海角大神

Americans are being subjected to a massive public relations assault attempting to persuade them that 鈥渇racking鈥� for natural gas and oil is the key to America鈥檚 energy future and that this change will free them forever from the bondage of oil imports.

What has really changed is the nation鈥檚 energy conversation. Until recently, it was about how the United States should reduce its dependency on climate-changing fossil fuels. Now the 鈥渃onversation鈥� has become a harangue about the energy, jobs, and tax revenues the industry insists will flow from fracking and how these outweigh environmental concerns.

The data do not adequately support these claims. Though the fracking revolution is only a few years old, it鈥檚 already losing steam. There are several reasons why.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a method of extracting natural gas and oil from low-permeability (usually shale) rock formations that don鈥檛 yield to conventional technologies. In the process, water, sand, and various chemicals are injected into shale rock at high pressure to open fractures in the rock and release gas or oil.

A few years ago, fracking for shale gas or tight oil was still novel and confined to small regions, but now tens of thousands of wells have been drilled. Millions of Americans have personal experience with the noise, truck traffic, fumes, and local political turmoil that seem inevitably to follow in fracking鈥檚 wake. Hundreds of anti-fracking citizen groups have formed, public sentiment seems to be turning, and communities have begun seeking bans or moratoriums on the practice.

Environmental problems can鈥檛 be swept under the carpet any longer. The image of a home-owner lighting his tap water on fire in Josh Fox鈥檚 documentary film 鈥淕asland鈥� has become a clich茅; still, for a while the natural gas industry successfully argued that adverse effects from fracking on water, air, soil, wildlife, livestock, and human health are negligible.

Industry-funded studies declared the practice safe, and the Environmental Protection Agency .聽Drilling companies tended to target economically depressed regions, where poverty forced most townsfolk to take whatever short-term jobs and production royalties were offered. Meanwhile, citizens who have suffered ill health effects or property damage that they link to fracking were led to sign non-disclosure agreements in order to receive settlement payoffs (including two children ages 7 and 10 who have been given ).

But the bad news just keeps leaking, like methane through a bad well casing. Former Mobil Oil vice president, Louis W. Allstadt, who spent his career running oil production operations and company mergers, now resistance groups. He points to studies revealing that compromised casings (and resulting instances of water contamination) are than the industry claims.

Meanwhile聽the Los Angeles Times聽 suggesting that the EPA has ignored evidence of environmental harms from fracking, choosing not to publicize or act on data collected by its own staff.

Wayne County, Pa., activists are of 1,500 drilling leases covering 100,000 acres of land. New York State鈥檚 moratorium on fracking remains in effect, despite massive industry efforts to end it. Meanwhile the Colorado city of Longmont has altogether, and the State of Colorado is 聽in an attempt to overturn the ban.

But fracking has another problem that is even bigger than environmental and health problems or shifting public opinion, though less publicized: Its production potential seems to have been oversold.

Everyone who pays attention to energy issues has heard that America has a hundred years or more of natural gas thanks to the application of fracking to shale reservoirs, and that the US is on track to outproduce Saudi Arabia now that oil is flowing from fracked fields in North Dakota and Texas. To most, the news at first sounded hopeful and reassuring. Yet as actual production numbers accumulate, it appears that claims made for fracking were simply too good to be true.

It turns out there are only a few geological formations in the US from which shale gas is being produced. In virtually all of them, except the Marcellus (in Pennsylvania and West Virginia), studies such as one from the Post Carbon Institute show that .

Why so soon? A major challenge bedeviling drillers is the high variability within shale. Each tight oil or shale gas-bearing geologic formation tends to be characterized by a small core area (usually a few counties) where production is profitable and plentiful, surrounded by a much larger region where per-well production rates are lower to start with and drop fast 鈥� often falling 60 percent during the first year.

Given the expense of horizontal drilling and fracking, it鈥檚 hard to make money in noncore areas unless oil and gas prices are stratospheric. As the 鈥渟weet spots鈥� get drilled to capacity, producers are being forced to the fringes, taking on more debt because sales of product don鈥檛 cover operating expenses.

With decline rates so high, promised production volumes are turning out to be more hype than reality. America鈥檚 hundred years of natural gas, heralded by President Obama as a national energy game changer, is based on unrealistic estimates 鈥� the amount of gas the Energy Information Administration says is 鈥渢echnically recoverable.鈥� But this quantity includes resources that will never be produced for economic reasons. Some estimate that shale gas and tight oil production聽聽before 2020.

In August, Shell聽聽on its liquids-rich shale assets in North America.聽While no details were released, it鈥檚 likely the company was simply acknowledging the unprofitability of leases in noncore regions. It could be that the oil industry itself is starting to learn that the shale revolution just ain鈥檛 all it was fracked up to be.

It is highly important that we return America鈥檚 energy focus to the most critical imperative of our time 鈥� the necessary and inevitable transition away from our current dependence on fossil fuels.

Richard聽Heinberg聽is senior fellow of the 聽and author of 11 books, most recently聽鈥�鈥�