Southwestern Energy Executive Mark Boling Admits Fracking Link to Climate Change

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An Executive* of a major shale gas development company has conceded what scientists have been saying for years: global shale gas development has the potential to wreak serious climate change havoc.

Best known for his companyโ€™s hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) activity, Southwestern Energy Executive Vice President* Mark Boling admitted his industry has a methane problem on the May 19 episode of Showtimeโ€™s โ€œYears of Living Dangerouslyโ€ in a segment titled, โ€œChasing Methane.โ€

โ€œI think some of those numbers, they certainly concern me,โ€ Boling says on the show. โ€œHow could you say that that methane emission rate was one and a half percent โ€“ very, very difficult to there from here for that.โ€ 

Boling goes toe to toe in the segment with Cornell University Professor Anthony Ingraffea, who co-authored the 2011 paper now best known as the โ€œCornell Study.โ€

That study was the first to say that over its entire lifecycle, shale gas production is dirtier than coal due to the greenhouse gas trapping capacity of leaking methane. Numerous studies since then have depicted high leakage rates throughout the production lifecycle. 


Cornell University Professor Anthony Ingraffea; Photo Credit: Cornell University

Brendan DeMelle, DeSmogBlog Executive Director and Managing Editor, is also a featured guest on tonightโ€™s episode. He discusses the well-funded climate change denial machine and attacks on renewable energy development in a segment titled, โ€œAgainst the Wind.โ€

The Years of Living Dangerously episode coincides with the release of a new paper on frackingโ€™s climate change impacts by Cornell Study co-author Professor Robert Howarth.

Howarthโ€™s latest paper is titled, โ€œA bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas,โ€ a wordplay on the industryโ€™s self-promotional pitch about gas being a โ€œbridge fuelโ€ to a clean energy future.

โ€œSmoking is Addictiveโ€ Redux

Over 16 years ago, then Philip Morris chairman Geoffrey Bible testified before Congress that โ€œtobacco is a risky product,โ€ โ€œplays a role in lung cancerโ€ and that โ€œcigarette smoking is addictive.โ€

It was a watershed moment for Big Tobacco. Only four years before that hearing, several tobacco industry CEOs testified under oath to Congress that nicotine is not addictive.


Photo Credit: Jessica Persson/AFP/Getty Images

While not stated under congressional oath, Bolingโ€™s statement depicts the reality of shale gas development. That reality is denied by those such as former Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, who says shale gas is โ€œcleanโ€ and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who once said gas is both โ€œcleanโ€ and not even a fossil fuel.

Put another way, history has repeated itself, with Mark Boling serving as frackingโ€™s Geoffrey Bible. But does that mean Southwestern Energy plans to stop fracking? Hardly.

โ€œNo question, thereโ€™s work to be done,โ€ he said on the show. โ€œBut we can all waste our time about โ€˜is it 4%, is it 8%, is it 1%โ€™ or we could all just say โ€˜I donโ€™t care what anyone thinks it is, letโ€™s go out and fix the problem.โ€™โ€

โ€œGreen Completionsโ€ the Fix?

Boling, along with others such as industry front group Energy in Depth and the Environmental Defense Fund, believe โ€œgreen completionsโ€ of wells during the fracking process are the fix to the problem of methane leakage and accompanying climate change impacts.

โ€œThe old way we used to do it, like this, we would vent probably 16 million cubic feet of gas on average from each well that we are now capturing,โ€ Boling told โ€œYears of Living Dangerously.โ€ โ€œMultiply that by the amount of money you make per thousand cubic feet, it pays for itself.โ€

But as segment host and New York Times reporter Mark Bittman pointed out, all of the claims the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) makes about how โ€œgreenโ€ the โ€œgreen completionsโ€ are come straight from the industry itself. EPA would not discuss the issue with Bittman for the episode.

But a former EPA employee did. John C. Bosch, Jr., Senior Engineer and Program Advisor for the EPAโ€˜s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, told Bittman that โ€œAll these emission inventories, by the way, are derived from industry supported data.โ€

Bosch compared it to the fox guarding the henhouse.

Or as Bittman put it in closing the segment, โ€œFrom everything Iโ€™ve seen, it seems like right now natural gas could be making our climate problem worse, not better. I think we need to ask ourselves if thatโ€™s a risk worth taking.โ€

*An earlier version of this article referred to Mark Boling, President โ€“ V+ Development Solutions, General Counsel & Secretary for Southwestern Energy, as the CEO. We regret the error. 

Photo Credit: ShutterstockGrandeDuc

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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