Image above: An unusual glow in North Dakota. Not an UFO but fracking consequences.
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A picture
tells a thousand geogstories
“…if you look
at the centre, where the Eastern lights give way to the empty Western plains,
there's a mysterious clump of light there that makes me wonder.”
A recent satellite image of the United States highlighted the power of remote sensing to expose layers of a geographical story for
the geography classroom. Such a story would be a great basis for a case study (or
a place based exemplar as the new expression is being popularised in the UK)
with physical and human perspectives. The satellite image above of the US shows a
significant glow in North Dakota. The interesting thing is
that this area is a lowly populated area of the US with no big cities. As it
turns out, this glow is fields of gas flares from the new oil fields in North
Dakota made possible by the controversial process of fracking. As one begins to
explore what all this means, layers of the geogstory are exposed. I do not
intend this posting to be a comprehensive expose of fracking and US oil generation,
rather a geographical examination of the glow, only able to be seen through
remote sensing technology.
The remote
sensing story
In the Suomi NPP
Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory satellite photo of the Earth
below, you can clearly see the Dakota fields blazing in the grasslands as North
America rolls by. The glow in North Dakota, on some nights, is almost as bright
as the aurora borealis.
The change
story
Six years
ago, the region in North Dakota was close to empty. The few ranchers who lived there
produced wheat, alfalfa, oats and corn. The U.S. Geological Survey knew there
were oil deposits underground, but deep
down, 2 miles below the surface. It wasn't till the 21st
Century that the industry developed a way to pull that oil to the surface at a
cost that made it practical. Fracking means pumping water and chemicals down
pipes, fracturing the rock, releasing the oil. The technology is hugely controversial.
The
Environment story
When oil
comes to the surface, it often brings natural gas with it, and according to
North Dakota's Department of Mineral Resources, 29 percent of the natural gas
now extracted in North Dakota is flared off. Gas isn't as profitable as oil,
and the energy companies don't always build the pipes or systems to carry it
away. For a year (with extensions), North Dakota allows drillers to burn gas,
just let it flare. There are now so many gas wells burning fires in the North Dakota
night, the fracking fields can be seen from deep space. What is so sad about
that is that it probably used to be one of the best places in the world to look
up and see the stars. There seems to be no end in sight to this energy
"boom" mentality.
The geomorphological
resource story
The Bakkenshale oil field is part of a huge formation covering approximately 200,000
square miles. It covers the northwest corner of North Dakota, the
northeast corner of Montana and a significant chunk of Saskatchewan, Canada, as
the image beneath indicates.
"In
1995, the U.S. Geological Survey surveyed the Bakken area in which they found
roughly 151 million barrels of recoverable oil. Since then, drilling
technology has improved causing reserve estimates to spike up between 6-24 billion barrels of
recoverable oil." -
So what is fracking? Contrary to what most people think, oil is not found in vast pools
beneath the surface; it’s found in solid rock formations. In order for rock to
yield economically produceable oil, it must have two qualities: porosity and
permeability. Shale is one of the most common sedimentary rocks. Sometimes it
contains an abundance of oil, but it’s not permeable, meaning oil and natural
gas cannot easily flow through the rock for extraction. To extract oil and
natural gas from shale, a well is drilled into a shale formation. Rather than
drilling straight down, the well kicks off laterally. A high pressure pump is
then used to break the rock (this is where ‘fracking’ gets its name, to
hydraulically fracture the rocks is colloquially, ‘fracking’). The gaps in the
rock created by the pressure allow the oil and gas to escape into the well
bore.
The
pollution story
In western
North Dakota the light pollution is so bad that people get confused and think
they are driving towards the sunrise in the early hours of the day.
Environmentalists claim that fracking can contaminate the water table, that
fracking fluid is harmful to water supplies and that fracking causes
earthquakes. Such views are at the core of the pro/con fracking environmental
debate.
The energy story
The lights
are a startlingly new oil and gas field — night time evidence of an oil boom
created by a technology called fracking. Those lights are rigs, hundreds of them, lit
at night, or fiery flares of natural gas. One hundred and fifty oil companies,
big ones, little ones, wildcatters, have flooded this region, drilling up to
eight new wells every day on what is called the Bakken formation. Altogether,
they are now producing 660,000 barrels a day — double the output two years ago
— so that in no time at all, North Dakota is now the second-largest oil
producing state in America. Only Texas produces more, and those lights are a
sign that this region is now on fire. This oil rush is so sudden, so enormous.
The Bakken fields are helping to improve energy security for the US. It is
estimated that every day drillers in North Dakota "burn off enough gas to
heat half a million homes."
The economic
story
North Dakota
now has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. More than 41,000 workers
got jobs there between 2008 and 2012. Only seven years ago, the U.S. was
importing 60 percent of its oil. Now imports are down to 42 percent. However
many locals consider that as they sit on billion dollar surpluses year after
year the government do nothing to build up the infrastructure or protect the
environment. North Dakota law says that flares are subject to taxes and
royalties after one year, even if the gas isn't being sold.
The social
story
Much of the
commentary indicates that state regulators seem less than energetic when
farmers call to complain about poisons in the air and water. Many farmers in
North Dakota can't prevent drillers from drilling — even if they'd like to.
Decades ago, the rights to the minerals below those farms were separated from
the rights to the land itself — which is why today, energy companies can move
in, create drilling pads where they please, move in trucks and workers, without
the farmers' consent. In some places, North Dakota feels like Texas in the
early 20th century, when cattlemen fought the oil men. This time it's corn
folks versus oil folks. Tempers are rising. The
elementary schools have tripled in enrolment in the past two years. They don't
want to stifle the money coming in from taxes because they need it to build up
their infrastructure. However, allowing the companies to do as they please with
little to no accountability will make it difficult to preserve some beautiful
country in the priaries of North Dakota..
So, just one
satellite image with an unusual glow can lead to such a rich place based
exemplar (case study) for the geography classroom. This is a great example of how remote
sensing can create a geogstory with so many layers to unpeel.
