Across the planet, the human race has begun to take notice of a rapidly changing climate. Of particular concern is the unnaturalness of such a global climate change, pointing to the fact that it is largely mankind’s doing, or rather, undoing. In addition to climate change, environmental problems such as water and air pollution, species extinction, and deforestation are rampant, indicating the all-encompassing degradation of industrial activities on the natural world. However, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas poses the greatest current threat because its potential for environmental and human damage is vast and its management is fairly unregulated. Although hydraulic fracturing, often shortened to fracking, has been around since its first
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Once used only rarely to extract from deep, conventional reservoirs of fossil fuels, fracking has evolved to a widely-used intensive process to retrieve natural gas from shallow, unconventional sources, such as shale rock, tight sands, and coal beds where the resource is not easily accessible (Food and Water Watch 2). Historically, the fracking procedure involved pumping a relatively small amount of acid into a clogged hole of a reservoir in order to allow the continued flow of oil or gas. However, as the demand for natural gas increased in the 1980’s, federal tax credits were offered for production of gas from unconventional sources, allowing companies to offset their own expenses and thus unleash an explosion in the number of wells applying the hydraulic fracturing method (Lane). Initially widely utilized in the Barnett shale reserves of Texas, gas production by means of fracking increased by 3,000 percent between 1998 and 2007. After the success of the Texas reservoir, a “natural gas revolution” took place, resulting in the targeting of shale reserves underlying Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and Arkansas. Nationally, between 2004 and 2008, the number of fracking wells increased 41 percent from 37,239 to 52,616, and through 2010 shale gas production alone rose an average of 48 percent annually (Food & …show more content…
This produced water is temporarily stored in pits on the well site before being trucked off and injected into wastewater disposal wells located elsewhere. Because the natural gas industry is not required to keep records of the volume of water and chemicals it uses, there is no known precise amount of the water and chemicals that are used in the fracturing process itself and how much of it remains underground (ADEQ 14). This kind of lack of regulation is a portion of what makes the process of hydraulic fracturing such an extreme concern. The lack of regulation of the United States natural gas industry is largely a result of the lobbying actions of the large company Halliburton, pioneers of hydraulic fracturing who create and distribute the cement casings intended to prevent leakage within hydraulic fracturing wells. A controversial corporation, Halliburton has been blamed for supplying the faulty cement casings that contributed to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in 2010, an oil spill tragedy that claimed the lives of eleven workers. The company has also been held responsible for a number of shale gas well blowouts. Upon the election of George W. Bush as President in 2000, the
Once used only rarely to extract from deep, conventional reservoirs of fossil fuels, fracking has evolved to a widely-used intensive process to retrieve natural gas from shallow, unconventional sources, such as shale rock, tight sands, and coal beds where the resource is not easily accessible (Food and Water Watch 2). Historically, the fracking procedure involved pumping a relatively small amount of acid into a clogged hole of a reservoir in order to allow the continued flow of oil or gas. However, as the demand for natural gas increased in the 1980’s, federal tax credits were offered for production of gas from unconventional sources, allowing companies to offset their own expenses and thus unleash an explosion in the number of wells applying the hydraulic fracturing method (Lane). Initially widely utilized in the Barnett shale reserves of Texas, gas production by means of fracking increased by 3,000 percent between 1998 and 2007. After the success of the Texas reservoir, a “natural gas revolution” took place, resulting in the targeting of shale reserves underlying Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and Arkansas. Nationally, between 2004 and 2008, the number of fracking wells increased 41 percent from 37,239 to 52,616, and through 2010 shale gas production alone rose an average of 48 percent annually (Food & …show more content…
This produced water is temporarily stored in pits on the well site before being trucked off and injected into wastewater disposal wells located elsewhere. Because the natural gas industry is not required to keep records of the volume of water and chemicals it uses, there is no known precise amount of the water and chemicals that are used in the fracturing process itself and how much of it remains underground (ADEQ 14). This kind of lack of regulation is a portion of what makes the process of hydraulic fracturing such an extreme concern. The lack of regulation of the United States natural gas industry is largely a result of the lobbying actions of the large company Halliburton, pioneers of hydraulic fracturing who create and distribute the cement casings intended to prevent leakage within hydraulic fracturing wells. A controversial corporation, Halliburton has been blamed for supplying the faulty cement casings that contributed to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in 2010, an oil spill tragedy that claimed the lives of eleven workers. The company has also been held responsible for a number of shale gas well blowouts. Upon the election of George W. Bush as President in 2000, the