The True Cost of Fracking

Hydraulic fracturing is defined as the act of drilling deep into the ground and injecting water, sand and chemicals under high pressure to break rock formation to recover hydrocarbons.1 This deep drilling (Horizontal drilling) can result in thousands and thousands of feet worth of pipes below the earth’s surface that then inject millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure. This pressure is directed at rock shale formations, a fine-grained sedimentary rock that is composed of mud mixed with clay minerals and fragments of other minerals.4 Under this extreme pressure the shale cracks and fractures releasing natural gas that is forced up through the pipes and up into a recovery well.2 It is argued that hydraulic fracking is both cheaper and is a cleaner method to use when compared to other fuels such as oil and coal. While such statements may have some truth behind them, electricity generated by natural gas releases one-third to one-half less carbon than coal3, the methods of retrieving the natural gas can be catastrophic to the environment.

Natural gas is abundant in sedimentary rock formation. These rock formations are prominent in the United States and could be the answer to America’s energy independence problem.6 The Marcellas Shale, a massive bed of sedimentary rock that reaches from northern New York to West Virginia, contains some 516 trillion cubic feet of gas.6 This is enough gas to power every natural gas burning device in the country for 20 years7, and from a business perspective have a net worth of over a trillion dollars in United States energy resources.6 From the EIA data, the Marcellas Shale formation has been increasingly productivefrom January 2007 up to January 2014, growing from 1,00...

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..., we will need more energy. My personal opinion is that natural gas has too many costs compared to benefits. The gas companies easily sweep the impact of fracking on the environment under the rug and we, the consumers of their products, let it happen. I would like to believe that all environmental costs were factored in before making the decision of using natural gas as a fuel. I also wish that our country’s energy problem could be solved through methods of renewable energy. We must be realistic and understand that natural gas may be the transition towards more renewable energy methods.7 At this time we can place stricter regulations on gas companies and their drilling methods. Through regulating the conservation of water and monitoring groundwater, air quality and chemicals used, we can have a part in making the U.S.’s energy processing as clean as possible.1