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Jake Young
BS 105-03
4/9/12
To Frack or Not to Frack?
Hydraulic Fracturing Technology
Upon taking BS105, Environmental Biology, I had never heard of the term “fracking” or all of the
issues surrounding hydraulic fracturing in the United States. Now, as the end of the semester is just
around the corner and a-er my prepara.on to write this paper, I now know how much of an issue
hydraulic fracturing has become during the last few years. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” as it is
commonly called, is a drilling method used to access underground deposits of oil and natural gas. It is
currently es.mated that 35,000 wells are hydraulically fractured each year, and that in the next decade
up to 80 percent of natural gas wells worldwide will u.lize hydraulic fracturing technology (Anon,
2011a). The method of hydraulic fracturing was 8rst implemented in 1947, and has been used to
withdraw about seven billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion feet of natural gas from various deep shale
rock deposits (Millican, 2011). A-er the current advances in the use of hydraulic fracturing, natural gas
prices have dropped dras.cally and our na.ons natural gas reserves have increased by thirty percent
(Millican, 2011).
Hydraulic Fracturing consists of drilling ver.cally underground un.l the drill is past the deepest
aquifer that contains fresh groundwater. A steel casing is then inserted into the drilled hole, followed by
cement being pumped in the hole to create a seal between the freshwater and the well bore (Mooney,
2011). Further drilling is then done un.l the rock shale forma.on is reached, where a new technique
called horizontal drilling is u.lized. This technique can turn the drill bit up to a ninety degree angle and
drill horizontally parallel to the surface for thousands of more feet (Mooney, 2011). The introduc.on of
horizontal drilling will be able to help extract the es.mated 827 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that would
be una>ainable using other methods (Mooney, 2011). When the shale rock is 8nally reached by the drill,
a set of precise explosions occur to produce spaces in the rock pores to ini.ally release the oil and gas
(Mooney, 2011). A blend of water, sand, and undisclosed chemicals are then blasted at high pressure
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into the hole to form more 8ssures to help keep the oil and natural gas @owing freely back up to the
surface (Millican, 2011).
According to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, ninety percent of all gas wells in
the United States u.lize hydraulic fracturing, and over a million wells have been hydraulically fractured in
the past 8-y years (Miller, 2009). It is also es.mated that anywhere from three to eight million gallons of
water is used each .me during the hydraulic fracturing process, and up to thirty percent of the water
usually returns to the surface (Gro>enthaler, 2011). The water used in hydraulic fracturing is composed
of about ninety percent water, nine percent sand, and less than one percent is made up of chemicals
that allow the 8ssures to stay open and allow the natural gas and oil to @ow more freely up to the
surface (Gro>enthaler, 2011).
Regulaon of Hydraulic Fracturing
Regula.ons regarding hydraulic fracturing used to be solely controlled by the states in which the
hydraulic fracturing was done, but in recent years, however, the federal government has stepped in and
issued regula.ons regarding hydraulic fracturing (Willie, 2011). In 1997, the Legal Environmental
Assistance Founda.on (LEAF) argued that hydraulic fracturing should be controlled by the Environmental
Protec.on Agency (EPA) under the Safe Water Drinking Act (Willie, 2011). The act requires any state that
wishes to keep control of their underground injec.on control programs to regulate any underground
injec.ons of @uids that are not allowed by any permit or rule (Willie, 2011). LEAF pe..oned the EPA to
discard its approval of an Alabama underground injec.on control program that was using hydraulic
fracturing methods (Willie, 2011). The EPA refused, however, sta.ng that the de8ni.on of underground
injec.on applied only to wells whose primary purpose is the underground injec.on of @uids, and since
the primary purpose of hydraulic fracturing is the extrac.on of natural gas and oil, the EPA denied
regula.on over hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Water Drinking Act (Willie, 2011).
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LEAF eventually won the case, but in 2005 Congress withdrew hydraulic fracturing from federal
regula.on by passing the Energy Policy Act, which excluded all hydraulic fracturing, except diesel fuel,
from the de8ni.on of underground injec.on described in the Safe Drinking Water Act (Willie, 2011). In
June of 2009, the federal government introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of
Chemicals Act (FRAC Act) to Congress. This act would place hydraulic fracturing under the control of the
EPA (Benincasa, 2011).
In recent years, the states that prac.ce hydraulic fracturing have each made their own
regula.ons to help keep the drill sites, and the state itself, safer. All states have a certain set of standards
that monitor the design and construc.on of the wells, cemen.ng standards, and well casing
requirements that keep the @uids that are injected and brought out of the wells from leaking out and
contamina.ng drinking water (Benincasa, 2011). Since the rapid growth of hydraulic fracturing in recent
