Haynesville Shale Hydraulic Fracturing

Floor Speech

HAYNESVILLE SHALE HYDRAULIC FRACTURING

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Mr. FLEMING. Madam Speaker, like most of America, I support an all-of-the-above solution to this Nation's energy needs. I believe we can have it all when it comes to energy. We can aggressively pursue renewable energy, nuclear energy and other innovative alternatives while continuing efforts to expand our domestic supply of fossil fuels. We live in a country rich in energy sources, and Congress should encourage production from all available resources and technologies.

Tonight I'd like to focus on a reliable, clean-burning alternative fuel which is in extraordinary abundance right under our feet in this country, and that is natural gas.

Located in my district in northwest Louisiana, recent estimates have projected the Haynesville Shale contains 234 trillion cubic feet of potential natural gas production. This would make it the largest natural gas play in the United States and one of the largest in the world, the equivalent of 18 years' worth of U.S. oil production.

I want to point out to you, the crosshatch area is the so-called Haynesville Shale. As you can see, it overlies several parishes in Louisiana as well as several counties in Texas, a very wide area. Now of course for those listening, shale is nothing more and nothing less than a rock formation deep down in the Earth, somewhere around 2 miles in depth, that acts like a sponge that's full of either gas or oil, and sometimes both. Today we have great methods of extracting fossil fuels from the shale.

But let me turn to some more statistics regarding the Haynesville Shale. It's provided massive injections of capital into the Fourth Congressional District of Louisiana, my district. It's pumped $4.5 billion into the economy in FY 2008. It's created nearly $3.9 billion in household earnings in the same year. The greatest impact on indirect and household earnings was experienced by workers in the mining sector, with new household earnings of $191.3 million in 2008. It's created over $30 million in new earnings in seven separate sectors. Number one, mining, $191.3 million; health care, $56.7 million; management, $46.6 million; professional, scientific and technical services, $38.5 million; retail trade, $35.7 million; manufacturing, $33.5 million; and construction, $31.8 million.

It directly and indirectly created over 32,000 jobs. The new jobs created by the extraction activities in the Haynesville Shale are widely dispersed across industries. Large impacts have been felt in utilities, 5,229 jobs; mining 3,808; health care, 3,496 jobs; and retail trade, 3,433.

Those are a lot of numbers, but I think you understand that the magnitude is what counts here. Conservative estimates report that State and local tax revenues increased by at least $153.3 million in 2008 due to the extraction activities of the Haynesville Shale. Needless to say, Louisiana is not suffering from the effects of the recession, unemployment, or real estate that many other States are today, largely due to the Haynesville Shale. Some parishes are reporting a 300 percent increase in sales tax collections.

I wanted to talk a moment about how we get the natural gas out of that shale that we're talking about that's 2 miles deep in the Earth. The method is called hydraulic fracturing, or ``hydrofracking'' is a more common term. This method has been used for over 60 years and is responsible for 30 percent of America's recoverable oil and gas. Of wells currently operating today, over 90 percent have been fractured at least once.

Environmentalists and their allies in Congress are escalating their assault on affordable and reliable energy with the legislation that would place regulation of hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act, SDWA, a law that was never intended for this purpose. This legislation would have far-reaching negative impacts on energy, energy producers and consumers alike. For years this process has been safely and effectively regulated by individual States; and of the more than 1 million wells fractured, not a single case of drinking water contamination has ever been recorded.

In my State of Louisiana, three different agencies have oversight related to this process. So you see, it's not an unregulated process to begin with. First is the Office of Conservation of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, then the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and, finally, the Department of Health and Hospitals, which tests potable water. Additionally, these agencies already work closely in association with existing Federal regulations under the EPA. As illustrated in these graphics, current industry practices ensure multiple levels of protection between any sources of drinking water and the production zone of an oil and gas well.

Fresh water aquifers are located relatively close to the surface. In the Haynesville shale, for instance, the Wilcox aquifer is found at depths between 200 and 600 feet.

The practice of hydrofracking takes place at a depth of over 10,000 feet or roughly 2 miles.

To put this into perspective, the distance between the aquifer and the hydrofracking equals about 33 footballs fields or 8 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other.

To ensure that neither the fluid pumped through the well, nor the oil or gas collected, enters the water supply, steel casings are inserted into the well to depths of between 1,000 and 4,000 feet.

Oil and gas companies are required to set protective surface casing well beyond the water table. For example, in the Haynesville Shale, surface casing must be set at a minimum of 1,800 feet.

The space between this first casing string and drilled hole is filled with cement.

The casing, cement specifications and cementing process are governed by state and federal regulations as well as industry standards. In every case this process is supervised by state agency officials.

Federal regulation of ``hydrofracking'' under the EPA would result in a sharp increase in costs to small and independent producers, as well as a dramatic decrease in output and job creation.

Production in large shale plays such as the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana, the Barnett in Texas and the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast U.S. would essentially grind to a halt and billions of dollars in federal and state tax revenue would be lost.

It is crucial that Congress recognize what resources, such as the Haynesville Shale, will play in this country's long-term economic and national security.

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