Environmental Benefits Of Fracking

Although hydraulic fracturing has been commercially used since the late 1940s, it has become a controversial topic in recent years. For -some people, fracking risks human’s health and pollutes the environment while others believe that this drilling technique has brought enormous benefits for both the U.S. and its citizen. In this paper, I would go further into the background history of fracking and discuss different stakeholders’ stances.

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking” is a reservoir stimulation technique. In other words, it can be defined as a process of deeply drilling down into the Earth and injecting high-pressurized water mixture, which contains water, sand and other chemicals into the ground. After having been pumped

The number of wells fracked grew significantly, reached 3000 wells per month by the mid 1950s. During the 1970s, there was a huge proliferation of massive hydraulic fracturing, resulted in an enormous number of wells that were stimulated by fracking. By the late 1970s, the process was widely used all different countries and religions, including Canada, Germany, Netherlands and England. It was not until 1999 that scientists found a new method to apply high pressure fluids to rubblize hard-rock formations and extract oil and gas trapped inside. Also, with the invention and application of horizontal drilling to fracking, it became possible to extract larger amounts of oil and natural gas from fracking shales. This absolutely has brought a revolution for the oil and gas industry of the U.S and changed the U.S energy picture from scarcity to abundance. Producers and drillers are now able to exploit a huge amount of natural gas and oil that were locked away in shells and hard rock formations previously. According to many credible reports, about 90 percent of today’s producing wells are stimulated by fracking; up to 35 percent of U.S natural gas production is from shale gas, compares with only 2 percent ten

In his article, Robert Rapier mentioned that: the marriage of fracking with horizontal drilling has enabled economic oil and gas production in the nation and with that improvement, fracking is now being used more than ever, making it to be more and more well-known. Thus, many researches have been conducted on the impacts fracking fluids, making it an increasing concern among a lot of