Natural gas mogul speaks on fracking, coal, greenhouse gases

David Porges, the CEO of EQT Corporation, a major natural gas company, spoke to an audience of about 100 people at the University of Charleston on Thursday night about fracking, coal and greenhouse gases. (See article.)

Porges said the chemicals used in the fracking process are no worse than the ones you find in your own home. He added that all the chemicals used in fracking are available on frackfocus.org, which is run by the Groundwater Protection Council.

‘”I tend not to be a big proponent of using natural gas instead of coal because of climate change … I don’t know whether the Earth is in a long-term warming trend or not,” he said.

But if the planet is warming because of human activity and high levels of carbon dioxide, “We’re going to have to figure out a way to get energy we need without creating greenhouse gases,” and natural gas offers a lot of air quality benefits, he said.’

When asked about whether fracking causes earthquakes, Porges quickly negated the claim and said “sensitive areas” should be avoided.

EQT operates in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia and owns over 14,000 wells and 5.2 trillion cubic feet of total natural gas reserves.

New study predicts increased use of natural gas will make climate change worse

A recent study at Cornell University concluded that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions (especially methane) resulting from extracting gas from shale reserves is astronomical—and would ultimately make climate change worse, not better.

Supporters of fracking argue that the process is a cleaner alternative, but this study proves their argument invalid, TreeHugger reports. The authors write in the study, which will be published in Climatic Change, “The large GHG footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming.”

They elaborate by mentioning that the carbon footprint of shale gas extraction is even higher than that of oil or coal. Scientists have estimated that as much as 8 percent of methane escapes into the atmosphere, which makes for a much worse footprint (methane is much more powerful than carbon dioxide).

Gas well blazing, methane emissions

This study is not the first of its kind, but it fortifies past research.