What Is It:
Hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, is a process used to recover natural gas and oil from shale rock.
To do this, a hole is drilled into the Earth. Then, a high-pressure water mixture is put into the rock, releasing the gas inside it. To get the gas to go flow into the well, the rock is then injected with chemicals, water, and sand.
The well is drilled into the ground horizontally so the gas will float upwards. This process was named “fracking” because the name refers to how rocks are fractured apart by high pressure.
Why Is It Controversial:
With fracking comes great environmental concerns. Immense amounts of water have been transported to fracking sites, damaging the environment. Also, many fear that chemicals used in this process will eventually contaminate groundwater near the sites. “The industry suggests pollution incidents are the results of bad practices, rather than the inherent risky technique.” But there is always room for error. If the risks of fracking could potentially contaminate acres and acres of land from one “bad practice”, why do it?
In addition to these, an increased amount of earthquakes in areas with fracking is linked to fracking in those areas. The graph below shows the how many earthquakes, how strong they were, and when they hit in Barnett Shale. Under that is a mini interview telling the normal amount of earthquakes in Oklahoma that are at or above 3 magnitude before fracking and how many are at or above 3 magnitude now.
Many other worries include that fracking wastes energy and eliminates renewable resources.
Conclusion:
Fracking destabilizes the earth, causing increases in earthquakes everywhere it happens. So why do we continue to do it?
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