EVEN as it tries to slow production down, America is still pumping three billion more cubic feet (85m cubic metres) of natural gas a day out of the ground than it can consume. The country has become so awash in the stuff since “fracking” (hydraulic fracturing of gas-bearing shale deposits) began barely five years ago that the price has plummeted from $8 per thousand cubic feet to $2. (A thousand cubic feet of natural gas contains roughly a million BTUs of energy.) Not that long ago, natural gas was a tenth of the price of oil in energy terms; now it is a 50th.
If the natural-gas companies go on producing at the current rate, all the storage reservoirs in America will be full by autumn. With nowhere left to put the stuff, its marginal price will fall to zero. Such a situation is unsustainable.
Extracting natural gas from tightly packed shale deposits costs around $5-6 per thousand cubic feet. Wells have to be sunk thousands of feet underground and then drilled horizontally through the gas-bearing formations for thousands of feet more. A slurry of water, quartz sand and chemical additives has then to be pumped into the well at high pressure, to fracture the shale and open fissures for the trapped gas to escape. And all the waste water has to be pumped back to the surface to be processed and stored, at considerable cost.
The Obama administration will soon issue sweeping new environmental-safety rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal land, setting a new standard that natural-gas wells on all lands eventually could follow.
The rules, which are likely to be unveiled by the Interior Department within days, are designed to address concerns that the method of extracting natural gas known as "fracking" can contaminate groundwater. Among other things, they create new guidelines for constructing wells and treating waste water, according to a draft of the proposed rules reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
At the same time, the department loosened a proposed requirement for companies tied to disclosing the chemicals they use to extract natural gas from the earth, after the industry complained an earlier version would slow drilling too much.
The change, which disappointed environmentalists, is a fresh sign that the administration is heeding industry concerns after Republican complaints of overregulation. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the industry two years to comply with new air-quality standards for oil and natural-gas wells after the industry complained it would be difficult to meet new standards.
WASHINGTON — The Sierra Club said Thursday it will try to block an energy company’s plan to export liquefied natural gas to find new markets for the drilling boom that has flooded the Mid-Atlantic with natural gas.
Virginia-based Dominion Resources Inc. is seeking to export 1 billion cubic feet per day through a terminal it owns in Maryland. A previous legal settlement dating to the 1970s gives the Sierra Club the ability to reject any significant changes to the purpose or footprint of the existing natural gas terminal in Cove Point, Md., 60 miles southeast of Washington.
The environmental group says the export project could result in major damage to the Chesapeake Bay and nearby Calvert Cliffs State Park in Maryland.
“The damage that this project would bring to the Maryland coast as well as the disastrous effects of the fracking boom on communities in states like Pennsylvania make it clear that exporting liquefied natural gas is bad news for Americans’ air, water and health,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.
Read more: Sierra Club Moving to Block Planned Maryland Terminal to Export Liquefied Natural Gas
LAMONT, Okla. — For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong
Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.
Yet in recent years, the climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us.
They acknowledge that the human release of greenhouse gases will cause the planet to warm. But they assert that clouds — which can either warm or cool the earth, depending on the type and location — will shift in such a way as to counter much of the expected temperature rise and preserve the equable climate on which civilization depends.
Their theory exploits the greatest remaining mystery in climate science, the difficulty that researchers have had in predicting how clouds will change. The scientific majority believes that clouds will most likely have a neutral effect or will even amplify the warming, perhaps strongly, but the lack of unambiguous proof has left room for dissent.
“Clouds really are the biggest uncertainty,” said Andrew E. Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M. “If you listen to the credible climate skeptics, they’ve really pushed all their chips onto clouds.”
Read more: Clouds’ Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters
WASHINGTON—Federal regulators put in place the first significant curbs on the fast-spreading drilling technique called fracking since widespread concerns about its environmental impact surfaced. But in a sign of the political sensitivities surrounding the issue, they gave companies more than two years to comply.
The Environmental Protection Agency rules, released Wednesday, are designed to limit the release of smog-forming chemicals and other toxic substances that may escape into the air during drilling for oil and natural gas.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which drillers use a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals to break apart energy-rich rocks, is behind the recent boom in U.S. oil and gas production. How to regulate it is emerging as one of the most important policy questions in Washington, with environmentalists urging strict controls and energy firms warning excessive red tape could stop the boom just as it is beginning to transform the U.S. energy business.
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