I was first confronted by the intense emotions around hydrofracking at a public meeting in New York City in November 2009. It was a cold, blustery night in downtown Manhattan, but over a thousand people streamed into a high school auditorium to learn about the potential benefits and hazards of extracting natural gas from in and around the city’s upstate watershed. I was there to research my book, The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century, and was curious to know what impact hydrofracking might have on the quality and quantity of the drinking water supplied to over nine million people every day.
The debate that night centered on the Marcellus Shale, which is a 95,000-square-mile swath of gas-rich rock that underlies parts of five states: New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. The stakes in play there—financial, environmental, political, and social—are enormous. The Marcellus deposit is thought to be the single largest energy deposit in the United States, and the second-largest gas deposit in the world (after the South Pars/North Dome gas-field, shared by Qatar and Iran). The Marcellus is estimated to contain at least 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is enough to power all American homes for 50 years.1
Shale is a dense layer of sedimentary rock that lies a mile or more underground in deposits sprinkled across the country (and, indeed, around the world). Natural gas or oil trapped in shale formations is known as “shale gas” or “shale oil,” and is chemically identical to gas and oil taken from traditional wells. Geologists have known about shale reserves for years, but until recently they have been too difficult to access. In the last decade, however, industry and government groups have pushed a technology called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which has unlocked enormous quantities of shale oil and gas and set off an environmentalist backlash.
Hydrofracking has created jobs, spurred industry, lowered carbon emissions, and provided an economic boon to many communities across the country. (While there is great interest in the technology worldwide, hydrofracking has been commercialized only in North America thus far.) Yet, while the temptations of “fracked” energy are great, critics say that it pollutes the water, ground, and air, and that these costs outweigh its benefits.
It was against this backdrop that I attended the meeting in New York City in 2009. The large auditorium was packed to standing-room only that night. Roughly a quarter of the crowd supported hydrofracking; another quarter had not made up their minds; and the remaining half were opposed. Some attendees wore suits or high heels, some came in camouflage and blue jeans, others were dressed up as mountains, fish, or rivers. Red-faced politicians stirred the crowd with fiery rhetoric; state regulators and energy executives kept a low profile; journalists swirled around the auditorium; and citizens asked pointed questions.
When gas companies began to explore rural upstate New York in the early 2000s, many residents leased their property for modest fees. Some were paid as little as $3 per acre plus a 12.5 percent royalty; by 2007 lease prices averaged about $25 an acre, plus royalties of 12.5 percent; by 2009, prices had skyrocketed to $6,000 an acre, plus royalties of 20 percent.2 The region was mired in an economic slump, and many residents and businesses were pushing then-governor David Paterson to open state-owned land to hydrofracking to generate jobs and revenue. But Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, cautioned that fracking “is not a risk that I think we should run.”3
Since that night in 2009, the two sides have only become more polarized. In New York State, for example, the public remains almost evenly split on the issue, with 39 percent in favor of hydrofracking and 43 percent opposed to it, according to a 2013 Siena poll.4 The Wall Street Journal opines, “fracking could be the difference between economic life and death” for New York.5 But celebrity opponents, like Yoko Ono and the actor Mark Ruffalo (who lives in upstate New York), shoot back, “You can’t say that we have climate change and we have to fight it, and then … say we’re going to move forward with hydrofracking.… You can’t have both.”6 And “Fracktivists” note that if fracking fluids—some of which are toxic or carcinogenic (as is benzene)—pollute the city’s carefully protected watershed, New York will be forced by EPA regulations to build a $10 billion filtration plant that will cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year to operate.7
Current New York governor Andrew Cuomo has no easy answers. Hydrofracking advocates, such as the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, have pressured state legislators to approve the process for nearly five years, and complain that Cuomo is stalling.8 But opposition groups threaten to label Cuomo—who is said to have presidential ambitions—a traitor and sellout if he allows hydrofracking.9 Cuomo was given a momentary reprieve in early 2013. The day before state regulators were set to issue an environmental impact statement, the state Department of Health requested more time to review three new studies. The state assembly imposed a two-year moratorium on new hydrofracked wells to await results of the studies.10
The argument in New York mirrors the national dispute over hydrofracking, and foreshadows a worldwide debate as shale gas and oil become increasingly important to the global energy equation.
In the meantime, my own position on hydrofracking continues to evolve. In 2009, informed by my research into water-related issues, I was opposed to hydrofracking. There is little question that the process is inherently risky: it uses huge volumes of water and has set off local “water wars” in arid states such as Colorado, Texas, and California. Moreover, shale wells can pollute the air and groundwater. Once hydrofracked, each well generates millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which includes secret chemical mixtures and naturally occurring radioactive elements that are difficult to clean and sequester. As hydrofracking technology spreads around the world, these challenges will become exponentially more difficult.
Yet the technology, practice, and oversight of hydrofracking have advanced since 2009, and it has become difficult to ignore the benefits of shale fuels. The scientific consensus holds that natural gas burns more cleanly than coal or oil, and thus reduces greenhouse gases; the economic consensus holds that hydrofracking creates jobs, revenue, and new supplies of energy; and the political consensus holds that natural gas is an effective “bridge fuel” to tide us over until renewable energy sources—such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower—have been commercialized.
To put it bluntly, hydrofracking is neither all good nor all bad. Rather, it is a timely and important subject rendered in shades of gray. And it is one that is worth talking about and, indeed, arguing over. My aim in writing this book is to help spur a healthy, informed dialogue about an energy supply that we still have much to learn about and that is changing the world we live in.