The Dangers of Fracking and Why it Must Be Stopped

 Julian Websdale/Wake Up World

Hydraulic fracturing is the fracturing of rock by a pressurized liquid. Some hydraulic fractures form naturally – certain veins or dikes are examples. Induced hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracturing, commonly known as fracking, is a technique in which typically water is mixed with sand and chemicals, and the mixture is injected at high pressure into a wellbore to create small fractures (typically less than 1mm), along which fluids such as gas, petroleum, uranium-bearing solution, and brine water may migrate to the well. Hydraulic pressure is removed from the well, and then small grains of proppant (sand or aluminium oxide) hold these fractures open once the rock achieves equilibrium. The technique is very common in wells for shale gas, tight gas, tight oil, and coal seam gas and hard rock wells.

The first experimental use of hydraulic fracturing was in 1947, and the first commercially successful applications were in 1949. George P. Mitchell is considered by some the modern “father of fracking” because he applied it to the Barnett Shale in the 1990s. As of 2010, it was estimated that 60% of all new oil and gas wells worldwide were being hydraulically fractured. As of 2012, 2.5 million hydraulic fracturing jobs have been performed on oil and gas wells worldwide, more than one million of them in the United States.

The Dangers

Fracking uses a toxic chemical cocktail known as fracking fluid. Companies using fracking fluid have resisted disclosing the contents of fracking fluid, claiming the information is proprietary. However, samples from well sites indicate that the fluid contains formaldehyde, acetic acids, citric acids, and boric acids, among hundreds of other contaminants. It has recently come to light that, despite the illegality of the action, companies have been caught using diesel fuel in the fracking fluid.

Fracking removes millions of gallons of precious freshwater from the water cycle. Each well uses between two and five million gallons of locally-sourced freshwater which will be permanently contaminated by ground contaminants and toxic chemicals contained in the fracking fluid. About half of this water returns to the surface, where it is stored in steel containers until it can be injected deep underground in oil and gas waste wells. At least some of the other half of this toxic cocktail makes its way back into the water supply.

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