ALBANY, N.Y. — Natural gas drillers in New York would be banned from using an extraction method that injects large amounts of liquid carbon dioxide deep underground, under a bill passed by the state Legislature.
The measure would immediately block a Texas company that wants to use the method as an alternative to hydraulic fracturing with a water-based solution.
The bill was passed in the state Assembly on March 12. The Senate is expected to vote this week.
The company, Southern Tier Solutions, says on its website that it wants to use carbon from power plants, instead of water, to extract natural gas in New York’s Southern Tier, where underground rock formations make more traditional drilling methods unprofitable.
Opponents say the company is simply trying to use a different mix of chemicals to get around New York’s ban on hydraulic fracturing, and they argue that using captured carbon instead of water poses many of the same environmental risks.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat, said New York doesn’t have much appetite for allowing fracking of any kind. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said she would review the legislation.
The company ultimately wants to lease one million hectares and hopes to start drilling this summer if it can obtain a permit. The state Department of Environmental Conservation says it has not yet received an application.
Company officials and its president, Bryce P. Phillips, did not return phone and email messages from The Associated Press. But in previous interviews, Phillips has said that using carbon dioxide instead of water for fracking could have environmental benefits.
Hydraulic fracturing involves pumping large quantities of water, sand, and chemicals underground under pressure intense enough to fracture rock layers containing oil or natural gas deposits so that the fossil fuel can be extracted. Fracking can cause earthquakes and has raised concerns about groundwater contamination.
Energy companies have been conducting this type of fracking for years in the Marcellus and Utica Shales, enormous rock formations that stretch for hundreds of miles. Pennsylvania, with a long history of oil and coal mining, welcomed the jobs it brought. But political opposition prevented a gas bomb from being launched in New York, Maryland, Vermont and several other states.
New Yorkers began calling their state representatives last fall after thousands of residents in Broome, Chemung and Tioga counties received letters from Southern Tier Solutions offering to lease their land for drilling.
Retired sheep farmers Harold and Joan Koster, whose farm is outside Binghamton, were among the many landowners who received letters.
“We were ready to throw it in the trash right away,” Harold Koster said. “This guy from Texas wants to come in, take the goods, rape the locals in terms of their environment and labor, and by the time they’re done, take the raw materials and leave them with nothing.”
John Nicolich, whose land is in Windsor, along the Pennsylvania state line, also received an offer, which he said he will not sign until more is known about the risks and benefits of CO2 injection. Still, he doesn’t think banning the technology is fair.
“My resources as a mineral owner may be being drained,” he said.
Phillips detailed his plans in a December interview on the WCNY-TV radio show Capitol Pressroom. He said the carbon dioxide would be captured and piped from power plants in Pennsylvania, and once injected, would remain underground or in pipes to be reused for more fracking.
“This process does not release methane into the atmosphere. There is no carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere,” Phillips said.
Liquid carbon dioxide has been in development for decades as an alternative to water in fracking, and some researchers agree with the extractive industry that it could ease pressure on the aquifers and groundwater that ultimately provide drinking and irrigation water.
As for environmental impacts, “the devil is in the details,” says Birol Dindoruk, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston.
In places with water shortages, or where wastewater disposal may be a problem, using carbon dioxide to improve or boost gas extraction could be seen as an alternative, he said.
“You don’t have to do as much cleaning as you would with certain fracking fluids,” Dindoruk said, depending on what additives are in the mixture. But such an operation would have to prove that total CO2 emissions would be lower than with water fracking.
“If they claim to be green,” Dindoruk said, “they should show it in numbers.”
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Associated Press writer Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
Maysoon Khan is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.