Hydraulic fracturing, or more commonly known as ‘fracking’, is a complex technique to retrieve natural gas and oil from the depths of the Earth’s shale rock.  This practice was started in the 1940s and has been very popular in the United States since many other forms of recovering natural gas and oil exhausted deposits closer to Earth’s crust.  After drilling down hundreds of meters into the Earth, fracking uses mixtures of high-pressured water, chemicals, sand, and pumps in the process of extraction.  The chemicals in the mix kill bacteria and dissolve minerals, making for an easier extraction of the resources, while the sand is used to fill the fractures and create canal like paths for the resources to reach the head of the well.  This mixture is injected into the rock at high pressure causing the layer of rock to fracture, releasing the natural gases and oil in the extraction area.  The mixture of fracking fluid and natural gases is then pumped out of the well to extract the resources, and once they have completed that they return the chemical-ridden fracking liquid back into the now exhausted well and cover it.

Fracking has allowed the US to flourish in domestic oil production.  The process of fracking allows energy firms to drill down to previously unreachable natural gas deposits and this has helped lower gas prices.  Using natural gas instead of coal to generate sources of energy, like electricity, outputs half the CO2 emissions and is helpful in the short run in shrinking the United States’ carbon footprint.

Since the practice of fracking began, it has been a very controversial topic.  Fracking is extensively used in the United States and it has helped the US in meeting our constantly growing energy demand.  The downside to fracking are the environmental concerns affiliated with the process.  The primary concern is water.  In one well, eight million liters of water is used in the fracking fluid.  Eight million liters of water could supply 65,000 people with a day’s worth of drinking water.  Although, less water is used in fracking than coal, nuclear, and oil extraction.  Surprisingly, these other resource extraction processes use approximately two, three, and ten times as much water than fracking.  During fracking, the water is then contaminated with 600 chemicals to make the fracking fluid.  These chemicals include numerous carcinogens and toxins such as lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde.  Environmentalists are concerned that these harmful chemicals may escape the fracking well and contaminate underground water sources.  Pollution has resulted in fracking, but the industry pleas that these incidents occurred because of bad practice of fracking instead of using a risky technique.  There have been over 1,000 reported cases of water pollution so far.  Environmentalists believe the country’s focus on fracking is distracting energy firms from investing in renewable energy sources.

HOW FRACKING WORKS VIDEO: