Good afternoon, and thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to present testimony to your committee. I do apologize for not being there, and I also compliment your staff for setting up this video conference on short notice.
I want to make it clear that all of my testimony this afternoon is on point, that is, unconventional natural gas development from shale formations. I'm going to limit my time to just a few comments right now, because I understand we have a whole two hours and I would rather spend my time with you answering your questions. But I am going to spend a few moments and suggest some lines of questions based on my reading of all the testimony on the issue of unconventional natural gas from shale formations that your committee has received to date from various speakers over the last few months.
As I've read that testimony, I've noted some inaccuracies and some misleading statements, so I hope today to help to clarify those for you. There are five main comments that I'd like to suggest right now that perhaps we could follow up on during Q and A.
The first is, don't make the same mistake that's been made in the U.S. by framing and naming the issue of unconventional natural gas production from shale fracking. It is not just fracking; it is the entire process, the whole system of producing unconventional gas from shale formations that you should be investigating. So don't develop too narrow a focus.
The second point is that the most important aspect of developing unconventional gas from a resource like shale is the scale of an operation. By that I mean two things. It takes between 50 and 100 times more fluids to develop a shale gas well than to develop a conventional gas well. That implies that a concomitant amount of waste products is produced in the stream. I emphasize 50 to 100 times the amount of fluid necessary over a conventional gas well. That's one aspect of what I refer to as scale. The second aspect is this. The nature of the geology of shale is such that to produce the vast quantities of gas that are being forecast by the industry will require a very high well density compared to conventional gas development. By that I mean on the order of three wells per square kilometre. Those two issues of scale need to be absorbed and digested: the large amounts of fluid necessary, which implies much transportation and much waste disposal; and many more wells per square kilometre than previously experienced.
The third point is that the technology to do this kind of unconventional development is, surprisingly, relatively new. There are four elements of that new technology, and they did not come together in the United States until about eight years ago. So this is not the hydraulic fracturing of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It's not conventional gas development of that era. It's a relatively new combined technology.
Fourth, because it's relatively new—in the U.S. certainly, and in the western provinces where it's going hot and heavy in Canada—regulations and the enforcement of the regulations have not kept pace with the technology in the U.S. I'll repeat that. The regulations and the enforcement of those regulations have not kept pace with this new technology. It is unlikely, based on the experience that we're seeing in the eastern part of the United States—Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, where shale gas development is under way—that your eastern provinces are ready for similar development. I emphasize that it is unlikely because we have similar geologies, similar surface uses, and similar population densities, and, as I said previously, the regulations and the enforcement of those regulations in that kind of environment. Your eastern provinces, I claim, are not yet ready.
Finally, the fifth point I want to make is to follow the waste streams. If there's one lesson we have learned already in the eastern part of the United States where shale gas development is undergoing tremendously rapid expansion, it is that the ability to note how much waste is being produced in each well is important—and by waste I mean solids, liquids, and gases. It's important to know what's being produced, in what volume and when, and where every waste stream winds up in the environment.
Those are the five points I would like to make in my opening comments. I hope we have ample time during Q and A that you might want to ask me to expand on all of them.
Thank you very much for your attention.