♪ MUSIC ♪
MILES O'BRIEN: In Colorado, drilling for oil and natural gas
using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is big business.
But, questions about its impact on the air and water are
far from settled.
JOE RYAN: One side was constantly contradicting the
other side. And, so we thought that's the perfect role for an
academic endeavor in this area.
MILES O'BRIEN: With support from the National Science
Foundation, environmental engineer Joseph Ryan at the
University of Colorado, Boulder heads a team gathering data on
the impact of oil and gas development on the environment.
JOE RYAN: The big goal of our project is to take the
scientific information and figure out a way to put that
into some kind of decision framework. Some way to turn that
information into knowledge that can improve our approach to
making regulations and developing policy in this area.
BRUCE VAUGHN: This graph on the lower right, the red line, shows
us the increasing level of methane...
MILES O'BRIEN: Research scientist Bruce Vaughn covers a
lot of ground in this mobile laboratory. He's measuring
methane, a greenhouse gas that is one by-product of oil
and natural gas extraction.
BRUCE VAUGHN: Ok, so here's what's in back of the truck. We
have... this is a cavity ring down laser spectrometer.
It's measuring methane and methane C13 here…
I think one of the most important things we can bring to
this study is a feeling of neutrality. We really are all
about producing solid science that will help feed the debate
with some real information and we don't really have a horse
in this race.
JESSICA ROGERS: To simulate a spill of fracturing fluids,
we're actually injecting a mixture of
four different compounds…
MILES O'BRIEN: Ryan's team wants to know more about how
long fracking chemicals might persist in the ecosystem should
they make their way into the groundwater.
JESSICA ROGERS: The main goal would be to see how quickly
those compounds are removed naturally. Some of those
compounds are removed rather quickly, and that some of
the other compounds stay around for quite a while,
which could possibly present more of a problem
for groundwater contamination.
MILES O'BRIEN: The project also looks at issues such as air
quality, human health, and energy sustainability.
JOE RYAN: We want to be able to reach people who may have oil
and gas development going on nearby them. They don't know
where to get information that they can trust. The difficulty
of trying to reconcile these two opposing points of view may
force them to realize that there must be some better
source of information.
MILES O'BRIEN: A renewable energy economy is likely decades
away. Putting science to work understanding how to maximize
the benefits of fossil fuels now, while curbing the negative
impacts – that's a powerful idea.
For Science Nation, I'm Miles O'Brien.
