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The Pros And Cons Of Fracking

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Thanks to the success of U.S. oil companies, which are engaging in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, the United States might soon pass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer. U.S. oil production has risen to 7.4 million barrels per day and the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that U.S. production will return to 1970 levels by 2019. In the past five years, the daily oil production in America increased by 3.7 million barrels, which reduced America’s import of oil by 44%. Oil being produced in regions like the Eagle Ford increased from virtually zero to 1.5 million barrels a day thanks to fracking. There are two types of how the U.S gets his oil. The first method is hydraulic fracturing and it is the fracturing of rock containing oil which has been used since the 1940s, i.e. a drilling technique used for extracting oil or natural gas from deep underground. Water mixed with sand and chemicals is injected at high pressure into a borehole, producing small fractures in the shale, therefore allowing natural gas or oil to seep into the well. In 2000, there were about 276,000 natural gas wells in the United States. By 2010 …show more content…

The manic drilling of the Americans has led to the completion of around 20,000 new wells since 2010, more than ten times Saudi Arabia’s tally. Consequently this has boosted America’s oil production by a third to nearly 9 million barrels a day, which is very close to Saudi Arabia’s output. As a result of this contest between the shalemen and the sheikhs, the world has tipped from a shortage of oil to a

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