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The Pros And Cons Of Fracking

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Governments are questioning where they should allow fracking and use in to get natural gases. Fracking is the process of breaking of rocks to release natural gases using drills or explosions. The fracking used today is hydraulic fracking which is the same process but uses pressurized water to break the rocks up. In order for the pipes to not get clogged up by bacteria they use chemicals to kill them. Where the natural gas is found is dug up is thousands of feet below the surface of the earth. “Most of these are vertical wells that tap into porous sandstone or limestone. Since the 1990s, however, gas companies have been able to harvest the gas still stuck in the original shale source. Fracking shale is accomplished by drilling horizontal wells …show more content…

This is mentioned in Source B. “In one study of 200 private water wells in the fracking regions of Pennsylvania, water quality was the same before and soon after drilling in all wells except one. The only surprise from that study was that many of the wells failed drinking water regulations before drilling started.” (Source A) Also “Pennsylvania companies now recycle 90 percent of this briny water by using it to frack more shale.” (Source A) So most of the water is reused not sent into the water system. “And while the natural gas produced by fracking does add greenhouse gases to the atmospherethrough leakage during gas extraction and carbon dioxide release during burning, it in fact holdsa significant environmental advantage over coal

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Conventional oil drilling does not deal with nearly as many dangerous chemicals in its process. Fracking can also be used to draw more oil from depleted conventional oil wells. This process exhausts the Earth. Furthermore, immense amounts of water is used when fracking and is a huge waste of natural resources. “Based on approximately 1,500 horizontal wells fracked in 2011, Pennsylvania used about 12-20 million gallons of water per day for Marcellus Shale drilling, which represents approximately .5-.8% of the 9.5 billion gallons of water the state uses daily” (Explore Shale.

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Fracking has become a major issues not only in the United States, but throughout the world. With the recent fracking boom in North America, ranging from south central Canada to Texas, the topic has become more of a controversy. There is a thin line balancing the environmental and economic impact. In the end, fracking adjusts to both sides and should be implemented around the globe. Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is the process of sending high pressure fluid mixtures, made up of water, sand, and chemical additives, to created hairline fractures in rocks.

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In other words, obtaining natural gas it's not a long-term solution. Also, it emits Methane to the air which is 21 times much more harmful than CO2. In a Spanish documentary about fracking in Colombia. They explain how Hydraulic Fracturing Companies offered money to the government to let them have spaces to do wells.

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What is fracking? Why do we do it? Fracking means to create a large opening in a rock and extract fluids of the cracked rocks. Fluids as in natural gases, oils, petroleum and other substances. This increases the amount that fluids are produced and it protects supplements.

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A controversial engineering issues that has people on both sides fighting for and against it is fracking. Fracking or by its actual name “hydraulic fracturing is a type or drilling that involces safely tapping shale and other tight-rock formations by drilling a mile or more below the surface before gradually turning horizontal and continuing several thousand feet more using high pressured water, sand and chemicals” (BBC UK). The high pressure of the mixture will create small cracks on the surface of the material that they are trying to mine, and the purpose of the sand is to keep the cracks from closing back in so that the pressure of the mixture can bring the material up. The material that is mined through fracking is gas and oil. Fracking on one side of the battle is very important to the US energy because it is allowing us to produce our oil fuel supplies

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Hydraulic fracturing has become an increasing popular method of creating natural gas wells in order to mine fossil fuels from the Earth. In fact, 9 out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States today were created from the process of fracking (Schmidt 2015). Through this process of fracking, millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals are pumped down into the Earth as deep as 10,000 feet below the surface, and then propelled horizontally through rock layers. At such high pressures, this mixture causes the rock to split open so that natural gas from the shale can flow upward through the well that has been created. The gas harvested is then stored in tanks and is ultimately piped to the commercial market.

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Fracking is a method of extracting natural gas from the earth. A hole is dug deep into the earth. This hole is one to two miles deep (Life Science). The hole also needs to be encased in some strong material so high elevation ground water doesn’t leak in. Once the hole is fully enclosed, high pressured water is shot deep underground (Life Science).

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Today there are increasing reports of natural gas depletion. Across the United States a new type of natural gas extraction called hydraulic fracturing is taking ground. Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for short is a process, which extracts natural gas deep from within the Earth’s surface. A well first needs to be constructed. After that is complete, the materials needed are chemicals, sand, and water.

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Fracking has actually been taking place since the 1940’s, but not until it was combined with horizontal drilling was it extremely useful (“Hydraulics” 71-75). In the past fifteen years the fracking business has skyrocketed. By 2015 thirty-five thousand wells are using fracking methods in order to extract the natural gases each year. Ninety percent of all gas production in the United States would be impossible without fracking (“Hydraulics” 71-75). More than ninety percent of natural gas wells in the U.S. rely on fracking (Howarth, Ingraffea, and Engelder).

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With that knowledge and knowing that Marcellus Shale operation planned to construct up to 200,000 new wells, means that 190,000 leaky wells could very well be in operation in one year (Nikiforuk 24). Now there are some arguing that it’s just as, if not worse than fracking. Jeff Tollefson, states that methane pollution in the air is just as bad. “[there is] hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change” (1). He continues by saying “methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere” (2).

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For instance, the use of natural gas has generated many widespread health benefits, like generating less harmful air particles. Compared to the different resources such as, coal which produces many harmful air particles affecting people’s health. Climate Connections says, “The major new supply of natural gas produced through fracking is displacing the burning of coal, which each year contributes to the early death of thousands of people. Coal made up about 50 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2008, 37 percent by 2012; meanwhile, natural gas went from about 20 percent to about 30 percent during that same period” in addition, in todays world, creating jobs is a huge thing that the world needs. Therefore, with fracking being a larger operation, it has generated plenty of jobs for individuals.

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It is believed that fracturing will help to extend the productivity of the older oil and gas fields, and helps to recover natural gas from sources which were once believed to be completely inaccessible, for instance tight shale formations. Fracking is different from traditional natural extraction methods which have been used over the years. Traditional natural gas wells are significantly less deep than fracking wells, by about thousands of feet and are essentially at depths which do not interfere with surface or subsurface water resources . Fracking also requires up to hundred times the quantity of water required by traditional

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What is Fracking? Fracking has been around for many years and will probably continue to exist for a while longer as long as there is no other alternative option that is cheaper than it. Fracking is the process of drilling down and injecting water fluids at a high pressure into the ground in order to shatter rock to release the natural gas up into the surface and so we can extract oil. Fracking is a big deal in the United States in general. There have been many arguments of fracking because it can seriously affect the environment around it.

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For years, people have been looking for alternate ways to get resources for us. Whether it hurts the world or not, they are hell bent on the pursuit of finding other resources. Fracking is one of these ways. Fracking is the process of drilling down into the earth to release the gas inside. Just like everything in the world, people choose different sides and have multiple opinions on why they believe such a thing.

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People complain about pollution from factories, cars, global warming, and the melting of polar ice caps, yet many people disregard the dangerous that come with fracking. Fracking is the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, and/or boreholes to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas. Fracking is causing an epidemic economically and environmentally. Fracking is continuously destroying the earth day by day. From the endless fracking today’s economy is depleting.

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