How do higher temperatures affect the drought in California?

How will the 2014 California drought affect debates about fracking the Monterey shale?

• Hydraulic fracturing is a water intensive process and there is already tension between the energy industry and California's agriculture industry. How has and/or will California's water shortage shape ongoing policy discussions?

• Answer:

  I'm sure farmers will continue to gleefully use the oil industry as a scapegoat for water shortages. But anyone who looks at the numbers can see that fracking is just a diversion. Farmers are responsible for almost the entirety of the water problem. Everything uses a small amount of water compared to farming. But it's hard to get good statistics on this, because different people use different definitions for "water use." For example, power plants "use" an enormous amount of water in the US -- about as much as agriculture -- but power plants immediately discharge the water back into the river or lake where it came from. The water stays clean and is returned to the source only 2-3 degrees warmer. There is very little net water use. Any time a household or business uses water, most of it is cleaned and returned to the environment through a wastewater treatment system. We spend some energy on purification, transport, and treatment, but it's essentially a closed loop with near-complete water recycling. A river's flow could be used five times over by cities along its banks before the water reaches the sea. Agriculture, on the other hand, consumes the water both for plant growth and through evaporation losses. Farming is the only large water user that cannot effectively recycle and thus takes over half of its water use entirely out of the available supply. Here's a great chart that shows our national big-picture water use vs consumption: http://theenergycollective.com/jessejenkins/205481/friday-energy-facts-how-much-water-does-fracking-shale-gas-consume (Read the article; it's good.) This chart is a little old, but the big-picture water flows are the same today. Look at the big gray "consumed or evaporated" branch -- that's the true impact of consumption on water supplies. The brown and bright blue lines represent water returned to the environment. Grey is consumption, blue and brown are recycling. Fracking doesn't even register at the national scale. It consumes less fresh water nationwide than maintaining the greens at golf courses. Seriously. Journalists talk about "millions of gallons per well" to drum up controversy, but that only sounds big if you've never looked at how many gallons it takes to fill swimming pools or water lawns in the suburbs. Fracking in aggregate consumes far less than 1% of over a hundred trillion gallons of total national water use. Big numbers only sound big if you conveniently ignore the context. I'm talking in national terms because shale gas exists across the country, but all of this particularly applies California. South/central California diverts massive water flows from other regions in order to grow orchards in the desert. Fracking does consume a bit higher share of water in the most active shale gas counties. But going all the way down to the county level is cherry-picking datapoints. In aggregate, across entire water basins, fracking consumes a negligible amount of water. And with recent advances in recycling techniques and salt-tolerant frac fluid recipes, the amount of fresh water used per well is dropping. That's because, believe it or not, the oil industry does respond to public opinion. We don't want to interfere with farmers' livelihoods. We rely on their goodwill for access to land (ie drilling leases) and community support to facilitate permits and infrastructure. We're working furiously to reduce the water consumption from our operations. And it's very common for shale gas companies to drill their own water wells at the drilling site, and then hand the water well over to the land-owner when the gas wells are put on production. Then there is also extensive partnership with local water utilities in the most active regions... both to ensure sufficient fresh water supply for drilling, and to support proper wastewater treatment. We're working to share our saline water treatment technologies with water utilities so they can tap deeper aquifers and take strain off fresh water supplies. I really think this is an area where the industry has listened to the public's concern, and is now genuinely trying to be a responsible partner in regional water management. But let's look at the big picture. Shale gas consumes a very small fraction of overall water use. But gallon for gallon, you get an incredible amount of value from the water used for shale gas. Not only does it generate local profits and jobs, but it also contributes to the entire economy (and national security) through lower domestic energy prices. It's hard to imagine a better use for the water that fracking does consume. To top it all off, every fracked gas well reduces total water consumption for energy production. Other sources of power take dramatically more water per unit energy produced: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/ETIP-DP-2010-15-final-4.pdf Shale gas wells are on the high end of the natural gas range, but note the log scale, and note where, say, ethanol sits in comparison. Ethanol production uses around 100 times as much water per unit energy as shale gas does. Coal, oil, nuclear -- all use significant water for fuel extraction. The minimal processing requirements, and extremely high electricity production efficiency of combined-cycle gas turbine power plants, together gives natural gas an inherent advantage over other energy sources. Let me repeat myself -- increased natural gas consumption tends to reduce demand on water supplies. Why are people so worried about fracking, again? Even a cursory inspection of the facts on the ground shows that fracking is not to blame for water shortages. The impact has been blown out of proportion, and the industry is responding to the legitimate concerns that have been raised. I sincerely believe shale gas water use will be considered a non-issue in the future.