This document discusses issues related to fracking and alternative energy options. It provides an overview of fracking activities and environmental impacts in New Zealand and other countries. Concerns are raised about water usage, chemical usage, waste disposal, and health impacts of fracking. Alternative energy options like energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric rail are proposed as more sustainable solutions that can reduce emissions and dependency on fossil fuels. The impacts of climate change from increasing greenhouse gas emissions are also discussed.

1. What the fracking?
Paul.Bruce@gw.govt.nz

2.  Fracking, the answer to peak conventional oil?
 Our overheated planet
 What needs to change
 The Age of Smart

3. Fracking:
The deeper you dig
the darker it gets
Michael Selp
South Taranaki District Councillor
“ These oil companies are like legal party drugs. As soon as one shuts
down another starts up and you‟re left legislating about things when the
damage is already done.”
“ My mother sang for the Kapuni choir. Half the choir over the last few
years have died of cancers. My mother was one of those. They all drank
in the area. Over the past 5/6 years they were just popping off.”

4.  Bans in many countries PAI expose
revealed widespread industry ties to pro-
fracking reports in the US
 Opposition from NZ Councils
 PcE Dr Jan Wright “substantive
case under the Environment Act”
 GWRC plans to use Report for
its Natural Resource Plan

5. Sensible answer to peak conventional
oil?

6. NZ situation
Evidence of poor waste disposal and
consents breached
Litany of incidents, accidents and
pollution from lax processes
4 million hectares where
fracking could occur

7. Fracking in Taranaki
 TRC reports 28 wells fracked but unable to identify chemicals
used (LOGOIMA request – Sarah Roberts, award winning
farmer)
 Swift Energy 17 operations using diesel containing BTEX
(benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenesis)
 1, possibly 3 blowouts, high by international standards (1:5200
Calif) (not acknowledged by Bernie Napp or David Robinson)
 Waste not stored in metal tanks and inconsistent use of linings in
pits
 Waste fluids sprayed onto farmland (Sarah Roberts)
 Shell Todd Oil Services indicates 10 contaminated sites at
Kapuni not acknowledged by TRC (Annnual Report)

8. Waikato
 Solid Energy fracking in 2007 in Waikato without consent
 WRC gave permission to continue with no public notification
Southland
 Two fracking wells in Ohai, Southland 1995 for coal seam gas
 Environment Southland unaware of fracking operation, environmental
monitoring ceased with project
 11 million litres waste water including chemicals dumped in stream
 Permit to dump waste was non-notified

9.  District Council granted earlier this year resource
consents for site establishment works for drilling platform
Te Karaka
 Not publicly notified, and expects to approve related
applications for exploratory drilling later this year
Wairarapa
 NZEC completed 2 D seismic Castlepoint/Ranuipermits
 4 core wells drilled, expect to drill exploration well at
Castlepoint early 2013, possibly using fracking

10. Deep sea oil and gas blocks
Government has called for
tenders: Rena cost taxpayers
 25 oil and gas blocks offshore
$50 million
 14 offshore Wairarapa, two in
Pegasus Basin south of Cape
Palliser
 Local Councils not informed

11. Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill Gulf of Mexico

12.  Permits covering 13,640 sq km
 Further 9,049 sq km awaiting approval
 Water extraction reduces water pressure to
allow gas to be released
 Direct pollution from water
 Ground water table lowered
 Leaks, blow outs and environmental
pollution in Australia

13. Health risks at every stage
•Massive water use
•Toxic chemicals
•Air pollution
•Climate change
•Waste disposal
•Health impacts
•Truck traffic

14. US/UK studies
 US study on implications surface water/terrestrial ecosystems
 Wells close to surface water increases risk to aquatic ecosystems:
 Water withdrawal
 Contamination
 Excess sediment
 Integrity of complete well assembly vital
 Well casing, steel tubes set in cement, essential barrier between well
and aquifers
 Separate warnings from US Geological Survey & US Protection
Agency
 UK Royal Society study highlights
 Well construction is greatest risk of groundwater contamination
 Risks likely to scale up in a national shale gas industry
 Robust monitoring before, during and after based on entire lifecycle of
operations, through to abandonment of wells
 Identifies need for more research on carbon footprint created by shale
gas extraction

15. Natural or man-made faults from hydraulic fracturing
or drilling can intersect and chemicals can migrate
to the surface in as little as "a few years, or less.”
www.propublica.org/documents/item/371276-myers-potential-pathways-from-
hydraulic
 2007 to 2010, one well integrity violation issued for
every six deep injection wells
 2 million abandoned, plugged gas wells
 Seepage up structure and breakdown of concrete in
wells sealed shut with concrete
 60% of well casings fail within 20 years of construction

16.  Last twelve months US‟s hottest since record keeping
began in 1895 (NOAA) - worst drought in 800 years
 High temperature to cold temperature records in ratio
10 to 1 confirmation of climate change
 Scientists warn it‟s the „new norm
 0.8 deg C rise causing far more damage than expected
Over heated earth?

17. Fossil fuel industry dumps waste carbon dioxide
for free, rather than invest in zephyrs and
sunbeams

18. Victoria in southern Australia 2009,
temperatures of 40 C, and 166 deaths

20. Temperature anomaly distribution: The frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local
temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) in units of local standard deviation
(horizontal axis).

21. July 20 - 27th 2010

22. Ice loss - IPCC projections
• third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone
• record Greenland ice melt
• oceans are 30 percent more acidic

23. NO ARCTIC SEA ICE AND OUR
PLANET WITH A DIFFERENT
CLIMATE
The blue line and shading is what the ensemble of models
used in the last IPCC report were suggesting might happen.
The red line is the multi-model mean for the projections in
the next IPCC report, and the pink shading covers the full
range of individual model runs. The black line is what‟s
actually happened so far

24. HaumoanaHawkesBay 17 March 2005
Present path sea level will reach Pliocene levels of 2.5 million
years ago, when sea level was 50 feet higher than now
(James Hansen)

25.  Rate of venting and leakage of methane to the
atmosphere is sufficient to give shale gas a larger
greenhouse gas footprint than any other fuel (Howarth
et al 2011)
 Global warming potential of methane is 72 higher than
carbon dioxide over first 20 years, and 25 times as
potent in 100 year time frame
 Shale gas is threatening investment in renewable
energies Fatih Birol, chief economist IEA

26. What‟s in store for our mokopuna?
•Clean energy technologies are available but they are
not being deployed quickly enough to avert potentially
disastrous consequences (Maria van derHoeven, executive
director IEA)
•Fossil fuel consumption five times higher than max
allowable to limit warming to 2 deg
•Present global rate of emissions increases imply a 6
degree temperature increase this century
•Each person on Earth has just 110 tonnes each of co2
to emit into the atmosphere before 2050
•At NZ‟s current rates, we will use our quota by about
2023

28. Easy oil gone

29. THE PROTOCOL
Nations shall aim to reduce their oil
consumption by at least the world
depletion rate of conventional production
The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan for a Sensible Energy Future

30. Sea level 200 years
ago

31.  Climate Change Response Act 2002
 NZ Emissions Trading Scheme
 Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Act 2004
 NPS for Renewable Electricity Generation
 New Zealand Energy Strategy
 New Zealand Energy Efficiency & Conservation Strategy
 NZ Transport Strategy
Climate denial
 Environment Court excluded climate change effects, approval can be grated
without consideration of contribution to climate change.
 Further weakening of ETS
 MoBIE Science& Investment Round to include $3.2m funding for gas hydrate
exploration

32.  Future energy security depends on risky deep sea
oil and fracking
 Soaring oil prices and plummeting real energy
yields from liquid fuels have already left economic
carnage in their wake, as a fragile global financial
system perched on a Matterhorn of debt has been
dealt blow after blow by the failure of the
economy” Richard Heinberg
 “Fracking is worth one job per million dollars GDP,
farming 15 jobs per million $, and hospitality 33
jobs” MP Gareth Hughes
 Net imports of oil comprise 60% of NZ total oil
consumption

33.  Climate change is identified as an
„overarching matter‟
 Climate change effects are taken into
account in planning and decision
making

34.  Consent authority is legally obliged to consider any consent application on its merits
 Captured by section 15(1)(d) and possibly sections 15(1)(a) and (b) of the RMA. The fracking activity needs a
resource consent, unless it is expressly allowed by a rule in a regional plan.
 Without evidence of adverse effects, it may be difficult to justify notification based on special circumstances
 The power of deferral contained in section 91 of the RMA is discretionary rather than mandatory
 Future stages will also need to (should) be considered on their merits
 A frack-free declaration by a regional council would be effective if the declaration coincided with the introduction of
prohibited activity status for the relevant activities in the council's regional plan
 Alternatively, a council might be able to argue around the lack of reassuring evidence, in terms of "the risk of
acting or not acting if there is uncertain or insufficient information about the subject matter of the
policies, rules, or other methods" (RMA section 32(4)(b)).
It is difficult to imagine how a fracking might be
consented under the RMA, when the information
required for making an accurate assessment of
environmental effects is simply unknown before
the project starts

35.  Objective 18
 Risks and consequences to people, communities, their
businesses, property and infrastructure from natural hazards and
climate change effects are reduced
 Objective 20
 Communities are more resilient to natural hazards, including the
impacts of climate change, and people are better prepared for the
consequences of natural hazard events
 Objective 9
 The region‟s energy needs are met in ways that:
 Improve energy efficiency and conservation
 Diversify the type and scale of renewable energy development
 Maximise the use of renewable energy resources
 Reduce dependency on fossil fuels…………

36.  TAG Oil thinks NZ Government is very
friendly
 National reviewing Crown Minerals Act to
make even more friendly
 Little Government support for transition to
renewables
 Fracking is high cost compared to
renewables and conventional oil

37. Investment in fossil fuels is removing capital
from projects that might still allow a return to
a stable climate and sustainability
Some $2.4 trillion in oil industry capital
expenditures from 1994 to 2004 increased the
worldwide rate of oil production by 12 million
barrels per day.
However, the $2.4 trillion in capital expenditures
spent from 2005 to 2010 resulted in a decrease
in the rate of oil production of 200,000 barrels per
day

39. High spend on capex compared to cash flow makes it a Ponzi
scheme
Annual decline rates 53%, only offset by increasing number of wells
– USA is now like a pin-cushion!
Increase in “tight” oil US production only accounts for 5% of
consumption
Tar sands have an EROEI of 5:1 and oil shale of 1.5:1 to 4:1
Not a renaissance or revolution, but a retirement party!

40. Ethics
What is unfolding is deeply threatening to
human life and the failure to address it
adequately at the political level raises
disturbing questions about our capacity to
act ethically as societies.
For climate change is at base now an ethical
question.
It is to do with the way our actions impact on
the lives of others both now and in
generations to come.
Jim Renwick

41. Mauri – essence of life

42.  Energy efficiency
 Renewable Energy
 Urban form (transit-orientated development)
 Transport patterns
 Farming practices
 Forest carbon sinks
 Store carbon in biomass including char

45.  Driver travel data page 6 .
 Social and recreational destinations 25%
 Over a third trip legs for shopping and personal business
 Work related is about one third of driving time and distance
 Accompany someone about ten per cent
 The driver was the sole vehicle occupant in two-thirds of trip legs (66 percent) in
cars, vans and utes (see Figure 9).
 In one fifth (22 percent) of trip legs, one passenger was carried (in addition to the
driver). One in eight trip legs (12 percent) involved two or more passengers.
 There was a slight tendency to carry more passengers on longer journeys. The
driver was the only vehicle occupant for 61 percent of the total distance driven and,
for 14 percent of total distance, two or more passengers were carried.
 Mean vehicle occupancy was 1.54 people per trip leg, or 1.63 people per distance
driven

46. Contribute
 2600 deaths a year from physical inactivity
 16% of NZ green house emissions (deaths mostly other
countries at present!)
 300 - 500 premature deaths from air pollutants
 400 deaths from accidents (10.7 per 100,000 population)
 Contamination of waterways through run-off from roads,
wastes such as used oil, batteries and tyres have an
impact on our environment

47. Fatalities Vehicles PopulatnVKT(bill)
 2000 462 2.61 3.86
 2001 455 2.66 3.89 35
 2002 405 2.73 3.95 36.4
 2003 461 2.84 4.03 37.7
 2004 435 2.95 4.09 38.9
 2005 405 3.06 4.14 39.4
 2006 393 3.12 4.19 39.4
 2007 421 3.19 4.23 40.2
 2008 366 3.21 4.27 39.7
 2009 384 3.2 4.32 39.8
 2010! 375 3.23 4.37 40
 2011 284 3.24 4.41

49.  Shift to more sustainable modes with investments
 rapid transit, walking, cycling
 traffic management
 limiting and pricing parking
 applying polluter-pays incentives
 offering better traveller information
 Avoid unnecessary trips
 smarter planning
 pricing
 telecommunications
 Improve vehicle efficiency
 cleaner fuels
 better-operated networks
 efficient vehicle technology adapted to local conditions and requirements

52. Great Harbour Way

53.  High quality
 High capacity
 Electric rail spine
 Extend “golden mile”
 Low running cost
 Oil free, eco-friendly

54. Tram-train schematic

55. Innovation
 Internet shopping
 Video conferencing
 Telecommuting
 Flexcar
 Green bikes
 Ride-sharing
 Free weekend
buses
 Fuel tax

56. Warmer drier houses are
healthier for young &elderly
Greater Wellington rating finance
Reduce energy bills!

57. Fun - liveable cities!

58. hous e photos 2007 002.JP G

59.  Transition offers a different story, one that is
about living more within our
means, connecting to place, returning power
to people and communities, building
resilience at the local level (Rob Hopkins)
 Renewable energy and conservation produce
more long term jobs at lower cost than
investment in fossil fuels
 Our fair share means halving our current
emissions by 2020

60. If climate change is “the greatest market failure”,
let‟s make sure our response is New Zealand‟s
greatest success – for our environment and for
our economy