Frac Execution: A Case History Or How To Gain Social Acceptance

Abstract

At the turn of the century several companies became active in Shale gas and Shale oil plays. Up to about 2007 this went unnoticed by the public at large. Then small groups started protests, not on the principles but on locally perceived disturbances. At some point people started blaming “Fracking” , seen as new technology where in fact it an old proven technology is. This is not say that the drilling and completion of shale gas wells went all okay. In fact, shortcuts in drilling procedures by some (smaller) USA shale gas companies did cause pollution and incidents. It prompted the major oil companies and service companies to develop new procedures. With effect. Nowadays entirely safe “chemicals” are used in fraccing, mostly ordinary food additives or household products. And frac fluids are recycled. However, the spirit was out of the bottle. All the commotion around shale gas coincided with the demand for an energy switch . Most people started to endorse the greenhouse effect of fossil fuels. Time for a change. Several NGO’s such as Greenpeace, started worldwide actions to convince people that the oil pumps and gas taps needed to be shut as soon as possible. It was rapidly picked up by politicians and clouded by lobbyists (e.g. in France by nuclear and hydroelectric power generation). But it would cause economic chaos if we would switch from oil to sustainable alternatives overnight. We will need oil and gas for the decades to come. And John Doe still wants to ride his car and have nice holidays in exotic places. So how much social acceptance for rapidly stopping the production of oil and gas is there in reality? Having said that we need to put effort in the development of the alternatives. Next to solar and wind, geothermal energy is an excellent sustainable alternative. Geothermal energy is a good sustainable alternative for the heating of buildings and houses. The heat produced by the earth itself has little or no impact on the environment. In the Netherlands, it could deliver 20% of the total energy demand in 2050, although for the time being it is primarily applied for greenhouses. As it happens the development of (deep) geothermal energy requires the use of many technologies developed by the oil and gas industry. With that the fear of earthquakes caused by hydraulic fraccing emerged: Fracking creates earth quakes (true or false?). It did in a geothermal project in Basel. So, in fact it may be true! But is it severe or is it manageable? Oil companies failed to convince the activists and the public that fraccing has an impressive safety track record. For instance, the Dutch mining authority (SodM) concluded that in the Netherlands none of the frac operations produced as far as known adverse effects for man and environment. Application of fraccing for conventional gas production can take place in a responsible manner. Several studies have shown that fracs have caused minor earthquakes, up to 3 on the Richter scale, but only in tectonically active areas. And only with large scale injections.

Barth 11 is a good example of how to convince the public that it can be done in a safe manner with proper attention to the worries of local residents. It is with that approach that we need to demonstrate to the public that drilling and fraccing is safe minimal or no harm to the environment.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90345 © 2018 AAPG European Region, Geothermal Cross Over Technology Workshop, Part II, Utrecht, The Netherlands, April 17-18, 2018