Hydraulic Fracturing
Freshwater biology, period 1
What is hydraulic fracturing?
https://www.google.com/#q=what+is+hydraulic+fracturing
The forcing open of fissures in subterranean rocks by introducing liquid at high pressure, especially to extract oil or gas.
Marcellus Shale- what is it? what does it have to do with natural gas production?
Step 1
This is known as the acid stage where several thousand gallons of water mixed with a dilute acid such as hydrochloric or muriatic acid clears cement debris and provides an open conduit for other fracturing fluids by dissolving minerals and opening fractures.
Step 2
This is known as the pad stage where approximately 100,000 gallons of slickwater fills the fractures with the slickwater solution and opens the fractures to help allow the flow and placement of proppant material.
Steps 3-4
3: This is a prop sequence stage, which can consist of several substages of water combined with proppant material. This is intended to keep open, or "prop" the fractures created or to enhance the fracture after the pressure is reduced. This stage may use several hundred thousand gallons of water.
4: This is the flushing stage. During the flushing stage fresh water is pushed through to flush out the excess proppant from the well.
My opinion on hydraulic fracking
I think hydraulic fracturing is bad because all of negative side effects such as:
- It takes 1-8 million gallons of water to complete each fracturing job.
- About 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used per fracture.
- Up to 600 chemicals are used in "fracking fluid" including known carcinogens & toxins such as: lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, radium, menthonal, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde.
- A well can only be fractured 18 times.
- There are 500,000 active gas wells in the US; to run these gas wells it used 72 trillion gallons of water and 360 billion gallons of chemicals.
- During the fracturing process methane gas and toxic chemicals leak out of he system and contaminate the surrounding groundwater; methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than any other wells.
- Contaminated well water that is ingested can lead to sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage.
- 50-70% of fracking fluid is left in the ground when the process is done; fracking fluid is not biodegradable
- The waste fluid is left in open air pits to evaporate, releasing harmful VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone.
US map of hydraulic fracturing
A comprehensive comparison of existing state disclosure requirements.
States with hydraulic fracturing since 2005
A map created by the Natural Resources Defense Council‘s resident mapping guru Rachel Fried, showing every state where we know fracking has occurred since 2005.
Worldwide map of hydraulic fracturing
A map of hydraulic fracturing movements and bans across the world.