Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking

Warning: sometimes it’s difficult to determine between fact and exaggeration, partly due to industry secrecy and resistance to any criticism, partly to loopholes in the laws—more to follow—and partly to the lack of verified tests and reports by the industry, opponents, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Background

The process became popular in the mid 1900’s to stimulate production in petroleum and gas wells that otherwise would have become commercially nonproductive. More than a million wells have been kept viable in the US using and reusing hydraulic fracturing. When a well is drilled, a supportive casing is placed along the walls and secured against leaks.

One method is to pour cement down the casing and back up the outside of it to prevent leakage of the pressurized water mixed with sand and chemicals pumped into the rock formation and of petroleum and gas released from the factures thus formed. The solid parts of the solution, called proppant, keep the fractures open.

Since the 2000’s, horizontal wellbores allow greater exposure to formerly inaccessible rock formations. Perforations are placed along the length of the wellbore to conduct fracturing, which allows recovery of petroleum and gas deep below the surface and in rock generally difficult to mine. Sleeves that can open and close are sometimes used instead of the cement option to prevent leakage.

Advantages

Fracturing can be used multiple times on the same well to keep it producing and accounted for forty-nine percent of gas production in 2010. With greater production in the US, gas and oil imports have decreased significantly in the twenty-first century.

Wednesday—effects on water, air, and surface land around such wells.