- How Big is Fracking in the U.S.?
According to the IPAA, there are about 1.7 million fracked oil and gas wells in the U.S. as of 2021, producing more than 7 billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Expansion of unconventional oil wells are generally dependent on the price of oil on the world market, while natural gas activity is focused more on local markets and tends to be more stable.
- Does Fracking Really Create Millions of Jobs?
According to the American Petroleum Institute, the unconventional energy sector directly supports 9.8 million jobs, while the projected increased availability of natural gas is expected to indirectly generate more than a million additional jobs by 2025 by boosting the manufacturing industry. It should be noted that these numbers are based on a study published in 2011.
However, when COVID-19 brought the world to a temporary standstill, the rapid decrease in demand for gasoline and concurrent crash in oil prices due to oversupply resulted in the loss of about 107,000 oil sector jobs over just 6 months. Currently, although demand has already rebounded, shale jobs are not expected to fully recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2027 or later. The delay in meeting the current demand for gasoline and other fuels is blamed on risk-averse investors and materials shortages, as well as a shortage of oil field workers, many of whom have left the industry. Ironically, in 2022, the mining sector had the largest rate of unemployment in the country, at 15%.
- Is Fracking Still a Booming Industry?
In early 2017, industry analysts predicted that fracking would be a $68 billion market by 2024, a prediction that’s still frequently referenced on industry websites. However, in 2022, a more updated prediction was made that included the disruption of COVID-19. In this analysis, the global hydraulic fracturing market is expected to reach $28.93 billion in 2028. The large disparity is partially related to the pandemic-caused decline of 51.5% in 2020 followed by a slow recovery. Still, a larger issue looms on the horizon, namely the persistent volatility of global oil and gas markets. Investors are no longer willing to buy the assurance of industry experts who once described fracking as the “biggest boom in world history.”
Removing the rose-colored glasses, it’s clear today that the industry’s unprecedented extreme price volatility makes it difficult to invest in long-term oil projects whose economics may become unviable at a future date. The high cost of unconventional oil extraction coupled with gains in renewable energy leave continued profitability highly questionable.
- Is it True that Frack Fluid is Mostly Just Water and Sand?
It’s true that, for most formulations, fracking fluid is primarily fresh water (98%), and a proppant like sand (1.5%). It’s the 0.5% left where the concern about water supply contamination and health effects lies. That doesn’t seem like a lot to be worried about, but it doesn’t take a high dosage of carcinogens or other toxins to cause significant illness or even death. Keeping in mind that fracking a single well can require 4 million gallons of fracking fluid, that equates to 80 tons of chemicals. When you calculate that there may be 10 or more wells on a single frack pad, the amount of chemicals being used represents a significant risk to the local environment, whether from underground leaks into groundwater or from surface spills into surface water supplies.
- How Much Methane is Leaked into the Atmosphere During Fracking?
There is no firm agreement between interested parties when estimating how much methane is typically leaked during fracking. Major differences in results appear not only because limited data is available, but because there’s little agreement on methodologies, the researchers’ biases, and use of the calculations themselves.
In 2011, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that 2.8% of gas produced from wells (both conventional and unconventional) leaks each year. This number doubled the EPA’s previous estimate. In response, the American Petroleum Institute (API) responded in 2012 saying the EPA’s 2011 study “substantially increased estimates of methane emissions from petroleum and natural-gas systems.” In 2013, the EPA reported that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry drastically lowered their estimate of methane leaks from gas drilling to 1.5% “based on industry guesses.” Many have argued that the EPA’s changing estimates were published in response to political and industry pressure at a time when fracking regulations were being debated.
In 2020, a new report derived from satellite data indicated that oil and gas wells of the Permian Basin (west Texas and southeastern New Mexico) leak an incredible 3.7% of the natural gas captured in that region, a number more than twice the revised estimate from the EPA and higher than the amount recorded in any U.S. oil and gas field previously. Researchers involved in that analysis suggest that production has expanded so quickly in that area (due to fracking) that there simply isn’t enough infrastructure to gather all the methane, so a significant amount is simply vented or burned off.
- How Many Gallons of Wastewater Does Fracking Produce?
According to a Duke University study published in 2015, between 2005 and 2014, US unconventional oil wells generated an average of 23.3 billion gallons of wastewater per year. While that number represents only 1% of total industrial water use nationwide, it’s important to note that this number refers to the ongoing production of briny wastewater (i.e., produced water) over the life of a well, not during the fracking activity itself, which returns only a fraction of the (now contaminated) chemically laden fracking fluids that were originally injected.
- What percentage of energy comes from fracking?
As of 2017, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that 67% of natural gas and 50% of the nation’s oil is produced from fracked wells. In 2022, the EIA indicated that about 65% of US crude oil output in 2021 came from tight oil.
- Is Shale Oil Still a Growth Industry?
Shale, or Tight oil and gas is still the dominant method of production in the US, largely because most conventional production has already been tapped. An important indicator of the future of shale oil production is the number of uncompleted vs completed wells across the country.
The first stage in developing a shale well is drilling the borehole and the horizontal arm(s). This stage may take two to four weeks per well, but at this point it’s essentially just a hole in the ground. These wells are called “Drilled but Uncompleted” or DUC. Once a well has been fractured, it’s completed and ready to go. It’s useful to keep track of these numbers since developing a large-scale shale play from start to finish could take as much as a decade.
In the US, prices for oil were already beginning to collapse pre-pandemic due to a sudden oversupply coming from the fracking boom in the US. As prices fell, fracked oil became unprofitable and major industry players were already beginning to scale back production even before the pandemic triggered more chaos. According to the EIA’s July 2021 Drilling Productivity Report, there were 5,957 drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells across the US. This was the lowest in 5 years, which suggests a healthy resurgence of shale oil development, but that’s not necessarily the whole picture. This number reflects not only an increasing rate of completions (particularly in the Permian basin) but a reduction in new drilling. This results in an overall reduction in the inventory of uncompleted wells (DUC). Since drilled wells represent, essentially, a storehouse of potential production, a significant reduction in this inventory not only represents the industry’s increased caution about market stability but could significantly limit the industry’s ability to respond quickly to changing markets.
- Isn’t Fracking Regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act?
As the shale gas industry has boomed, hundreds of thousands of new oil and gas wells have been drilled in more than half the states in the US. The appetite for “energy independence” and some level of control on prices has allowed fracking practices, from well stimulation to wastewater disposal, to continue without important safeguards.
Based on the Energy Policy Act of 2005, hydraulic fracturing is exempt from Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulations unless diesel is used in the fracking process. Diesel is specifically mentioned because it contains highly toxic chemicals, particularly BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene). These chemicals are soluble in water and are so toxic that the EPA has declared that no level of exposure above zero is without risks. Despite such heavy warnings, the SWDA focuses only on diesel, leaving plenty of toxic alternative chemicals available to use in its place, many of which also contain BTEX compounds.
