Shale gas and drinking water safety

Much has been made of the documentary Gasland.

A scene from the movie which premiered in June on the HBO Network in the United States, shows water from a faucet lighting up in an area where natural gas is purported to have impacted the water supply as the result of ‘fracking' or hydraulic fracturing, the unconventional technique of fracturing rock to extract gas in shale drilling.

Discussing the documentary with New Europe, Fadel Gheit,  a senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York said that scientifically it is difficult to prove that hydraulic fracturing is responsible for contamination of drinking water.

Gheit explains that shale gas is about 3,000 to 4,000 meters into the ground, while the drinking water table is less than 50, 60 or 70 meters.

“This is very solid rock that has very low permeability so it is very difficult scientifically to convince somebody that whatever liquid that the companies use in hydraulic fracturing can penetrate rocks of almost three kilometers in the ground to reach the drinking water,” says Gheit.

Gheit also talks about the prospect for shale gas in Europe. “There is a very strong belief that Eastern Europe is sitting on huge shale gas fields,” he said.