Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future Read Free Page A

and important information that is, with rare exceptions, failing to find its way into the public discussion about our energy future. Its upshot is that the game is about to turn again .
    Almost no one who seriously thinks about the issue doubts that the Peakists will win in the end, no matter how pathetic my team’s prospects may look for the moment. After all, fossil fuels are finite, so depletion and declining production are inevitable. The debate has always been about timing: Is depletion something we should worry about now?
    Readers who’ve seen articles and TV ads proclaiming America’s newfound oil and gas abundance may find it strange and surprising to learn that the official forecast from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) is for America’s historic oil production decline to resume within this decade . 5
    But the EIA may actually be overly optimistic. Once the peak is passed, the agency foresees a long, slow slide in production from tight oil deposits (likewise from shale gas wells). However, analysis that takes into account the remaining number of possible drilling sites, as well as the high production decline rates in typical tight oil and shale gas wells, yields a different forecast: production will indeed peak before 2020, but then it will likely fall much more rapidly than either the industry or the official agencies forecast.
    There’s more—much more. This book tells an analytic story assembled from proprietary industry data on every active and potential US oil and gas play. It’s a story about shale gas wells that cost more to drill than their gas is worth at current prices; a story about Wall Street investment banks driving independent oil and gas companies to produce uneconomic resources just so brokers can collect fees; and a story about official agencies that have overestimated oil production and underestimated prices consistently for the past decade.
    The book also relates a human and environmental story gathered from people who live close to the nation’s thousands of fracked oil and gas wells—a tale of spiraling impacts to drinking water, air, soil, livestock, and wildlife; about companies failing to pay agreed lease fees; about declining property values; about neighbor turned against neighbor; and about boom towns in turmoil.
    Here, in briefest outline, are the findings the evidence supports:
The oil and gas industry’s recent unexpected successes will prove to be short-lived.
Their actual, long-term significance has been overstated.
New unconventional sources of oil and gas production come with hidden costs (both monetary and environmental) that society cannot bear.
    Further, these conclusions lead inevitably to one final, crucial observation:
The oil and gas industry’s exaggerations of future supply have been motivated by short-term financial self-interest, and, to the extent that they influence national energy policy, they are a disaster for America and for future generations.
    * * *
    This book is aimed at the general public and at policy makers, who need to understand why the current received wisdom about US fossil fuel abundance is dangerously wrong.
    It is especially directed toward local anti-fracking activists across the United States and throughout the world who are working hard to limit or prevent harms to water and air quality, wildlife, and human health. Bolstering environmental arguments with economic data showing the likely brevity of the fracking boom can only help win debates regarding the regulation of this dangerous technology.
    The book is meant as well for the thousands of readers who learned about peak oil during the past decade, took the information seriously, and made extraordinary efforts to reduce their personal petroleum dependency and to prepare their communities for the end of the era of cheap oil—only to see their credibility erode as a result of oil and gas industry disinformation and spin. These are my people, and they need some encouragement