A common criticism of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is that it wastes water. Los Angeles just became the largest U.S. city to vote to ban fracking. One of the main justifications was water conservation during the current California drought. L.A. Councilmember Mike Bonin said that fracking “uses excessive amounts of water in a drought.” Some lawmakers are even pushing for a statewide ban.
However, as the following table shows, fracking uses much less water than other energy sources. To produce one million British Thermal Units (MMBtu) of energy, natural gas from fracking uses an average of 1.25 gallons of water. Biofuels use over 2,500 gallons of water per MMBtu. If the concern of environmentalists is saving water, they should attack biofuels and synfuels.
Fresh water is necessary for fracking since it creates the clean fractures which allow oil and gas to flow upwards to the wellbore. As drilling technology has advanced, companies have begun using more recycled water and this trend is expected to continue.
It takes twice as much water to maintain a golf course for a month than to frack a natural gas well. Put another way, fracking a well only takes the equivalent of 4.5 Olympic swimming pools.
Rusty Todd, professor at the University of Texas (Austin) wrote in the Wall Street Journal this summer that, “Nationwide, the EPA estimates that landscape irrigation consumes about nine billion gallons of water a day. That’s more than three trillion gallons a year, or more than 20 times its highest estimate for the amount of water used annually in fracking.”
Fracking advances have propelled the oil and gas industries which have been the backbone of recent growth in GDP and employment. Without the $300-$400 billion yearly increase in output from oil and gas production, economic growth would still be negative. This economic boom is not confined to the oil and gas industries. Access to cheap, reliable energy has positive ripple effects throughout the rest of the economy.
Five years after the beginning of economic recovery, U.S. employment is still 850,000 jobs below 2007 levels. However, jobs related to America’s oil and gas industry have been booming. Jobs in the oil and gas sector have increased by 40 percent since 2007.
After 30 years of employment declines, more than 400,000 jobs have been created in direct production of oil and gas since 2003, and two million more in indirect employment. Now, one million Americans work directly in the oil and gas industry, and ten million jobs are associated with that industry.
These economic benefits that are supporting the U.S. economy are threatened by overzealous regulations which, as the case with water usage, are based on misleading statistics. Fracking bans only serve to push energy production to more water-intensive sources. L.A.’s recent decision is misguided; hopefully the California state legislature will not follow its example.
