One of the least understood impacts of natural gas development is its impact on the water cycle.
We often hear about how much water is required to hydraulically fracture a well (as much as five million gallons) and how much of the water (as much 80%) stays underground. Many think this water is irretrievably lost, that is to say forever removed from the water cycle, because we are leaving it a mile or more underground. This is true, up to a point, but it’s far from the full story, because the combustion of natural gas yields water vapor that goes into the atmosphere, and a lots of it. It yields enough water, in fact, to more than replace what is lost in just a matter of months. It’s all a matter of chemistry – the kind we learned in high school. If you weren’t paying attention in class, you might find the whole idea rather fantastic, as some of our anti-gas friends do, but it’s about as basic as it gets and, yes, fire can produce water!
Most applications that burn fuel produce water vapour particularly natural gas whose high hydrogen content produces much water.
The worry with hydraulic fracturing using large amounts of water for extracting oil or natural gas and attempting to balance that with the water vapour produced during combustion processes is that in the first case the water is accessible in concentrated volumes for which there are competing uses but after combustion resultant water vapour is dispersed in many directions.
This month (April, 2012) the Denver Post reports that Front Range farmers in Colorado are bidding for water to grow crops through the coming hot summer and possible drought but are facing new competition from oil and gas drillers.
At Colorado’s premier auction for unallocated water this spring, companies that provide water for hydraulic fracturing at well sites were top bidders on supplies once claimed exclusively by farmers.
If combustion of natural gas yields enough water to at least replace what is lost in just a matter of months how does junkscience.com believe that Front Range farmers might receive their fair share for agricultural purposes?
Who says farmers are entitled to any water if they aren’t the top bidders? The thing about markets is they allocate resources by cost-benefit and in this case the farmers are not delivering the same return on resource as the frackers are.
Hydraulic fracturing usually uses water in the deep reservoirs above the fracture sites, of course, and the gas producers would have more money to invest in the exploration and drilling than the farmers.
Chances are the gas producers would identify more water (and make more well water available) than the farmers would on their own, and the farmers would have more water available from wells inaccessible or unknown to them than if there was no exploration and drilling for gas
I think Ross was specifically concerned about this report: http://www.denverpost.com/environment/ci_20299962/colorado-farms-planning-dry-spell-losing-auction-bids