High Momentum, High Risk

In the 1970s, the world experienced an energy crisis. Natural gas hit a market peak in the US, and this decade saw the birth of the concept that natural gas could be used as a “bridge fuel” between fossil fuels and renewable energy. Of the three major fossil fuels, methane has the lowest amount of carbon per unit of energy. The bridge fuel concept did not catch on until decades later but it has more momentum than ever, just when both the natural gas industry and our knowledge of its effect on the environment have drastically changed. Now that we are 40 years past the introduction of the “bridge fuel” concept and need to take urgent action on climate change, many scientists warn that we have passed the timeframe in which natural gas could be used as a bridge without worsening climate change.

That’s not all that’s changed. Up until the last decade, natural gas was derived through conventional extraction—in simplified terms, drillers installed piping systems into underground gas basins and gas readily flowed out. Conventional extraction didn’t put much demand on water resources, especially when compared with other fossil fuels. That made it appealing from both a pollution and water consumption perspective. Today, though, two-thirds (67 percent) of the natural gas produced in the United States comes from a harmful and toxic process known as fracking.

Fracking targets geologic formations that contain fossil fuels that are not so easily extracted, primarily tight sands and organic-rich shales. Companies that engage in fracking inject large quantities of water, sand and chemicals—two billion gallons of chemicals between 2005 and 2013—into a fossil fuel well at high pressure. The pressure fractures the earth inside the gas well, releasing larger quantities of gas or oil.

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By 2010, natural gas producers were fracking more than 90 percent of the natural gas wells in the United States. The gas fracking boom led to a surplus gas supply and created a drive for the industry to convince domestic and international customers to buy more gas. In turn, more infrastructure must get built to deliver the surplus gas to customers. The possible result of this build-out makes it likely that states and regions will get locked into reliance on fracked gas for the foreseeable future. This would make fracked gas less of a bridge and more of a destination.

Fracking contributed to a dramatic increase in US natural gas production, multiplying the once less-alarming issues related to natural gas. The fracking boom has produced major environmental risks, including lowered freshwater supply and the generation of millions of gallons of toxic and high-salinity fracking wastewater. Fracking poses a greater risk to air and water quality than conventional extraction, and increased fracked gas production leaks more heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere.

Natural gas has changed and so too should our analysis of it. The perils of fracking and the ongoing expansion of scientific knowledge about methane make it clear that if natural gas is to be used as a bridge fuel, the bridge must be traversed carefully. Unfortunately, Northwest policymakers are not traversing the bridge carefully, but rather rushing across it. In recent years there have been three proposals to turn Washington and Oregon into methanol surrogates for China, to the detriment of three Washington cities and their water resources. The misconceptions around natural gas allowed the methanol project’s backers to sweet talk misinformed officials at multiple levels of state and local government.

The success of decades of greenwashing natural gas—now fracked gas—threatens to put Northwest climate goals at risk.

Thanks to Adrian Down and Marcia Baker, who contributed research to this series.