If you pay attention to enviornmental debates then you have likely heard of “fracking”.  Depending on which source you use to learn about hyrdaulic fracturing you will either come to know it as the ultimate answer to our energy crisis, global warming dilemma, and our dependence on foreign oil, or the final trigger to pull that will lead to the destruction of all that is good and natural.  Well this is what i’ve found.

Natural gas is energy efficient and is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel.  We have plenty of access to it in the United States.  In fact, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) the United States contains more than 2,500 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas resources.  Furthermore 33% is held in shale rock formations. Natural gas from shale has grown to 25% of U.S. gas production in just a decade and will be 50% by 2035.  The two processes by which the gas from shale rock is released and captured are known as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.  The technology for these two processes have been developed largely in the past decade.

This information is from Chevron.  Now lets look at a different source; say.. I don’t know, maybe one that is not set to make billions of dollars off of hydraulic fracturing…

There are plenty of environmental concerns regarding fracking.  They range from contamination of ground water to pollution of the air, with all kinds of global warming impacts and health concerns in between.  Wildlife have been killed due to contaminated water and private well owners have complained about contamination so why isn’t fracking being outlawed?  Environmental reports have been criticized for being too narrow in scope and it seems the gas and oil industry might have some friends in washington.  According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “in 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted by the U.S. Congress from any regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act”.  Oh, here is a report I thought was interesting:   Apparently in the town of Dimrock, PA there was a report of 13 private wells found to be contaminated with methane. One of the wells exploded!

References:

http://www.americanrivers.org/initiatives/pollution/energy-pollution/?gclid=CM3W24P7yrUCFUhV4AodyWoA-w

http://www.chevron.com/deliveringenergy/naturalgas/shalegas/?utm_campaign=Energy_Sources_-_Shale_Gas_English&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_term=Hydraulic_Fracturing

http://www.surviveclimatechange.com/fracking.html