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The Pros And Cons Of Hydraulic Fracturing

1724 Words7 Pages

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. In regard to environmental wellbeing, …show more content…

A study done by Duke University that was published in the American Economic Review says that fracking wells stationed within one kilometer of a home cause the price to decrease 13.9% which on average meant that the value of each home decreased by $30,167 (Sereix 2016). Fracking also causes economic decline for farms in surrounding regions. Often there is loss of livestock due to exposure to fracking wastewater spills, increased difficulty to get water for farming supplies, and conflicts with crops that would otherwise have been grown organically. Current regulations fail to make sure that sufficient funds are available for proper closer and reclamation of well sites and also do not require that sufficient funds are available to fix environmental problems or compensate victims of them. These consequences will continue to go unregulated and fall on the burden of taxpayers if the government does not further restrict and regulate the fracking process as a whole. Oil and gas companies should both be required to post either bonds or another type of financial assurance to make sure that they have enough capital to plug wells, reclaim their well sites, repair damages done to roads, and compensate anyone harmed by during the process of fracking. As many of the environmental consequences of fracking, such as climate change, will not be seen until years in the future, the people and companies responsible will be long gone by the time all the damage they have done truly becomes apparent (Rumpler

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