A few 'Fracking Facts"

My Partner Witchy and I ( The Genie) are both devoted hard core environmentalists and in support of her article, here are a few hard core facts about 'fracking' that we should all know in order to develop an informed opinion about it.

Texas has seen the number of recorded earthquakes increase tenfold since 2007, the same time a drilling boom spurred by hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” took off. Scientific studies of those quakes has linked most of them to oil and gas drilling activity.
The culprit of earthquakes near fracking sites is not believed to be the act of drilling and fracturing the shale itself, but rather the disposal wells. Disposal wells are the final resting place for used drilling fluid. These waste wells are located thousands of feet underground. They pump waste into each of them from several different drill sites.There are more than 50,000 disposal wells in Texas.

If you pump water into a fault, the fault can slip, causing an earthquake.The science linking manmade earthquakes to the oil and gas industry isn’t anything new. Decades ago, researchers found they could turn earthquakes on and off by injecting liquid into the ground, says Dr. William Ellsworth with the Earthquake Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey.

So What is Fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside.
Up to 600 chemicals are used in fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as…lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid and formaldehyde. 
Down at around 10,000ft the fracking fluid is then pressure injected into the ground through a drilled pipeline.

The Math

500,000
Active gas wells in the US
X
8 million
Gallons of water per fracking
X
18
Times a well can be fracked 
= 72 trillion gallons of water and 360 billion gallons of chemicals needed to run the existing gas wells.

Shale Fracturing

The mixture reaches the end of the well where the high pressure causes the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures where natural gas flows into the well.

Contamination

During this process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby groundwater.
Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells.
 

Drinking Water

Contaminated well water is used for drinking water for nearby cities and towns.
There have been over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling as well as cases of sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water.
Only 30-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.
The waste fluid that is recovered 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.
In the end, hydraulic fracking produces approximately 300,000 barrels of natural gas a day, but at the price of numerous environmental, safety, and health hazards.


IS IT WORTH IT??