Frack is Wack
By Shoshanna Ochocki
It is 6:45 am on a Tuesday and the town of Bobtown, PA is awoken by a ground-shaking explosion. The explosion took place at a Chevron well site on February 11, 2014. The site continued to burn for five straight days before it was finally able to be put out on the 15th of February. This incident left two people injured and one missing who was later found dead. As recompense, Chevron sent out 100 vouchers for a free large pizza and a 2-liter of soda. A free pizza and a bottle of soda, according to Chevron, make up for the lack of clean water, clean air, and safety. Chevron is quoted as saying that they "offered a token of appreciation" to the citizens affected by the blast. This specific incident was in a hydraulic fracturing plant and reached a truck carrying natural gas. The explosion in Bobtown is not unfamiliar. Many more cities and towns have had similar fracking accidents, leaving their towns in ruins.
Hydraulic fracturing or hydro-fracking, is a high pressure drilling that fractures rocks deep underground to release gas or oil. This gas and/or oil had previously been thought to be unattainable, and is now able to be used, but at a very high cost to the environment and the stability of the earth. This process is a well-stimulation that involves injecting fluid down a well under very high pressure to artificially fracture rock, usually in deep shale formations. Hydro-fracking was actually developed in 1948, but has only now been heavily relied upon.
Probably the biggest concern is water contamination, whether it be ground water or rivers, lakes, and streams. The biggest problem with fracking is that the cracks in the rocks cannot be controlled. When the rock cracks, excess hydro-fracking fluids, oil, gas, proppants, etc. escape through the fissures and contaminate the water sources. This pollutes the drinking water for whole communities and cities as it did in Bobtown, PA. The water is very hard to clean now that there are fissure for the contaminants to flow through. In the US alone, there have been countless claims of water contamination from hydro-fracking so far and there will be many more if it is not regulated. Not only do the fissures provide a means of escape for the fluids, but failure of the cement casing also allows the contaminants to enter water supplies. In Bainbridge, OH in 2007 an improperly sealed wellbore allowed gas from the shale layer to travel into an underground drinking water supply. Gerard Matthews states, “even if ninety-nine percent of fracturing fluid is composed of water and sand, the remaining one percent of two million gallons of water would constitute 20,000 gallons of chemicals”. Real hydro-fracking operations contain even more chemicals than Matthews stated. An upwards of 20,000 gallons of chemicals is extremely significant, especially when you consider just how many excess fissures there are that the chemicals can escape through. Not only are these chemicals, but the majority are chemicals that should not be ingested by anyone, be they humans or animals or plants, under any circumstance.
Water pollution is not the only concern. Air pollution, flow-back problems, storage, and earthquakes are also major effects of fracking. It has been noted that at each stage in a fracking operation tonnes of toxic volatile organic compounds are released into the air. This pollution is being recognized as “gas-field ozone”. This gas-field ozone is creating previously unrecognized air pollution in rural areas that mirrors urban air pollution. Flow-back of the fracking fluid provides even more chances for the waste-water to escape into drinking water sources. Storing the fracking fluids is just as dangerous. In the U.S. It is common practice to keep the fluids in an open evaporation pit until the drilling operation is closed, which could be an upwards of 25 years. In other fracking sites, the toxic waste-water is re-injected into pits to be stored underground. It has also been recorded that 50 separate earth tremors were caused in the UK by fracking. The tremors were caused by the formation and cracking of the rock substrate and the sheer pressure of the injected fracking water.
Fracking is causing very extreme environmental impacts, most of which we have not even had a chance to research yet. The biggest threat from fracking is the lack of research. The splitting of the rock beds is unpredictable and the chances of the toxic fluid leaking through unknown fractures is extremely high. These are only a few of the immediate dangers we have observed, and we do not even fully understand the consequences of these, let alone the consequences that have not fully emerged yet. Bobtown, PA and Bainbridge, OH are only two specific incidents. Many more towns and cities have suffered from fracking, and many more will continue to suffer is fracking is not stopped or at least regulated.
[Photo, Natural Gas Drilling, by Ari Moore licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
By Shoshanna Ochocki
It is 6:45 am on a Tuesday and the town of Bobtown, PA is awoken by a ground-shaking explosion. The explosion took place at a Chevron well site on February 11, 2014. The site continued to burn for five straight days before it was finally able to be put out on the 15th of February. This incident left two people injured and one missing who was later found dead. As recompense, Chevron sent out 100 vouchers for a free large pizza and a 2-liter of soda. A free pizza and a bottle of soda, according to Chevron, make up for the lack of clean water, clean air, and safety. Chevron is quoted as saying that they "offered a token of appreciation" to the citizens affected by the blast. This specific incident was in a hydraulic fracturing plant and reached a truck carrying natural gas. The explosion in Bobtown is not unfamiliar. Many more cities and towns have had similar fracking accidents, leaving their towns in ruins.
Hydraulic fracturing or hydro-fracking, is a high pressure drilling that fractures rocks deep underground to release gas or oil. This gas and/or oil had previously been thought to be unattainable, and is now able to be used, but at a very high cost to the environment and the stability of the earth. This process is a well-stimulation that involves injecting fluid down a well under very high pressure to artificially fracture rock, usually in deep shale formations. Hydro-fracking was actually developed in 1948, but has only now been heavily relied upon.
Probably the biggest concern is water contamination, whether it be ground water or rivers, lakes, and streams. The biggest problem with fracking is that the cracks in the rocks cannot be controlled. When the rock cracks, excess hydro-fracking fluids, oil, gas, proppants, etc. escape through the fissures and contaminate the water sources. This pollutes the drinking water for whole communities and cities as it did in Bobtown, PA. The water is very hard to clean now that there are fissure for the contaminants to flow through. In the US alone, there have been countless claims of water contamination from hydro-fracking so far and there will be many more if it is not regulated. Not only do the fissures provide a means of escape for the fluids, but failure of the cement casing also allows the contaminants to enter water supplies. In Bainbridge, OH in 2007 an improperly sealed wellbore allowed gas from the shale layer to travel into an underground drinking water supply. Gerard Matthews states, “even if ninety-nine percent of fracturing fluid is composed of water and sand, the remaining one percent of two million gallons of water would constitute 20,000 gallons of chemicals”. Real hydro-fracking operations contain even more chemicals than Matthews stated. An upwards of 20,000 gallons of chemicals is extremely significant, especially when you consider just how many excess fissures there are that the chemicals can escape through. Not only are these chemicals, but the majority are chemicals that should not be ingested by anyone, be they humans or animals or plants, under any circumstance.
Water pollution is not the only concern. Air pollution, flow-back problems, storage, and earthquakes are also major effects of fracking. It has been noted that at each stage in a fracking operation tonnes of toxic volatile organic compounds are released into the air. This pollution is being recognized as “gas-field ozone”. This gas-field ozone is creating previously unrecognized air pollution in rural areas that mirrors urban air pollution. Flow-back of the fracking fluid provides even more chances for the waste-water to escape into drinking water sources. Storing the fracking fluids is just as dangerous. In the U.S. It is common practice to keep the fluids in an open evaporation pit until the drilling operation is closed, which could be an upwards of 25 years. In other fracking sites, the toxic waste-water is re-injected into pits to be stored underground. It has also been recorded that 50 separate earth tremors were caused in the UK by fracking. The tremors were caused by the formation and cracking of the rock substrate and the sheer pressure of the injected fracking water.
Fracking is causing very extreme environmental impacts, most of which we have not even had a chance to research yet. The biggest threat from fracking is the lack of research. The splitting of the rock beds is unpredictable and the chances of the toxic fluid leaking through unknown fractures is extremely high. These are only a few of the immediate dangers we have observed, and we do not even fully understand the consequences of these, let alone the consequences that have not fully emerged yet. Bobtown, PA and Bainbridge, OH are only two specific incidents. Many more towns and cities have suffered from fracking, and many more will continue to suffer is fracking is not stopped or at least regulated.
[Photo, Natural Gas Drilling, by Ari Moore licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]