By John Pickard
Fracking, like nuclear power, is one of those issues that divides honest trade unionists and good activists in the labour movement. The developing of fracking appears to offer employment and economic development in areas where neither of these are currently well-developed. However, I believe that socialists must argue and campaign against fracking and we need to explain the reasons why.
Fracking, as the name implies, involves the ‘fracturing’ of rock deep underground. The principle has been known for decades, but there has been a growth in fracking in recent decades because of improved techniques in drilling and especially in managing horizontal drilling far underground. The target of the drilling is shale, a kind of rock in which there is a substantial proportion of oil and/or natural gas.
Some rock formations have large natural ‘pools’ of oil or gas and it has been these that have traditionally been exploited by oil and gas wells. In these cases, once a well is drilled, the fuel flows naturally to the surface, due to the weight of the overlying rocks. But this is not the case with shale, where the gas/oil is too closely embedded within the rock to form large, easily-exploited pools. The fossil fuel, therefore, must be forcibly separated from the shale before it can be pumped to the surface. Hence the need for rock fracturing.
A typical fracking well drills down over a mile and having reached that point, the well is then drilled horizontally. It is along these horizontal drill-holes that explosive charges are set off to ‘fracture’ the rocks and create new fissures within the natural rock, perhaps a hundred or two hundred metres in all directions. A slurry of sand, water and chemicals is then pumped down the well, flooding through all the fissures in the shale and freeing the oil and gas previously trapped in the rock.
The fracking well will have ‘down’ and ‘up’ pipes so that when the slurry is pumped back to the surface, it then contains oil and gas that can be easily separated. A typical fracking well, despite the investment in drilling, roads and infrastructure, has only a limited life and after a few years it may become uneconomic and so it is therefore abandoned.
Fracking revolutionised US energy production
World-wide, there are over two million fracking wells. Fracking has certainly made an enormous difference to the US economy. Thanks to its tens of thousands of fracking wells, the USA is now the world’s third biggest producer of oil, is completely self-sufficient in energy and is in a position even to export liquid natural gas to Europe. One of the reasons for the huge increase in fracking is the high price of crude oil. As long as the oil price above a certain value (as it is now) it becomes economical to use fracking. Below that price and fracking is not economic.
In Britain, the proponents of fracking have argued that the shale rocks under in this country can produce a bonanza as great as the original North Sea Oil boom. One industry CEO claimed a few years ago that “shale gas is the most important energy development since the discovery of oil”. Cuadrilla, the big fracking company, claims that in Lancashire alone, there are “20 trillion to 40 trillion cubic feet” of gas/oil, although not all of this might be recoverable.
The industry claims that while a well is in development and production, it provides important employment and economic development. This is an argument echoed also by the leaders of some trade unions, defending, they claim, their members’ jobs. The industry can present an image of a safe, clean, well-organised and well-monitored industry, describing with slick graphics how a landscape used for fracking can be returned to its pristine condition when the life of the fracking well is over. They also claim that there is no danger to the aquifers – the water-bearing rocks from which much of our water is extracted for everyday use – because the fracking wells go far below the aquifers.
What is the reality of the situation? First of all, we have to consider the safety of the well that is drilled in the first place. Before slurry is piped down and back up and the extraction is progressed, the well has to be sealed on its outside by the injection of cement or some other sealant. The problem is, of course, that there is no means of checking the integrity of a seal that reaches a mile underground.
The slurry that is pumped under pressure contains all kinds of chemical reagents – including surfactants (powerful caustic chemicals similar to detergents) to help ‘loosen’ the oil from the shale. The fracking companies hide from public scrutiny the chemical composition of their slurries, under the rules of commercial secrecy. Many of these chemicals (hundreds are used across the industry) are poisonous and/or carcinogenic. There is no way that companies would be able to check (or would want to check) the integrity of a well seal hundreds of metres below ground level and there is every chance that these dangerous chemical reagents would seep out of wells and get into aquifers, even those these are near the surface.
US experience is that pollution is a widespread problem
The experience in the USA has been that aquifers and ground-water has been polluted by pumped water and by oil and gas coming up through the system. Indeed, there are pictures on Youtube of people in the US lighting gas coming out of their water taps!
Then there is the question of the water the fracking uses. The only way the oil and gas can be separated from the shale is by pumping huge amounts of water under great pressure. It means that a typical fracking well uses hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every day. The question arises, where does this water come from? – the answer is usually from the ‘normal’ water supplies used for domestic and industrial use. There is no doubt that a major fracking well will seriously deplete the water supplies in an area and in fact there have been multiple complaints and some closure of fracking wells in California, where water is in such short supply and where agricultural water needs are so great. Among those companies with the greatest concerns about fracking in Britain are…the water companies.
Another question that has to be resolved is what happens to the slurry after it comes back to the surface? Hundreds of thousands of gallons of dirty water, polluted by chemicals and now further polluted by oil, sand and shale debris, is back on the surface with nowhere to go. It cannot (or should not) be just poured into rivers where it would poison fish and local wildlife. What tends to happen is that this water is left in artificial ‘lagoons’ until such time as it evaporates naturally, leaving a poisonous residue. That is in theory, of course. There are no guarantees that these huge lagoons will maintain their integrity and not leak into the water table as well. Cuadrilla and the big fracking companies don’t give a satisfactory answer about how they deal with the ‘used’’ water, once it comes back to the surface.
The possibility of earth tremors is another issue. After an earthquake in British Columbia, Canada, the BC Oil and Gas Commission came to the conclusion that it “was caused by fluid injection during hydraulic fracturing from an operator in the area…”. Likewise, in Britain drilling in Lancashire was suspended after an earthquake in the Blackpool area. Now, the Tories have announced a relaxation of the rules regarding earth tremors – so that a tremor has to be more significant than a certain level (on the Richter Scale) before any drilling is suspended.
Inspection system will be completely impotent
Of course, the government and the companies will argue that there will be proper regulation, safeguards and monitoring. But in practice, this process cannot be trusted. How many Health and Safety inspections are there today in industrial processes? – a vanishingly small number. Workers can have no confidence whatsoever in what will be a minimal inspection system, overseeing a process that is in any case hidden hundreds of metres below the surface. Despite supposed regulations in the USA, it has been found on many occasions that the fracking companies were flouting the rules.
In California, the State Water Resources Board found that at least nine the sites were dumping waste water contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. In one case it was found that nearly 3 bn gallons of wastewater was illegally injected into aquifers.
Flouting the rules, in other words, is rife. Communities in Britain can have no confidence whatsoever in the inspection and monitoring regime of a Tory government hell-bent on cutting ‘red-tape’ and de-regulating anything that moves.
Last but not least, the labour movement should oppose fracking because it represents yet more investment in burning fossil fuels that promote global warming. Many regions of the country needs jobs and investment, but there is absolutely no reason why investment cannot take place in other, renewable forms of energy. Trade union leaders have to fight for the jobs of their members and for employment in their areas. But fracking is not the only means of providing good jobs. Wind, tidal and solar energy represent industries in their infancy, in the sense that there is still huge scope for new development and growth in them. Given the dire warnings last week from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is even more important than ever that the labour movement should take seriously the threat of global warming. We should follow a policy of leaving the carbon in the ground, whether it is oil, coal or gas and instead we should be promoting clean, renewable energy sources and the jobs and investment that goes with them.
October 11, 2018
