Mapping the world’s oil and gas pipelines

Every day the world consumes some 100 million barrels of oil and 60 million equivalent barrels of natural gas.

By Mohammed Hussein
Published On 16 Dec 202116 Dec 2021

Over the past 50 years, the world’s annual energy consumption has nearly tripled – from 62,949 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 1969 to 173,340 TWh in 2019.

For centuries, burning coal was the main source of the world’s energy

By the 1960s, rapid advancements in sourcing, transporting and refining oil and gas allowed those energy-dense fossil fuels to overtake coal and become the world’s primary source of energy – which they remain today.

Despite advances in renewable energy, fossil fuels including coal, oil and gas still make up more than 80 percent of the world’s primary energy consumption.

(Al Jazeera)

Every day, the world consumes some 100 million barrels of oil and 60 million equivalent barrels of natural gas.

To transport this massive amount of energy, pipelines – usually made out of carbon steel – are widely used.

In the following infographic series, we map the world’s current and planned oil and gas pipelines.

Global pipelines – 30 times Earth’s circumference

According to the Global Energy Monitor, there were at least 2,381 operational oil and gas pipelines distributed across some 162 countries as of December 2020. The combined length of these pipelines is more than 1.18 million km (730,000 miles) – enough to circle the Earth 30 times.

The countries with the longest network of oil and gas pipelines include:
United States – Oil: 91,067km (56,587 miles); Gas: 333,366km (207,145 miles)
Russia – Oil: 38,419km (23,872 miles); Gas: 92,831km (57,683 miles)
Canada – Oil: 23,361km (14,516 miles); Gas: 84,682km (52,619 miles)
China – Oil: 27,441km (17,051 miles); Gas: 76,363km (47,450 miles)
Australia – Oil: 1,636km (1,017 miles); Gas: 23,002km (14,293 miles)

The map below shows pipeline networks across the globe. Pipelines that are shorter than 100km (62 miles) or that have a capacity of less than 6,000 barrels per day are not included.

(Al Jazeera)

The companies that own most of the of oil pipelines by length include:
Transneft, Russia – 42,383km (26,335 miles) – 15 percent
Enbridge, Canada – 33,750km (20,971 miles) – 12 percent
PipeChina, China – 15,947km (9,909 miles) – 5 percent

The companies that own most of the gas pipelines by length include:
Gazprom, Russia – 103,212km (64,133 miles) – 11.2 percent
TC Energy, Canada – 99,440km (61,789 miles) – 10.8 percent
Kinder Morgan, US – 82,075km (50,999 miles) – 9 percent

(Al Jazeera)

Pipelines by region

Americas

A little more than half (51 percent) of the world’s total oil and gas pipelines by length are in the Americas.

Some of the most noteworthy pipelines include:

The Keystone Oil Pipeline
Length: 3,462km (2,151 miles)
Capacity: 700,000 barrels per day
Start year: 2010
Runs from Alberta province in western Canada down to refineries in Illinois and Texas in the US. In 2021, an expansion to the pipeline known as Keystone XL was cancelled after its permit was revoked by the administration of US President Joe Biden.

Rockies Express Gas Pipeline
Length: 2,702km (1,679 miles)
Capacity: 102 million cubic metres (3.6 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 2009
The pipeline system is one of the largest natural gas pipelines ever built in North America. It runs from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to eastern Ohio, crossing through US eight states.

GASBOL Gas Pipeline
Length: 3,150km (1,957 miles)
Capacity: 30 million cubic metres (1.06 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 1999
Also known as the Bolivia–Brazil pipeline, GASBOL is the longest natural gas pipeline in South America.

Colonial Pipeline
Length: 8,850km (5,500 miles)
Capacity: 3 million barrels per day
Start year: 1962
It is the largest pipeline system for refined oil products in the US. In May, hackers launched a cyberattack against the company that disrupted fuel supplies and led to shortages across the East Coast.

(Al Jazeera)

Europe

About a quarter (27 percent) of the total length of the world’s pipelines are in Europe.

Some key pipelines in Europe are:

Druzhba Oil Pipeline
Length: 5,100km (3,169 miles)
Capacity: 1.4 million barrels per day
Start year: 1962
It is the world’s longest oil pipeline and one of the largest oil pipeline networks in the world. It carries oil from the eastern part of Russia to points in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Yamal-Europe Gas Pipeline
Length: 1,660km (1,031 miles)
Capacity: 90 million cubic metres (3.2 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 2006
Transports gas from Russia’s Yamal Peninsula to European consumers across Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, among other countries.

Greece-Italy Interconnector Gas Pipeline
Length: 800km (497 miles)
Start year: 2010
It is an onshore and offshore natural gas pipeline that runs from Greece to the Apulia region in southeastern Italy.

(Al Jazeera)

Middle East and Africa

About 6 percent of the total length of the world’s pipelines cross through the Middle East and Africa.

Some of the main pipelines include:

Trans-Mediterranean Gas Pipeline
Length: 2,475km (1,538 miles)
Capacity: 92 million cubic metres (3.3 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 1983
Begins in Algeria, passes through Tunisia and crosses the Mediterranean Sea on to Italy and Slovenia.

East-West Crude Oil Pipeline
Length: 1,200km (746 miles)
Capacity: 5 million barrels per day
Start year: 1982
Known as the Petroline and Abqaiq-Yanbu oil pipeline, the Saudi oil pipeline runs from Abqaiq in the east of the country to Yanbu Oil Terminal on the Red Sea coast.

Tazama Oil Pipeline
Length: 1,710km (1,062 miles)
Capacity: 22,000 barrels per day
Start year: 1968
Runs from the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania onto Ndola in central Zambia.

(Al Jazeera)

Asia Pacific

About 16 percent of the total length of the world’s pipelines cross through the Asia-Pacific region.

Some of the main pipelines include:

Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean Oil Pipeline

Length: 4,857km (3,018 miles)
Capacity: 1 million barrels per day
Start year: 2009
It is used to export Russian crude oil to Asia-Pacific markets, including Japan, China and South Korea.

West-East Gas Pipeline
Length: 18,854km (11,715 miles)
Capacity: 82 million cubic metres (2.9 billion cubic feet) per day
Start year: 2005
Consists of four pipelines that run between Xinjiang in the west of China to Shanghai in the east.

Moomba to Sydney Gas Pipeline
Length: 2,081km (1,293 miles)
Capacity: 13 million cubic metres (463 million cubic feet) per day
Start year: 1976
Runs from gas fields in southern Australia to gas distribution systems in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, and Canberra.

(Al Jazeera)

About 200,000km of planned expansions

There are currently at least 212,049km (131,761 miles) of ongoing and planned pipeline expansions costing an estimated $1 trillion.

China’s 32,800km (20,381-mile) expansion of its oil and gas pipeline is the highest in the world. PipeChina, known formally as China Oil and Gas Pipeline Network, will soon become the largest builder of gas pipelines in the world, according to Global Energy Monitor.

The map below highlights where these planned pipelines are located.

(Al Jazeera)

Some notable pipelines include:

Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline
This 1,230km (764-mile) gas pipeline is set to run from Ust-Luga in Russia to Greifswald, Germany, and to carry 151 million cubic metres (5.3 billion cubic feet) of natural gas per day. The pipeline will cost $11.6bn, and plans to start operations in 2022.

Capline Oil Pipeline
Running from Pakota, Illinois to St James, Louisiana in the US and scheduled to open in 2022, this pipeline will have a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day and total length of 1,017km (632 miles).

Niger-Benin Oil Pipeline
Stretches from Agadem oil field in Niger to the port of Seme Terminal in Benin. Its capacity is 90,000 barrels per day and its total length is 1,980km (1,230 miles). The pipeline will cost $7bn and is slated to start operations in 2024.

Xinjiang Coal-to-Gas Pipeline
Runs from Xinjiang Autonomous Territory to Shaoguan, Guangdong, China. Its capacity is 82 million cubic metres (2.9 billion cubic feet) per day and it has a total length of 8,372km (5,202 miles). The pipeline was planned to start its operations in 2021.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Shifting sands
Impact concerns remain as silica plan pivots from fracking to solar power

By: Ben Waldman
Posted: 2:00 AM CST Monday, Dec. 13, 2021
Last Modified: 11:59 AM CST Monday, Dec. 13, 2021 | Updates



Alberta’s Canadian Premium Sands Inc. announced plans last week to pivot to solar glass production and has chosen Selkirk as the base of its manufacturing operations.

A Canadian company previously engaged in hydraulic fracturing is pivoting to solar glass production, and has chosen Selkirk as the base of its manufacturing operations.

Alberta’s Canadian Premium Sands Inc., and the City of Selkirk announced the plans last week.

The move toward solar panel glass production is considered by the city to align with its sustainability mandate, and will create an estimated 300 jobs, while the company said the move toward solar panel development made strong business sense. Selkirk director of sustainable economic development Tim Feduniw called it "potentially the largest single industrial investment in the last 100 years in Selkirk."

When Canadian Premium Sands first received approved quarry leases in Seymourville, located about 160 kilometres north of Selkirk on the territory of Hollow Water First Nation, the company intended to use the silica sand deposits in fracking — a process in which silica sand particles are injected into the earth to extract resources.

Although the First Nation’s government agreed to the leases with CPS, which had its licence issued and approved by the province in May 2019, there has been opposition from some community members concerned over impacts on nearby bodies of water, air and land, as well as a lack of community consultation by their government or a community-involved environmental review beforehand.

"The silica sand of this unique landscape is central to Ojibwa spirituality," Hollow Water’s Marcel Hardisty wrote in a 2019 op-ed for the Free Press. "It is like the stars in the Milky Way. We come from the stars, and we return to them — that is our belief. As a way of honouring that link, sand was used in burial rituals, placed on the ground around the deceased to guide them home to their place among the stars with their ancestors."

Alberta’s Canadian Premium Sands Inc. announced plans last week to pivot to solar glass production and has chosen Selkirk as the base of its manufacturing operations.

Now, instead of fracking, the publicly traded company intends to use that silica sand to manufacture panelled glass for the solar power industry.

CEO Glenn Leroux says the move makes good business sense. "When the oil and gas sector cratered, and then COVID hit, our original business plan wasn’t viable anymore." So the company reconsidered potential uses for the low-iron silica, which is a base component of glass for solar panelling. Market research showed there were no North American solar glass manufacturers, Leroux said; all such product was sourced from China and other countries in the Pacific rim.

"This is a dramatic pivot for us, but every potential customer we’ve spoken to has growth plans," he said. "Solar is going to be a huge component of (future policy and carbon reduction targets). It’s rapidly growing, and let’s face it, it’s where the world is going, so it’s the right thing to do."

Even with the change in plans, some are skeptical and remain concerned over potential environmental impacts of the proposed operation.

Mary-Jane McCarron, who lived on Hollow Water for years and whose two sons are members, says while fracking is much more detrimental, there are still fears over the potential impact on the water, air, and land surrounding the quarry in Seymourville through extraction for glassmaking. As well, there are concerns the operation will go through the local trap line.

"This looks like a panicky effort to come up with something that looks environmentally responsible in order to get the money out," said McCarron, who is involved in Camp Morning Star, a demonstration set up after CPS was first issued licences in Hollow Water.

Don Sullivan, a research associate for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, wrote in an online article for the CCPA last week that the revamped plan "contains a good deal of greenwashing."
Jim Mone / The Associated Press Files

Low-iron silica is a base component of glass used for solar panels.

Leroux disputed that statement, and said the change in direction was not a strategic way of "greening up," but that it made economic sense as solar power installation is anticipated to increase significantly in the next decade. Profit-wise, it was a better option, he said; environmentally, too.

On the environmental front, he said one-tenth as much silica will need to be extracted and processed for patterned-glass making annually as would have been extracted for fracking purposes. He also emphasized the products being made would promote a reduced reliance on carbon and promote renewable energy development. And, they wouldn’t be coming from thousands of kilometres away.

"This is green, but we didn’t set out to see how we can ‘green’ this company," he said. "The business opportunity for solar glass was a way better opportunity."

He also said that quarry leases are granted by the provincial government’s mines branch. "CPS has participation agreements with financial benefit elements in place with both Hollow Water and Seymourville, the details of which are confidential," he wrote in an email.

Leroux said the company will need to receive a notice of approval for an alteration of its environmental licences, along with approval of business permits. Plus, the company will have to raise "hundreds of millions" of dollars in funding. Should they be successful in those regards, he anticipates development of the manufacturing facility could begin by the end of 2022.

For the city of Selkirk, that manufacturing facility would create approximately 300 jobs, according to a release from the company, and could potentially spur other developments in the solar energy sector.

A city spokesperson reiterated Selkirk’s role is as host, not as partner, in the proposed project. "We recognize that there were concerns about a proposed past project that did not go forward," an email read. "What has been presented to us is a very different project with very different environmental outcomes. It is solely about the manufacturing of solar glass."

"CPS in our dealings have demonstrated their belief and commitment to environmental licensing processes as well as respecting and working with (I)ndigenous communities and their associated land rights," the email continued. "It is our view that this project represents a positive transition in the energy sector as it looks to divert resources to greener energy products for the benefit of all."

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca

Ben Waldman
Reporter
Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.

Yukon Court of Appeal strikes down more claims in oil company's lawsuit on government's fracking ban

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The government said there were still parts of the lawsuit

 that stood no chance of success

CBC News · Posted: Dec 09, 2021 4:40 PM CT | Last Updated: December 9

Chance Oil and Gas, formerly Northern Cross, is suing the Yukon government for $2.2 billion. It stems from a 2015 moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. (Northern Cross)

The Yukon Court of Appeal has tossed out more parts of a $2.2-billion lawsuit against the territorial government.

Chance Oil and Gas is suing over the government's 2015 moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking. In January, a Yukon Supreme Court judge threw out part of the lawsuit, but the government appealed, saying there were still parts of the lawsuit that stood no chance of success.

The appeal court has now agreed — in part. It's thrown out claims that the moratorium unjustly enriched the government.

The court also said the government's moratorium amounts to the unlawful cancellation of the company's permits

The lawsuit has yet to go to trial.

• Court tosses parts of oil company's lawsuit against Yukon government

The Yukon Supreme Court previously struck down three of the company's lawsuit claims at the start of this year.

That included a claim of unlawful interference with economic interests and the company's request to order the government to exempt it from the fracking ban.

The court also granted a request from the government to remove Ranj Pillai, Yukon's energey minister at the time, from the suit.

The former Yukon Party government issued the fracking moratorium in 2015 following months of hearings on the practice by a select committee of the Legislative Assembly.

Fracking is only permitted in the natural-gas rich Liard Basin in southeast Yukon, and only with the approval of local First Nations.

The Liberal government, elected in November 2016, later said it would not issue permits for fracking operations anywhere in the territory.

A ‘false solution’? How crypto mining became the oil industry’s new hope

Illustration: Kat Morris/The Guardian

Supported by


Leanna First-Arai
Thu 16 Dec 2021 

In January of 2019, Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness, recently reunited prep school pals from Denver, drove out to the snow-covered plains of Wyoming to bring a piece of tech culture to the American heartland. Trembling in -20F (-29C) temperatures, they wired up a prototype of their brainchild: a machine that harnesses the “waste gas” from oil rigs to power mining for cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, the most-popular decentralized digital currency, have a notoriously large carbon footprint (bitcoin mining alone consumes about half as much electricity in a year as all of the UK). So to leverage a cheap source of energy to run their bitcoin mining operations, Lochmiller and Cavness found themselves partnering with oil companies to repurpose a byproduct, primarily methane, that’s typically vented or burnt off in flares.


Waste from one bitcoin transaction ‘like binning two iPhones’

“We flipped the switch and saw all the bitcoin mining servers light up green, and you could see the flare physically shrink a little bit,” said Lochmiller, a self-described “city kid” who had never before set foot in an oilfield.

“It was kind of a Frankenstein moment, like ‘Oh my god, it’s alive!’”

Their creation is part of a niche wave of tech startups that are now eyeing the oil and gas industry to help power the cryptocurrency boom. Lochmiller and Cavness, who started a bitcoin mining company called Crusoe Energy, see their fix as a marriage between two problems capable of “solving” one another: the wasting of gas flaring that contributes to the climate crisis, and the need for cheaper energy as crypto increases in popularity.

Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness, founders of Crusoe Energy, show off their modular data centers. Photograph: Crusoe Energy

Climate experts, however, warn it’s a “false solution” so long as oil and gas production is allowed to continue. The world’s leading authority on climate science concludes that only a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will help avert a climate calamity; merely finding alternate uses for “waste gas” doesn’t confront the dire need to curb fossil fuel consumption. If anything, researchers warn, oil companies may feel incentivized to drill even more.

“At the end of the day, they’re still burning natural gas,” said Arvind Ravikumar, a methane researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, who deemed flare mitigation and companies proposing similar technologies a “scam”.

Lochmiller and Cavness, however, say their work helps the industry produce oil in as clean a way as possible, buying time, or “extending the runway” for the energy transition.

Their company has attracted high-profile investors, including Bain and Winklevoss Capital, raking in $125m for their second round of fundraising in April. They plan to roll out 100 bitcoin mining data centers by early 2022, up from the 65 units already in place.

Crusoe has trademarked its solution as “digital flare mitigation”. They install fleets of data centers that hum in shipping container-like structures next to remote oil rigs. Oil producers are then paid for the waste gas they otherwise wouldn’t use because it’s cheaper to burn than to pay to transport to market. In return, Crusoe can use the byproduct to power energy-intensive computing operations on-site.

Lochmiller and Cavness say their work helps the industry produce oil in as clean a way as possible. Illustration: Kat Morris/The Guardian

The data centers burn through enormous amounts of energy because there’s no centralized “bank” that holds cryptocurrency. Instead, new coins are created by solving complex equations that require heavy computing power to authenticate. The currency is then tracked on a decentralized ledger, known as the blockchain, which is also resource-intensive to maintain.

The new technology comes amid a “great mining migration” that’s currently underway in the United States after China banned crypto mining in September. And with renewed global focus on cutting the highly-potent greenhouse gas, methane, which is the primary “waste gas” in flaring, the model is particularly in vogue.

Oil-friendly regulators, elected officials, industry groups and financial services giants have been taking note. Commissioner Jim Wright of the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency charged with regulating oil and gas, told the Guardian that modular mitigation setups like Crusoe’s are “most appealing”. Texas senator Ted Cruz is also a fan.

Meanwhile, North Dakota lawmakers on both sides of the aisle passed a law this year making oil producers eligible for a tax credit if they employ onsite flare mitigation. Crusoe, which is based in Williston, North Dakota – the heart of the Bakken shale – worked closely with legislators to pass the bill.

According to Paasha Mahdavi, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who co-authored a 2020 paper on methane mitigation measures, new technologies that stop flaring at the source do seem like they would reduce emissions.

But in practice, he said, projects designed to capture otherwise flared or vented gas have resulted in an overall increase in gas production. After all, they create a new source of demand.

“It’s like if you had a leaky gasoline pipeline and, instead of fixing the problem, you plugged in a Humvee next to the leak and left the engine on in perpetuity with the A/C on full blast,” Mahdavi said.

Cavness, the chief executive of Crusoe Energy who goes by “Electron Cowboy” on Twitter, grew up envisioning himself jumping on the family bandwagon. He would get an internship with Shell, and follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to carve out a career in the oil and gas industry.

But then Cavness landed at Middlebury College, a prestigious liberal arts school in Vermont with a reputation as the alma mater of global climate campaign, 350.org founders, and home of the university fossil fuel divestment movement.

“Climate was the whole conversation,” Cavness said, noting that he felt pressure to downplay his oil and gas roots.

After going down the climate rabbit hole at Middlebury, and spending a year after graduation studying the “morality of energy”, Cavness’ job was troubling his conscience. He’d been losing sleep thinking about the unfathomable amount of gas the industry was wasting. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2020, 142bn cubic metres of gas was flared – the energy equivalent of providing electricity to 49m homes.

When Cavness reunited with Lochmiller in 2018 during an 18-hour hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains, they hatched a plan: Lochmiller, an MIT graduate based in San Francisco, had recently left a position as a partner at a cryptocurrency investment firm, while Cavness was with a separate firm that invested in oil and gas. Together, they would combine their worlds of bitcoin and big oil.

Chase Lochmiller, a co-founder of Crusoe Energy, says their company supports new fossil fuel exploration and drilling. 

Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, the bitcoin flaring option is enormously appealing to the industry. Crusoe’s data centers are set up without cost to producers, who earn money on gas they otherwise wouldn’t.

“It’s essentially a free offering to the oil company,” Cavness explained earlier this year at Hart Energy’s Developing Unconventional Gas virtual conference for the Bakken and Rockies regions.

Cavness and Lochmiller say they’re on the cusp of the latest climate research. But critics warn their company sits squarely within the techno-optimistic ecosystem of Silicon Valley, where the hunt for innovative solutions may blind even the most climate-literate entrepreneurs.

Climate experts warn Crusoe’s outlook, and it’s proposed “fix”, reflects a selective understanding of the science. Even the most conservative forecasts say oil and gas exploration must stop immediately to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis, including unnecessary loss of human lives. But despite Crusoe’s climate-focused branding, Lochmiller confirmed the company supports ongoing exploration and drilling.

As Cavness sees it, even after his now-infant daughter grows old or reaches the end of her life, fossil fuels will still be around. If the oil industry will be “required to sustain life on the planet” anyway, Cavness asks, why not drill in the cleanest way possible?

While the Crusoe chiefs say their digital flare migration technology is buying time for new clean energy sources, some fear their strategy is more like placing a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. Nine out of ten climate experts who responded to requests for comment, including top methane researchers, political scientists, and climate analysts, said that oil and gas exploration and new drilling – even if equipped with methane mitigation technologies – is not in line with a future in which warming is curbed in accordance with global climate pledges.

Of this group, the one dissenting voice, an academic and co-founder of a greenhouse gas monitoring company, said continued exploration and drilling can “probably” happen in a clean way.

It’s like … if you plugged in a Humvee next to the leak and left the engine on in perpetuity with the A/C on full blast

Paasha Mahdavi

Climate experts are more split over the degree to which cryptocurrency operations should be allowed to consume renewable energy. Three out of ten climate experts the Guardian spoke with were intrigued by one element of Crusoe’s model.

Similar to waste gas operations, the company has a set of data centers slated to run on wind farms designed to tap energy available when gigawatts generated exceed those demanded. Crusoe’s ability to pay for that energy, according to the company, will enable renewable developers to underwrite new fleets.

But not all are optimistic. Heather Price, an atmospheric chemist and professor at North Seattle College, worries that flare mitigation technology is little more than a greenwashing tactic meant to spin fossil fuels in a positive light.

“I have no faith that this use of flares for crypto would be a temporary situation,” she said. “The fossil fuel industry and crypto companies should not get a ‘cookie’ for this move.”


This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story

Researchers Find Evidence That Fracking Can Trigger an All-New Type of Earthquake

CLARE WATSON

11 DECEMBER 2021

Oil and gas extraction can trigger small, slow-moving, longer-lasting earthquake tremors, which scientists have documented in Canadian fracking fields for the first time.

A team of researchers from the Geological Survey of Canada documented a new type of earthquake event resulting from slow ruptures near an active gas well. This helps to explain how near-imperceptible tremors induced by oil and gas extraction processes can trigger seismic slips and larger earthquakes.

Around 10 percent of the roughly 350 earthquakes recorded over 5 months a few kilometersfrom an active gas well in British Columbia, Canada, ruptured more slowly and lasted seconds longer than typical tremors caused by fracking, the study found.

"We'd assumed that [fracking] induced earthquakes behave like most other earthquakes and have roughly the same rupture speed of two to three kilometers per second," explains seismologist Rebecca Harrington of Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.

Hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, is a process used by the oil and gas industry that involves pumping pressurized liquids into a drilled well to create small fractures in subsurface rocks.

By its very design, fracking causes small, barely detectable earthquakes to extract oil and gas trapped below ground. The process also pumps huge amounts of wastewater back underground, which can stress existing geological fault lines. 

Using a network of seismic stations around an injection well, the researchers found evidence of a hard-to-detect process that had been predicted but not yet documented near fracking sites.

The new type of 'slow-slip' signals documented, dubbed hybrid-frequency waveform earthquakes for their distinctive features, release little seismic energy and measured magnitude 2.0 or less. 

Based on previous modeling and experimental studies, it's thought that high-pressure fracking induces aseismic slips which interact with nearby faults, stress rocks and lead to larger seismic events, with the hybrid-frequency waveforms being new evidence of that transition happening – a few kilometers from gas wells.

The study follows mounting concerns that fracking is "generating larger and larger maximum magnitude earthquakes," Harrington and colleagues write in their paper, which was published with funding from an open science initiative.

The largest earthquake caused by fracking struck China in 2018 and measured magnitude 5.7, the same magnitude as, for example, a naturally occurring earthquake in Pakistan that left at least 20 people dead in 2021. So although these manmade earthquakes are rare, they have the potential to cause serious harm.

In recent years, studies have linked distant earthquakes to fracking, finding that fluid injection can induce earthquakes "much faster and farther away" than previously thought.

This kind of research, which seeks to understand how fracking triggers minor tremors leading to larger earthquakes, provides critical evidence linking extractive processes to earthquake damages, not least for residents living near fracking sites who have long opposed the practice, fearing damage to property, water supplies, and livelihoods.

"In the absence of a known mechanism by which fracking could cause earthquakes more than a mile or two from drilling sites, operators have often denied responsibility for such quakes," geologist Gillian Foulger wrote in The Conversation circa 2019.

Much of this research has been spurred on by a dramatic increase in seismic activity in the midwestern United States in the past few decades, along with observations of tremors that linger months or even years after extraction.

What's more, a 2013 study showed that oil and gas fields stressed by wastewater disposal are prone to mid-sized earthquakes triggered by other large earthquakes thousands of kilometers away, with epicenters under other continents.

While some seismologists argue that a better understanding of earthquakes caused by fracking helps to manage and mitigate associated risks, and that induced earthquakes are rare, the question on many people's minds is whether fracking should be happening at all, given the trajectory our planet is on – a path to catastrophic global heating which can only be averted if we phase out fossil fuels.

On that point, this body of research investigating earthquakes triggered by fracking also has some serious ramifications for already-contentious carbon capture and storage technologies, which are not yet proven at scale and similarly involve injecting captured carbon deep below ground.

"An earthquake-induced rupture of an artificial carbon dioxide reservoir would nullify costly efforts to keep the gas out of the atmosphere, as well as posing health risks to local residents – so understanding how to manage such risks is imperative in the development of such technology," Foulger wrote.

The study was published in Nature Communications.

From denial to delay: How the oil industry refined its strategy on climate

By Naomi Oreskes, Jeff Nesbit | December 10, 2021

BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
 

Photo by Robin Sommer/Unsplash
This article is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Despite countless investigations, lawsuits, social shaming, and regulations dating back decades, the oil and gas industry remains formidable. After all, it has made consuming its products seem like a human necessity. It has confused the public about climate science, bought the eternal gratitude of one of America’s two main political parties, and repeatedly out-maneuvered regulatory efforts. And it has done all this in part by thinking ahead and then acting ruthlessly. While the rest of us were playing checkers, its executives were playing three-dimensional chess.

Take this brief tour of the industry’s history, and then ask yourself: Is there any doubt that these companies are now plotting to keep the profits rolling in, even as mega-hurricanes and roaring wildfires scream the dangers of the climate emergency?

The John D. Rockefeller myth Ida Tarbell is one of the most celebrated investigative journalists in American history. Long before Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal, Tarbell’s reporting broke up the Standard Oil monopoly. In 19 articles that became a widely read book, History of the Standard Oil Company, published in 1904, she exposed its unsavory practices. In 1911, federal regulators used Tarbell’s findings to break Standard Oil into 33 much smaller companies.

David had slayed Goliath. The U.S. government had set a monopoly-busting standard for future generations. John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil’s owner, lost. The good guys won—or so it seemed.

In fact, Rockefeller saw what was coming and ended up profiting—massively—from the breakup of his company. Rockefeller made sure to retain significant stock holdings in each of Standard Oil’s 33 offspring and position them in different parts of the U.S. where they wouldn’t compete against one another. Collectively, the 33 offspring went on to make Rockefeller very, very rich. Indeed, it was the breakup of Standard Oil that tripled his wealth and made him the wealthiest man in the world. In 1916, five years after Standard Oil was broken up, Rockefeller became the world’s first billionaire.

Say it ain’t so, Dr. Seuss! One of the offspring of Standard Oil was Esso (S-O, spelled out), which later launched one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history. It did so by relying on the talents of a young cartoonist who millions would later adore under his pen name, Dr. Seuss. Decades before authoring the pro-environment parable The Lorax, Theodore Geisel helped Esso market “Flit,” a household spray gun that killed mosquitoes. What Americans weren’t told was that the pesticide DDT made up 5% of each blast of Flit.

When Esso put considerable creative resources behind the Flit campaign, they were looking years ahead to a time when they would also successfully market oil-based products. The campaign ran for 17 years in the 1940s and 1950s, at the time an unheard length of time for an ad campaign. It taught Esso and other Standard Oil companies how to sell derivative products (like plastic and pesticides) that made the company and the brand a household name in the minds of the public. In its day, “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” was as ubiquitous as “Got Milk?” is today.

At the time, the public (and even many scientists) didn’t appreciate the deadly nature of DDT. That didn’t come until the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. But accepting that DDT was deadly was hard, in part because of the genius of Geisel, whose wacky characters—strikingly similar to the figures who would later populate Dr. Seuss books—energetically extolled Flit’s alleged benefits.

Geisel later said the experience “taught me conciseness and how to marry pictures with words.” The Flit ad campaign was incredibly smart and clever marketing. It taught the industry how to sell a dangerous and unnecessary product as if it were something useful and even fun. Years later, ExxonMobil would take that cleverness to new heights in its advertorials. They weren’t about clever characters. But they were awfully clever, containing few, if any, outright lies, but a whole lot of half-truths and misrepresentations. It was clever enough to convince the New York Times to run them without labeling them as the advertisements that they, in fact, were. Their climate “advertorials” appeared in the op-ed page of the New York Times and were part of what scholars have called “the longest, regular (weekly) use of media to influence public and elite opinion in contemporary America.”

Controlling climate science Big Oil also saw climate change coming. As abundant investigative reporting and academic studies have documented, the companies’ own scientists were telling their executives in the 1970s that burning more oil and other fossil fuels would overheat the planet. (Other scientists had been saying so since the 1960s.) The companies responded by lying about the danger of their products, blunting public awareness, and lobbying against government action. The result is today’s climate emergency.

Less well-known is how oil and gas companies didn’t just lie about their own research. They also mounted a stealth campaign to monitor and influence what the rest of the scientific community learned and said about climate change.

The companies embedded scientists in universities and made sure they were present at important conferences. They nominated them to be contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose assessments from 1990 onward defined what the press, public, and policymakers thought was true about climate science. While the IPCC reports, which rely on consensus science, were sound, Big Oil’s scientific participation gave them an insider’s view of the road ahead. More ominously, they introduced the art of questioning the consensus science in forums where every word is parsed.

The industry was employing a strategy pioneered by tobacco companies, but with a twist. Beginning in the 1950s, the tobacco industry cultivated a sotto voce network of scientists at scores of American universities and medical schools, whose work it funded. Some of these scientists were actively engaged in research to discredit the idea that cigarette smoking was a health risk, but most of it was more subtle; the industry supported research on causes of cancer and heart disease other than tobacco, such as radon, asbestos, and diet. It was a form of misdirection, designed to deflect our attention away from the harms of tobacco and onto other things. The scheme worked for a while, but when it was exposed in the 1990s, in part through lawsuits, the bad publicity largely killed it. What self-respecting scientist would take tobacco industry money after that?

The oil and gas industry learned from that mistake and decided that, instead of working surreptitiously, it would work in the open. And rather than work primarily with individual scientists whose work might be of use, it would seek to influence the direction of the scientific community as a whole. The industry’s internal scientists continued to do research and publish peer-reviewed articles, but the industry also openly funded university collaborations and other researchers. From the late 1970s through the 1980s, Exxon was known both as a climate research pioneer, and as a generous patron of university science, supporting student research and fellowships at many major universities. Its scientists also worked alongside senior colleagues at NASA, the Department of Energy, and other key institutions, and funded breakfasts, luncheons, and other activities at scientific meetings. Those efforts had the net effect of creating goodwill and bonds of loyalty. It’s been effective.

The industry’s scientists may have been operating in good faith, but their work helped delay public recognition of the scientific consensus that climate change was unequivocally man-made, happening now, and very dangerous. The industry’s extensive presence in the field also gave it early access to cutting edge research it used to its advantage. Exxon, for example, designed oil platforms to accommodate more rapid sea level rise, even as the company publicly denied that climate change was occurring.

Don’t call it methane, it’s “natural” gas Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, yet it has received far less attention. One reason is that the oil and gas industry has positioned methane— which marketing experts cleverly labeled “natural gas”—as the future of the energy economy. The industry promotes methane gas as a “clean” fuel that’s needed to bridge the transition from today’s carbon economy to tomorrow’s renewable energy era. Some go further and see gas as a permanent part of the energy landscape: BP’s plan is renewables plus gas for the foreseeable future, and the company and other oil majors frequently invoke “low carbon” instead of “no carbon.”

Except that methane gas isn’t clean. It’s about 80 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide is.

As recently as a decade ago, many scientists and environmentalists viewed “natural gas” as a climate hero. The oil and gas industry’s ad guys encouraged this view by portraying gas as a coal killer. The American Petroleum Institute paid millions to run its first-ever Super Bowl ad in 2017, portraying gas as an engine of innovation that powers the American way of life. Between 2008 and 2019, API spent more than $750 million on public relations, advertising, and communications (for both oil and gas interests), an analysis by the Climate Investigations Center found. Today, most Americans view gas as clean, even though science shows that we can’t meet our climate goals without quickly transitioning away from it. The bottom line is that we can’t solve a problem caused by fossil fuels with more fossil fuels. But the industry has made a lot of us think otherwise.

There’s little chance the oil and gas industry can defeat renewable energy in the long term. Wind, solar, and geothermal, which are clean and cost-competitive, will eventually dominate energy markets. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, GridLab, and Energy Innovation have found that the U.S. can achieve 90% clean electricity by the year 2035 with no new gas and at no additional cost to consumers. But the oil and gas industry doesn’t need to win the fight in the long term. It just needs to win right now so it can keep developing oil and gas fields that will be in use for decades to come. To do that, it just has to keep doing what it has done for the past 25 years: win today, fight again tomorrow.

A spider’s web of pipelines Here’s a final example of how the oil and gas industry plans for the next war even as its adversaries are still fighting the last one. Almost no one outside of a few law firms, trade groups, and congressional staff in Washington, DC, knows what the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is or does. But the oil and gas industry knows and it moved quickly after Donald Trump became president to lay the groundwork for decades of future fossil fuel dependency.

FERC has long been a rubber stamp for the oil and gas industry. The industry proposes gas pipelines, and FERC approves them. When FERC approves a pipeline, that approval grants the pipeline eminent domain, which in effect makes the pipeline all but impossible to stop.

Eminent domain gives a company the legal right to build a pipeline through landowners’ properties, and there is nothing they or state or county officials can do about it. A couple of states have successfully, though temporarily, blocked pipelines by invoking federal statutes such as the Clean Water Act. But if those state cases reach the current Supreme Court, the three justices Trump appointed—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett—are almost certain to rule in the industry’s favor.

Oil and gas industry executives seized upon Trump’s arrival in the White House. In the opening days of his administration, independent researchers listened in on public trade gatherings of the executives, who talked about “flooding the zone” at FERC. The industry planned to submit not just one or two but nearly a dozen interstate gas pipeline requests. Plotted on a map, the projected pipelines covered so much of the U.S. that they resembled a spider’s web.

Once pipelines are in the system, companies can start to build them, and utility commissioners in every corner of America see this gas “infrastructure” as a fait accompli. And pipelines are built to last decades. In fact, if properly maintained, a pipeline can last forever in principle. This strategy could allow the oil and gas industry to lock in fossil fuel dependency for the rest of the century.

In hindsight, it’s clear that oil and gas industry leaders used outright climate denial when it suited their corporate and political interests throughout the 1990s. But now that outright denial is no longer credible, they’ve pivoted from denial to delay. Industry PR and marketing efforts have shifted massive resources to a central message that, yes, climate change is real, but that the necessary changes will require more research and decades to implement, and above all, more fossil fuels. Climate delay is the new climate denial.

Nearly every major oil and gas company now claims that they accept the science and that they support sensible climate policies. But their actions speak louder than words. It’s clear that the future they want is one that still uses fossil fuels abundantly—regardless of what the science says. Whether it is selling deadly pesticides or deadly fossil fuels, they will do what it takes to keep their products on the market. Now that we’re in a race to a clean energy future, it’s time to recognize that they simply can’t be trusted as partners in that race. We’ve been fooled too many times.

AUSTRALIA

Queensland quietly grants fracking leases to Origin in fragile channel country

Environment groups believe the energy giant is targeting shale oil, but the company says project in ‘early stages’

Origin Energy will now need to gain environmental approvals before any fossil fuel exploration in Queensland’s channel country after it was granted fracking leases. Photograph: David Maurice Smith/Oculi

Graham Readfearn
@readfearn
Fri 17 Dec 2021 02.12 GMT

The Queensland government has quietly approved applications from energy company Origin that could lead to the extraction of fossil fuels across 225,000 hectares of Queensland’s channel country – part of one of the world’s last major free-flowing desert river systems.

Environmentalists and traditional owners said drilling in the fragile environment would threaten rivers, unique wildlife and could compromise the region’s organic beef industry. There are fears that the controversial technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could also be used.

The Queensland government said Origin would now need to gain environmental approvals before it could begin any exploration works. The company said the project was in its “early days”.


‘The living heart of Australia’: fracking plans threaten fragile channel country

The Guardian revealed in January Origin had submitted petroleum applications in 10 areas across the channel country – part of the vast Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin.

Angus Emmott, a channel country grazier and naturalist, said the granting of the leases was “totally unacceptable” and the state government had promised at the last three elections to protect the region.

“Now they’ve gone and done this. These are the last free-flowing desert rivers on the face of the earth and we need governments with the guts to protect them.”

Environment groups believe Origin is targeting shale oil from the region, but the company says until exploration starts it will not know what kind of fossil fuels are there.

Ellie Smith, of environment group Lock the Gate Alliance, said there had not been meaningful consultation with the community before the leases were granted.

She said: “Communities who rely on the free-flowing desert rivers of the region will suffer tremendously if Origin Energy now builds industrial-scale, polluting shale oilfields.

“Exploiting this unique and spectacular part of Queensland for shale oil will also release a carbon bomb at a time when the world desperately needs to rein in its addiction to fossil fuels to mitigate the climate crisis.”

Riley Rocco, a spokesperson for the Western Rivers Alliance, a group of conservationists, graziers and traditional owners, said they were “deeply concerned” and feared Origin would use controversial hydraulic fracturing techniques.

Rocco said the government had committed to consulting with traditional owners and stakeholders “to ensure this world renowned river and wetland system is protected”.

“The Lake Eyre basin rivers and wetlands are rich in wildlife and cultural heritage,” Rocco said. “The channel country’s profitable organic beef industry relies on the floodplains being naturally irrigated from unhindered clean water flows. To allow new oil and gas mining here is to put the local community and wildlife at risk.”

Traditional owners are worried about the potential impact of drilling, pipelines and infrastructure on waterways and that this could also interfere with traditional songlines that are based on the routes of the rivers.

Karen Monaghan, a Wangkangurru Yarluyandi traditional owner and member of Lake Eyre Basin Traditional Owners Alliance, said: “The channel country is my mother’s Country.

“I grew up swimming in these rivers and I don’t want them fracked for oil or gas, dried out or dammed.”

A statement from Origin Energy said no work had been carried out on any of the petroleum leases.

“It’s very early days with regards to any proposed exploration activity in these permit areas,” a spokesperson said.


A dream of belonging: for Indigenous Australians, the fabled ‘outback’ is home

“The nature of exploration is to firstly determine what resources are in that particular area and whether they are recoverable.

“As is the case with all our operations, we would put in place approved management plans, procedures and controls to protect the environment and waterways, as well as areas of cultural significance.”

A statement from the Queensland Department of Resources said: “Any resources project must stack up environmentally, socially and financially and are assessed against strict criteria.”

Origin Energy must be granted an environmental authority before it could carry out exploration works, the statement said.

The department said traditional owners that held a native title claim were notified and consented prior to the approval of the petroleum leases.

An independent report commissioned in 2019 by the Queensland government, but not made public until last year, called for a ban on unconventional gas exploration in the region.

The report, which was leaked and later tabled in parliament, recommended gas wells and ponds be excluded from areas which frequently flood, and unconventional petroleum and gas production should be designated “unacceptable use” in an area that overlaps with some of the Origin lease applications.

The Guardian has approached the state’s environment department for comment.

Queensland Government grants oil and gas leases in Channel Country, failing to consult traditional owners

ABC Western Qld /
By Ellie Grounds and Nathan Morris
Posted Thu 16 Dec 2021 

The Queensland Government was advised in 2019 by environmental scientists that fracking in the Channel Country was "unacceptable".(ABC News: Brendan Esposito)

The Queensland Government has quietly paved the way for fracking in the environmentally sensitive Channel Country, despite repeated promises to protect the area and an unfulfilled commitment to consult with traditional owners.

Key points:
The Queensland Government has quietly granted leases to Origin Energy to develop oil and gas over the Channel Country

The move comes after an election promise to protect the region and consult with traditional owners, some of whom say they feel 'dudded'

Controversial gas 'fracking' could now happen for the first time in the sensitive inland waterway
\

In October, 11 applications for petroleum leases across more than 250,000 hectares of land in the Channel Country bioregion of the Lake Eyre Basin were granted to gas company Origin Energy.

The Queensland Department of Resources said it received consent from the registered native title claim group, however, there is currently no native title claim over the land concerned.

An alliance group of traditional owner groups, which the government promised to consult, was also not consulted prior to the leases being approved.

The leases give Origin Energy the right to explore for and produce petroleum, and test for petroleum production. Though, the company still needs an Environmental Authority before commencing any resource development.

The granting of the petroleum leases means unconventional gas production could occur in the Channel Country for the first time which, in the shale geology of the Lake Eyre Basin, will likely require fracking.

The Lake Eyre Basin is one of the last remaining free-flowing river systems in the world.(ABC News: Brendan Esposito)

The Lake Eyre Basin is one of the last remaining free-flowing river systems in the world, where spectacular webs of waterways spread over 120 million hectares, across four states and territories.

The floodplains in the Channel Country support a thriving organic beef industry and carry enormous environmental importance as a wildlife habitat.


"It's of international significance," grazier Angus Emmott said, who lives on a property south-west of Longreach, at the top end of the Channel Country floodplains.

"We've got the Cooper [Creek], the Georgina and the Diamantina rivers, which are the last major desert rivers on the face of the planet that are not seriously compromised by human actions."

Angus Emmott and his family have been running cattle on Noonbah Station near Longreach for more than 100 years.(ABC Southern Queensland: Nathan Morris)

'There hasn't been any consultation'

Since the end of 2019, Labor has repeatedly committed to establishing a stakeholder advisory group and consulting traditional owners on achieving a balance between the region's economic prosperity and ecological sustainability.

The government helped establish the Lake Eyre Basin Traditional Owners Alliance, made up of more than a dozen local traditional owner groups, which former Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch promised to consult.

"We are going to work in partnership with First Nations peoples and support their establishment of the Lake Eyre Basin Traditional Owner Alliance, which will have an active role in the decision-making and management of that area," Ms Enoch said in a media release in December 2019.

An excerpt from the Queensland Resources Industry Development Plan published in November 2021.(Supplied: Department of Resources)

Mithaka man George Gorringe is a traditional landowner in the area and is a founding member of the Alliance.

At the group's first meeting, which happened on Tuesday, December 14, Mr Gorringe said there was no mention of the petroleum leases being granted.

He only found out later that day.

"I got a phone call to say that this is what happened, and that is the first I'd heard about it," Mr Gorringe said.


"It was very disappointing to hear this, and also that there hasn't been any consultation."

The department said, "the registered native title claim group was notified and consented to the grant of the petroleum leases prior to the approval of the petroleum leases."

Origin Energy also said it had "been in contact with native title groups about meeting for some time and have participated in an introductory meeting with one group in recent weeks."

The National Native Title Tribunal shows there is currently no registered native title claim over the 11 Origin Energy petroleum leases.

The 11 petroleum leases (in purple) fall on land parcels that do not have a native title claim over them.(Supplied: Native Title Vision)

The area concerned falls between a Native Title claim by the Mithaka people to the west, and one by the Boonthamurra people to the east.

Mr Gorringe said neither the Mithaka people nor the Alliance was consulted prior to the petroleum leases being granted, which represents the Mithaka and Boonthamurra people among others.


"My feeling is, and it's pretty raw at the moment, that we've been sort of dudded," he said.

"Is it worthwhile to have this [stakeholder advisory] committee?

"I just wonder why that's even there?"

11 petroleum leases were granted by the government in October across more than 250,000 hectares of land in the Channel Country.(ABC Southern Queensland: Nathan Morris)

Grazier Angus Emmott, said holding meetings after the fact showed that the government was not genuine in its past commitment to protect the Channel Country and consult the community.

"We now have a government that is setting up this new sham consultation process to try and rubber stamp an outcome that they've pre-determined with the fossil fuel industry," Mr Emmott said.


"It's just pure political opportunism led by money, power and greed.

"I think it stinks."
Fracking in Channel Country 'unacceptable'

In September 2019 the Department of Environment and Science commissioned an independent scientific report into the potential impacts of oil and gas development, and other activities such as agriculture and tourism, on Queensland's Channel Country.

It found oil and gas development could "create barriers" on natural watercourses and drawdown water in the Great Artesian Basin.

In a 2019 report on the Channel Country, a scientific expert panel recommended unconventional gas production be deemed unacceptable.(Supplied: Queensland Government)

The scientists also said drilling and fracturing fluids could potentially pollute soil and water.

The report recommended that "unconventional petroleum and gas production be an unacceptable use" in the area and that "gas wells and ponds" be excluded from frequently flooded areas.

The Channel Country's floodplains support a thriving organic beef industry.

(Supplied: Angus Emmott)

Ellie Smith from environmental group Lock The Gate said the government's decision to grant the petroleum leases went against both scientific advice and election promises.

"What we've had over many election cycles is commitments from Labor governments to have some kind of adequate protection for the Lake Eyre Basin rivers and watercourses and balance that with the economic development in the region," Ms Smith said.

"We thought that the government would at least wait until the consultation had taken place before progressing any of those leases.

"I think the trust of the group is broken."

Government still committed

In a statement to the ABC, the Department of Environment and Science said, "We are committed to protecting the rivers, watercourses and floodplains of the river systems in the Queensland section of the Lake Eyre Basin."

A spokesperson for the Department of Resources added that "any resources project must stack up environmentally, socially and financially and are assessed against strict criteria."

Angus Emmott's dog Banjo cools off in a flooded channel on their property.

(Supplied: Angus Emmott)

Researchers investigate health effects of fracking in B.C.’s Northeast


U of T's Élyse Caron-Beaudoin and Marianne Hatzopoulou are working together to shed light on how fracking impacts air quality for B.C. communities and residents' exposure to contaminants (photo by Johnny Guatto)


With thousands of wells and counting, the Northeast region of British Columbia is one of Canada’s most important hubs of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – the process of blasting pressurized liquid at rock formations to fracture them and release the natural gas trapped inside.

Part of the region sits atop the Montney Formation, a massive, football-shaped tract of land that stretches into northwestern Alberta and is believed to contain one of the world’s richest reserves of shale gas.

But in addition to releasing gas, fracking also causes the emission of chemicals that can cause or exacerbate health problems including birth defects, cancers and asthma. And while communities located near fracking areas have raised concerns about the health impacts, there has been a dearth of Canadian studies on the topic – until now.

Élyse Caron-Beaudoin, an assistant professor in environmental health in the department of health and society at the University of Toronto Scarborough, is lead author of the only Canadian studies to have explored the health impacts and exposure to contaminants associated with fracking. The latest study, published in Science of the Total Environment, found high levels of some volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in tap water and indoor air in the homes of pregnant women living in the Peace River Valley in Northeast B.C. The study was designed in partnership with the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, the West Moberly First Nations and the Saulteau First Nations.

“Overall, there are consistent associations with negative health effects,” says Caron-Beaudoin, who co-leads one of the only research groups actively investigating the health impacts of fracking in Canada and previously ran a smaller pilot study that found high levels of trace metals in urine and hair samples of pregnant women in two Northeast B.C. communities.

“What we don’t have a lot of in the literature is exposure assessment – measuring the level of exposure of local communities to chemicals that are potentially emitted or released during unconventional natural gas operations.”

To help fill this gap, Caron-Beaudoin is teaming up with Marianne Hatzopoulou, a professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, to shed light on how fracking impacts air quality and exposure to contaminants.

The project combines Hatzopoulou’s expertise in air quality research – modelling road transportation emissions, assessing urban air quality and evaluating population exposure to air pollutants – with Caron-Beaudoin’s scholarship in environmental health to lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the environmental and health justice implications of fracking.

It’s being supported by a $120,000 grant from XSeed, a funding program that aims to catalyze inter-disciplinary research collaborations involving scholars from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and one of U of T’s other academic divisions.

Hatzopoulou’s first task is to develop air quality models – computer simulations that estimate the concentration of air pollutants generated by an activity, and the degree of population exposure to these contaminants – for various fracking scenarios.

“In urban environments, we try to quantify how much a car emits while it’s driving one kilometre,” says Hatzopoulou. “In industrial settings, we may try to understand how much is emitted from the stack as a function of the production of a certain material. With gas fracking, we try to understand what is being emitted during the different life stages of gas wells.

The modelling, which involves combining existing measurements, data from regulatory agencies and data from published literature, includes creating an “emissions inventory.” It’s effectively a database containing information on the pollutants generated by different kinds of wells across their various stages of operation.

“What the air quality model does is resolve how air pollutants being emitted in the environment are going to disperse because of wind, meteorology, etc., and how they are going to chemically react with other species that are present in the atmosphere. Eventually, the output includes concentrations of multiple air pollutants that individuals are exposed to,” Hatzopolou says.

“Once exposures from the model are assigned to various individuals, we want to investigate how they relate to measurements conducted in homes and other markers in biological samples.”

This is where data from Caron-Beaudoin’s studies – she measured chemicals in indoor air and tap water, as well as the hair and nails of pregnant women – come into play.

“The urine gives you an indication of short-term exposure and the nails and hair more of a long-term exposure, so we can trace their exposure patterns back in time using those different types of samples,” Caron-Beaudoin says.

By probing the associations between Hatzopoulou’s modelled air pollution data and the chemical and biological samples gathered by Caron-Beaudoin, the researchers hope to develop a better understanding of the links between fracking activity and exposure to toxins.

Caron-Beaudoin’s team have also been working on developing exposure metrics related to well density, proximity and the different stages of well operation. That includes well pad preparation, drilling, fracking and gas production. The association between those metrics and modelled fracking emissions will also be investigated.

Ultimately, the goal is to generate evidence – and a suite of tools – to help estimate exposure to contaminants, an area where little knowledge exists due to the exorbitant cost of carrying out ongoing exposure studies.

“A big challenge of exposure assessment is the logistics and cost – it costs a lot of money to go to remote areas and have air quality sampling and water quality sampling,” Caron-Beaudoin says. “Hopefully our project can provide tools to estimate exposure accurately without having to rely on traditional exposure assessment methods that are costly and difficult to implement.”

Hatzopoulou adds that she hopes their work can be leveraged to inform regulations and engineering decisions that make it possible to curb the detrimental health impacts of fracking. What if well numbers are capped in certain areas? Should exploration be concentrated in certain spaces? How can air pollution be minimized through smart engineering decisions?

“This study will provide health and exposure information, which are lacking when regulatory agencies are currently issuing permits for fracking,” Hatzopoulou says.

A more immediate priority is to empower communities with knowledge about the impact of fracking operations on their health. Such information is critical given that the communities located near Canada’s fracking hotspots are disproportionately rural and Indigenous, and are therefore already disadvantaged by health and economic disparities.

“First and foremost, it’s important to arm communities with data about their exposures, what they’re breathing and the impact of what they’re seeing every day,” Hatzopoulou says.

“That’s the goal,” Caron-Beaudoin adds. “To share the data and results with communities so that they have as much information as possible to help make decisions on the types of industrial development happening on their territory.”