Tagged: natural gas

The past few days have been busy ones in the world of natural gas extraction:

• New hydrofracking rules from the Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were met with complaints from both sides.
• A New York environmental group is questioning whether the state's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) believes wastewater is a real concern.
• And the EPA withheld a study on aquifer contamination in Wyoming at the request of the governor - who then used the delay to prepare a smear campaign.

Here's details on each:

There's a boom in natural gas production in the United States, a boom so big the market is having trouble absorbing it all.

The unusually warm weather this winter is one reason for the excess, since it reduced the need for people to burn gas to heat their homes. A bigger reason, however, is the huge increase in gas production made possible by new methods of coaxing gas out of shale rock formations.

Peter Ricchiuti, a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans and an expert on oil and gas production, says the normal supply-and-demand laws of economics aren't working as they used to in the industry.

According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, 13 states: 

• Are unsure or don't know where some of their natural gas pipelines are located, or
• Have little or no information on pipeline reliability.

But according to New York officials, we're not one of them.

Why is there such a big fuss over fracking?

According to Karen Moreau, who heads the New York State Petroleum Council, environmentalists have stirred up the controversy as a fundraising tool.

“It’s part of a movement to enrich the environmental groups,” she says, “Because through hysteria, and creating an environment of fear, it certainly does cause people to support the mission of some of these groups.”

Environmentalists, obviously, disagree with that assertion.

In its Energy Outlook for 2012, the Department of Energy has reduced its estimate of unproven "technically recoverable reserve" (TRR) natural gas in the Marcellus Shale from 410 trillion cubic feet to 141 trillion cubic.

For those of you playing at home, 141 trillion down from 410 trillion represents a nearly one-third  two-thirds reduction in natural gas across the whole Marcellus Shale formation.

But it's still pretty far off from the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) competing estimate, of about 84 trillion cubic feet.

Pending well permit applications for high-volume hydraulic fracturing (2007-present):

If New York State allows hydrofracking, where would it happen?

With the help of officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), we used the agency's searchable online oil and gas database to find out precisely where drilling companies have applied for hydrofracking permits.

So what does this map mean?