A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science concludes that hydraulic fracturing–the controversial technique behind the nation’s recent oil and gas boom–doesn’t appear to contribute significantly to global warming, as many environmental groups have warned.
It’s great news for oil and gas companies such as Exxon Mobil, Shell, and Chevron, which have relied on breakthroughs in so-called fracking technology to cheaply unlock vast new reserves of domestic oil and natural gas that had been trapped underground in shale-rock formations. …
The study is also good news for the Obama administration, which is expected this week to release one in a series of new global-warming regulations on coal-fired power plants, the nation’s chief contributor to global warming. White House officials contend that the climate-change rules aren’t likely to hurt the economy, in part because the coal power can be replaced by the new glut of cheaply fracked natural gas, which produces just half the carbon pollution of coal. However, if fears that natural-gas fracking contributed major greenhouse-gas methane emissions proved true, it could have frozen the natural-gas boom and made it far more difficult for the Obama White House to rein in climate pollution without seeing spikes in energy costs.
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