Persuasive Essay On Fraking

Before starting the process of fracking the drilling site must be suitable. The site must be four to six acres, cleared from large equipment, and have plastic lines placed for drilling waste . In addition, their must be a water impoundment with about 4 million gallons of water that is collected and stored in order to be pumped into the well. This water is transferred by tanks, trucks, or plastic-lined ponds . Hydraulic fracturing processes begins by drilling a vertical well. The drilling goes through aquifers and dozens of geological layers before it reaches desired location of shale rocked believed to contain natural gas. The drill begins drilling horizontally and a production casing is then inserted into the borehole which is surrounded by cement to case it. Next, a perforating gun is fired to make the shale rock more penetrable. A mixture of water, sand, and various undisclosed chemicals are then pumped in at high pressure in order to fracture/break the shale for the gas to escape. After the fissures in the shale rock occur the natural gas is released through the fissures and is taken up the well to the surface. Last, the water byproduct, also referred to as flow back water or produced water is released and travels back to the surface. The gas that is collected is then processed, refined, and shipped to distributors

It’s been over 65 years since fracking first began as a method of extraction by oil and gas companies, but the government has done little to regulate the catastrophic practice. How anyone could consider injecting tens of thousands of gallons of water and chemicals deep into the ground being a good idea is beyond me. Those chemicals include chlorine, acetone, benzene, formaldehyde, ammonia, and almost 600 other chemicals that fracking operations won’t even reveal to the public. These chemicals, despite denial by all major natural gas and oil companies that practice fracking, almost always end up in groundwater supplies. I’m sure you’ve seen at least one video online of someone who lives near a fracking site lighting the water coming out of their faucet on fire. Thanks to a ruling in 2005 under the Bush administration, fracking operations are exempt from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as "Fracking", is drilling into the ground for gas. This process injects over 500 chemicals into the ground which sometimes reaches peoples water supply. When the water becomes polluted it can harm not only humans, but animals. In Gasland ,Josh Fox talks to people about their problems with Fracking and goes in depth about the damage it is doing.

Fracking is considered one of the most controversial methods of obtaining Earth’s natural gases. It is also known as hydraulic fracturing, which is drilling and introducing fluid (mostly water) into the ground to get certain rocks to produce natural gases. Fracking could cause devastating effects to the environment. According to the article “Hydraulic Fracturing 101” on the web-site earthworks.com, fracking can not only use up a lot of water, but it can also contaminate groundwater. Two to ten million gallons of water can be used to fracture a single well. Also the water used to fracture has many additives, such as hydrochloric acid, that can prove deadly to those who come in contact with them. In “Hydraulic Fracturing 101” it stated that

Not until recently, neither the federal nor state governments required drilling companies to disclose the ingredients used in frack fluids. Some states have begun to require that companies disclose the chemicals they use, but even some companies can withhold some chemical names under trade secret exemptions. As a result, a comprehensive list of chemicals used in the fracking process does not exist. Some states have begun to require that companies disclose the chemicals they use, but yet again confidential business information claims result in only partial disclosures. Corporations involved in fracking, like ExxonMobil have inserted loopholes in drilling legislation that allow them to keep various chemicals used in the fracking process secret. But just 2% of the billions of gallons of frack fluid created by gas drillers measures up to the use of hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals. “A 2011 report to Congress estimated that from 2005 to 2009, 14 leading fracking companies used (before mixing with water) 780 million gallons of 750 different chemicals”

The nation is shifting towards electricity generated by natural gas- over the past ten years 81 percent of new electricity capacity has been gas fired- and state governments are playing regulatory catch-up with the drilling technology’s rapid expansion to meet this burgeoning demand”. (http://www.gracelinks.org/191/natural-gas-fracking-introduction) However; to meet this demand, gas and oil companies have ignored some rather important harmful effects of hydraulic fracturing. These harmful effects include; water droughts, increased pollution, the spread of toxins, and possible negative influence on local economies. Water droughts because of the fracking process are caused by using up to approximately one-hundred times more water than previous drilling methods. This means that gradually less and less of the world where drilling is active or was active will have the ability to attain non chemical induced water. The article, “List of Pros and Cons of Fracking” published by Occupy Theory states that, “Anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of fracking waste water flows back to the original drilling surface” (http://occupytheory.org/list-of-pros-and-cons-of-fracking/) Hydraulic fracturing causes pollution in several different aspects. Oil and gas companies are not required to provide a list of chemicals used in the process which causes those in the areas where drilling is present to not be able to adapt correctly to these toxins. According to research, a few of the chemicals that have been found present in fracking include; benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene. These three chemicals are known to the scientific community to cause harmful effects on the health of people. Also, the article, “Pros and Cons of Fracking: 5 Key Issues” explains that because of the dropping gas prices, drilling use will

That being said, like conventional wells, fracking wells need to be monitored and maintained. Well casing failures, improper cementing, well leaks, spills of fluid, as well as improper dumping of wastewater are all examples of mishandling and create a climate of distrust of oil and gas companies. Supporters of fracking claim that responsible operators, with governmental oversight (regulatory policies), make for a perfectly safe drilling environment. Drilling of oil is complicated and challenging, but safe drilling and production practices have been known and used for decades. Environmentally harmful incidents are preventable by following industries best practices.

Throughout the whole drilling process, many chemicals, and wastes release to the air. Among these chemicals, the process emits a huge amount of methane which is a very big contributor to global warming. The possibility of water contamination in fracking areas is also very immense because of the high tendency of wastes to seep back in to water supply. Rachel Richardson, a co-author of the paper from Environment America, told ThinkProgress, “For the past decade, fracking has been a nightmare for our drinking water, our open spaces, and our climate”. Researches have also revealed, as a result of the application of huge pressure in to the rocks, fracking triggers earthquake. As per MSNBC report “new study links Oklahoma earthquakes to fracking”

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of extracting natural gas from shale rock layers deep within the earth.The dangers of fracking are the chemicals that go into fracking and how much water is used and contamination of city water. Some dangers of fracking are water usage. They use 2 to 5 million gallons of water. Not all of the chemicals are recovered from the ground. We only know of 8 out of 600 chemicals. To many chemicals are used and some a harmful. Fracking water usage is too high for instance one well can use 144,000,000million gallons of water. 50%-70% of the fracking fluid is left in the ground and isn’t biodegradable. The waste fluid that is outside in the sunlight evaporates and releases volatile organic compounds(Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic chemicals that have a high vapor pressure at ordinary room temperature. Their high vapor pressure results from a low boiling point, which causes large numbers of molecules to evaporate or sublimate from the liquid or solid form of the compound and enter the surrounding air.) Due to the VOCs acid rain, ground level ozone and contaminated air. Ground level ozone is bad, but ozone up high in the atmosphere protects the earth from the Sun’s harmful rays.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been a hot topic in recent times due to its controversial ways. Many people argue that it is a way for the United States to become less dependent on foreign oil, while others argue that the environmental cons outweigh the pros of fracking. Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from underground by drilling into the earth. This is done by injecting water, sand, and chemicals into a bedrock formation by a well (“Hydraulic Fracking”). By doing this, the process creates new fractures in the rock, as well as making previously made fractures bigger and easier to access (“Hydraulic Fracking”). Fracking is mostly done is areas that have low-permeability rocks like tight sandstone, shale, and some coal beds to increase the flow of oil and/or gas to a well (“Hydraulic Fracking”). The fracking process can take up to a month; the drilling team going more than a mile into the earth to extract the natural gases or oil. After the job is done, the well is cemented up (“What is Fracking”).

While vertical wells do yield gas, they are mainly used as a base to connect several horizontal wells, which is where the money lies in the industry. After drilling, about “2 million to 10 million gallons of water [is used] to extract the gas” (Marsa 3-4). However, high pressured water alone will not break away the shale rock, therefore sand is added to enable further fracturing. The controversial issue fueling the debate is the third substances added to the water which allow the natural gas to escape for collection. “A cocktail of friction-reducing lubricants [are used] to make the water slick enough to slide through the pipes swiftly” (Marsa 4). A geochemist by the name of Tracy Bank conducted a study at SUNY Buffalo which concluded that the lubricant contained an abundance of toxic metals, “including uranium, barium, chromium, zinc and arsenic” (Marsa 2). This is just a short list of the negative compounds used in fracking. It is likely that the public will never get the full story as to the composition of the lubricants, as major fracking companies refuse to release that information, “claiming that doing so would reveal trade secrets” (Rahman 1). So where do these contaminants end up? After reaching the surface, the waste is emptied into tanks for storage. However, sometimes ponds are also used to hold the pollutants, therefore releasing the harmful toxins into runoffs. Once the gas has

Hydraulic Fracturing or “Fracking” is a new innovated way to get fossil fuels out of the ground. Companies use fracking when there is shale gas or tight gas and oil trapped in the ground below. The crews of these wells drill down into the earth and pump a mixture of water and a cocktail of chemicals in order to release this gas. The solution fractures the ground below releasing gasses and oil back up through the pipe where the fossil fuel product is stored and shipped across the country. Recently fracking companies have been coming under fire for contaminating aquifers in the areas they operate. They may say that fracking is a tried and true way to gain natural gas but I am skeptical.

Let’s go a bit more in depth with some of the cons to fracking. Groundwater contamination comes about because during the fracking process methane gas and the toxic chemicals used for the process are leached out into the groundwater (Loki (2015)). One well can produce millions of gallons of waste water (Loki (2015)). Out of this waste water only 30-50% is recovered and the rest stays in the ground and is also not biodegradable (Loki (2015)). Air pollution from fracking occurs from a naturally occurring radioactive gas known as radon (Loki (2015)). Radon comes from the decay of uranium in rock, soil, and water (Loki (2015)). During the fracking process it is released into the air through the well

This method has become more and more common in the past couple of years due to becoming a very effective and is able to extract large amounts of oil which has become popular in Countries in Europe and in the North American continent; the focus would more in fracking in the United States. While others are more focused on the positive side of fracking such as, it provides energy to the world, bringing economic stability, or that burning natural gas is more environmental friendly than burning coal. While this is good points on the matter the focal point is on environmental impact which include the gases that are released during this process do harmful damage to the environment and it also unleashes unnatural seismic activity in prone areas. Equally, fracking in areas that are inhabited with essential species risk of their habitats being destroyer, thus going extinct which leads to unbalance in the eco system which is essential for a balance environment. By the same token, water is at risk because due to fracking water systems are contaminated and into the groundwater which make it unsafe to drink and utilize for cooking, bathing

So what is fracking? According to Manuel, “fracking is a procedure used in extraction of natural gas and oil, which may pollute both ground and surface water.” “The procedure consists of fluids being injected into the bore hole and causes cracks in the formation rocks” (Gordalla). During the drilling process, the injection of more than one million gallons of water, sand, and chemicals at a high pressure into horizontally drilled wells as far as 10,000 feet below the surface ground. The pressurized mixtures causes the rock layer to crack. These cracks are called fissures. The fissures are held open by the sand particles so that the natural gas from the shale can flow up the well (Manuel). Fracking contains chemicals designed to increase flow rates, dissolve sediments, kill bacteria, control temperatures, or prevent degradation inside the wellbore (Fracking). In the video Gasland II, fracking waste have identified formaldehyde acetic acids and boric acids.