resources

In a press release entitled, "North America leads the world in production of shale gas," the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) boasts long and loud that US gas quantities extracted by fracking shale beds vastly exceed production in Canada and China. Energy resources analysts, however, are critical that the EIA never releases balanced accounts on petroleum and gas production which would reveal the growing costs of extraction.

These extraction costs include threats to human water supplies, which some believe could threaten civilisation and human survival in large US populations, including New York,[1] increasing fuel required to extract more fuel from more difficult places, massive earth subsidence and drastic landscape change, destruction of farmland, poisoning of soil, disturbance of pastoral and agricultural production and, most strikingly, destruction of democracy and property rights.[2] France has outlawed fracking for these reasons. [3]

I contacted Fawzi Aloulou, the specialist spokesman for the following EIA report with questions about this. I asked him, whether he had information about the amount of energy and the financial cost of extracting this natural gas from the shale? I put it to him that, as he would be aware, we have gone from an earlier situation where liquid petroleum gushed from the ground and gas was blown off into the atmosphere to one where great lengths have to be gone to to get an energy return on investment.

I wrote to him: "The EIA figures don't show the changes in the costs of extraction for crude and other liquids over time, nor for [fracking shale]." I added that candobetter.net would like to publish the EIA reported findings but we feel that they need more comment re the energy and financial cost side.

Dr Fawsi thanked me for my interest in the EIA's work but replied, "We don’t publish the financial cost of extracting natural gas from shale for a simple reason: cost keeps changing over time as function of depth of the shale, depletion rate and technology improvement."

To this I responded with, "Surely an annual report could average them out?"

Dr Fawsi replied, "That’s a good guess. However, our cost estimates are model-generated and we do not post them in public domain."

My further question as to where I might find an objective source on this major factor in energy production has so far received no answer. But I am interested to know that the EIA does model the problem. There is probably nothing more important to the American and global public likely to be affected by increasing environmental and social turmoil associated with trying to keep up petroleum-type resources to maintain economic growth in an era of dwindling traditional fuel source forms.

Below is Dr Fawsi's report. At this point in time no-one I know can say what the amount of gas produced would look like if these graphs also revealed and deducted the amount of gas and other resources that were used up to produce these apparently stunning surpluses. For more on these unmentioned factors have a look at our pages on fracking and coal-seam gas.

EIA report that North America leads the world in production of shale gas

The United States and Canada are the only major producers of commercially viable natural gas from shale formations in the world, even though about a dozen other countries have conducted exploratory test wells, according to a joint U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)/Advanced Resources International (ARI) study released in June. China is the only nation outside of North America that has registered commercially viable production of shale gas, although the volumes contribute less than 1% of the total natural gas production in that country. In comparison, shale gas as a share of total natural gas production in 2012 was 39% in the United States and 15% in Canada.

Shale gas dry production in the United States averaged 25.7 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2012, while total dry production averaged 65.7 Bcf/d. In Canada, total dry natural gas production from the two major shale plays—the Muskwa-Otter Park shale formation in the Horn River Basin of northern British Columbia and the adjacent Montney Basin that spreads over British Columbia and Alberta—averaged 2.0 Bcf/d in 2012, while total Canadian production averaged 14.0 Bcf/d. Gross withdrawals from Horn River and Montney averaged 2.5 Bcf/d in 2012, and reached 2.8 Bcf/d by May 2013. The potential for higher production from these two plays is currently constrained by limited pipeline infrastructure.

China was ranked as the largest holder of shale gas resources among the 41 countries assessed for technically recoverable shale resources in the study released by EIA/ARI this past June. The Chinese government has not officially reported on shale gas production, but some independent Chinese energy analysts have claimed commercial production of at least 0.003 Bcf/d of shale gas, mainly from the Sichuan Basin.

Map of China with EIA/ARI shale gas/oil assessment, as explained in the article text.

Principal contributor: Aloulou Fawzi

NOTES

[1] "In Gaslands it has been suggested that, if completely developed, the huge Marcellus shale formation in the United states, under the current very poorly regulated, chaotically individual and uncoordinated system of drilling, could permit as many as 400,000 new wells. This might endanger the supply of water to New York, which would be catastrophic."
[2] Articles on social, vital and environmental costs of fracking
[3] Whilst official pronouncements try to normalise fracking as inevitable in the United States and Canada, the French experience highlights the coercive and outlandish application of this technology. More debate is needed and for debate, organisations like the EIA should release more information about these costs.

"France says "No" to fracking based on US experience

France has just passed its anti-fracking law in parliament. The law rescinds rights previously granted and puts any schale-mining for gas on hold pending new and safer technologies. Source: JT, Edition du Mercredi 13 Avril 2011, http://jt.france2.fr/20h/

This parliamentary decision is yet more evidence that the Napoleonic system in France and Europe is far more democratic - in protecting peoples' rights and communal (and national) assets and vital resources - than the anglophone systems in their various forms in Britain and her current and ex-colonies. America, Canada, Australia are among the least democratic countries in the world, with vast and growing differences between the haves and the have-nots, in legal systems which cannibalise and destroy their own community, citizens and resources. The reason that these countries are not yet obviously reduced to the poverty of Haiti is that their citizens started out with more resources per capita. As commonwealth is transferred more and more into private hands in those systems, people who have to date been able to survive, will not survive. The growing numbers of homeless and hopelessly endebted are indicators of the social unsustainability of the current economic and legal systems in Australia, America and Canada. In France and the rest of Europe, it is virtually impossible for citizens to be left without shelter unless they voluntarily opt out - as some homeless do - albeit with every attempt made to shelter them each winter.

High on the list of reasons against fracking in France was the risk of contamination of water supply and its impact on agriculture and human health." Source: First published as /?q=node/2348#comment-6275

Why is it that Australia's unemployed in March 2010 just gone number 611,000, while thousands of unskilled jobs are being filled by new immigrants?

Walk around the centres of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney and get into a taxi and find invariably a new migrant at the wheel, born overseas, whose first language is not English, who has had to learn the city streets after driving the taxi. Meanwhile how many of our unemployed, Australian born living in cities, who grew up in the city and could drive a taxi if the opportrunity presented? Why does not Centrelink link up with the taxi industry and put priority on Australia's unemployed, before the jobs go to foreigners? When tourist want to get directions from a taxi driver in a city, someone who is born in the city will have more local knowledge than someone who has not.

Same goes for unskilled and semi-skilled government workers such as those employed by the railways, selling tickets, directing passengers, as guards, as linesmen. Why are these jobs dominated 100% by new migrants?

Is it because Federal and State governments in Australia have prejudiced rules to employ migrants first, because if they don't, they can be branded as discrminatory. That Australian-borns and Indigenous Australians are poorly represented in government unskilled and semi-skilled jobs is REVERSE DISCRIMINATION.

In NSW, government policy requires people who work for the NSW Government need to adhere to its principle of
Cultural Diversity, celebrating not Australian values, but different linguistic, religious, racial and ethnic backgrounds under the Principles of Multiculturalism Act 2000. Such diversity recognises linguistic and cultural assets as a 'valuable resource'.

English language, assimilation and cultural fit is out the door.
Employmers, vocational training institutions like TAFE and Centrelink seem to be poles apart not talking to each other. Australians can't find work, yet employers can't find workers. Liberal and Labor simpletons just take the easy quick fix solution - more migrants!.

Tony Abbott's kneejerk solution

Catholic Liberal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's latest kneejerk solution is to ban Australia's unemployed under the age of 30 access to welfare. Abbots wants under-30s to leave the community they grew up in and relocate to areas where employers need unskilled labour. Forget that the migrants have taken the local unskilled jobs.
Tony Abbott calls for debate on banning dole for under-30s

Abbott other kneejerk solution is to send Australia's youth to West Australian and Queensland mining and resources sector. This is the same industry sector that failed to train its workforce before the last resources boom and so had to go offshore for more migrants. Then when the boom ended, corporations like BHP Billiton sacked thousands and abandonned local communities dependent on it.

Remember the 6000 sacked by BHP Billiton a year ago at Ravesthorpe!

Criticism over Abbott's kneejerk solution by Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes, is justified. “If (Abbott) genuinely thinks you are going to solve an economically crippling skills shortage by taking punitive measures against welfare recipients, he has clearly never lived in the real world,” Mr Howes said. “You can't just get any old Joe off the street and plonk them into a mine, and think that's going to mean they can work.”

The skills shortage in WA's resources sector is a direct result of short term profit taking by the mining companies failing to re-invest in skilling. It is a failure by both the companies and the WA and Queensland governments to adequately skills train between the resources booms.

Migration needs to be tied to Australia's carrying capacity. Part of that capacity is utilising our home grown unemployed first. I wager that of our current 611,000 unemployed, 300,000 could take on unskilled jobs while they seek the sought of work they want. That would be 300,000 less people on welfare, 300,000 less migrants, 300,000 more Australian happily contributing to the economy and to Australian society and 300,000 families of one sort or another not under stress. Consequential Australian social problems of homelessness, family breakdown, decline in physical and mental health, substance abuse, etc. would be in part addressed.

Migrants coming to Australia taking Australian jobs are at the same time abandoning their countries of origin and depriving their home countries of a workforce.

This week - 25 August 2009 - it's about creating a citizens bank. Joe points out that Australians demanded a peoples' bank in 1909 (after the 1890 depression) and got it. Unfortunately they made it the property of the government, and the Hawk Government sold it off.

"Next time", says Joe, "It needs to be made to belong to us, not the government." Then they won't be able to sell it off without a referendum.

You learn a lot about politics, rights and institutions from Joe. Also about how to conduct demonstrations. And about how we need to be active and let the government know we are out there.

Joe is also wise to big business and unsustainable population growth.

Listen to Joe Toscano here. From anywhere in the world.

Markets are the most inefficient way of doing anything. It's free markets that got us into this mess in the first place, because when supply far far exceeds demand, commodities are so cheap they are squandered. This is exactly what happened to oil. And water. And farming land.

Now, and quite suddenly, population pressures are exposing all the cracks. We no longer have this super abundance, and the market's way of dealing with this is to increase prices, the idea being to decrease demand. Unfortunately, the high demand is no longer caused by over abundance, it's caused by [per capita] shortages, and the market does not know how to cope with this. It simply does not compute, growth is sacrosanct. Now I realise we 'need' growth merely to pay the interest on the accruing debts the market needs to create more 'stuff', it is fast becoming evident that growth must stop. It will stop. Growth simply cannot go on forever in a closed system [like Planet Earth]. It's immaterial whether we want to end growth or not, it simply will, just like a cancer dies when it kills its host.

Humans did not evolve in markets and money. Money and markets are not in our genes. Money and markets are social constructions.

No a-priori reason exists why people must work to live. Without money, markets or the requirement to work, we would not need banks, insurance companies or most of the institutions we have today.

The market economises "money", not natural resources. Ninety percent of the natural resources used in this country are wasted on the overhead because people are required to work in order to live. I reckon 10% of the population could do all the essential work that actually needs to be done.

Australians' diets require something like 3,500 food calories each day, yet in our idiotic Rube Goldberg social system we are actually consuming, when all energy is taken into consideration, something like 200,000 calories every day! [see below]. Clearly, the "market economy" is the most inefficient organization in the history of the world!

The only technical way to reduce natural resource consumption by at least 90% is to put everyone except those with critical jobs on welfare. Forgive debt. Almost everyone would stay home and practice birth control and Permaculture. See SOCIETY OF SLOTH: A Thought Experiment
By Jay Hanson, spring, 1999 at www.warsocialism.com/unnecessary.htm.

See also Mike Stasse interviewed on U-tube, John Quiggin's failure to grasp the resources shortage crisis