The topic of Hydrofracking is a rather interesting one to me, the first time I was exposed to the concept was when the movie Promise Land came out. After watching the movie I found myself quite shocked on the process and how it was negatively affecting everyone in the surrounding areas. Maybe I never heard about fracking becausue I was living in the northeast where clearly no one saw a need to hydrofrack, or maybe it was because heavily invested people were able to keep the process and the risks quite. Before I cover some of the potential risk; lets talk about what hydrofracking really is:

“fracking, is a technique in which typically water is mixed with sand and chemicals, and the mixture is injected at high pressure into a wellbore to create small fractures (typically less than 1mm), along which fluids such as gas, petroleum, uranium-bearing solution, and these fluids are then pumped back to the surface for disposal”  (1)

now that we understand how hydrofracking is done, it doesn’t seem that bad, does it? Well lets remember that this is a rather new method of getting once inaccessible hydrocarbons, and as Investor Environmental Health Network has mentioned in their webpage iehn.com “60%-80% of natural gas wells drilled in the next decade will require hydraulic fracturing.” To me that seems like a whole lot of companies are jumping on the bandwagon to increase their profit margins and reach these untapped resources. In my mind that’s a huge red flag right from the start, is hydrofracking really to good to be true, or do companies like Chevron see an unethical practice that hasn’t been exploited yet?

What does this mean for the average citizen who lives in the areas where these large companies are fracking? It means the use of surface ponds or pits to store all those chemicals that were pumped down into the 1mm hole, the largest problem being that the EPA has yet to develop proper protocols for how to dispose of these waist fluids, moreover, they’re leaving it up to local governments, states and tribes to have primary responsibility (2). Thus leading to a lot of uncertainty in what the following repercussions will be by having no solid laws in place regarding spills or contamination to punish these companies if something did happen.

While some people may not be able to fully understand the negative effects of fracking, I’d like to end this blog with a quote from the actor Dustin Noble from the movie Promise Land:

“Hi everybody. I’m here because my farm is gone. The land just turned brown and it died. Its happened to one of us. It can happen to all of us”

while this is out of a hollywood movie, it does show the current effects of fracking in these small farming communities. Within the next decade I would not only like to see the percentage of wells being drilled using hydrofracking decrease, but I’d also like to see the EPA start adapting harsh and restricting laws regarding this practice of reaching hydrocarbons.

An example of the extracting process being used to bring chemicals and water back to the surface

References:

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing

2) http://www.iehn.org/overview.naturalgashydraulicfracturing.php