Shale Gas and the Cornell Study

Earlier this week, a Cornell University study is said to have found that extracting natural gas from shale formations using hydraulic fracturing generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than burning coal.  (Read more HERE)

The study, to be published later this week in the journal Climatic Change, has drawn criticism directed at its authors, methodology and its conclusions, which industry groups say is flawed.

In his excellent blog, The Oil and the Glory, Steve LeVine provides his thoughts on the Cornell study:

If Cornell Professor Robert Howarth and a couple of his colleagues are correct, there is precious little hope -- very close to none -- of getting greenhouse gas emissions under control and preventing some of the less-pleasant repercussions of  climate change. This week, the Howarth team published a paper disputing one of the main assumptions accompanying the U.S. boom in shale gas drilling -- that it is a positive development because natural gas emits half the greenhouse gases of coal, and a third less than oil. Gas, it has been said here and elsewhere, is a "bridge fuel" until an as-yet undetermined non-fossil fuel technology is scaled up to propel the global economy along with the world's private vehicles. But Howarth says that, when one takes into account the methane released during shale gas production, coal in fact comes out cleaner. Given the hoopla surrounding shale gas, Howarth's paper has attracted much attention, including prominent display in the New York Times. But is he right?

Over at the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Levi isn't so sure. There is no dispute regarding the hazards of methane -- this gas is pernicious. But Levi takes Howarth to task for relying on "isolated cases reported in industry magazines" along with the performance of notoriously bad Russian pipelines for his conclusions regarding how much methane escapes into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing, the method by which shale gas is extracted. Levi is at his most brutal in an apparent scientific gaffe -- Howarth used comparative gigajoules in order to measure the methane emissions of shale gas against those of coal. The problem is that gas produces a lot more electricity than coal gigajoule-by-gigajoule, something that Howarth doesn't take account of. For that reason, Levi favors kilowatt-hours for comparison purposes, and regards Howarth's failure to do so as "an unforgivable methodological flaw; correcting for it strongly tilts Howarth's calculations back toward gas, even if you accept everything else he says." Ouch.

Howarth explicitly states his data are thin and that more research is necessary -- methane is under-examined.  Levi agrees with him there.

LeVine's comments on industry practice and disclosure below should be a reminder to players in Europe, who certainly appear to be more proactive than their American counterparts in establishing early community engagement:

Here is where we return to one of the industry's own big failures to get out in front, figure out its weak points before critics do, and fix them. We have previously suggested that the error-prone shale gas industry ought to police itself, put peer pressure on its own bad actors to straighten up, and openly disclose the content of its fracking fluid. Now a new front has opened up. It could be too late to recover entirely -- the industry is headed for serious federal regulation, the very thing it has sought to avert.

With Thanks to Steve LeVine

Additional Reading from Nature News : Natural gas greenhouse emissions study draws fire