The Terrible, Awful, Border-Line Ignorant Plan for the Oil Industry
1,122,764 is a big number. It’s a number equivalent to 212.65 miles, the weight of 86.37 African Bush Elephants, and the amount of people employed by the fuels sector in 2018. I know the petroleum industry may not be a topic I’d typically write about in this blog but seeing that so many of my readers are impacted in some way, shape, form, or fashion by petroleum careers, I felt this needed to be discussed.
The American public got news last week that President Biden had put a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on public lands as part of his commitment to fight climate change. This goes hand in hand with one of Biden’s campaign promises: the banning of new drilling.
Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has been put on the chopping block by anti-drillers pretty much as long as I can remember. However, all I’ve ever been told is “fracking is bad” followed by “no, it’s not.” I’ve never actually heard an argument for or against fracking. And it’s hard to look online because if you type “fracking” into the Google search bar, you’re flooded with lots of mixed reviews from sources which seemingly have an agenda. So, I asked an expert.
Gary Simpson, a fellow Aggie, is a Field Engineer for Gordon Technologies, LLC and spent a few years working directly with fracking in South and West Texas.
“Fracking is simply a process to extract oil and gas. It's technology, which isn't inherently good or bad, and it has pros/cons just like every other form of energy extraction,” Simpson told me.
I’ll give you the cons first because I’m a big believer in ending on a high note.
Simpson said the largest current con with fracking is water usage and disposal. To understand why we’re discussing oil and water together, you need to first know the mechanics of fracking.
In layman’s terms, a well is drilled a mile under the Earth’s surface, then kicked off to the side to form an L shape. The middle (cylinder) of the well is isolated from the ground water with about three million pounds of steel and cement to keep the contents of the well contained. After the well is drilled, thin holes are punched along the horizontal leg of the well and a water-based mixture is injected into the well at high pressure. The fluid goes down, and the pressure from the fluid makes natural gas and oil come up. The American Petroleum Institute (API) has a video on their website depicting the process and I would highly recommend watching it.
“It takes millions of gallons of water to complete a well, and about half of the volume pumped down is flowed back to surface. This water is contaminated and cannot be filtered via traditional (affordable) methods, and so it is reused whenever possible, but it is usually reinjected into disposal wells,” Simpson said.
Another issue with fracking, Simpson added, is earthquakes. The disposal of wastewater artificially lubricates existing fault lines and makes them slide past one another more easily, creating earthquakes.
“There was actually a magnitude 2.1 quake this morning about 8 miles north of my apartment in Midland, [Texas],” Simpson said.
These two fairly major downfalls raise the question of “is it all worth it?” Simpson stated. He said this is something scientists and engineers are trying to decide.
Okay, so now that we’ve heard the bad, let’s listen to the good (which, in a roundabout way, is also the bad because it’s infuriating to know the pros of fracking while hearing seemingly trusted sources glaze over the benefits like they were working at Krispy Kreme).
“One massive benefit has been that it [fracking] has allowed the U.S. to be the ONLY country in the world to reduce greenhouse gases year-over-year. We're back to 1990's levels of emissions,” Simpson said.
Simpson is echoed by the API, which notes fracking is THE reason we’re having an energy revolution.
“Fracking is letting the U.S. tap vast oil and natural gas reserves that previously were locked away in shale and other tight-rock formations. Up to 95 percent of natural gas wells drilled in the next decade will require hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing also is being used to stimulate new production from older wells,” according to API’s website. “Because of shale and fracking, the United States is leading the world in natural gas and oil production. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects domestic crude production will average 12.4 million barrels per day (mb/d) this year and 13.2 mb/d next year. Simply put, fracking is the engine in the U.S. energy revolution.”
Wait, hold the phone… energy revolution? I thought we were destroying the planet. Isn’t that what we’ve been told? That the oil field is basically killing our environment and we should disrespect oil field workers because of that? Even though they’re the ones keeping our fuel tanks off E and heat in our many of our homes? That’s what many of our elected officials, industry “professionals,” and news sources have said, anyways. This is yet another reason I wanted to write about this topic — sound familiar, cattlemen? I digress.
As if this weren’t enough to get you heated, Simpson pointed out something which is near and dear to every one of our hearts and wallets.
“The single largest pro is that because of fracking, energy prices are much, much lower than they would be without it. That allows for even the poorest families to be able to afford to travel, cook, heat/cool their homes, etc.,” Simpson said.
I might add that not only is fracking allowing energy prices to be lower, but it has created a massive number of jobs for American citizens which circles me back around to that 1,122,764 number I mentioned at the beginning of this column (cited from usenergyjobs.com).
Truly, if I were to count the people I personally know who put food on their family’s table by working in the oil field, I’d run out of fingers, toes, and even eyelashes.
There’s no way anyone can deny the positive effect the petroleum industry has had on countless blue- and white-collar workers across the nation… and frankly, it breaks my heart to know that so many of these people will lose their job in the near future, if they haven’t already.
What’s going to happen when your neighbors have to sell their house because of the loss of a petroleum job? Or when your child’s best friend is wearing shoes which are too small because “Daddy got laid off?” Or what about when a community like Midland, Texas turns into a ghost town because we’ve stopped fracking?
A 2016 press release put out by the Global Energy Institute reads, “by 2022, 14.8 million jobs could be lost, gasoline prices and electricity prices could almost double, and each American family could see their cost-of-living increase by almost $4,000.”
Is that what we, the American people, want? Because that’s what we elected.
If President Biden has his way, and if the U.S. really does get rid of fracking, there’s no telling how many jobs will be lost — and for what? To combat climate change?
It has been proven time and time again that the usage of fracking and horizontal drilling (sometimes referred to as directional drilling) has minimized the U.S.’ environmental footprint. So, why is this even an argument?
The Biden Administration has a “clean-energy plan” which promises jobs to remedy the oil field jobs lost — but how much more crippling debt will the country go in to get these clean-energy solutions? At some point, we have to quit borrowing money — and at some point, we have to sit back and examine the plan laid out for us by our Commander and Chief regardless of our political affiliation… because it doesn’t take a petroleum engineering degree to know this is a bad one.
In an article published by the LA Times, President Biden is quoted saying, “we've already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can't wait any longer. We see it with our own eyes, we feel it, we know it in our bones. And it's time to act."
