Methane Fracking

Even more troubling, than the potential groundwater contamination, is the claim that the methane released during this process is minimal. Although the overall amounts are relatively low, methane has 105 times more warming impact pound for pound than carbon dioxide and so, just a little can go a very long way when it comes to climate change. Not surprisingly, there is wide disagreement on how much methane is being leaked into the atmosphere as part of the fracking process. In a study at Cornell University, Robert Howarth found that the leak rate of methane was between 4 and 5.6 percent (Stockton). Although industry backers have fielded competing studies that they say completely discredits Howarth's findings a recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has supported his numbers as reasonable. At this point, it is impossible to confirm the true scale of this problem because the release of methane at drilling sites is "largely undocumented" (Stockton).
The sad irony of this development, is that if the release of methane into the air surpasses the …show more content…
They say that the quakes can be induced in two ways: one by the pressure as the fracking occurred, and two, for a time after the process was completed, by pressure changes brought on by the lingering presence of fracking fluid. Dr. Eaton and Xuewei Bao also suggest that most of the recent earthquakes in Oklahoma and other parts of the United States have been caused by the burial of wastewater from all kinds of oil and gas wells rather than by the fracking process itself. Wastewater is injected under pressure into disposal wells drilled into a sandstone or other permeable formation and flows into the rock. That can cause pressure changes in the formation that can upset the equilibrium around a fault zone, causing fault slips resulting in an