Fracking – The dangers and the ‘energy promise’

What’s fracking? Confused by the conflicting reports the natural gas helps your country’s energy needs and the critics claiming it causes threats to the environment and health?

Check out the following website Dangers of Fracking which looks in simple terms at hydraulic fracturing (the official term) and the process involved.

The process, water and chemicals used tell a horrifying story. In the United States, there are currently half a million active gas wells using 8 million gallons of water per fracking (a well can be fracked an average of 18 times). This means 72 trillion gallons of water and 360 billion gallons of largely toxic chemicals are needed to run the current fracking operations. That’s massive.

During the fracking process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out of the system and contaminate the nearby groundwater.

The gas drilling companies say the process is safe. But there is evidence, some of it anecdotal, that the fracking process could be causing the following:

– Small earthquakes
– Sinkholes
– Danger of methane contamination of tap water (try turning on the tap and using a lighter)
– Danger that your house could explode (some house owners have been told to keep their doors and windows open and not light a stove or cigarette in the house)
– Danger to livestock (cases of animals getting ill or dying from fracking fluid contamination of the water)
– Danger to health (evidence of rashes, respiratory problems, digestion problems, plus concerns about the potential for cancer)
– Loss in land value
– And more…

Part of the problem is insufficient investigation has been done into the dangers of fracking, yet the companies continue to drill wells with virtual impunity and the support of the local authorities. Few people really understand the process or the dangers.

The idea of mining natural gas is promoted as what the Harvard Magazine calls, The Gas Gift as if this is a “clean” energy source.

This is what the magazine says about fracking:

Supplies of natural gas now economically recoverable from shale in the United States could accommodate the country’s domestic demand for natural gas at current levels of consumption for more than a hundred years: an economic and strategic boon, and, at least in the near term, an important stepping-stone toward lower-carbon, greener energy.

But even though natural gas is relatively “clean”—particularly relative to coal burned to generate electricity—the “fracking” process used to produce the new supplies poses significant environmental risks. We must ensure that procedures and policies are in place to minimize potential damage to local and regional air quality and to protect essential water resources. We need to make sure that extraction of the gas (consisting mainly of methane, with small amounts of other gases) from shale and its transport to market does not result in a significant increase in “fugitive” (inadvertent) emissions of methane (CH4)—which is 10 times more powerful as a climate-altering agent, molecule per molecule, than carbon dioxide (CO2, the most abundant greenhouse gas). Further, we will need to recognize from the outset that cheap natural gas may delay the transition to truly carbon-free, sustainable solar- and wind-energy supplies that remain crucial in light of our worsening climate-change crisis.

Food and Water Watch says fracking should be banned and claims better regulations will not make the process safer.

.. the process of fracking introduces additional industrial activity into communities beyond the well. Clearing land to build new access roads and new well sites, drilling and encasing the well, fracking the well and generating the waste, trucking in heavy equipment and materials and trucking out the vast amounts of toxic waste — all of these steps contribute to air and water pollution risks and devaluation of land that is turning our communities into sacrifice zones. Fracking threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the communities we love and the climate on which we all depend. That’s why over 250 communities in the U.S. have passed resolutions to stop fracking, and why Vermont, France and Bulgaria have stopped it.

The general public have little or no say in the decisions being made to drill for natural gas. Hence the importance of activist groups and awareness campaigns to at the very least put a halt to the drilling going on at a feverish rate in the U.S. and elsewhere.