Exercising Due Diligence

"Canada's shale gas resources dwarf the 60.4 trillion cubic feet of marketable gas reserves that the National Energy Board estimated remained in Canada at the end of 2010.:
"The scale and pace at which shale gas resources are being developed are challenging the ability to assess and manage their environmental impacts."
"There is reason to believe that shale gas development poses a risk to water resources, but the extent of that risk, and whether substantial damage has already occurred, cannot be assessed because of a lack of scientific data and understanding."
Council of Canadian Academies panel public policy report

A cautionary note on a technology whose end effects are little known. Extracting gas by fracturing rock beds with high-pressure fluids is a relatively new protocol affecting the geology of the country whose potential results remain in question. How to develop the resource safely and without deleterious impact on the environment is of major concern, stated the report co-author Rick Chalaturnyk, engineering professor at University of Alberta.

"Perhaps cautionary is the right philosophy. We really do stand a chance to put in place the regulatory framework to answer the questions around environmental impact", he stated. The independent organization he is part of is comprised of university researchers from across Canada whose mandate is to investigate public policy issues.

Environment Canada had tasked the Council of Canadian Academies to investigate fracking procedures and its 292-page resulting report agrees that there could be significant economic benefits across Canada through the use of the process where substantial deposits of shale gas exist in all provinces and territories, exempting Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Nunavut.

The downside of their findings represented the uncertainty relating to risks to the environment and human health. The potential for the contamination of groundwater certainly is a grave issue. No less than that of exposure to the mixtures of chemicals used in the process whose interaction is as yet poorly understood. The unknown effects on groundwater from fracking water pumped under the surface represents a serious concern, while exposure to chemicals represents another.

In some jurisdictions where fracking takes place there is no requirement on industry to list those chemicals that are being used. Fracking is being credited in the United States for promising to make the country energy-independent with the discovery of immense reserves of underground gas deposits which fracking makes available for use. Uncertainty about the long-term effects of fracking is not merely a Canadian concern, it is a universal one.

View of a Chevron gas drilling rig in Franklin Township, Pa. on May 1, 2012. Wells are being drilled across the state of Pennsylvania to extract gas from the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that extends throughout much of the Appalachian Basin. Gas companies are using a technique known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," which involves pumping fluid into wells at high pressure in order to fracture the rock formation and release the gas.

The European Union countries, faced with energy-needs uncertainty, particularly dependent in large part on gas imported from Russia with its constant destabilizing threats of cutting off supply, of raising prices, are aware that they have their own natural gas resources buried deep in their geology. They too, may before long, turn to fracking to release the potential gas fields existing within their own geographies.

It would certainly represent a relief as well as a dire requirement to be aware of all possible effects of fracking before we discover dismaying evidence that we have once again embarked on a process that may prove immensely deleterious to our environment, our health and our peace of mind.