Potential impacts of shale gas development on the Delaware River basin

A.R. Ingraffea, Ph.D.
Posted 8/21/12

[The below is a slightly condensed version of commentary given at a press conference on a new report by CNA, a non-profit research and analysis organization, about the potential impacts of shale gas …

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Potential impacts of shale gas development on the Delaware River basin

Posted

[The below is a slightly condensed version of commentary given at a press conference on a new report by CNA, a non-profit research and analysis organization, about the potential impacts of shale gas development in the Delaware River Basin (https://www.cna.org/news/releases/future-fracking-drb).]

I am Dr. Anthony R. Ingraffea, the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University, and a founding member of the board of PSE Healthy Energy, a not-for-profit science-based organization of physicians, scientists and engineers.

... [The] excellent report by CNA on the expected impacts of shale gas development in the Delaware River Basin... is unique in that it looks across a broad range of impacts, uses a common basis of well and well-pad influences, and derives projections based on actual past production data in the Marcellus and the key drivers of that production. The CNA study is, in effect, a focusing lens that clarifies the interactions of many factors behind shale gas production in the Marcellus...

Please understand that CNA has performed a study of this issue, and has not been asked to take, nor has it taken, a policy position on it. However, as a scientist and licensed professional engineer, my comments will conclude with an advocacy position on policy.

First, an important insight at the regional scale. You heard what the CNA report finds with respect to impacts to air and water and the consequent harms to human health. Let’s put those in the context of what we now know.

In 2007, when Delaware Riverkeeper first became an advocate for preserving that watershed from shale gas development, there were only six peer-reviewed science, engineering, and public health publications on the actual impacts of shale gas development worldwide. Today, six years later, there are over 580 such publications, and that number increases daily. Alarmingly, about 80% of those have been published since January 1, 2013 and over 50% in just the past year and a half: where it has occurred, shale gas development has been done largely in ignorance of its impacts. A review of those 580 publications in the key categories of impacts to human health, to air, and to water reveals that 94% find harmful impacts to human health, 69% find harmful impacts on water quality, and 88% find harmful impacts to air quality.

On top of this nascent but rapidly growing base of peer-reviewed publication of data and information there now comes the CNA report adding a timely and exhaustive basis for giving context to these harmful impacts in the Marcellus play, and especially that part not yet developed, the Delaware River Basin. The epoch of anecdotes is over: we know have firm scientific evidence of the harmful impacts of shale gas development as forecast in the CNA report.

Let’s look now at the global scale. Can shale gas development in the Delaware River Basin have effects that go beyond the region?

The world’s leading climate scientists now calculate that over 75% of the remaining fossil fuel reserves, including the shale gas in the Eastern Marcellus, must remain undeveloped if we are to avoid irreversible climate harm in the next few decades. Who will volunteer their shale gas to stay underground? The Marcellus is now the largest producer of shale gas in the United States. Hasn’t Pennsylvania already done enough to [release] significant amounts of both carbon dioxide and methane into the global climate engine? Is it in the best interests of not only the citizenry of the Delaware River Basin, but also that of all Americans, to permit yet an additional 63,000 shale gas wells in the Marcellus with 4,000 in the Delaware rivershed?

I strongly suggest the answer to these last two questions is “no.” I think it is far better that we all do our part in the fight against global warming by deciding now where we will place a monument, not build another well pad, somewhere along our beloved Delaware that declares, “This is where we stopped!”

[A. R. Ingraffea, Ph.D., P.E. is the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus and Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow at Cornell University.]

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