This post is about a topic that I keep hearing about, but most people I know have not. There is a process known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking for short. It's a relatively new way for energy companies to extract natural gas. It involves injecting "fracking fluid," a mixture of water, diesel and "secret" chemicals, deep underground where it can crack the shale apart, releasing the gas to be collected and allowing the poison fluid to more easily interact with groundwater. As a bonus the fluid then gets removed and comes back as a highly contaminated water that's also radioactive. Oh Joy!
The only downside of burning natural gas is the carbon that is put into the atmosphere - other than that it is a very clean burning fuel. (If it wasn't gas stoves and ranges found in kitchens wouldn't be possible.) Now the emphasis I put on the word burning is there because there is a much greater cost associated with collecting it. Originally natural gas was found as the unwanted by-product of drilling for crude oil and was simply burned off in the oil field. Somewhere along the way someone realized what a great waste this was and a network of pipes was installed all over the country to deliver the natural gas directly to homes for heating and such, thereby turning a waste product into a profit source. But since land based crude oil wells have declined in great numbers in the United States there isn't so much natural gas along with it. Lucky for gas companies they discovered that layers of shale formations deep underground contains lots of natural gas, albeit not accompanied by crude oil. Never mind though, they figured out a way to get at the natural gas and make it highly hazardous to the environment all at the same time. Wasn't that nice of them?
(Update on May 24: I should add that there are still plenty of crude oil wells producing natural gas that is flared off and wasted. Unfortunately those wells are located on the North Slope of Alaska. A proposed pipeline to bring this wasted gas down to the lower 48 has been put on hold because it wouldn't be profitable enough what with all the cheap fracked gas available.)
Lets start the lesson with a TeeVee show called NOW. NOW is no longer bringing in-depth journalism to PBS on Friday night, but thanks to the Internet you can watch this episode right on your computer. Or, if you are so inclined, watch the DVD of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Gasland" from which much of this episode of NOW is based on.
Next, read this article from the New York Times which is current as of February 26, 2011. This is a really great article with multimedia and interactive features to better illustrate how fracking is done. Also it addresses how all that radioactive water is gets disposed of. If you were thinking it happens in a safe manner with strict government oversight you are very much mistaken.
Then there's the earthquakes, specifically the Guy-Greenbrier earthquake swarm in Arkansas. To be fair there is only anecdotal evidence that over a 1000 earthquakes-which started shortly after used fracking fluid was disposed of-by injecting it into deep wells (to be permanently forgotten about)-drilled into a previously unknown fault line that has been dormant for millions of years... Yeah, nobody can really say the waste fluid wells caused the tremors, which reached a peak of 4.7, but after that further injection was ceased and now the tremors seem to be subsiding. No real connection there though.
For more information do your own Google search. There is also a much better blog post by someone else.
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