15/01/06
中东应该三思而后行
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Securing energy resources is critical for fuelling development, but deciding which types of18beplay to invest in will affect a country’s future in many ways — and not all are good when it comes to shale gas.
Four countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia — are planning to extract shale gas, and one, Algeria, is said to have already started.
The chief executive of Algeria’s state-owned energy company, Sonatrach, said in a radio interview that the country is investing $70 billion over 20 years to exploit shale gas in the southern desert.
这些计划激起了该地区关于beplay足球体育的微博环境的andhealthimpacts of shale gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’. The most important concern is that it requires huge amounts of potablewater— each fracking process uses about 2 to 5 million gallons — but most MENA countries have water scarcity, and 15 out of 19 are facing water poverty. [1]
在过去的四个月中，由于阿尔及利亚公民加强抗议活动，呼吁停止压裂，辩论已经激起。
On 13 May, SciDev.Net’s MENA edition took the debate online to discuss the impact of fracking on the region. Another aim of the debate was to explore how extracting companies and countries can monitor and manage these impacts. The discussion also raised questions about whether shale gas extraction should be a priority as a future source of energy in such a sunny and arid region suitable for solar.
We convened three panellists: Sufyan Tell, a Jordanian environmentalist and former chief technical advisor in the UN Development Programme (UNDP); Salah Hafez, a geophysicist and chair of the National Petroleum Company in Egypt; and Samir Mahmoud, professor of journalism at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, who has a special interest in the petrochemicals sector in Arab countries.
In the run-up to the debate, we published two viewpoints onthe environmental impacts of shale gas in MENAandhow fracking impacts can be managed，我们还发表了一篇有关feasibility of shale gas extraction and future techniques in MENA。
Most comments submitted during the two hours of the online discussion reflected a need to better understand the issue. Some participants asked if fracking is the only technique available for exploiting shale gas, and if scientists expect the process to become cleaner in the future.
Fracking and its impacts
Shale gas is natural gas trapped in the earth’s shale (sedimentary rock) formations. It has become a new stock of fossil fuel that some believe emits fewer greenhouse gases than coal. The United States has led in shale extraction, which took off there in 2010.
Fracking is the most popular technique used to extract shale gas: it works by drilling as deep as 3,000 metres into shale formations and injecting a mixture of water, silica and up to 700 different chemicals at high pressure to fracture rocks and release the gas they contain. [2]
There is evidence that this has many impacts on the environment. Large quantities of methane are released into the atmosphere during the drilling process, and there is also groundwater contamination, either from methane escaping or from the chemicals pumped into shale rocks. It is difficult and costly to treat the water used during fracking so that it is safe to re-use.
And then there’s the traffic: transporting equipment can affect the quality of life for residents near drilling sites.
Lack of regulations
For MENA, an arid region that depends on groundwater, a high risk of contamination is unacceptable. Even countries that are well off in surface water supplies are relying more on groundwater to meet rising demand. So as one participant in our debate asked, if contamination is likely to happen, how could the region deal with it?
“If the well is drilled in the right way, with the right precautions, contamination couldn’t happen,” said Hafez in defence of the process. But how can the industry make sure this is the case, asked Mahmoud, when there are no regulations for monitoring companies working on extraction, and no laws that penalise companies that might let this happen?
Hafez’s view is that countries planning to allow fracking need strict laws for monitoring companies working on shale gas extraction, and need to ensure that they will pay for cleaning up any contamination.
但是其他人则说，法规必然会在中东和北非国家违反，严格的法律可能会损害页岩气的经济可行性。
Looking at alternatives
一些参与者认为，随着石油和天然气价格的降低，压裂变得越来越不那么经济，因此其他更清洁的提取技术就是答案。
Here the debate revealed promising techniques that are still being assessed in the lab. Using lasers or plasma gasification (which converts organic matter into synthetic gas and solid waste) for drilling are two examples — neither technique involves water or chemicals. But they are a long way from field rollout.
与此同时,一些跨国公司looking at using saline groundwater or sea water for drilling, instead of potable water. They are also developing chemical mixtures that are more environmentally friendly and less hazardous to health.
But given the current significant hazards associated with fracking, MENA countries should rethink making it a priority for energy investment. It might be both economic and cleaner in the future, but it is still a fossil fuel source.
Our debate participants mentioned investment in renewables, and especially solar energy, as more economically competitive options, especially as prices are dropping and most MENA countries have sunny days almost all year.
The world will not be weaned off fossil fuels in the near future, so shale gas is one energy source we might need to depend on. But MENA countries have to invest more in studying its extraction impacts before committing energy budgets to fracking.
Bothina Osama is regional coordinator ofscidev.net’sMiddle East and North Africa edition.
References
[1]水in the Arab region: Availability, status and threats(Chapter 1 in:阿拉伯地区的水治理：管理稀缺并确保未来, UNDP, 2013)
[2] Corrie Clark and othersHydraulic fracturing and shale gas production: Technology, impacts, and regulations(Argonne National Laboratory, 2013)
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