Hydraulic Fracturing, or fracking, has been going on in the United States since the 1950’s. However, we haven’t had a need to utilize the process because the United States has gotten most of their energy from the middle east or oil deposits within the states. But with recent political issues in the middle east and diminishing oil production in the US, we started our economic fall behind the other “powerhouse” countries in the world.  A quick fix to this issue was to start fracking in the states. Since then, we have economically fixed small communities in the US through the creation of jobs and intensely grew an industry worth 225 billion dollars. Fracking has caused America to go from the number one importer of energy to the number one exporter. With all these great results coming from hydraulic fracturing, why stop the money flow? What the benefiting businesses won’t tell you are the horrible byproducts that come from the fracking process. Earthquakes, flammable water, and land pollution can be linked to fracking. Hydraulic fracturing may be a lucrative way of increasing our nation’s wealth, however, it will occur at the expense of our basic human rights to safety and the protection of citizens.

It is imperative to understand the process of fracking before the pros and cons can be discussed. The process starts by drilling a hole about two to three miles down through the earth’s crust using fresh water based fluid. This way, drinking water is not affected. Then a steel pipe, with a diameter smaller than the hole drilled, is inserted into the hole. Concrete is then poured down the space between the pipe and the earth. Depending on the geology of the area and the depth of the drill hole, an additional barrier is slid in the cemented in pipe. And just like the original pipe, the new barrier is cemented in place. After the concrete has set, they continue drilling to what is called the kickoff depth. 

What makes drilling for hydrocarbons in a shale formation unique is the necessity to drill horizontally. This kickoff depth is where the drill starts to curve and move in a horizontal fashion. The advantage to horizontal drilling is being able to drill multiple wells from one drilling path., which minimizes the impact to the surface environment. When the targeted distance is reached, the drill is removed and a steel casing is inserted through the full length of the well bore. Once again, the steel pipe is cemented in place to ensure no leakage or movement. Now that the drilling is finished, and the final casing has been secured, the drilling rig is removed and the execration process now begins. 

The next step in being able to get to the shale gas from inside the cemented steel casing. This is accomplished by using a specialized tool called a perforating gun. The gun is lowered down to the very end of the steel casing and 4 explosive charges detonate creating holes through the pipe, concrete, and rock. These holes connect the reservoir and the well bore. Since these holes are only a few inches long, and the detonation happens over a mile underground, the process is insusceptible on the surface. The perforating gun is then removed in preparation for the next step, hydraulic fracturing.

This process consists of pumping a mixture of mostly water and sand plus a few chemicals including but not limited to; chloride, polyacrylamide, ethylene glycol, sodium/potassium carbonate, glutaraldehyde, guar gum, isopropanol, and multiple kinds of acids, down the well bore at an immense pressure. It is forced through the perforations created earlier and into the rock. The mixture is under such high pressure it cracks the target rock. It rushes into the rock. When the pressure is relieved, the sand is left in the cracked rock to keep it spread apart creating what is about a 2 mm gap. This allows the previously trapped oil or gas to flow to the drilled hole more easily. After that section, a specially designed plug is inserted in the well boar permanently sealing off the perforated area leading to a new ‘stage’ of hydraulic fracturing. This process is continued down the entire horizontal well bore, which can extend several miles. Once the entirety of the bore is blasted and plugged, the plugs are drilled through and harvesting the oil/natural gas begins. 

This whole process of developing a well can last anywhere from three to five months. A few weeks to prepare the drilling site, about a month of actual drilling, and one to two months to finish a few completing stages. But this four-month investment will result in a single place being able to produce oil or natural gas for twenty to forty years.

Now that the process of fracking is understood, we can continue with the benefits and drawbacks. As mentioned earlier, the hydraulic fracturing industry has not just stabilized small communities, but helped them grow very wealthy. In New York alone, high volume hydraulic fracturing was promised to create more than 54,000 jobs within a 30-year time period (Schulte). Additionally, it is estimated their state and local revenues would annually increase by 32-126 million dollars. When these numbers came out, New York quickly started giving out permits to drill (Executive Order 41, 2010). Members of the government that issued these permits, did not do so in a wealthy area of New York. They wanted to help the poorer communities because the drilling companies were offering between 500-5000 dollars per acre to landowners. Since the 2008 boom, about 229,000 jobs were created and 2.2 billion dollars in tax revenue has been collected for New York (Ridlington). 

In 2004, prices for wellheads hovered around $8.21 per 1,000 cubic feet. That price has since increased to an average of $2.15 per 1,000 cubic feet (Ridlington). First thought that comes to mind is that lower price equates to a lower income, except in this case it is the opposite. This price fluctuation means that our inventory has increased so greatly, that we have too much to sell. And having a lower price will attract other consumers to do more business with us because our price undercuts traditional oil prices. These are only beginning numbers. By 2010, 5 trillion cubic feet of gas has been produced and that number is expected to rise to 13.6 trillion cubic feet by 2035 (Kellogg). The more gas we produce, the more we sell, the wealthier we become as a country. 

Aside from the economic benefits, there are a few environmental and political positives that come from fracking. Although, they quickly become obsolete when you compare the downside of this destructive process. By creating an abundant, cheap, and domestic natural gas market, you increase national security. Less imports means less foreign affairs. In today’s day and age, the less we take in from other countries, the better. Because natural gas is so cheap, more people are investing in using natural gas for electricity. Thus, reducing the number of coal plants in the US. Studies show there is a 50% drop of CO2 emissions per unit of electricity when using natural gas from fracking versus coal. 

For every company that rises to power, there is someone to keep them in check, or make it harder for them to operate. Which is not a bad component to have in our capitalist society, it keeps any one person from gaining too much of the nation’s wealth. The fracking industries have yet to have a challenger. This is due to the limited research on the negative impacts. Because the fracking boom happened so recently, the research to determine the industry’s harmful effects have started not more than twenty years ago. The US government is benefiting so greatly from taxing the 225-billion-dollar industry, they have yet to implement the needed restrictions to preserve the citizens’ safety. Even with the research that has surfaced. 

The Environment America Research & Policy Center has since put out some frightening numbers. It is reported that there has been at least 250 billion gallons of water used since 2005. And because the frackers can’t use contaminated water in this complex process, they take from our clean drinking water. Operators have used more than two billion gallons of chemicals on thousands of fracking sites around this country. Unfortunately, the chemicals are mixed with our drinking water and that water is forever contaminated. It can never be filtered for practical use. You would think that knowing they took our drinking water and chemically destroyed it, the fracking companies would find an economically suitable way to dispose of the harmful water. Instead, they pump the waste water under the shale rock, an area that is closer to fault lines than the area that is initially drilled. This is dumped into what is called a ‘class two waste disposal well’ and it is pumped with an enormous pressure over extended periods of time. There are two issues with this. First, the waste water will eventually seep up to our drinking water. There have been over 1,000 Cases of water contamination across 6 states in 2011 alone (Hoffman). But fracking fluids can get into our water from the drilling process as well. When the concrete is poured down the well to case in and secure the steel pipe, if the process is done incorrectly, or if the concrete has little air bubbles in it, the concrete can rupture and leak fracking fluid into our drinking water. There are multiple cases in Pennsylvania where tap water was being lit on fire due to this incident. Continuing, fracking pollution can get into our water at many other points during the complex process. There have been many reports of leaks, spills, well blowouts and the escape of methane all getting into groundwater. In Pennsylvania, it is confirmed that over 160 drinking water wells have been contaminated by drilling operations from 2008-2012(St. Fleur). New Mexico reported 743 cases where oil and gas operations have affected groundwater that is drinking water for 90 percent of their residents. The leaking of polluted water can affect more than just our drinking water. Bromide is a chemical left in the wastewater. And when it mixes with chlorine, a common chemical at drinking water treatment plants, it yields something called trihalomethanes. These chemicals are known to cause cancer and increase the risk of birth defects. In May 2010, a Pennsylvania hydraulic fracturing wastewater disposal site leaked into a neighboring farm field, the Department of Agriculture was forced to quarantine 28 cattle that were exposed to the wastewater (Ridlington). 

The second issue with the injecting wastewater into our earth has a disturbing connection to an increase in earthquakes. As of 2016, there is no rule saying you cannot pump water into the ground that you have not done a study on to ensure there is no false system that is likely to be impacted by that waste. The high pressure is essentially lubricating existing faults and causing the fault lines to slip when they aren’t supposed to. In 2008, there was 850 earthquakes that shook the central US. In 2015, that number jumped to 2000 earthquakes (Wines). These numbers include both induced and natural earthquakes. Although most of these earthquakes have a magnitude of 3 or less, which cannot be felt on the surface, the United States Geological Survey predicts a 5-17% chance of significant damage to homes in north Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Where a high volume of fracking occurs.

The government has started a movement to regulate the pressure that waste water can be pumped into the ground since then. This will not resolve the issue in whole, but will significantly reduce the number of induced earthquakes. However, there is still no limit to how much pressure one can frack with. If high school chemistry has taught us anything, it’s that areas with high pressure want to flow to areas of low pressure. 

There are also records of air pollutants that come from fracking sites. The pollution consists of benzene, xylene, and toluene. These chemicals can cause a variety of health issues to nearby residents from simple eye irritation and/or headaches to severe asthma and cancer (Knapton). The Texas Department of Environmental Quality ran a study to find 19 fracking sites in Texas, and more in Arkansas, are throwing enough benzene in the air to pose immediate human health dangers. Benzene is the chemical most linked to cancers. A homeowner in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania described the suffering of her and her kids after a fracking site was built 780 feet from her house. Pam Judy, the homeowner, stated “Shortly after operations began, we started to experience extreme headaches, runny noses, sore/scratchy throats, muscle aches and a constant feeling of fatigue. Both of our children are experiencing nose bleeds and I’ve had dizziness, vomiting and vertigo to the point that I couldn’t stand and was taken to an emergency room.” After constant badgering, she got state officials to test the quality of air in her home’s proximity. The findings included every chemical stated above plus a few more. Fracking companies will try and tell you that hydraulic fracturing is a cleaner source of energy. Which is true when you talk about CO2 emissions. However, in five Dallas counties, a study showed shale drilling was a larger producer of smog forming gas than cars and trucks. In Wyoming, fracking was credited to pollution so bad that for the first time ever they failed to meet the federal air quality standards. 

Solving the fracking issue will not be easy and it will take time. Shutting down an industry as large as hydraulic fracturing is a challenging task. They are giving the government millions in tax revenue and stabilizing local economies. A couple routes can be taken to solve this environmental problem. Finding new technologies that make the process of drilling and disposal safer to the environment and citizens. This is the riskiest of the choices. The advancements of technology that are needed to make fracking safe for our well-being, are decades away. By the time we figure out a solution, the damage would be too far to repair. It is a gamble to wait for the technology to arise, however the benefits would be astounding. 

The reasonable solution would be to heavily regulate the process of fracking until the technologies to make fracking a safe process arise. Have certain pressure limits, drilling distance limits, how long you can frack in one area, and more restrictions on the major causes of the negative effects of fracking. The first restriction that should be placed is drilling proximity limits to heavily populated areas. Moving fracking wells 17 or more miles away from any occupied residence would decrease the chance of poisonous gas exposure by 15%(Wu). Which isn’t a lot, but it’s a good place to start. Plus, if the fracking process triggers an earthquake, the center will be further away from civilization. To prevent the earthquake issue, we must restrict the pressure for which one can frack with. Unfortunately, this will decrease the amount of gas we can extract. Less pressure means less shale formations get cracked open. This is a small price to pay for a significant reduction of earthquakes. The hardest aspect to control is sadly the most detrimental to our well-being. Chemicals that are used to frack are necessary to the extraction of natural gas. The cocktail of acids and bases serve the purpose of keeping the water, and gas clean and lubricated (Balog).  But there a few chemicals which aren’t necessary, it just makes the process easier. For example, isopropanol neutralizes the polarity of the natural gas, meaning it won’t stick to the pipe coming up to the surface(Wu). Pumping hundreds of chemicals into our earth will have to be tolerated until a suitable substitution can be found. I believe hydraulic fracturing’s negative impacts can be significantly reduced using these restrictions until better technology comes out to make it environmentally friendly. 
