Tag Archives: natural gas

Math Unmasks Oil and Gas Boom as Bubble

By | |
1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

a natural gas well using hydraulic fracturing

In the midst of a natural gas “boom,” fracking rigs like this are fast becoming an endangered species. The reason? Mathematics.

There are three kinds of people in this world: the kind who understand mathematics, and the kind who don’t (Irony alert). You can find the latter buying lottery tickets, leaning over casino tables and conducting news conferences about the new American oil boom.  It has become conventional wisdom (oxymoron alert), an assertion not even worthy of discussion by Serious People, that the United States is, as an NPR program host said offhandedly the other day,  “on its way to energy independence.” Here’s what mathematics has to say about this titanic (metaphor alert) scam. Continue reading →

Expert: Shale Gas Boom a Bubble About to Pop

By | |
Comments Off on Expert: Shale Gas Boom a Bubble About to Pop

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

oil jacks

In the old days, when you poked holes in the ground and pumped out oil with jacks like these, it was a boom. Now, it’s just a fracking bubble.

One of the top geologists in the oil exploration and production business says: 1) shale gas production by hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is a commercial failure. Is. Present tense. 2) shale gas will be the next financial “bubble” to collapse. 3) holding out the possibility of energy independence for the United States is “absurd.” To suggest it could be done in five years is “garbage.”

Continue reading →

Fossil Fools Ignore Arithmetic

By | |
6 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

These oil wells were thick as fleas along the Texas coast in 1978, when America was awash in oil. But production has been declining since 1970, and simple-minded hype will not change that. (Photo by Roger Wollstad (Roger4336)/Flickr)

If you don’t believe in arithmetic — if your political or religious tenets require you to deny that 2 + 2 always equals 4 — then by all means stop right here and go read something by Glenn Beck. For the remaining minority, then, of people clinging to outmoded faiths in things like gravity and mathematical truth, here’s the headline: we are running short of oil. There is no renaissance, no triumph of technology, no sudden reversal of the rules of the universe. And it is still true that running short is almost as bad as running out. Continue reading →

NPR: The Lost Best Hope

By | |
1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

(Photo by timsamoff/flickr)

The last bastion of intelligent and balanced journalism in this country is apparently now the lost bastion: on Morning Edition last Wednesday, NPR ran a piece on the oil bidness that was a travesty of journalism. The piece by John Ydstie “reported” on the “huge boom” in US oil and natural gas production and claimed — not by quoting an idiot, but by making the idiotic statement with no attribution or qualification — that it “could help the nation reach the elusive goal of energy independence.” That was the lede sentence, and things went downhill from there.
Continue reading →

Oil and Troubled Waters

By | |
Comments Off on Oil and Troubled Waters

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Monster machines scrape tarry sand from the surface of Alberta, Canada. By applying enormous quantities of water and natural gas, they make a low quality, corrosive crude oil and proclaim a “new Saudi Arabia.” (Photo by HowlMontreal/Flickr)

Like some crazed fan-dancer, the oil industry (along with its wholly owned subsidiaries such as the US Congress) is doing its best to conceal and distract us from the naked truth. It has waved in our faces during the past year such ostrich feathers as “Canadian tar sands; another Saudi Arabia!” and “shale gas; another Saudi Arabia!!” and “hyper-deep ocean drilling; another Saudi Arabia.” But when we step back from the year, and look at the unhyped numbers, it doesn’t matter any more whether the dancer has any clothes on or not.

The Mother of All Fracking Lies

By | |
4 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Water from one of the wells never harmed by fracking explodes, in a scene from the documentary "Gasland."

The claim that not one single water well has been harmed by hydraulic fracturing for natural gas is the anthem of the oil and gas industry as it presses its case to perforate the shale formations of the world without regard for the vital water resources also to be found there. The current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lisa Jackson, sings from the same sheet music. But even in a world where public statements have little relationship to reality, this is a remarkable Big Lie. Continue reading →

Three Media Home Runs. No, Seriously.

By | |
Comments Off on Three Media Home Runs. No, Seriously.

If they gave Oscars for journalism, these would be our nominees for this year in the categories newspaper, radio and TV. (Photo by Cliff1066/Flickr)

The Lamestream (news) Media (thank you, Sarah) don’t get much respect here or anywhere else these days, because they mostly do not deserve any. But now and again, traditional journalism rears its gorgeous head, and uses words and images to reveal and explain the realities of our world in riveting and memorable ways. Typically, such works sink from sight and remembrance like stones tossed in a polluted river, so let us remove our hats and mumble a few respectful words over three masterful works that appeared in the past few days — one in a newspaper, one on the radio (remember radio programs?) and, yes, even one on TV.   Continue reading →

New York Times Explodes Natural-Gas Bubble

By | |
Comments Off on New York Times Explodes Natural-Gas Bubble

The thing about a gas bubble is, it's flammable. (Photo by Andrew Kuznetsov/Flickr)

Once in a great while a newspaper (“The few. The frail. The fading.”) reminds us why we need newspapers, and why we are going to miss them. There are no other institutions left whose purpose (speaking here of the practitioners, not the investors) is to seek the facts and tell the truth. On Friday, the New York Times published the results of an exhaustive review of America’s natural-gas industry, which has been energized by the discovery of a new way to unlock gas from shale, and has pronounced it to be — to paraphrase — a fraud. Continue reading →

Fracking Natural Gas: Unreality TV

By | |
4 Comments

Marchers in Pittsburg protest fracking in November, 2010. (Photo by Marcellus Protest/Flickr)

The thing about pathological liars is that they also lie to themselves. Their lies get them into ever deeper trouble, which they attempt to handle by mumbling lies to themselves, which don’t help, which causes them to double down on lies until gravity reasserts itself and the world falls on them. Keep this in mind as we watch the end state of the oil and gas industry. Continue reading →

Natural Gas, or Drinkable Water? Choose One

By | |
2 Comments

In a scene from the Academy-Award nominated documentary GasLand, a Pennsylvania resident ignites the water flowing from his kitchen tap, a trick he could not perform before natural-gas fracking came to a field near his.

A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences belies industry assurances that they can retrieve natural gas by hydraulic fracturing without affecting adjacent water supplies. The report provides more evidence that what industry ads portray as a safe source of abundant energy via new technology may in fact be an unacceptable tradeoff between the fossil fuel we want and the water we need. Continue reading →