Energy security & the big fracking pollute
Wednesday, December 07, 2011 at 18 : 55Till the early 1970s, India used to be heavily dependent on international charity exports of wheat, corn and other food grains. It took the dynamic leadership of the then minister of food and agriculture, C Subramaniam, Bharat Ratna, to usher in the Green revolution which led to food self-sufficiency. It took Dr Kurien of Gujarat Amul less than half a decade to lead a white revolution making India the largest milk producer in the world.
Considering the back ground of India being dependent on European charity to provide milk for our teeming millions of children, this was truly a major achievement of any developing country. an equally staggering opportunity lies unexploited in this country over the past several decades. this is the all-important sector of petroleum industry.
We import 1.35 million tonnes of crude annually. a significant portion of this crude comes from the Middle Eastern countries whose affinity and sympathy is to Pakistan. apart from the major drain on the county’s hard currency reserves, the possibility of a squeeze on oil supplies in the event of hostilities with Pakistan cannot be ruled out.
Pakistan’s Gwadar port sits like a cobra over the straits of Hormuz, threatening to impose a blockade on tankers coming to India. this apart, the burgeoning rise in the price of crude oil manipulated by the OPEC cartel, poses a threat to our energy security.
Inexplicably, an important source of hydrocarbons which the country possesses in abundance, like the thorium deposits in the beach sands of Kerala, lies unexploited. Oil bearing shale soft-rock exists in the North Eastern states of Arunachal, Assam and Nagaland.
The Government of India published documents show that exploitable (economically recoverable) shale oil deposits to the extent of 70 billion tonnes are available in these three states. at the current rate of consumption of 1.35 million tonnes per annum, these deposits will last more than 450 years.
After meeting the present and growing requirement of crude oil, India can choose to become a major exporter of oil, improving our muscle flexing ability to secure our global interests.
Shale oil is far richer than Arabian crude in the higher molecular-weight distillates making shale oil valuable as major petro-chemical industrial complexes can be catered downstream.
Refining of the crude in the North Eastern states and starting of industries using the down-stream products like yarn, PTA, paraxylens, polyester and more, will help in creating employment leading to reduction in insurgency. Arunachal is coveted by China and keeping security and environmental aspects in mind, the Army could be involved in the exploitation of shale oil.
Fortunately, the oil bearing shale is at shallow depths and lends itself to open cast mining. Estonia has been mining shale for the last 30 years and extracting the oil in retorts. It is a proven technology with very little environmental impact where after completion of mining, the depleted shale is dumped back and trees grown over it.
An alternate technology, Fracking, is a recently introduced technology, however it is highly polluting. There are dangers involved in adopting fracking technology, where corners are bound to be cut, if left to private parties, leading to an environment disaster.
In most polluting industries, the pollutants produced are byproducts of a chemical process using harmless chemicals. in some cases the process starts with the introduction of toxic materials which get transformed into benign chemicals, and one has to ensure that some of the toxic chemicals that get away unprocessed are captured from the effluents.
In a few cases the toxic materials pass right through up – processed. in many cases, these toxic chemicals are beyond the municipal waste treatment plants’ capacity to filter out. in the USA, to safeguard water-bodies from toxic effluents, the Clean Water Act was passed. in the USA, if you throw your used car battery into a pond, you can be jailed.
If in spite of these laws, oil and gas companies in the USA drill one kilometer deep and then five kilometers horizontally, and pumps in, unregulated, toxic chemicals under pressure to fracture the underlying rock, will it not make your hair stand on end? this technique is called fracking (hydraulic fracturing).
And if you are told that this high- pressure impregnation of shale is being done in the USA with cases of ground and surface water pollution coming to light with farm animals dying painfully and humans complaining of memory loss, sleep loss, nervous disorders, breathing problems, gastronomical and liver problems, and cases of cancer, will you let the technology be used in India unregulated?
There have been cases of drinking water coming out from taps bursting into flames because of methane pollution. When Dick Cheney was the Vice President of the USA, a law was enacted exempting the use of Fracking technology from the Clean Water laws! What will be your reaction if you found out that France banned such an activity in July this year, and has revoked shale gas permits issued earlier?
The Irish government has commissioned a study into this controversial method of extracting natural gas. North Carolina has not allowed fracking and the Democrats in Ohio are pressing for a ban on fracking.
Fracking (hydraulic fracturing) is a technology developed by Halliburton to free gas and oil from sedimentary rock, shale.
The technology involves pumping under pressure “chemicals”, water and sand in bores to fracture the shale. the “chemicals” list of 150 items includes 29 chemicals like benzene, ethylbenzene, formaldehyde, methanol, naphthalene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, toluene, xylene, boric acid, hydrochloric acid, isopropanol, and diesel fuel that are either known or possible carcinogens or are regulated by the federal government of the USA because of other risks to human health.
Typically, in a one square mile pad hosting a fracking site, 14 million litres to 99 million litres of fracking chemicals are pumped in. the ratio of the chemicals cocktail to fresh water used is 1:100, and this thirsty requirement for water puts a heavy strain on local water reservoirs.
While pumping in the water, chemical, and sand, there is a return of a portion of the fluids which is stored in a pit dug out adjacent to the drilling site. the pit is lined with plastic sheets to prevent seepage.
At the end of the fracking operation, this pit is dozed over with mud, before which some of the chemicals evaporate and get air borne. To prevent or minimize the chemicals locked in the five to seven kilometer long bore holes from seeping into aquifers, the bore holes are encased in concrete by pumping in concrete slurry.
Googling for “fracking” will throw up a plethora of links to technical literature and videos that are horrifying. Gasland is a documentary film on fracking directed and filmed by Josh Fox. the film has won awards.
Being slow to adopting new technologies has spared India the agony of experiencing the effects of fracking so far. if in the US, in spite of the horrors surfacing and protests increasing, there is no letup in fracking, one can imagine what will happen if fracking is attempted in a remote area in the northeastern areas of India.
Just for one test-fracking attempt, imagine a convoy of more than 1000 trucks carrying toxic chemicals starting from Kolkata, snaking their way up steep slopes and negotiating hair pin bends in a remote area in the northeast. Only one truck has to fall into a ravine and crack open for the Brahmaputra to be wiped out. Assuming this does not happen in the first test attempt, and after completing the fracking operation without a blowout or mishap, even if the returning fluids are stored in perfectly lined pits, a small earthquake will get the fluids to spill out or seep into the ground.
Even if the concrete encased bores have been perfectly done, an earthquake is sure to get the fluids entrapped in the shale and bore hole to gush out through cracks. the north east area is seismically active.
Fortunately for India, the shale deposits exist at shallow depths. Safe technologies involving open cast mining of the shale, and squeezing out the oil and gas from the mined shale in retorts are available world over. the biggest shale mines in the world are in Estonia (you could google for links) which the Estonians have been operating for more than 30 years. the Estonians have dumped back the depleted shale in mined areas and grown trees on it. we could learn from their experience.
The Government of India could be urged to wake up from their slumber and show a sense of urgency with respect to shale oil exploitation. France is leading the light by banning fracking and we should follow.
