What is Hydrofracking? It is a legitimate question. Not many people seem to know much about it. Spell check wanted to change it ‘hydrogenation’. Through educated guesses and assumptions, one can predict that ‘Hydro’, refers to water, and ‘Fracking’ either refers to a new trend on social media, or is a term relatable to ‘fracturing’.
Also referred to as Slick Water Hydraulic Fracturing, (which I think rules out my social media trend theory), is defined by thinkbeforeyoufrack.org as “a economical and technological method, which enables natural gas producers to recover natural gas from dense shale formations. During the drilling process, the drill will bore deep down into the earth and then horizontally for approximately 8,ooo feet in each direction.” By doing this domestically, the U.S. would decrease its dependence on international oil while also using a less damaging fossil fuel.
By drilling into the earth and applying a mixture of sand, water and chemicals, the natural gas is released from the shale and is then collected for use. It’s cleaner than crude oil and coal, and it has fewer losses in transportation than coal as well as being more environmentally friendly than other methods of drilling. But like any other form of drilling into the earth, hydrofracking is not entirely ‘Earth friendly’
The majority of this drilling is taking place in the Mid-A
tlantic and Mid-West, mostly in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and parts of Eastern Ohio and Western New York (as seen in the map below). Before thedrilling can take place, trees must be cleared out from these heavily-wooded areas.
Furthermore, during the drilling, the chemical mixture used in the process contains chemicals like benzene which can be lethal. To make matters worse, no specific or clarified amount of chemical has been disclosed and in some cases can leak into water supplies. In addition to the possibility of leakage of these chemicals, 6-8 million gallons of water are used in the process. For comparison, an Olympic sized swimming pool uses just 2/3 million gallons.
With the down sides out of the way we come to the reason that a seemingly horrible process is common practice. The Marcellus basin deposit is believed to hold as much as 80 barrels of oil-worth of Natural gas. This strengthens our economy, reduces or dependency on imports, promotes the using of a cheaper and cleaner resource, and allows for cleaner energy creation for the US.
The U.S. has a lengthy and controversial history with drilling into the Earth, in this case, like in most, the situation can be helpful if it is treated the right way. Attention and care is needed, a lack in such could end up being detrimental to the process. The point is to become environmentally efficient while growing economically. From a scientific standpoint, let’s hope the U.S. focuses on the first of those goals rather than the latter, which hasn’t always necessarily been the case.
http://www.peacecouncil.net/NOON/hydrofrac/HdryoFrac2.htm
http://www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/hydro-fracking.asp