I don't think it is accurate to say it "dissipates into the rest of the water system". Typically the hydrocarbon formations being fracked are thousands of feet below the water table, separated by thousands of feet of impermeable shale. It's the same, or more so, for disposal zones where the frack fluid that flows back is injected. For the fluid to mix with a potable aquifer, it would have to leak within a wellbore. That's possible, for sure, but it's pretty rare, can be detected through proper monitoring, and can be more or less eliminated as a risk when the well is ultimately abandoned by pumping cement down the well. You don't really need a computer model to tell you what's going to happen: the formations have been separate for millions of years, and they're probably going to continue to be separate for millions more.
I hadn't heard about them using the water for crops, that is a little more alarming to me. I suspect it's not being done quite as cavalierly as you're suggesting - they are clearly treating and testing it, as discussed in the article.
In my (maybe biased) opinion, all of this should be weighed against the alternatives. Gas is much cleaner than coal, after all. In Europe, they made the decision to ban fracking, and also eliminate nuclear energy (in some countries at least). Some of the gap can be filled increasingly with renewables, but as recent history has shown, not all of it. Most of the gap is filled with Russian gas, which has its own issues. And overall it makes the energy supply less robust, which allowed their current energy crisis to happen, when the wind doesn't blow enough and the Russian supply has hiccups.
I don't think it's fair to paint this as oil and gas companies reaping all the benefits while everyone else pays the price: everyone benefits from lower energy prices, directly or indirectly. In my opinion, consumers bear some of the responsibility for environmental issues, as well as the producers.
"impermeable" until there's an earthquake caused by fracking and things shift deep underground where nobody can monitor or track what is happening? Seems exceptionally short sighted to me.
I think it's best to look at the options through a risk matrix. Is it possible that an earthquake is generated by fracking that is big enough to geologically connect a hydrocarbon formation with a surface aquifer thousands of feet above it? I suppose, but I think it is very unlikely. I don't think there are any cases of that on record, and wells have been fracked in the US for many decades (although not as frequently as recently). What is the consequence of that happening? A community (likely a rural community) loses potable drinking water. I would say that is a low probability of a medium impact event.
The calculation is going to change if there is a higher probability of drinking water contamination for whatever reason, or if more people live in the area and would be impacted by an event, just as the risk matrix is different building a nuclear power plant in France compared to building one on the Japanese coastline. Of course every jurisdiction makes its own decisions, as is their right, but the consequence of always taking the least risky option can leave a country in a tough situation when those options don't cover their energy needs, like in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) right now.
Absent from your analysis is the risk presented by global warming. Obviously, transitioning the energy sources for an entire group of nations is risky and absolutely the kind of thing you expect to be a bumpy ride. On the other hand, uncontrolled global warming is far more risky - at worst, the energy shortages present a limited economic challenge. Global warming presents an existential challenge at worst, and an unbounded, extreme economic challenge at best.
The issue a lot of people have with fracking is not just the local environmental damage, but also the deeper issue of whether it's worth pouring investment into an obsolete industry that is going to produce inputs for other obsolete industries, all of which are environmentally damaging on any scale, just so you can gain a bit of energy security in the here and now. It's not just kicking the can down the road on your future energy security - it's also pushing us towards an extremely chaotic and difficult future for everybody.
They are other important uses hydrocarbons other than energy production. So calling them obsolete seems a bit of a stretch.
For example take coal one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. Steel plants making carbon steel steel need to convert that coal into coke. Even an electric arc furnace needs coke to make carbon steel.
Similar things with other hydro-carbons. So its not like we are gonna stop using them even if the grid was entirely renewable and nuclear.
Now industrial processes that use such hydrocarbons to produce useful stuff other than energy are certainly a minority of the market. So mines and wells for such things will still exist. So the tech is still useful, but we just ideally stop using these hydro-carbons as fuel.
You need a little bit of carbon to make carbon steel, but the vast majority of the coke is used for heat and producing a reducing atmosphere to reduce the ore. Both of those can also be done with a process using Hydrogen.
He sort of has a point in that there are some products (plastics, etc) that are only produced from crude oil. The problem is it's pretty doubtful that fracking would be worthwhile if that was the only demand - there's more than enough normal crude to produce plastics.
As I understand it, most fracking isn't even profitable right now - it is only profitable if oil prices are relatively high.
You left out the matrix on the other side of the equation.
What is the cost of not fracking? Very, very debatable.
On a case by case evaluation, the risk from any single fracking well seems much higher than the risk of not using that well. On the aggregate, the calculation may be different. But again, it is all very arguable.
In an argument of this consequence, the side that says, "That's secret information" should lose.
> In Europe, they made the decision to ban fracking, and also eliminate nuclear energy
Well the difference being fracking for natural gas is an environmental disaster that will leave untold problems for the future to clean up, and nuclear energy is one of the cleanest forms of energy we have.
Also maybe read the entire article on using fracking wastewater on crops:
Until now, government authorities have only required limited testing of recycled irrigation water, checking for naturally occurring toxins such as salts and arsenic, using decades-old monitoring standards. They haven’t screened for the range of chemicals used in modern oil production.
No one knows whether nuts, citrus or other crops grown with the recycled oil field water have been contaminated. Farmers may test crops for pests or disease, but they don’t check for water-borne chemicals. Instead, they rely on oversight by state and local water authorities. But experts say that testing of both the water and the produce should be expanded.
This is surprising to me because in North Dakota there have been plenty of brine spills (from storage tanks) and it seems to destroy the farmland. It's nearly impossible to clean up and it always makes its way into major waterways.
I can't believe a farmer would intentionally use this to water their crops, it wouldn't make any business sense.
I don't know anything about this, but contamination seems plausible, as you say, and it would probably make sense for California to update its regulations to make sure the crops grown with this water are safe for consumption.
I think this is a pretty unusual situation. As far as I know, most spent frack fluid is reused in oilfield operations or disposed of in deep disposal wells.
I hadn't heard about them using the water for crops, that is a little more alarming to me. I suspect it's not being done quite as cavalierly as you're suggesting - they are clearly treating and testing it, as discussed in the article.
In my (maybe biased) opinion, all of this should be weighed against the alternatives. Gas is much cleaner than coal, after all. In Europe, they made the decision to ban fracking, and also eliminate nuclear energy (in some countries at least). Some of the gap can be filled increasingly with renewables, but as recent history has shown, not all of it. Most of the gap is filled with Russian gas, which has its own issues. And overall it makes the energy supply less robust, which allowed their current energy crisis to happen, when the wind doesn't blow enough and the Russian supply has hiccups.
I don't think it's fair to paint this as oil and gas companies reaping all the benefits while everyone else pays the price: everyone benefits from lower energy prices, directly or indirectly. In my opinion, consumers bear some of the responsibility for environmental issues, as well as the producers.