By Tirthankar Mukherjee
The conflict between the claims of industry-based growth and environmental protectionism will not be resolved until both sides appreciate the merits of their antagonists’ position and agree to abandon unreasonable posturing. A few years ago, an internationally acclaimed mining consultancy firmissued the preposterous warning, particularly to countries like Mongolia poised for great mining expansion, that their gest threat would come from thugs in the guise of environmentalists. Similarly, activists often choose to be blind to changing priorities inside a company, and keep judging its present work on the basis of terrible things that happened decades ago, when the world did not know many things that are part of common consciousness today.
Such intolerance will not do any good to Mongolia, as it plans to reconcile differences in approaches to oil shale exploration. Thus I was surprised when, some weeks ago, a sensible young man (who will remain unnamed because of my admiration for him on many other counts) snidely dismissed a thoughtful article as the work of an anti-oil shale sceptic, period. The article bore the subtitle “Colonialism, Mining and Oil Shale” and came after the author, Macdonald Stainsby, had visited Mongolia “to see what was up with the recently publicised oil shale industry”. His conclusion about a company that has signed a memorandum to develop shale deposits was, “When one considers who is leading the company it seems highly probable that (its) very existence is ideological, given the public positions of many on the board regarding oil, climate change, Zionism and militarism, never mind American revelationist Christianity tied to tales of Armageddon and Israel.”
The merits of his thesis that the real reason this company has come to Mongolia is to demonstrate the viability of a project that they envision in Israel against strong opposition from those who care about its environmental and climate costs do not concern us. Enough corporate shenanigans have been exposed to make it clear that nothing in fact is too far-fetched. The MMJ has published several articles and interviews favouring an immediate and urgent start to oil shale exploration in Mongolia, with former President P.Ochirbat among the passionate supporters of the cause, but the possible hazards have been, if I may say so, overlooked. I am in no scientific or technical way qualified to speak on the issue, but I wonder if their zeal to ensure energy self-sufficiency for Mongolia is not blinkering them to geological uncertainty around the commercial prospects of shale gas. We all love a fresh narrative but one with consensual support is better to live with. We have to be wary of the succession of overenthusiastic media reports that have started appearing. They create hype, justify exploration and present a picture of shale gas that might not be quite true.
Not all protesters spread around the world can be dismissed as naпve do-gooders. Among them is Anthony R. Ingraffea, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University and President of Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy, a nonprofit group. He began a recent article – its headline was“Gangplank to a Warm Future” – thus, “As (one) who helped develop shale fracking techniques, I can assure you that this gas is not ‘clean’.” There is no way to stop regular and considerable leaks of methane, the main component of natural gas, the gas extracted from shale deposits. Now, while methane does not last nearly as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide it is a far more powerful greenhouse gas, and over a two-decade period, “one pound of it traps as much heat as at least 72 pounds of carbon dioxide. Its potency declines, but even after a century, it is at least 25 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. When burned, natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, but methane leakage eviscerates this advantage because of its heat-trapping power.”
It is very likely that methods will be developed in the course of time to minimise these leaks to the extent that will then give gas the climate advantage over coal that it lacks now. A group of scientists and journalists studying climate change said in a study released in May that the 50 percent climate advantage of natural gas over coal is unlikely to be achieved over the next three to four decades. “Unfortunately, we don’t have that long to address climate change — the next two decades are crucial”, says Ingraffea. Ambitious plans for Mongolia would have hundreds, if not thousands of wells, and this problem will be neither negligible nor preventable with current technology.
Britain right now is witnessing a fracking war. A conflict has erupted over Prime Minister David Cameron’s “vision of turning the English countryside into hydraulic-fracturing central, a place where West Sussex would release its inner West Texas”, says a newspaper report. The man who vowed in 2010 to head “the greenest government ever” is now adamant in asserting: “We cannot afford to miss out on fracking.” Celebrities have joined the ordinary people’s battle against the dash for gas. The point of view of the protest has been summed up by a villager, “Fracking is not wanted here on this planet. It would poison our water supply. I’ve read how in the United States you can light your taps. We don’t drink fire in this country.”
It is time to make it clear that I am not suggesting that shale gas exploration in Mongolia be made into a hot-button politico-cultural issue where one is called upon to demonstrate one’s credentials in a post-ideological world, donning a badge of allegiance to a cause before considering the complex science involved. This works the other way, too.
The example of shale gas being a game-changer in the USA will not hold. Mongolians as stakeholders must differentiate between their country and the USA as Mongolia lacks the supporting gas infrastructure that already existed in the USA when it started developing its shale gas industry. That type of development will present significant investment opportunities but that also means shale gas production costs in Mongolia will be higher as also that full commercial exploitation of any potential shale gas deposit will take years. Among the enabling conditions in the USA that made shale gas development easier to establish was the country’s ability to apply technology at a rapid pace, allowing industry to become more efficient in the extraction process. Further, the USA had less stringent environmental provisions, with an abundant supply of water and methods to dispose of it.
Mongolia has renewable wind, solar and energy-efficiency technology options. We can adopt these quickly and affordably, creating economic growth, jobs and a truly clean energy future to address climate change. Political will is the missing ingredient. Meaningful carbon reduction is impossible so long as the fossil fuel industry is allowed so much influence over our energy policies and regulatory agencies. Policy makers need to listen to the voices of independent scientists while there is still time.
P.S. I saw the article “Mongolia Joins Shale Revolution, But at What Cost?” in The Diplomat after I wrote the above. In it, Michelle Tolson writes, more carefully and more informedly than I, about questions that surround the viability of oil shale exploration in Mongolia and its environmental costs. I urge everybody interested in the issue to read it.
I am also yet to read any account of The Discover Mongolia mining conference panel discussion on the issue, but hope it was a fruitful and unbiased exercise.