The Confusion of “Fracking”
Mar 17th, 2012 by kmoxey
These past few weeks of class, we had discussed alternative energy sources with their costly funding budgets that included the drilling for natural gas. This reminded me of a chain email my Dad sent me about the discovery of oil reserves in the Mid West region near North Dakota. The USGS has speculated billions, even trillions of gallons of oil are under the grassy fields that are captured in shale underground.
I thought to myself, if the United States, has more oil than the Middle East, or wherever we are importing it that makes it cost over $100 per barrel, then why should we keep on importing? Drilling oil in the United States would be obviously a better thing to do, because we would not have to import it at such high costs. There would even be an abundance of jobs available to alleviate the stress on our tanking economy.
I found a youtube video proclaiming the abundant job opportunities and growing communities.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEi0b7CFDHI[/youtube]
Little did I know what is really going on in those mining fields.
I decided to do some research on the untapped oil in our country, I first found websites and blogs complaining about environmentalists’ movements to cease their complaints about drilling, and how they are hurting the economy.
After viewing one side of the story, I went into further search to read about the other side. The drilling method of companies’ choice was the new technology of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking”. I already knew this was the technique of drilling natural gas, and there has been some extreme controversy about water contamination. Now they are using this technique for drilling of crude oil.
Since I am looking for the other side of the story, I immediately thought of the documentary, “Gasland”. After watching it in its entirety, I have finally educated myself on both sides of the issue. The movie was extremely compelling and it defiantly informed me about the negative sides of fracking. If you do not have more than one hour to spend watching the documentary, here is a website that explains the problems of hydraulic fracturing.
I had finally came to a conclusion that hydraulic fracturing is not a necessary evil. There are other methods out there that can drill for oil, and contaminating our water supply is not one of them. Looking at an economic standpoint, will there ever be a solution to our sinking economy that does not hurt our environment?
12 Responses to “The Confusion of “Fracking””
I can’t pretend to understand fracking entirely, but I was blown away by how the following website explains the impact of this process. Not only is the way this website narrates the process beautiful, but it is also quite scary when you consider the VOCs and other potential environmental impacts. Check it out, and it might be a cool site to share with your class:
http://dangersoffracking.com/
I always thought I understood the basics, of fracking, but looking at those links blew my mind.
The dangersoffracking.com site was a great visual aid and gave very clear numbers.
But here is what freaks me out about all of this environmental degradation everything… I have never seen a billion of anything, but I feel like everything is always in billions.
“360 billion gallons of chemicals needed to run our current gas wells.” I can’t even fathom what that actually means.
The other information about the sensory, respiratory, and neurological damages along with the VOCs… I honestly can’t even believe it all.
So to answer your question, I’m not sure if there is a solution that doesn’t hurt our environment, but there is no way fracking is the answer.
I really enjoyed your description of your level-headed examination into fracking. Being unbiased is not something I, personally, excel in 🙂 . On that note, I have not inquired very far into the process, but will take a look at the websites mentioned and the documentary.
We’ve talked a lot about water issues in class and you’d think that with so many shortages, we wouldn’t want to do anything else that damages our water system. So I wonder why, if fracking is a new process, why they switched to it in the first place. Maybe once I check those websites….
Anyway, thanks for your post!
Thanks for the post! I’ve been hearing a lot about fracking lately, and these are great links for explaining the effects of fracking. Kylie, I think they switched to fracking for the same reasons Kelsey listed in the first paragraph – we wouldn’t have to spend so much money on importing, it’s relatively abundant, and it could provide a lot of jobs. However, the negatives to fracking stack up. Those multiple truck trips to provide water for fracking sound awfully expensive – what if fuel costs actually increase because of fracking? Also, my roommate lives near an area in Pennsylvania where there’s a lot of fracking. Her neighbors are getting nervous about the quality of their water.
Some people also say that fracking makes the ground more prone to earthquakes. Scientific American
– Katie Diemer,
– Katie Diemer
I think we also have overlooked the way pop culture has adopted the term frack. With Battlestar Galactica being the example I have in mind: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Frack
Reverend, I WAS GOING TO POST DANGERSOFFRACKING! The internet is clearly no place to procrastinate on.
I feel horrible for saying this, but I must agree with kgirard. Billions of chemicals being used solely for fracturing (the website Reverend posted says 40,000 gallons of chemicals used per fracturing). Sure, it may be economically beneficial, but Earth has to be long term. Perhaps I’m being a little crazy, but there must be another way to perhaps receive this oil without resorting to fracturing and further destruction of the environment. If anything, this class has been revealing that there is something that has to be done. Not can, not should, but MUST.
Great post and discussion so far! I have never heard of fracking being used for oil drilling though (usually used in natural gas extraction), so this was a very interesting couple of articles. I also found the other sides argument interesting as well. It interest me because it seems that no where in any of these stories does it say how long they actually will have this oil resource. Though it does say in the first CNN Money article that they plan on producing a certain amount of barrels by 2035, it does not say how long it will last. 2035 does seem like quite a long time away but in all actuality its really not especially for the amount of infrastructure they are planning on building. I understand it is probably hard to estimate how long a certain oil field will last before it is completely tapped but don’t you think it would be wise to estimate this before spending millions on infrastructure and making the case to continue our country on fossil fuels? Also none of the post explains just how much of this new oil reserve will get us off foreign oil. We use approximately 18.77 million barrels of oil a day according to eia (http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=33&t=6) and at the highest projected production, this oil reserve will pump out 350,000 barrels a day. Looks to me there is quite a large gap (about 17 million) here that will have to be filled through imports. I mean this is not considering the large amount of environmental damage that producing this oil and burning it will cause. This again falls back to this short term thinking problem that we continue to run into throughout our discussions. We will see if people finally do their research.
Thank you for the responses.
The website “reverend” provided was very user friendly and gave useful information for the general public to understand.
Also the linguistic approach “jim” gave to the conversation was quite comical.
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I have some friends who run a sheep ranch in Paonia, Colorado who are concerned about implications for their water supply, and trying to fight a BLM plan for fracking in their valley (they turned me on to the Gasland video as well)- if you have any suggestions, I will share with them.
This is a great conversation around a HUGE issue that I wish we could spend a whole class on- fracking and if it’s worth it. Several of you made the strong argument that the short term gains (some oil, some short-lived jobs) are NOT worth it. Super super post!
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