Fracking Blogathon: A word from our member by Environmental Action.
8 am: What the FRACK is going on by HipHopTC.
11:00 am: Chasing the Red Queen in Frackingland by James Wells. You are here!
1:00 pm: Kandi Mossett, Climate Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).
2:00 pm: Linda Capato, Fracking Campaign Coordinator for 350.org.
3:00 pm: FishOutofWater.
5:00 pm: Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
11:00 am: Horace Boothroyd III.
1:00 pm: RandW
3:00 pm: Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr., President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus.
5:00 pm: Damien Luzzo
Our Daily Kos community organizers are Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, boatsie, rb137, JekyllnHyde, citisven, peregrine kate, John Crapper, Aji, and Kitsap River, with Meteor Blades serving as the group's adviser.
Please tweet all diaries posted during the day, adding the hashtag #SB1132. Feel free to link to your Facebook pages, and remember to republish each diary to your DK Groups. You can also follow all postings by clicking this link for the Climate Change SOS Blogathon Group. Then, click 'Follow' and that will make all postings show up in 'My Stream' of your Daily Kos page. Graphic Credit: 350.org.
|
References
Decline curve figure and map of Bakken Shale wells from shalebubble.org, courtesy of the Post Carbon Institute.
Speaking of PCI, keep an eye out for a post at 5:00 PT today (scheduled) from Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
Image of mud pit courtesy of shaleshock.org
Fracking impacts chart is from Fracking By The Numbers, Environment America. Check out Environment California's No Fracking in California page.
Aerial view and playground view from Earthworks Action, thanks TXSharon for the link.
Can you find the fake quote?