Part II: Endangering U.S.
Water Supplies
Basically, the initial steps
for forming a fracking well start off the same as for any conventional well. A
hole is drilled down past the first 50 feet or so of soil, down past fresh
water aquifers and then into deeper formations which can be anywhere from 1000
feet to 4000 feet below the surface. Once past the water table, a steel case is
placed down the borehole well. Cement is poured down the borehole shaft which
backs up and fills the spacing between the borehole inner cavity wall and the
steel shaft forming a cement annulus. Ideally, this is to prevent any
contaminants from entering the water table.
Vertical drilling then
continues till one is close to the shale rock formation which can be anywhere
from 6,000 to 10,000 feet below the surface. Vertical drilling continues until
a kick-off point is reached where the borehole drilling is maneuvered to curve
the shaft and then continue the drilling horizontally. The borehole shaft may
continue horizontally for a few thousand more feet. The drill is removed and a
new steel casing is put in place that extends through the full length of the
borehole. Next a specialized explosive device is sent into the borehole which
creates perforations through the steel case and makes holes right into the
shale rock.
Next, under high pressure, a
mixture of water, chemicals, and sand is pumped into the borehole, usually
using big diesel powered pumps, which enters into the perforations made into
the shale rock. As the water is pressured in, it creates fractures in the
shale, hence the name hydraulic fracturing. Typically, after four to six weeks
of drilling, anywhere from three to seven days are spent fracking into the
shale rock enabling the release of oils and natural gas. The sand particles
keep the factures in the rock open so as the water pressure is alleviated, the
oil and gas can seep out through these highly permeable fracture pathways.
The process is highly
intensive in its water usage and typically one fracking uses five million
gallons of water, which is typically mixed with 40,000 gallons of chemicals
like acids. Five million gallons of water is the enough to supply the needs of
150 people for one year. The oil and gas companies are not required to tell
regulators what the chemicals are used in fracking. Actually, under the
bipartisan Energy Policy Act of 2005, by what is referred to as the
‘Halliburton Loophole”, fracking is exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act,
the Clear Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. By the way, even while arguing
about concerns for global warming, a then Senator Barrack Obama voted for the
bill, and when it was brought up in a debate with Hillary Clinton during the
democratic primaries for presidential contenders, Barrack Obama stated he voted
reluctantly but wanted the United States to achieve energy independence and
liked the provisions the bill had for ‘clean coal.’ For those that have been
following the energy sector, ‘clean coal’ seems to be a propaganda tool for the
coal industry and never materialized. A pilot plant with advanced carbon
sequestration technology has been talked about but never constructed, yet the
coal industry spent literally tens of millions of dollars marketing the
concept.
Regarding the politics, both
parties have been complicit in the current state of the fracking industry.
Apparently, the only difference between the two parties is the Republican view
that we are not doing enough fracking, especially on publicly owned land, and
for this President Obama is occasionally accused of having a war on the oil
industry. The current conservative view is that all federally owned land should
be privatized and the government should be kept out of it. Although it probably
appears normal in the current political landscape, this is quite a dramatic
change in conservative ideology which once held a belief in conservation of
America’s landscapes. It was the Republican Party that effectively began the
first federal national parks in the 1870s. Aggressive environmental activism
didn’t really pick up in the United States till the 1970s.
As the number of fracking
wells has been rising at a high rate, the five million gallons of water per
well, the equivalent of seven Olympic sized swimming pools, adds up quite
rapidly. The industry likes to point out that a typical large size golf course
uses up one million of water per week in the summer, and that such uses over
time easily surpass the amount of water used in fracking. However, what is not
brought up when such comparisons are made is that the water used in fracking is
typically completely removed from the hydrologic cycle. In other words, when a
golf course is watered, some of that water evaporates back into the air, and
some runs off into nearby streams and the rest sinks into the soil and joins
the water table. Other industries that use water will filter out particles and
toxins and put the water back into the cycle, and so forth. The water from
fracking is typically highly contaminated with chemicals and often radioactive
with Radium-226 and Radium-228. The industry usually can’t recycle the water
and instead the waste water is pressured into deep injection wells, sent more
than a mile below the surface of the earth. Basically, the water is simply just
removed from biosphere altogether. As there are concerns of long term future
water shortages, one can see the danger of removing potentially potable water
from the hydrologic cycle altogether.
Scientists have already
noticed that global warming has increased drought cycles, and some of the areas
hit by the most severe of droughts also have an active fracking industry
competing for the local water supply. For instance, at the heart of the Texas fracking
oil and gas rush, the Eagle Ford Shale formation, the local water aquifer
levels have dropped by 300 feet. Some Texas communities had at one point ran
out of water or came very close to the brink of running out of water. Many
reservoirs in west Texas are still only at 25% capacity. The combination of
drought and high water demand for fracking caused similar problems in Colorado
and parts of California.
Since 2008, fresh water
lakes have seen water levels decline, and many scientists attribute this to
climate change. This has been especially noticeable among the Great Lakes which
supplies water to 40 million American and Canadian residents. In the Great
Plains region from North Dakota to Texas, the Natural Academy of Sciences has
noted that over-pumping of the water aquifers by the farming community could
deplete the groundwater supply by 70% over the next 50 years. Certainly, 97% of
the water on the Earth is in our oceans, but only a mere 2.5% of that water is
fresh water for which depend on to live. Of that 2.5%, less than 1% of that
fresh water is readily accessible for human use as the bulk of the fresh water
on this planet is actually located in the Antarctica. So we must ask ourselves,
should we add the additional burden of fracking on our fresh water supplies
that simply throws the water out of the system permanently?
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