http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34827-natural-gas-becomes-a-fracking-mess
[links in on-line article]
Natural Gas Becomes a Fracking Mess
Sunday, 14 February 2016 00:00
By Emily Schwartz Greco, OtherWords | Op-Ed
Until late last year, Laura Gideon's family lived in Porter Ranch on the
outskirts of Los Angeles. "We didn't ever want to leave," Gideon told
the Associated Press. It's "a nice gated community."
What uprooted them from one of LA's wealthiest pockets? They became
climate refugees when the nearby Aliso Canyon natural gas storage well
sprang a nasty leak.
Clouds of gas have billowed from the faulty well, which lacked a
subsurface shutoff valve, for three and a half months. After inhaling
nonstop plumes of methane, benzene, and other toxic chemicals, local
residents began to suffer nausea, vomiting, headaches, and nosebleeds.
The disaster has also smacked local businesses hard and eroded real
estate values.
Erin Brockovich, the activist and legal researcher made famous by an
Academy-award winning film depicting her against-all-odds victory
against another California utility, lives only 30 miles away. Now
working with a law firm to help the locals file claims, she calls the
Aliso Canyon leak a "BP oil spill, just on land" - because of its
magnitude, duration, and climate impact.
And that's why this incident imperils more than the people who live
there and the bottom line of Southern California Gas Co., the local
utility that ran the well.
Just as the Gulf Coast disaster invigorated opposition to offshore oil
drilling, the Porter Ranch debacle may sap the natural gas industry's
popularity. Above all, it's exposing the fuel's persistent reputation as
"clean" and climate-friendly as a complete lie.
Environmentalists, backed by ample research, have struggled to debunk
that narrative for years.
Although burning natural gas releases less carbon dioxide than coal or
diesel, extracting and distributing it releases methane into the
atmosphere. And so do storage accidents like this one.
And methane is between 86 and 105 times as powerful as CO₂ at disrupting
the climate over a 20-year period. The now common practice of hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, to obtain natural gas also pollutes waterways
and squanders water - a big problem for parched California.
Environmental Defense Fund is tracking the climate damage wrought by the
broken well, which is located in a vacant oil field about a mile and a
half underground. The group calculates that the roughly 100,000 metric
tons of natural gas that escaped is the equivalent of burning nearly 900
million gallons of gasoline.
This big climate footprint is particularly troubling because thanks to
record production levels, natural gas will soon become the nation's top
power source, eclipsing coal. Natural gas supplies have grown so fast
that U.S. prices are crashing due to oversupply. The industry wants to
fix this imbalance through exports.
Shipping the stuff overseas requires condensing natural gas into liquid
form at very high heat, using expensive infrastructure. More production
will trigger more pollution and potential leaks.
Exporting liquefied natural gas, or LNG, also depends on persuading
foreigners to buy it. But where are the customers?
Selling to Europe means competing with Russian producers. And the
Russians stand ready to block this competition by slashing their own
prices. At the same time, liquefied natural gas prices in Asia have
fallen. Experts say they could plunge further as supplies outweigh demand.
In other words, the natural gas business has turned into a money-losing
venture at the same time that the fossil fuel's real costs to people and
the planet are becoming clearer.
Capping the failed well won't stop all the physical, emotional, and
financial distress experienced by Laura Gideon and thousands of other
Southern Californians. As she told the AP: "We're in mourning now."
The natural gas industry probably is too. It's a fracking mess.
_______________________________________________
Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list
Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org
http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel