As a huge Battlestar Galactica nerd, I couldn’t help but post this particular title… though of course, this isn’t a post about BSG, it’s a post about hydraulic fracturing (referred to as ‘fracking’). Fracking recently became of interest to me personally as some land that my dad owns in northeastern PA apparently might be on top of natural gas reserves and could therefore be subject to this industrial process. He and I were talking about what he might do with the land, and before I could have an educated discussion with him, I decided I should first do some research.
After looking at a variety of sites online, from what I could cobble together, it seems that the land my dad owns sits on a large shale reservoir that extends from Ohio and West Virginia into Pennsylvania and New York. This shale contains perhaps trillions of cubic feet of natural gas; however, the gas is effectively trapped in the shale, because the lack of porosity in the rock doesn’t allow the gas to escape. Thus, to get the natural gas out, hydraulic fracturing is used. This process has been used for years to help increase productivity of oil and other kinds of wells. What would happen in the case of the natural gas in PA is that the drillers would use highly-propelled water or other fluids to create fractures in the rocks, so that the gas could escape. Seems like using water to open up well fractures wouldn’t be a terribly harmful to the environment; however, it seems like other propellants and materials (like sand) are also pumped into these fractures to keep them open after the water is extracted back out.
So in what I could gather, this raises a few environmental concerns. First, the water that is extracted out of the fractures after the fracking is complete might be contaminated, so it needs to go somewhere… and there are no clear disposal processes outlined in the information I could find. Additionally, any chemicals or other additives that are pumped underground could remain in the water table, thereby damaging or polluting drinking water. Some environmental groups even assert that fracking could cause earthquakes.
At present, it seems like the facts are hazy and unclear. The EPA is currently working on a fracking study, and – based on their website – will release this study in late 2012; it should be a comprehensive discussion on the findings and environmental impact of fracking.
Also too, a documentary movie was released last year called ‘Gasland‘, the plot of which (though I haven’t yet seen it) sounds almost exactly like what is happening to the area where my dad owns land. His land is located in a very rural and underdeveloped area, and all of a sudden he has been hearing that local land owners are selling or leasing their land for huge payouts to oil companies who want to extract the natural gas from underneath. My dad’s piece of land has been in our family for decades… so the thought of it being damaged by oil companies, when once it was used pretty much solely as a hunting retreat for my dad and brother, seemed totally antithetical to what we had the land for in the first place. So his personal debate is currently whether he should even consider selling or leasing the land to the oil companies, should they come knocking on his door.
That all being said, apparently there are horizontal fracking methods whereby gas could be recovered from under your land, without the actual vertical well being on the land itself. So in this case, would owners that said no to wells on their property still not be safe, since the drilling companies could go horizontally underground from a nearby location and extract (and possibly damage) the bedrock underneath?
Going to continue to monitor what’s happening in upstate PA, as well as in my current home of NY.
