What is the evidence for and against hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’? How dangerous is the process? What are the real risks involved? Was reading this article in CNN on the subject, but it seems long on emotion and short on facts…so, what’s the 'dope here?
(I realize that this might be a more GQ type question, but my guess is that it will turn into a debate between pro-business and pro-environmental groups, since there is so much emotion obviously tied up in it)
-XT
What’s the Straight Dope on ‘fracking’?
I can’t read articles on it without giggling like a schoolgirl.
No more mister nice Gaius!
No more Mr. Nice Cylon!
-XT
Brian Dunning did a Skeptoid podcast on fracking recently. You can read it or download the audio here:
The bottom line is that those opposed to fracking have not made any kind of evidence-based case against it.
Can’t say, other than it’s something I do with my wife fairly often.
There is evidence of potential problems from fracking. The problem seems to be more political than physical though, with the fracking industry proposing unregulated operation without reasonable measures to monitor and maintain safety, while the opponents want to entirely stop an activity which hasn’t been proven to have harmed anyone. Fracking will probably continue unabated, unless some freak accident causes an earthquake or a fire. It’s not exactly a sensible approach to resolving the questions, but it’s the way we do things in the good old US of A.
She told me you ain’t no fracking good at it:)
It’s not new, O&G companies have been doing it for a long time but there’s so much more of it going on now because combined with horizontal drilling it’s finally made development of the widespread but relatively impermeable shales a viable proposition. Basically, you drill down to the pay formation, then angle the drill bit horizontally and drill within the formation. That way even when a pay zone might be only 50 feet thick, the entire distance you drilled horizontally is all pay.
These shale are very tight though, giving up their hydrocarbons grudgingly. So drillers pump water, sand and caustic chemicals in under pressure to fracture open more of the shale and have those tortuous channels remain open for release of oil or gas, or both.
What some landowners and environmentalist claim is that these fractures have provided a counduit for the chemicals used to invade groundwater aquifers. No doubt that has happened some times in the past. The evidence and coincidential timing is beyond refute. Will proper planning, monitoring and implementation though this should be avoidable in most situations.
The overall dope on fracking is as varied as the geology underneath the land. It will need to be customized based on what lithologies, structures, fluids and priorities may exist.
Earthquakes in Greenbrier might, may be, kinda sorta caused by fracking, according to the State Geological Survey.
**lieu’s **understanding is similar to mine: When done with an eye to minimizing environmental impact, fracking has minimal environmental impact. When done with an eye to maximum extraction and rapid development, there are risks involved to adjacent aquifers.
Strikingly similar, in my way of thinking, to strip mining. Around my hometown, you can tell when they started coal mining in any given area by the current condition of the land–even after the mine’s been closed and replanted to the current environmental standards, you can still tell the difference in mines that were operated before those standards were put in place vs. ones started after.
They are pretty sure it is perfectly safe, but then again it might be insanely foolhardy and render huge tracts of land unstable and uninhabitable while poisoning the earth for decades.
Consider, that when they set off the first atomic bomb, they were pretty sure everything was going to be ok, but, then again, there did seem to be this possibility that a nuclear explosion might actually set the entire earth’s atmosphere on fire and render our entire planet a useless cinder. The math seemed to be in their favor but it was a little ambiguous.
So, they lit one off and now they know.
Fracking is like that due to potentials for creating geologic instability and fucking up the water table and all that. They think it will be ok.
Did anyone here see Gasland? Documentary, interviewing land-owners with some fair horrific stories.
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking
[sub]offerred without comment, do not know enough to confirm or debunk[/sub]
There is some doubt it is the fractures propagating to the aquifers - the shales are down at 7 thousand feet in the case of the Marcellus. It is unlikely that a fracture will propagate that far up to a surface aquifer.
Bad zonal isolation (basically a poor cement job in the intermediate well bore), or very suspect practices when disposing of the fracturing fluids recovered during well clean up are more likely.
I don’t have time right now to provide a cite but I know that a couple of Haliburton executives recently drank fracking fluid straight, in a very public manner.
I saw it too, and if even half of the stuff he cited is true what gas companies are doing is diabolical.
They did that straight? Man, I’d have to be severely impaired…
It was drink or have Dick Cheney shoot them in the face. 
The thing is hydrocarbons collect in formations where impermeable layers of geologically significant size overlay permeable layers of similar sizes. The collection of the hydrocarbons takes place over millions of years. Above that impermeable layer, hydrological characteristics are all affected by the impermeability of the layer. Aquifers are shaped, and directed by the presence of the impermeable layers.
If you want to make the layer permeable, you frack it. That lets you withdraw the hydrocarbons, and sell them. It used to be way too expensive to do it, but fuel demand, and technology have changed that. The cost is only lapping at the edges of economic viability, and in most formations it is still just a bit too expensive for a major infrastructure investment.
It takes a long time to see the changes in making a large impermeable layer of the underlying bedrock of a region permeable. It also takes a lot of money to thoroughly investigate which of the many possible long term changes is likely. Hydrocarbon infiltration is one of the easiest to detect, and among the earliest to occur. But it still takes decades to detect in most cases. The biggest problem in political matters is that by the time you realize that you have dumped a clean water aquifer into a new path, or opened a hydrocarbon flow into a clean aquifer, it is way too late to do anything about it. Probably way too late to sue the corporation that decided to take the chance.
The problems that might happen, much later than the profits would be made, and probably in different political jurisdictions make it fairly easy for people to dismiss the cost of the fairly expensive geological surveys, and ongoing test regimes as totally unrealistic. Your grandkids can’t vote yet, and it ain’t illegal.
Tris
This thread was last commented on a year ago but in that time Fracking has become a bigger controversy and presumably we have more evidence as to the harmful effects of it versus the economic benefits? A cover story in this week’s Village Voice led me to find it and I think it makes more sense to just revive this one than start a new one.
I am an unabashed Liberal and I am hopeful that this country will be able to pioneer renewable energy in the next couple of decades, but that doesn’t mean I ignore the fact that we still need fossil fuels and that being able to produce it domestically would help it be more affordable.
The article I linked is biased, I can see that, but it basically makes the same charges against the oil industry that have been levied in matters of Climate Change against the deniers: The story claims that the science shows that Fracking is very harmful and is not as profitable as oil companies promised or hoped, however they spend a fortune to gather dissenting opinions which create confusion in the minds of the public and politicians.
It’s easy for me to believe since I see it in matters of Climate Change. Is that really what is happening here?
I could be convinced that Fracking is not perfect and does cause negative effects but that they are overstated and that it can be done in some areas with manageable consequences. I can see a compromise that Fracking can be done but only in certain circumstances and with oil companies bearing a ton of responsibility for clean-up, maintenance, and what have you.
It’s also possible that it causes so much damage that it’s just not worth it.
What is the Straight Dope here? Can Fracking be done… maybe not totally safely, but safe enough to make it worth it? Or should I join in with the rest of my Liberal friends who see this as just another way for oil companies to pervert science and politicians and the health of our environment and those of us living around it, all in the name of a few more dollars?
The latest from science is that we are getting a mixed verdict:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/mixed-verdict-on-fracking.html
So, one has to be careful with what some groups related to the industry are telling us, they might say with a straight face that fracking is not harmful, but they are doing so by omitting the mess of pollution that they are generating close to the surface around the wells.