The request for energy around United States is becoming a big issue. Due to the change in climate and environmental problems, the necessity to increasing energy is rising. Being as though natural gas has become a substitute fuel source for power plants, it also has the power to put heat in homes and aid as fuel for vehicles. Having natural gas is an advantage to lessen oil and coal in the United States. Having the Marcellus Shale drilled in can bring a lot of advantages, disadvantages, and financial growth of developing energy sources.
The Marcellus shale, or known as the Marcellus formation is a marine sedimentary rock in the eastern part of North America. The Shale occurs in the subsurface beneath much of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. Small areas of Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia are also underlain by the Marcellus Shale (Marcellus Shale - Appalachian Basin Natural Gas Play). The shale has natural gas throughout the rock and is known as an alternative tank of hydrocarbons, because the oil and gas comes from sandstone. In the Marcellus Shale overview it states that, “The Shale is about 600 square miles under New York, PA, Ohio, Maryland, and West Virginia, The shale extends under the Great Lakes and into Ontario, Canada. Until recently, it had been overlooked because a vertical gas well drilled through the shale would not yield enough to be economically feasible.” Marcellus shale spreads throughout the whole eastern part of the U.S.
The Marcellus Shale - Appalachian Basin Natural Gas Play article states that, Natural Gas plays a role in the Marcellus shale in three ways. One is the within the pore spaces of the shale. Two is within vertical fractures that break through the shale, and third absorbed on mineral grains and organic material. The gas that comes into the pore space is very difficult of escape because they are very small and not connected well.
There are a lot of factors that comes with developing the Marcellus shale. One is that prices have gone up for natural gas. Pop city Media stated that, “Prices spiked up, from about $3 per thousand cubic feet in 2002 to over $11 in summer 2008”. Another factor is using the hydraulic fracturing, drilling in the shale this way makes it more available and inexpensive to the development. Lastly, climate movement made natural gas and source for fuel.
Natural gas is very dangerous, especially when the health of people is the main problem. The side effects of natural gas, according to Tox Town the article points out “oxygen can be reduced, causing dizziness, fatigue, nausea, headache, and irregular breathing” and even “death”. Pennsylvania is suffering in a tremendous way people are not consuming water like they used to. In fact, the video from Fracking Hell: The Untold Story” have people explaining how their rivers and have yellow colors, and how strong the water smell. They cannot wash dishes,
Then gallons of water mixed with "frak fluid" and proppants continuously until the target area can't take all the constant pressure and eventually breaks. Thus cracking open areas in a well filled with natural gas. The cracks are held open with the proppants. Marcellus Shale formations are located around the northeastern side of the United States. This rock is said to be known to hold a great deal of amount of natural gas, as much as 500 trillion cubic feet. Only an estimated amount of 50 trillion cubic feet is all that can be recovered from the Marcellus
In today's global economy, energy is one of the most crucial and sought after commodities. Who supplies it and how much they supply determines how much influence they have over other countries as well as the global economy. This is why hydraulic fracturing is currently such an important and controversial topic in the United States. Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as "fracking" or hydrofracturing, is the process of using pressurized liquids to fracture rocks and release hydrocarbons such as shale gas, which burns more efficiently than coal. This booming process of energy production provides a much needed economic boost, creating jobs and providing gas energy for Americans. The efficiently burning shale gas reduces carbon emission from electricity production plants, reducing carbon footprints on the environment. However, the process of hydraulic fracturing uses millions of gallons of pressurized liquid, which contains toxic chemicals, and some of this water is left over undealt with. The air near fracking sites is often also polluted and unsafe for nearby community residents. Injecting millions of gallons of water laced with toxic chemicals into the rock thousands of feet deep can cause earthquakes, causing a safety hazards for all nearby areas. Hydraulic Fracturing makes rare natural gases easily attainable, boosting the economy and reducing carbon emissions. However, the negative side effects such as contaminated water and air, make hydraulic fracturing a process that may not be worth the benefits.
The U.S federal government should significantly increase fracking because oil and gas fracking is big business in America, with more than two million hydraulically fractured wells across the country producing 43 and 67 percent of our national oil and gas outputs, respectively. But in my opinion these wells also nearly played a secondary role as nuclear waste storage sites and had the Atomic Energy Commission had its way with Project Plowshare. And fracking is the process of pumping water deep into the Earth, specifically into underground oil and gas reserves, at tremendous pressures in order to break apart the surrounding rock and free the energy product, which can then be pumped out and used. However in the mid 1950s, scientists from the Atomic Energy Commission and officials from the U.S. Bureau of Mines did begin experimenting with an alternative method of fracking, one that employed nuclear bombs more powerful than anything we dropped on the Japanese.
Gas in shale formations are“low in permeability,” making it very tedious to extract, but with the increase in technological knowledge in fracking and horizontally drilling into shale beds, the vast reserves of natural gas resource could be extracted (4). Fracking is a large industrial operation that boost the “productivity of a oil or gas well” (5). It is a process by which, under very high pressure, a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand, are pumped into shale formations that causes fractures in the rocks to open wider or create new fractures that would allow otherwise trapped oil and gas to flow into the wells (6).
Olmstead, Sheila M et al. “Shale Gas Development Impacts on Surface Water Quality in Pennsylvania.” PNAS 110.13 (2013): 4962–4967.
It is a known fact Pennsylvania is greatly impacted by the Marcellus Shale. The Marcellus Shale is a layer of black shale located under the Appalachian basin from Prehistoric times. Natural gas and oil are being extracted from this layer for their increasing economic value, with natural gas having a worth of $10 for every thousand cubic feet of it. Furthermore, improved technology such as “hydraulic fracturing” and “horizontal wells” has made Marcellus drilling more efficient and has increased the implementation of the drilling as a source of economic opportunity for not only drilling companies but for the whole state of Pennsylvania (“Marcellus Shale”). An important part of this Marcellus activity is that “most drilling is occurring in rural areas” according to Joseph Morris, a poll analyzer from Mercyhurst College (Begos, Kevin. “Gas”). Amid the economic opportunity, farmers in these areas are resistant to signing over their farmland to drilling companies. Bradford County farmer Carol French, who wrote an editorial in The Patriot News, stated, “Has anyone considered how these gas developments and industrial uses on farmland will impact agriculture production for years to come if a farmer does not have the necessary means or information to negotiate protection measures?” She fears that drilling will ruin rural property and thus unnecessarily change or hurt farmers’ economic way of life (French). However, because of the vital economic benefits that Marcellus Shale drilling has for Pennsylvania, farmers in rural areas of the state should choose to allow drilling on their property.
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
I spent three years in the U.S. Army. I always knew that one day I would join, but I wasn 't given the chance to finish what I started there. I gained a very unique perspective of the world. I was injured halfway through my first tour and subsequently I was medically discharged against my will. When I was transitioning out, there were many briefings I was required to sit through in order to complete the process. One of the most memorable was the resume writing class. If a soldier decided to attend and pay attention, I think the most important thing they would have learned is to never have a single plan. You should always have at least five plans for each important transition in life. These plans should all carry equal weight. Your time should
Before one can see the devastating effects of fracking, one must first understand how fracking works. As previously stated, the main intent of hydro-fracking is to access and harvest natural gas that lies below the surface of the Earth. Having formed over 400 million years ago by the collision of tectonic plates (Marsa 3), the Marcellus Shale plays host to a gold mine of natural gas, which is currently at the center of the fracking debate in the Northeastern region of the United States. Unfortunately, access...
Shale gas is a kind of unconventional nature gas, which is trapped or gathered in the dark shale or carbon rock. The rock layer has low permeability and low porosity, which means that the best way to get this recourse is fracturing to enhance connectivity and porosity. The shale gas reservoirs are mainly located in North America, Central Asia, China, Latin America, Middle East, North Africa and Russia and other countries and regions. The United State and Canada are only two countries, which have significant shale gas production.
Fracking has contributed to positive economic impacts and a closer sense of energy independence for the United States. Oil and natural gas rich areas underneath North Dakota have grown to contribute a large percentage of these resources to the overall production in the United States. The fact that the United States holds the potential to gain full energy independence could be not only monumental for the country in a global context but also extremely beneficial to the citizens. Less dependence on foreign exports could mean a healthier future for the country. The energy security potential of fracking, balanced with the environmental risks, make it important that it not be a yes-no question, but rather find a solution to satisfy it in a greater context.
The United States relies on imports for about forty percent of its crude oil, which is the lowest rate of dependency since 1991 according to the U.S Energy Information Administration. Today our country is trying to keep on track in becoming less and less dependent. When it comes to the topic of the future ways the United States will get its fuel, most of us readily agree that the United States should become more independent by using natural gas that is already here on our land. Where this argument usually ends, however, is on the question of the consequences drilling for natural gas brings. Whereas some are convinced drilling is safe, others maintain that it is actually in fact dangerous. Hydraulic fracturing or "fracking", the terms for drilling for natural gas, is dangerous to our public health and to the environment because of the water contamination it causes. Therefore, it is not something that should become a project for alternative fuel used by the United States.
United States is known for their innovation towards alternative energy like solar power, wind power and nuclear power. However , these alternative energies are not completely beneficial towards the United States. For example, Hydrofracking; What is hydrofracking? Gas industries use hydrofracking to extract natural gases from shale ground in order to power Americans homes. When gas industries hydrofrack, they dig ten-thousand feet into the mantle of the earth and turn perpendicular to the t into shale layers with cement and steel casing to prevent leaks.
Around the world, countries are dependent on oil and more often than not, foreign oil. The U.S. is at a time where they believe buying foreign oil supports terrorism and hurts our economy. Shale formations deep underground that spread all over the U.S. have been found to contain natural gas. This includes the Marcellus Shale formation and the Utica Shale formation, which can be found all throughout New York State and down the East Coast (Hydro-Fracking pg.1). To get at this abundance of gas underground, hydraulic fracturing was invented, but this new method of gas extraction safe for the environment and for the people around it?