Balance Between Fueling the Economy with Shale Gas and its Carbon Management – Life Cycle Assessment Review

Abstract

Climate activists have long been in opposition of Shale Gas’ resource development because of the environmental and land impact related to its development on surface water, ground water sources and air emissions along with potential earthquakes due to induced seismicity. There is a knowledge gap in understanding of carbon footprint of shale gas’ resource development because of lack of engineering design detail in previous Life Cycle Analysis of this resource. The objective of this study is to add value and reduce the scientific gap with respect to understanding of shale gas resource development techniques and it’s environmental and land impact. The work establishes the Shale gas’ resource development foundation by in depth understanding of characteristics of shale reservoirs, generation and distributions of shale gas and key techniques for shale gas construction, production, and processing. The study utilizes ISO 14040 series of standard, which uses Life Cycle Assessment approach and understands the cradle-to-gate, cradle-to-grave and gate-to-gate previous Life Cycle Analysis of shale gas’ resource development. The work does systematic analysis and summarizes the previously published Life Cycle Analysis to understand further the potential environmental impacts of resource development of Shale Gas. This will help academia, industry, climate activists, policy makers and public in general to simply understand the field development and its operation of shale gas in terms of carbon numbers thereby optimizing the operations through carbon management thus reducing the potential impacts and meet the sustainability target for future generations.