Unconventional shale gas development: challenges for environmental policy and EA practice

Abstract

The growth of unconventional shale gas development has been accompanied by controversy over its environmental and social impacts. This paper reviews recent literature to clarify what is known and not known about the physical, chemical and toxicological properties of the process chemicals and wastewaters generated in hydraulic fracturing, the mechanisms and pathways by which they enter surface water and groundwater aquifers and the risks posed to human and ecosystem health. Assessing the impacts of unconventional shale gas development is clearly constrained by a lack of baseline information, complex hydrogeological histories for natural migration of hydrocarbons, lack of tracers to monitor and verify the source, timing and mechanism of contaminant migration into water resources. This is compounded by lack of transparency and accountability in policy decisions. The paper argues that managing the social and environmental risks of unconventional shale gas development calls for a new generation of impact assessment, one that marries the ideals of strategic environmental assessment, cumulative effects assessment, backcasting and deliberative and inclusive processes of community engagement towards collective risk management. KEYWORDSHydraulic fracturing; risk-based environmental assessment; unconventional shale gas development; deliberative and inclusive process; collective risk management ARTICLE HISTORY

Editorial

“…Impact assessment continues to play an important role to play in this context and many of the papers published in IAPA over the years have directly or indirectly dealt with this (e.g. Hands and Hudson 2016;Yap 2016;Huang et al 2017; see also Fischer 2018).…”

Assessing, monitoring, and addressing boomtown impacts in the US: evaluating an existing public health model

“…Similarly, the US features a heterogeneous policy environment with fracking banned in some jurisdictions (in one state and several municipalities) and loosely regulated in others (Rabe 2014;Loh and Osland 2016). In this context, identifying processes and models for conducting impact assessment (IA) suited to UFF development, and practical opportunities to apply them, is an important activity for the expert IA community (Yap 2016).…”

Environmental risks associated with flowback and produced waters in shale gas projects

“…And, in short, this is against the application of this technology in conditions of environmental sustainability and public acceptance.Several studies that carry out reviews of the empirical literature on the impacts of unconventional shale gas and probability bounds analysis establish that wastewater disposal carried the highest risk and epistemic uncertainty, i.e. lack of knowledge, reflecting the high volumes of wastewater generated and the lack of efficacy of industrial or municipal wastewater treatment facilities used to treat these wastewaters(CIWEM, 2016;Rozell and Reaven 2012;Yap, 2016).To assess the risk associated with this scenario it should be considered two different aspects. The first one is about the knowledge of the elements and the expected concentration of them in those waters and the second one the water contaminationpathways.…”