ahhh, Frack

In a Environmental Studies class of mine, we watched a documentary that some of you might have seen titled Gas Land,  by Josh Fox. In this film, it starts out with some vivid imagery of some of our natural gas wells, and takes us inside a some sort of congress meeting, discussing the importance of drilling for natural gas, saying that there is “no real credible threat to underground drinking water from hydrolic fracturing,” however, Josh seems to come up with some different findings along his journey for the truth. What he finds is frighting, and I encourage all of you to watch Gas Land, for I cannot get the whole feeling of the movie in one small post. This film is available on HBO and Netflix right now, and I’m sure you can find it a thousand other places online, because it is a pretty relevant issue. In the first minute of the film, those in favor of fracking have been giving misleading information, such as :” … entire process is imperceptible under the surface” and, “Mostly water and a few chemicals are used”. However after watching the film, and doing some independent research, I found that the fracking could drill us into a darker future.

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A Few Fracking Facts

Fracking

Questions about fracking have been in the back of my mind since I noticed several articles on the internet warning of its dangers. After watching the short film “ The Fracking of Rachel Carson” my interest reached new heights and was prompted by new questions. What does the process actually entail of? Are there different types of fracking? What materials are used?  What are the dangers? Who is benefiting from fracking?

Fracking comes in two forms: hydraulic fracturing and horizontal hydraulic fracturing.  Hydraulic fracturing is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural well drilling. The average well is 8,000-10,000 feet deep. After a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand, and undisclosed chemicals are injected under high pressure. One to eight million gallons of water are needed for each frack. The pressure breaks or fractures shale, and creates openings in the rock allowing natural gas to flow more freely out of the well. When deep drilling stops yielding results, horizontal fracking is employed. In this method, close to 700 chemicals and millions of gallons of water are used to break up the shale.  For each frack, 80-300 tons of chemicals may be used for and for each well 40,000 gallons of chemicals are needed. All of  the water used in fracking is contaminated by the procedure and must be cleaned and disposed of. Each well requires 400 tanker trucks to transport the water in and out of the site.

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