Natural gas play a huge role in contributing to our nations clean energy. The U.S has large amounts of natural gas reserves due to drilling horizontally and hydraulic Fracturing technologies which enable us to get large amounts of natural gas. This provides economic safety, energy safety and many environmental benefits.
Natural gas is being used in a lot of the Hydraulic Fracturing to help preserve the environment. The Houston based Apache corp has switched to using natural gas in there drilling. Its a proven process that allows producers to safely recover natural gases and oil. This technology has potential to reduce our foreign fuel imports and reduce Carbon dioxide accelerations.
There is also lots of fear that Hydraulic Fracturing is dangerous to the human population. It is believed that trying to drill out of tightly packed rock may cause too much pollution. This process affects a lot of the water because you have to use so much of it, therefore environmentalist and farmers fear that it will pollute the water source.“Our concern is with maintaining the quality of the water in our streams and preventing groundwater contamination,” said George Jugovic Jr., president of Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, an advocacy group.
High pressure liquid cracks the rock and the sand helps keep the fracture therefore allowing the gas to escape and be contained. Over all so far in Canada there have been over 700 wells cracked and next is the U.S. The oil is being distributed to places such as Shell and Chevron.
Sources:
http://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracture/
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/123618/Natural_Gas_Powering_Apache_Hydraulic_Fracturing_Ops
http://www.hydraulicfracturing.com/Pages/information.aspx Hydroluic fracturing
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/business/energy-environment/race-is-on-to-clean-up-hydraulic-fracturing.html?_r=0