Frack Tour Checklist
A number of distortions on hydraulic fracturing have been presented to the Yukon community and to the MLAs that serve in the Select Committee on fracking. I will enumerate a few that are important to be addressed during and following the fact finding tour in Alberta of the Select Committee commencing this week. The newly released agenda, as the original one, does not show any evidence of balance or respect for science but fortunately, Mr. Heffernan him-self has been put out of the agenda, which is a plus, you’ll see why.
1. As a key unconventional natural gas industry promoter, Kevin Heffernan stated 28/29 Oct. 2013 in Whitehorse and Watson Lake that the average life expectancy of a frack well is 25 years. This is false as it is the production life of conventional gas wells, frack wells last on average (!) little more than 5 years. Industry data from a cross section of gas fracking companies in the with Yukon shales comparable Texas Barnett shale show an average well life of 7.5 years up to well abandonment. Only eight percent of Barnett frack wells ever made any money and that only over less than five years. Frack generated road damage exceeds all oil and gas revenue in the state and at a seven year boom’s endgame local unemployment is among the highest in Texas.
Source: Natural gas analyst Deborah Rogers and Texas Gov. figures
2. Heffernan referred to studies a known shale development lobby group, the Environmental Defense Fund initiated, funded and contracted with the University of Texas. Among the involved departments are the energy and chemistry institutes. Representative of a wider academic fraud scandal that follows the EDF is the UT energy institute study that claimed fracking supposedly does not pollute ground water. Lead author Prof. Groat and institute director Orbach had to resign after it became known that Groat had received personally 1.5 million dollars from the oil & gas company PXP before and while involved with the 2012 study. Groat had failed to mention this as did Heffernan. UT distanced itself from its energy institute’s water study.
Source: University of Texas
4. Heffernan painted as supposed outlier a 2012 Cornell University study by Ingraffea, Santoro and Howarth that observed higher than other fossil fuel GHG emissions as part of shale gas extraction; When in fact it is part of a growing body of work with similar results including from the University of Colorado, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
He claimed in Whitehorse that a 2013 EDF funded UT chemistry institute study that presents low findings on shale drilling related methane emissions was corroborated by other academic studies: “Ah, so it has been looked at by the US National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Resources Canada, the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, Stanford, Canadian Mc Gill University, MIT, University of California L.A., the list goes on and on”. Except for the MIT Energy Initiative with a series of gas frack related studies that were initiated and partly funded by the shale gas lobby group American Clean Skies Foundation, none of these bodies have carried out scientific work on methane emissions of shale gas extraction; Involved MITEI key authors Tony Meggs and Ernest Moniz were on the payroll of Talisman Energy and the oil consulting firm ICF International without declaring it while carrying out the frack gas studies. MITEI is funded to the tune 145 million dollars by the oil & gas industry. Heffernan failed to mention MITEI’s conflict of interest position.
Source: Listed universities and Public Accountability Initiative
5. Heffernan attempted to methodically confuse a well established nomenclature in the industry literature. Some of the firm basics that he mutilates are:
source rock applies to - conventional and unconventional
reservoir (rock) to - conventional
conventional requires - source rock and reservoir
trap, cap or seal characteristic to - conventional
low, slow permeability to - unconventional
unconventional reserve ~ 5% - 10 % of unconventional resource, or less
frack gas well depletion ~ 60% to 90% in year 1, after 2 years approaching zero
conventional gas well depletion ~ several decades
These are universal operational parameters of the natural gas (oil) industry involving fundamentally different financial and logistics sets. They don't apply by 100% but close.
Key preparation for hydro fracking involves the use of a perfing gun that deploys explosive shaped charges punching through horizontal steel pipe (production casing) and into rock. Without it hydraulic fracturing fluid wouldn’t have holes to come through the steel casing essentially like water jets through the holes in a monstrous shower head. Hard to believe Heffernan’s omission was an accident, since it follows his strategy of hiding brute force shattering into gravel and mangling of geology and water tables as much as possible behind conventional gas drilling language and imagery.
Source: wide range of literature from oil & gas industry and petroleum engineering
6. Heffernan falsified and shifted the scientific understanding of gas flow in rock by tens to hundreds of times.
A key metrics of oil & gas geology and industry is the darcy scale, which describes permeability of rock for natural gas or water or crude oil. As illustration, a mosquito net would be more permeable for movements of air or water drops than a tent wall but less than an open tent door. Conventional versus unconventional gas is a meaningful distinction not randomly chosen. Conventional gas moves freely when tapped, unconventional gas does not flow without high intensity fracking.
Heffernan positions conventional gas above a permeability of 100 microdarcy (0.1 millidarcy).
Everybody else in the oil industry and academia defines conventional gas reservoir rock in millidarcy, usually above 10 millidarcy, never less than one millidarcy.
He makes unconventional gas look conventional to say fracking is well established and was done since the 40s to falsely dismiss critics of brute force fracking in this way.
Again Heffernan prepared the ground for a false expectation that geological, hydrological, petroleum engineering, economic and environmental viability of gas fracking would be along the lines of conventional gas drilling architecture.
Sources: Exxon Mobile, Halliburton, Chesapeake Energy, Total and other shale gas players
7. This kind of parallel universe communication approach by the unconventional oil & gas extraction PR is different to conventional oil & gas tactics and people are not prepared to resist its manipulation. A good example are some of the presentations made to the Select Committee late in 2013.
The Economic Development Department of the Yukon Government in its presentation stated: “The supply of North American natural gas is now largely dependent on unconventional resources.” In fact the opposite is the case and about half of Canadian crude oil production and three quarter of Canada’s natural gas production is conventional. About half of US natural gas and about three quarter of US crude oil production comes from conventional extraction.
Off course net production from conventional petroleum reserves is roughly five to ten times better than from unconventional reserves. Net energy is what counts as it relates to energy production figures in the way net income compares to gross revenue or wages before deductions. It means that unconventional production wastes precious and shrinking conventional reserves, creates mountains of public and environmental debt and derails the economy. The oil majors don’t pursue energy, they are after frack fiction based hand outs to extend an outdated monopoly position. Ecdev failed to mention even the aspect of net energy as it presented hype, not facts, to the Select Committee.
Sources: Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, US Energy Information Administration, Oil Drum (petroleum economy internet archive) and the presentation of Yukoners Concerned to the Select Committee
8. Yukon Chief Medical Officer Brendan Hanley advised to implement regulations for fracking. His deduction from the regulatory landscape of fracking is false. There is no evidence anywhere that regulations break into the rock hard physics and mechanics that determine frack operation standards are becoming more destructive and even less safe going forward. The trend is to pulverize and crack the depth of entire regions and destroy their geological integrity more and more, not less. The context is further highlighted by the typical but already summed up extraction results in the end game of the Barnett Shale that show wells are abandoned with 8% of gas actually produced.
And there is of course the hope that more might be extracted with at this point staggering increases of force that already exceed the overall intensity of nuclear underground test scenarios.
Source: Colorado Medical Association and other medical associations who have said no to frack regulations because the process defies regulation. The “New Solutions” journal special issue compilation of peer reviewed health impact studies describing health decline and harm in regions with always regulated shale development.
9. The speaking notes of the Yukon Water Board to the Select Committee representatively state : “Further, since Hydraulic Fracturing is but one specific method of a rapidly evolving set of technologies of formation stimulation, the board chose to issue its guidance in a sufficiently general manner allowing for future industrial innovations and government policies.”
The adoption of the word stimulation more than by its out of place sexual possibilities indicates the Water Board has no clue. The meaning core of the word stimulation describes an acceleration or intensification of a reality that would be there without the stimulation. But a horizontal drill hole in shale without fracking is just that a hole in the rock releasing a cow fart. Yes, the Water Board made a joke out of a serious assignment, but what they presented is highly misleading or mislead or both.
Their presentation does not look coherent enough to have considered the Gas Buggy experiment from New Mexico in 1967 that used an atom bomb for shale gas fracking. It is the only other time in history or future conception that a significant release of shale gas entered the stage that is not based on brute force hydraulic fracturing. “ … is but one …” says the Water Board actually believes, along Heffernan style deceptions, there are other methods for shale gas extraction than high intensity hydraulic (or pneumatic, perhaps, but not likely have they heard of it) fracturing from multi well pads; A universal standard that was established for the first time in the North East B.C. 2007. The nuclear test ban treaty from 1973 also bans industrial uses of atom bombs like in the Gas Buggy experiment. The word “ban” might be hint for a Yukon Water Board that wanted to earn their department’s title and wages.
Peter Becker, Whitehorse Energy Consultant
Saturday 22 March 2014
John Streicker Backtracks and Frack Dances
John Streicker Backtracks and Frack Dances
Feb. 28 Jacqueline Ronson reports on an interview of the Yukon News with John Streicker, in which his relentless campaign for moving forward with regulated gas fracking in Yukon attempts damage control but continues (for more evidence google: streicker synergy deception).
In the interview his denial of supporting fracking lacks credibility as an actor’s role does in a badly written theatre plot. One that might re-appear unexplained on stage 20 min after dying a memorable death. The News and Ronson pitched Puff Balls, delivering less than critical thinking. It seems to me Streicker droned on in self reference while shutting out criticism from science and the community, as he has done.
John Streicker, who now tries to say he opposes fracking, in the interview does not come clean on any of his pro-frack positions and well worn industry talking points such as the following ones.
Streicker’s language is seductive, it charms Yukoners into the frack tent to hang themselves.
Who would push back against nice sounding ideas and who would want:
- to oppose a "local energy source" (streicker pitch for fracking, Whse Star, Aug. 2, 2013)?
- to go against “prime alternate energy” (Streicker in a green party blog:
"Our prime alternate energy potential is natural gas.")?
- to go against "open and informed discussion" (streicker's committee submission implies independent science and citizens as not "open and informed”)?
- a "polarized debate" (streicker essentially blames frack critics, in his submission, to be an extreme pole)?
- draw adversarial lines in the sand (Streicker mass email to Yukoners Oct. 4, 2013 “I have never liked making ‘fracking’ the line in the sand.”)?
- to go against a 0.4% target for frack gas leakage that supposedly helps the climate (submission)?
- to oppose regulations to manage or minimize “risk” (Streicker uses “risk” in the interview, as before, to hide proven frack harms that are not risk but geological certainties)?
And his most recent cover up for his frack lobby work is as dishonest as the litany of frack industry talking points he again brings forward seamlessly. In the News interview he starts off with the "benefits and risks” advertisement language he introduced to Yukon in 2012.
Streicker’s false language was adopted in its title by the select committee on the risks and benefits of hydraulic fracturing in 2013. The by him brokered synergy contract from 2012 already attempted with the same words to recruit the community to fracking, in the fine print. (google: synergy yukon contract). We are not splitting hairs as Streicker is known for a clever command of words.
In the first sentence of the Ronson report on the interview he is quoted asserting there are “benefits of fracking”, as if benefits were a fact. He claims to weigh those unfavourably against “risks”, as if “risks” would be truthful to proved harms. By shifting these aspects Streicker opens the back door further to a YG under fire to come up with a supposed balance in favour of fracking.
In reality there are no credible net benefits, profits or useful energy returns except for falsely presenting geological occurrences of oil & gas in shales as reserves. Hollow energy security and phoney geological reserve claims are fabricated to look worthy of investor commitments and government subsidies.
The point is made by natural gas industrialists like Art Berman, veteran geologists like David Hughes, and financial analysts specializing on oil & gas like Deborah Rogers.
Consequently Streicker’s hype starts to look like the oil & gas version of salting gold claims. But a false front is advertisement gold as it appears not big oil doing the frack bubble bidding but the green party guy.
Except the investment fraud in the unconventional oil & gas sector, exceeds in scale large crimes like the Bre-X scandal. Streicker’s talk of benefits and conventional/unconventional bait and switch tricks hide the disastrous write down of billions in shale gas assets and investment, but also job and infrastructure losses.
No, with two nearly abandoned conventional wells at Kotaneelee the Yukon does not have an oil & gas industry or possibilities. A dangerous exception are shale and coal bed fracking disasters moved forward by Streicker’s frack regulation advice.
The Yukon News report on the Streicker interview concludes: "Those regulations need to be in place whether or not fracking is allowed in the territory, because methane leaks from conventional gas production pose the exact same risk, he said.”
This is false. Every single study that was not contracted, paid for and controlled by the oil & gas industry determines frack wells and frack fields leak more methane and cause more pollution. Also unconventional oil & gas heavily industrializes communities and landscapes, conventional does not.
Again, Streicker is using the uncertainty language of frack PR, and the word “risk” to great effect. With this method he confuses awareness of proven destruction in order to silence the community and control dialogue.
As with he conclusion of the interview Streicker’s representations are permeated with putting gas fracking in a continuum of conventional drilling. It is also a much repeated gas industry angle we have heard in Whitehorse from Kevin Heffernan (CSUR) and Aaron Miller (CAPP).
When unconventional really is different to conventional oil & gas drilling which is spot development. A steel pipe is inserted into a reservoir essentially like a straw into a cocktail drink. Unconventional drilling is spatial development and involves shattering the geology of entire regions.
It is seamless spatial saturation and toxic degradation in 3D.
In the interview Streicker does not address these or any specific concerns his critics bring forward, and rather quotes himself instead throughout the interview. This appears arrogant and certainly not trust promoting for an engineer.
Ronson quotes Streicker, without probing or following up:
“If methane leaks, or fugitive emissions, are any higher than 0.4 per cent of production, natural gas is no better than other fossil fuel alternatives, according to Streicker’s Jan. 31 submission to the (YG frack) committee.”
Countless times he has brought up the 0.4 figure that is out of whack with reality. Independent studies by the University of Colorado and others show fugitive frack gas field emissions that are 20, 25 times higher than that.
The oil funded shale lobby group Environmental Defence Fund (EDF) is the funder and initiator of a bulk of phoney frack studies. It created the fiction of a 0.4% target together with other frack talking points that in broken record fashion come out of Streicker.
High leakage and pollution, resulting in economic and environmental devastation are consistent with unconventional geology. They are not as Streicker claims determined by regulatory regimes.
That is why there are moratoriums and bans in place in many jurisdictions, nationally and internationally, that have extensive regulations or the ability to generate them, like Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Germany, France and most recently and notably, even oil producing Los Angeles. Los Angeles City Council, as most recent high profile case, passed the fracking ban in a 10 to 0 vote (google: list of bans worldwide).
It is disturbing how Streicker sets up his argument and how he positions the conversation on climate crisis and unconventional oil & gas extraction. 0.4 per cent might not be met but he gets to say it again and again exercising his power of suggestion on people. Especially those folks are exploited with gaps in their understanding of energy technologies and policies.
He continues to pitch climate concerns and even anxiety to counter-act and demobilize as much as possible an effective no-frack position. John Streicker has proven to be formidable in deceptive and slick application of such gas industry tactics.
(google: Newfoundland Bans Unconventional Oil & Gas Extraction yukonblogger)
However, John Streicker’s misuse of the 0.4 per cent leakage figure is among the finest in trade craft of psychological frack warfare.
Feb. 28 Jacqueline Ronson reports on an interview of the Yukon News with John Streicker, in which his relentless campaign for moving forward with regulated gas fracking in Yukon attempts damage control but continues (for more evidence google: streicker synergy deception).
In the interview his denial of supporting fracking lacks credibility as an actor’s role does in a badly written theatre plot. One that might re-appear unexplained on stage 20 min after dying a memorable death. The News and Ronson pitched Puff Balls, delivering less than critical thinking. It seems to me Streicker droned on in self reference while shutting out criticism from science and the community, as he has done.
John Streicker, who now tries to say he opposes fracking, in the interview does not come clean on any of his pro-frack positions and well worn industry talking points such as the following ones.
Streicker’s language is seductive, it charms Yukoners into the frack tent to hang themselves.
Who would push back against nice sounding ideas and who would want:
- to oppose a "local energy source" (streicker pitch for fracking, Whse Star, Aug. 2, 2013)?
- to go against “prime alternate energy” (Streicker in a green party blog:
"Our prime alternate energy potential is natural gas.")?
- to go against "open and informed discussion" (streicker's committee submission implies independent science and citizens as not "open and informed”)?
- a "polarized debate" (streicker essentially blames frack critics, in his submission, to be an extreme pole)?
- draw adversarial lines in the sand (Streicker mass email to Yukoners Oct. 4, 2013 “I have never liked making ‘fracking’ the line in the sand.”)?
- to go against a 0.4% target for frack gas leakage that supposedly helps the climate (submission)?
- to oppose regulations to manage or minimize “risk” (Streicker uses “risk” in the interview, as before, to hide proven frack harms that are not risk but geological certainties)?
And his most recent cover up for his frack lobby work is as dishonest as the litany of frack industry talking points he again brings forward seamlessly. In the News interview he starts off with the "benefits and risks” advertisement language he introduced to Yukon in 2012.
Streicker’s false language was adopted in its title by the select committee on the risks and benefits of hydraulic fracturing in 2013. The by him brokered synergy contract from 2012 already attempted with the same words to recruit the community to fracking, in the fine print. (google: synergy yukon contract). We are not splitting hairs as Streicker is known for a clever command of words.
In the first sentence of the Ronson report on the interview he is quoted asserting there are “benefits of fracking”, as if benefits were a fact. He claims to weigh those unfavourably against “risks”, as if “risks” would be truthful to proved harms. By shifting these aspects Streicker opens the back door further to a YG under fire to come up with a supposed balance in favour of fracking.
In reality there are no credible net benefits, profits or useful energy returns except for falsely presenting geological occurrences of oil & gas in shales as reserves. Hollow energy security and phoney geological reserve claims are fabricated to look worthy of investor commitments and government subsidies.
The point is made by natural gas industrialists like Art Berman, veteran geologists like David Hughes, and financial analysts specializing on oil & gas like Deborah Rogers.
Consequently Streicker’s hype starts to look like the oil & gas version of salting gold claims. But a false front is advertisement gold as it appears not big oil doing the frack bubble bidding but the green party guy.
Except the investment fraud in the unconventional oil & gas sector, exceeds in scale large crimes like the Bre-X scandal. Streicker’s talk of benefits and conventional/unconventional bait and switch tricks hide the disastrous write down of billions in shale gas assets and investment, but also job and infrastructure losses.
No, with two nearly abandoned conventional wells at Kotaneelee the Yukon does not have an oil & gas industry or possibilities. A dangerous exception are shale and coal bed fracking disasters moved forward by Streicker’s frack regulation advice.
The Yukon News report on the Streicker interview concludes: "Those regulations need to be in place whether or not fracking is allowed in the territory, because methane leaks from conventional gas production pose the exact same risk, he said.”
This is false. Every single study that was not contracted, paid for and controlled by the oil & gas industry determines frack wells and frack fields leak more methane and cause more pollution. Also unconventional oil & gas heavily industrializes communities and landscapes, conventional does not.
Again, Streicker is using the uncertainty language of frack PR, and the word “risk” to great effect. With this method he confuses awareness of proven destruction in order to silence the community and control dialogue.
As with he conclusion of the interview Streicker’s representations are permeated with putting gas fracking in a continuum of conventional drilling. It is also a much repeated gas industry angle we have heard in Whitehorse from Kevin Heffernan (CSUR) and Aaron Miller (CAPP).
When unconventional really is different to conventional oil & gas drilling which is spot development. A steel pipe is inserted into a reservoir essentially like a straw into a cocktail drink. Unconventional drilling is spatial development and involves shattering the geology of entire regions.
It is seamless spatial saturation and toxic degradation in 3D.
In the interview Streicker does not address these or any specific concerns his critics bring forward, and rather quotes himself instead throughout the interview. This appears arrogant and certainly not trust promoting for an engineer.
Ronson quotes Streicker, without probing or following up:
“If methane leaks, or fugitive emissions, are any higher than 0.4 per cent of production, natural gas is no better than other fossil fuel alternatives, according to Streicker’s Jan. 31 submission to the (YG frack) committee.”
Countless times he has brought up the 0.4 figure that is out of whack with reality. Independent studies by the University of Colorado and others show fugitive frack gas field emissions that are 20, 25 times higher than that.
The oil funded shale lobby group Environmental Defence Fund (EDF) is the funder and initiator of a bulk of phoney frack studies. It created the fiction of a 0.4% target together with other frack talking points that in broken record fashion come out of Streicker.
High leakage and pollution, resulting in economic and environmental devastation are consistent with unconventional geology. They are not as Streicker claims determined by regulatory regimes.
That is why there are moratoriums and bans in place in many jurisdictions, nationally and internationally, that have extensive regulations or the ability to generate them, like Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Germany, France and most recently and notably, even oil producing Los Angeles. Los Angeles City Council, as most recent high profile case, passed the fracking ban in a 10 to 0 vote (google: list of bans worldwide).
It is disturbing how Streicker sets up his argument and how he positions the conversation on climate crisis and unconventional oil & gas extraction. 0.4 per cent might not be met but he gets to say it again and again exercising his power of suggestion on people. Especially those folks are exploited with gaps in their understanding of energy technologies and policies.
He continues to pitch climate concerns and even anxiety to counter-act and demobilize as much as possible an effective no-frack position. John Streicker has proven to be formidable in deceptive and slick application of such gas industry tactics.
(google: Newfoundland Bans Unconventional Oil & Gas Extraction yukonblogger)
However, John Streicker’s misuse of the 0.4 per cent leakage figure is among the finest in trade craft of psychological frack warfare.
Monday 3 March 2014
4 Nov. Newfoundland Bans Unconventional Oil & Gas Extraction (Whitehorse Star, Dec 2013)
4 Nov. Newfoundland Bans Unconventional Oil & Gas Extraction (Whitehorse Star, Dec 2013)
On 11 Dec. The Whitehorse Star Star syndicated a story by Ezra Levant
"Newfoundlanders aren't getting the fracking truth!”
In the story Mr. Levant, without referring to evidence, presented as fact that with the genuine purpose of critisizing gas fracking a fictional or anonymous Syd Peters made insider revelations in St John’s Telegram.
There is no record of critics to gas fracking pitching stories as misleading or hidden entities.
Whereas it is day to day practice for the pro frack promoters to not disclose who they are and in fact act as false flag environmental critics. What are they hiding?
There is an entire industry of oil funded organizations without community roots who pretend to be environmentalists, pitching provocations, distorting independent and peer reviewed evidence and stabbing the citizens in the back.
Just a few weeks ago on invitation of the Yukon Chamber of Commerce’s Darielle Talarico a speaker for the unconventional gas drilling industry, Kevin Heffernan, appeared in Whitehorse and Watson Lake.
Heffernan has a record as paid and registered lobbyist with the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying in Canada without mentioning this in his introduction. He tried to beef up the gas frack industry’s limited credibility and substantiate his claims that water and air are supposedly not poisoned by rattling down a reference list of such oil & gas funded false front groups, among them: Environmental Defense Fund, Center for Sustainable Shale Development, Synergy Conservation and Stakeholder Groups, Groundwater Protection Council. According to informed sources Heffernan is also slated as prominent lecturer for the upcoming tour to Alberta and B.C. of the Legislative Frack Research Committee; And no credible science or information will be offered to balance the apparently well choreographed junk science program.
Enlightening us on how these things come about, CNBC provided an investigative report on a closed door training session about how best to lie to people, the: Media & Stakeholder Relations Hydraulic Fracturing Initiative 2011, Oct.31/ Nov.1 Houston/Texas.
Michel D. Kehs, then Chesapeake Energy Vice President and PR chief spoke to an audience that included Canadian gas fracking outfits like Encana: “Chesapeake has got nearly 100 people whose sole jobs are to deal with community relations. We have got people going out and speaking in the community every night.” and “It does not matter what the facts are!”
In the list of sessions was the PR director for Range Resources, Mat Pitzarella, who had this advice: "We have several former PSYOPs folks (military psychological warfare experts) that work for us at Range because they're very comfortable dealing with localized issues and local governments.”
As we know him and his Sun Media/FoxNorth spin masters Mr. Levant in his story continues not with honest common sense but likewise with deception on the unconventional oil & gas disaster for human and civic rights, ruin for the economy and destruction for the environment.
Peter Becker
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