Fracking Study Provides Good News for the Industry

In a study designed to determine the degree to which chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing for natural gas contaminate drinking water, preliminary results are encouraging for the gas and oil industry for a change.

In short, Energy Department researchers, so far, have found “nothing of concern,” in a study at a site in Pennsylvania, according to Bloomberg.

The results are preliminary and await ratification in a final report, but if they hold up, will help support long-standing industry contention that fracking does not pose a risk of ground water contamination.

All this is good news for oil companies as they face growing competition from so-called cleaner, alternative energy sources while fighting allegations that fracking contaminates groundwater and causes other health problems.

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Fred Baldassare, senior geoscientist at Echelon Applied Geoscience told Bloomberg that the preliminary results pretty much confirm the suspicions of many scientists.

“A lot of us never thought there was much of a risk of fluid migration,” Baldassare, said. “We have so much confining pressure that the opportunity for water to move is just really minimal.”

The encouraging news for the fracking industry, where the Marcellus Shale field lies about 5000 feet underground, does not, however, answer all concerns about the process used to extract natural gas, according to Baldassare.

Those concerns include poisonous methane gas, which can reach the surface much more easily in locations where fracking takes place and spills or leaks from containment ponds in which water from a fracked well is held.

The study, being conducted by the Energy Department, was still in progress, according to Shelley Martin, a representative of the National Energy Technology Laboratory. Ms. Martin said the results of the study are “far too preliminary to make any firm claims.”

Nonetheless, The Associated Press reported Friday that after a full year of monitoring, results showed that the chemicals used in the fracking process remained thousands of feet below the water table where drinking water supplies are found.

In the study, markers were injected into drilling fluids more than 8000 feet below the surface and were not detected in a monitoring zone 3,000 feet higher, The Associated Press report said.

Rob Jackson, a scientist at Duke University told The The Associated Press, "This is good news,” while still cautioning that a single study doesn’t really prove that fracking is safe, especially since the methods used to extract natural gas vary so widely in the industry.

The long-term effect of the results of the study on shares of companies heavily invested in fracking, such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. CHK, Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. COG, and Range Resources Corp. RRC, remains to be seen.

At the time of this writing, Jim Probasco had no position in any mentioned securities.