Fracking and its Effect on the Environment

1451 Words3 Pages

Oil and natural gas companies have developed a way to drill for natural gas, a process called hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Natural gas is a flammable gas mixture consisting of methane and several other hydrocarbons that occur naturally underground. Natural gas is used as fuel for heating, cooking, and even in some automobiles like the “RideOn” buses. This technique has only recently become economically feasible with the rising prices of fossil fuels, and there is much potential for recovering natural gas through fracking. However, fracking has many waste products and unusual side effects caused by the unnatural forces and materials used. Fracking has a detrimental effect on the surrounding environment through pollution and earthquakes.

Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from layers of shale rock deep within the earth. One of the world’s largest plays of natural gas is in the Marcellus Shale, is located in the Appalachian basin and extends across New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, eastern Ohio and portions of Kentucky and Tennessee. “Plays” are areas where companies are actively looking for natural gas inside shale rock formations. Plays are drilled for natural gas by hydraulic fracturing in a two step process. First, a production well is drilled down into the ground for thousands of feet and then gradually leveled so that the tip of the drill is travelling horizontally through the ground. The second part of the process is where it gets the name of “fracking” because the second step in the process is where a mixture of sand, water, and chemicals, many of which are known to be harmful, are forced under extremely high pressure down into the shale through the horizontal part of ...

... middle of paper ...

...289. Retrieved from Gale Science in Context database. (A264004904)

Drilling for Natural Gas in the Marcellus and Utica Shales: Environmental Regulatory Basics [Fact sheet]. (n.d.). Retrieved from Agriculture and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University website: http://wayne.osu.edu/topics/agriculture-and-natural-resources/gas-and-oil-lease-information/2011-wayne-county-oils-and-gas-lease-meeting-resources/Marcellus_Shale_Fact_Sheet.pdf

Fracking: The New Global Water Crisis. (2012, March). Retrieved from http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/FrackingCrisisUS.pdf

Healy, J. H., Rubey, W. W., Griggs, D. T., & Raleigh, C. B. (1968, September). The Denver Earthquakes. Science, 161(3848), 1301-1310. Retrieved from JSTOR database.

The Myth that Gas is “Clean Energy” [Fact sheet]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/myth.html

More about Fracking and its Effect on the Environment

Open Document