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<\/a>I also think that it is an uphill battle for the industry to change public perception that fracking is good for the country and good for the environment at the same time.\u00a0 Even a billion dollar public relations campaign will not change that. Not that I would want PR executives and lawyers to lose out in this process. Somebody has to spend for the Audis<\/em>, the Mercedes Benzes<\/em>, Lear<\/em> jets and box seats at the Superbowl<\/em>.\u00a0 They are part of how our economy flows.<\/p>\nGetting our oil from elsewhere overseas carries an environmental price too.\u00a0 Do you think it\u2019s OK for some countries to have their aquifers destroyed to extract oil to ship to America, but not OK if ours are damaged? \u00a0\u00a0Does the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta, the deserts of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates or Iraq less important?\u00a0 There are living things there too besides people.\u00a0 These organisms may not look so cute or cuddly, but deserve the right to exist.\u00a0 How about marine life in the Gulf of Mexico and the new gas fields being discovered along the continental shelves and out in the open oceans?\u00a0 Pollution in China eventually reaches the United States; just takes time to get here.\u00a0 The same is true that desert storms in Africa bring polluted particles to Europe and beyond.\u00a0 We live in one Earth, interconnected in so many ways that even pollution is a shared experience for all.\u00a0 Our Fracking issue is a mirror of what is happening throughout the world and how we deal with this may set the framework on how the rest of world can manage the same issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Human beings are great problem-solving species. That is why we are dominant on Earth. We are also a great problem-making species too\u2014but we have the ability to correct our mistakes.\u00a0 This Fracking problem is no different. \u00a0The Halliburton technology was a ground breaking (pardon the pun) in extracting shale oil.\u00a0 No one cared about it for decades until when the boom came and thousands of wells start springing up all over the place.\u00a0 And, just like the crib story, things happen.\u00a0 Is the contamination problem ubiquitous throughout the industry or is it just a few bad apples spoiling the rest of the bushel? \u00a0I can\u2019t say for sure. \u00a0Can the technology be improved so that even some bad apples can\u2019t ruin things for the rest of us? \u00a0I am sure it can.\u00a0 This is not rocket science.\u00a0 We are not curing cancer or growing new hair on balding scalps.\u00a0 This is engineering, chemistry and geology.\u00a0 Americans are good at these.\u00a0 We can certainly make a better mouse trap.\u00a0 And, we should.<\/p>\n
The answer to this problem will not come from tweaking the fracking fluid formula a little or carting them offsite\u00a0and hoping for the best; and it is not lambasting the industry, yet clamoring for cheap oil and gas at the same time.\u00a0 The answer lies in collectively finding a better way, another method and an improved \u2018out-of-box\u2019 idea that can change the scenario in the years to come.<\/p>\n
When it is energy and the environment, time seems to be of the essence.\u00a0 We don\u2019t always have the luxury to wait.\u00a0 As I think through these issues tonight, how does one create a \u2018crash program\u2019 to solve this issue?\u00a0 Certainly waiting for the universities to come up with solutions will take time and money too.\u00a0 To get a grant (assuming there is money appropriated for it) takes at least a year, even if one\u2019s idea is so great and if you are in the right academic environment to get it.\u00a0 \u00a0An entrepreneur with a great idea?\u00a0 Not likely because this project will cost a bundle of personal wealth even to try a simple idea and most entrepreneurs, like yours truly, are always hard up for cash to chase new ideas.\u00a0 Government?\u00a0 I think everyone will agree that getting Congress involved is a guarantee of long, bickering rounds of partisanship.\u00a0 They have to argue about it until they reach consensus and until everyone involved looks great on TV.\u00a0\u00a0 By the time it gets voted, if at all, the enthusiasm would have died of old age.\u00a0 The Industry? \u00a0Oil men are great adventurers but hardly guys that do well when put together in the same room, especially if they have to share a single vintage bottle of Bourbon (The standard perception would be: \u201cIt works. Why fix when it is not broken\u2014just tweak it a bit and keep the regulators happy.\u201d).\u00a0 Bill Gates is preoccupied with his obsession with malaria, TB and something else in foreign lands. And Oprah is just way too busy right now.<\/p>\n How to stimulate innovation?<\/strong><\/p>\n In his State of the Union speech last week, President Obama focused on the need for innovation in America and the need to correct America\u2019s innovation deficit.\u00a0 With the economy in the toilet right now, we better find a better way to stimulate innovation than the traditional ways it has always been done.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n So, it dawned on me.\u00a0 (It would have happened earlier if I had that bottle of Bourbon).\u00a0 We need a FRACKING CHALLENGE<\/strong>.\u00a0 The same way that my friend, Mike \u2013 Dr. Michael A. Champ — has been advocating for A DESALINATION CHALLENGE to develop a low cost, advanced desalination technology to convert seawater into freshwater. Make everyone chip in<\/strong>.\u00a0 Get Mike to create a combination of Gates Foundation Grand Challenge and a FRACKING X-PRIZE that has an independent, third party judging group with the right expertise to develop the rules, judge the challenge and award cash prizes.\u00a0<\/p>\n How to do it?\u00a0 <\/strong>Set up a nonprofit foundation with a board comprising industry, academia, environmental groups and government. \u00a0Then ask each company involved in hydraulic fracturing to support the program with 1 % of their gross sales over a 3-year period, complemented with the 100% tax free incentive from the government for that funding. \u00a0Considering that the projected market value of shale oil by 2015 is estimated at US $12 billion, this will yield at least US $300 million– $100 million to support promising ideas for validation at Phase I; another $100 for field demonstration of those that have real world practical applications on Phase II; and $100 million for the Prize on Phase III. \u00a0Any company that pitches in gets to use the technology royalty-free; the rest that didn\u2019t shall pay a price through the nose to use the technology developed from this Challenge.<\/p>\n $300 million is a lot less than the fracking industry likely spends just paying lawyers and PR companies in a single year.\u00a0 Seems a lot of bucks, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 \u00a0This project is definitely not simple or cheap.\u00a0 But, if you look at it from other perspectives, it surely isn\u2019t that much.\u00a0 The last Megalotto that\u00a0<\/em>I (and other friends) sunk $10 for was worth $375 Million! \u00a0I did not win even a buck either, but I was willing to fork over $10 for the infinitesimal chance of winning.<\/p>\n Or, let\u2019s assume the industry, according to environmentalists, is just a bunch of lowly \u2018pond scum\u2019; only in it for what they can get out of it (I tend to think not). \u00a0Then, how about just $1 contribution from every US resident — citizens, legal aliens, illegal aliens and out-of-this-world aliens? \u00a0That\u2019s even less than the price of one bottled water.\u00a0 Or, for a family of 4, just skip one Starbucks<\/em> coffee for one day this year!\u00a0 We can make $300 million without government-industry support.<\/p>\n Or better yet, run the fundraising from a special Megalotto<\/em> for each of the states affected by fracking.\u00a0 \u201cHey. You never know,\u201d as the NY lotto advertising says.\u00a0<\/p>\n $1 per person in the US is a cheap price for saving our water resources and keep our own oil and gas flowing, isn’t it?\u00a0 Buy less foreign oil;\u00a0Keep our men and women in the military from harms way for the sake of protecting our overseas strategic interests in oil.<\/p>\n How about it? \u00a0Anyone up to this FRACKING CHALLENGE?<\/strong><\/p>\n Jonathan R. Matias<\/p>\n Chief Science Officer<\/em><\/p>\n Poseidon Sciences Group<\/p>\n www.poseidonsciences.com<\/a><\/p>\n Suggested reading:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.poseidonsciences.com\/Covalently_bonded_biocides_selenium_environmentally_friendly_hydraulic_fracturing_Poseidon_Sciences.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.poseidonsciences.com\/Selenium_environmentally_friendly_biocides-Hydraulic_Fracturing_Poseidon_Sciences.pdf<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n http:\/\/gasfrac.com\/fracturing_process.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n Suggested reading on the use of a prize to stimulate innovation:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n Adler, Jonathan. Editorial on Innovation. <\/em>Prizes are more effective at spurring innovation than federal subsidies.<\/em> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/energy.nationalreview.com\/post\/?q=YTQwNzY2ZGRhMGM5MGQ0NjdmMTlhNjVjZDdkZTY4NjE<\/a>=<\/p>\n Congressional Research Service, Deborah D. Stine. 2009. Federally Funded Innovation Inducement Prizes<\/em>.\u00a0 CRS 7-5700. www.crs.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n Diamandis,\u00a0 P.H. 2007.\u00a0 X Prize Foundation.\u00a0 2007.\u00a0 Offer a prize if you want innovation. Reno Gazette<\/em> Journal. www.RGJ.com<\/a> August 13, 2007.\u00a0<\/p>\n Debelak, D.\u00a0 2007. Winning a Contest Can Catapult Your Invention into the Mainstream<\/em>.\u00a0 www.entrepreneur.com<\/a><\/p>\n McKinsey & Company. 2009.\u00a0 And the Winner is\u2026Capturing the Promise of Philanthropic Prizes<\/em>.\u00a0 124p. http:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/clientservice\/socialsector\/And_the_winner_is.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n The Economist. 2010.\u00a0 Offering a cash prize to encourage innovation is all the rage. Sometimes it works rather well. <\/em>\u00a0http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/16740639?story_id=16740639<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/a>Yes, there have been some innovations in the past 6 months. \u00a0But they are not ground breaking. \u00a0They won\u2019t change much how things are done.\u00a0 Even our work at Poseidon Sciences on developing covalently bound biocides that never leave the ceramic beads (proppants) to keep the fractured shale from clogging with bacterial slime is just part of the incremental step toward eco-safety.\u00a0 Perhaps the newest idea I have seen from industry is the use of LPG technology (liquid petroleum gas, not propane as one would automatically think, but a mixture of petroleum and natural gas in liquid state) by GASFRAC Energy Services Inc. (Alberta, Canada) instead of the conventional hydraulic fracturing fluid.\u00a0 The company claims that the new process avoids the contaminations normally associated with fracking fluids since all of the LPG are recovered after the fracture stimulation.\u00a0 Only time will tell if there might be unintended consequences here too, but certainly it is a step in the right direction, if all goes well.<\/p>\n<\/a>I always thought that prizes to stimulate innovation is a modern invention until Mike pointed out that it dated as far back as 1714.\u00a0 Back then, determining the accurate position of a British ship at sea was indeed a challenge and they needed a practical means of determining longitude.\u00a0 That year, the British Parliament enacted the famed Longitude Act<\/em> and offered the highest bounty \u2013 a prize equal to a king\u2019s ransom (several million dollars in today\u2019s currency) for a \u201cPracticable and Useful\u201d means of determining longitude.\u00a0\u00a0 English clock maker John Harrison, a mechanical genius who pioneered the science of portable precision time keeping, invented a clock that would carry the true time from the home port to any remote part of the world, which was considered the greatest scientific problem of his time in measuring longitude.\u00a0 Harrison was our first true X-Prize winner in recorded history at least.\u00a0 I would not be surprised if later archaeologists dig up an Egyptian tablet from 5,000 years ago announcing a competition for best design of an above ground pharaoh\u2019s tomb.<\/p>\n