The unbelievable ignorance of the leftist professoriat

Today on Real Clear Politics, an article from Salon is reprinted. In the article, professor Michael Klare, "professor of peace and world security" at Hampshire College discusses how the big oil companies are trying to turn the USA into a third world petrostate in order to rape the land to extract oil and gas without opposition. The article contains the usual ravings of the far left about oil; it is evil per se. The big oil companies are all evil. Those who want more oil in order to bring prices down are evil. Nothing good comes from oil. Oil production will lead to terrible pollution.

It is not worth listing all of the nonsense that the professor of peace sets forth. It is a delusion that stems from a political outlook rather than a review of reality. Nevertheless, I decided to try to write to Klare to see if he could be persuaded to correct some of the more glaring errors. I chose one that no one who knows anything about the oil and gas industry could have missed, namely the existence of other means to extract oil and gas from shale besides hydrofracking.

Here is the pertinent part of my e-mail to professor of peace Klare:

Dear professor Klare:

I read your article from Salon which was reprinted at real clear politics. It contains a glaring error about which you should be informed. Specifically, I refer to this section of your text:

“Consider the extraction of shale oil and gas, widely considered the most crucial aspect of Big Oil’s current push back into the North American market. Shale formations in Canada and the U.S. are believed to house massive quantities of oil and natural gas, and their accelerated extraction is already helping reduce the region’s reliance on imported petroleum.
Both energy sources, however, can only be extracted through a process known as hydraulic fracturing (“hydro-fracking,” or just plain “fracking”) that uses powerful jets of water in massive quantities to shatter underground shale formations, creating fissures through which the hydrocarbons can escape. In addition, to widen these fissures and ease the escape of the oil and gas they hold, the fracking water has to be mixed with a variety of often poisonous solvents and acids. This technique produces massive quantities of toxic wastewater, which can neither be returned to the environment without endangering drinking water supplies nor easily stored and decontaminated.”

This section is just wrong. There is a process which uses no water whatsoever for fracking of shale oil and shale gas. The process instead uses liquid propane gas or LPG, a gel like substance which is made (as the name suggests) of propane. The process is currently being used both in the USA and Canada by GasFrac Energy Services of Alberta. The gelled propane is pumped as a viscous liquid under pressure into the well and used to fracture the rock formations a mile or more below the surface in much the same way that hydrofracking works. At that point, however, the processes diverge. With water, about half is returned to the surface for recycling or disposal. The water brings with it salts and possibly other minerals from the rock below. Eventually all of the water that returns to the surface has to be treated for disposal. You questioned the efficacy of that treatment in your article. With LPG, however, once the pressure on the fluid is removed, the propane gel evaporates. In other words, the propane gel turns back into propane gas. This propane gas then returns to the surface together with the natural gas or oil. The propane is removed from the product flow and remains available to be returned to gel for use again in the next well. Since the propane returning to the surface is a gas, it does not bring with it any minerals from the subterranean strata.

The benefit of using the propane gel are substantial. 1) No water is needed. This is particularly important in areas like Texas that have a tight water supply. 2) No pollutants are returned to the surface dissolved in water since no water or other medium that could contain the pollutants is used. 3) Even traffic in the area of the well is reduced since the volume of LPG is much less than that of the water for hydrofracking. 4) Because none of the water is left underground to block passage of the oil or gas after fracking if LPG is used, the wells that are completed by the LPG method produce more oil and gas sooner and for longer periods of time than those completed by hydrofracking.

You should also be aware that the state of New York which has had a moratorium on hydrofracking specifically allows the use of LPG for completion provided that a propane recovery unit is present to remove the propane from the product flow from the well. In other words, you do not need to take my word or the word of the oil industry that you seem to hate; the state government in New York (which has been quite hostile to hydrofracking) verifies what I am telling you.

I have received no response from Klare. Nor do I expect one. Those like professor of peace Klare never seem to want to be bothered by the actual facts.