Fracking Pros And Cons: Weighing In On Hydraulic Fracturing

WASHINGTON -- Last Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its final research plan to study the effects of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water and its long-term impacts on the environment.

Hydraulic fracturing involves drilling thousands of feet below the earth's surface and pumping millions of gallons of water and chemical additives at high pressure into the well. Because of the United States' large reserves of shale gas, advocates say American energy independence is a real possibility if the industry is given support.

Conversely, environmental activists caution that the potential dangers of the fracking process have not been fully evaluated and may not be worth the risk. Instead, they say, the U.S. should focus on renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass.

The energy potential for shale gas is undeniable. It is among the fastest growing energy sources in the country: In 2000, shale gas represented 1 percent of natural gas supplies in the country. Today, that number is 30 percent and rising.

While there are great risks to the fracking process, many argue there are also a number of potential benefits.

Below is a list of several arguments made by both sides, for and against hydraulic fracturing. Do the risks outweigh the rewards? Is this a practice not worth pursuing? You decide.

RATE IT!   |  

VOTE

Disagree

Agree!

CURRENT TOP 5 PICK YOUR OWN TOP 5

USERS WHO VOTED

NEW! CREATE YOUR OWN SLIDESHOW

Quick Poll

Is Hydraulic Fracturing Worth It?

Yes, Its Potential Benefits Far Outweigh Any Risks

No, The Environmental Impact Is Not Worth The Investment

Share your vote on Facebook so your friends can take this poll

Comments

[Kenz300]

02:15 PM on 01/06/2012

We all need clan air, clean water and safe food to eat.

Polluted ground water can not be cleaned up.

Republicans like to deregulate everything. Let business regulate themselves they say.

That is how business owners make all the profits and then leave the mess for the taxpayers to clean up. Does anyone remember when rivers caught fire in America. We have regulations because business will go for profits at the expense of health, safety and the environment.

[TheRepublikid]

06:53 PM on 12/08/2011

My biggest beef is the seeming endless stream of back and forth information from both sides that seems to show highly compelling data that proves the other side is wrong. Despite years of debate and study, we still have no truly clear idea of if we should proceed or not. No one wants their back yard filled with toxic sludge, but I know a lot of my neighbors could use the jobs, or the gas royalties. http://www.republikid.com/2010/06/pros-cons-natural-gas-drilling.html

[Juan Reyna]

05:02 AM on 01/03/2012

I would not agree to drill, now a days we do anything for a buck, better get to some kind of bardering or some other way of getting money. We have got to think about our children, we will be leaving them with a big mess.

[Genatco Ltd]

03:41 PM on 11/14/2011

If the banks were vesting in drilling for oil or natural gas both equally risky business ventures wouldn't we have been self sufficient by now in the US? The grand illusion about fossil gas energy in the US being it's a high risk venture without a guarantee of high return. Past perceptions of would be investors has proved Wall Street oil and gas commodity stocks are less risky and more viable then giving a drilling Fracking company 1/2 million $$ to drill a hole in the ground for an unknown ROI. Greed will win it always has and the grand illusion of drill baby drill is just that. Should I be wrong then surely you will not reap the benefits of someone else's oil or natural gas success although you may reap the environmental fallout. Vesting in magnetic motion physics is a new energy frontier the universe has known about since the big bang. http://www.genatco.com

[The last sane American]

08:55 AM on 11/13/2011

Well I am glad we got that con into the mix - Number 5 - causes earthquakes.

1) What is the source of the photo? a natural earthquake of magnitude probably greater than Richter 7 (a logarithmic scale; so every unit is 10 time stronger}
2) what is the magnitude of the greatest quake supposedly associated with 'fraccing"? about 3.
3) so the damage associated with that 'fraccing' quake would be 10,000 times less than the photo shown.
4) And what what is the magnitude range of the millions of frac jobs conducted over the last 60 or so years? Probably less than 2 as there appear to be negligible reports of even rattling cabinets in this country associated with fraccing.
5) so if this con is a "straw dog" what about the others?
6) just wondering has noted the NIMBY effect?

[Michael Lee Smyth]

01:44 AM on 11/13/2011

I have a friend whose cousin now has to go to the laundromat and use bottled water to cook and clean with, They can turn on the tap and there is so much combustible gas in the line that it will merrily burn as the water comes out from the tap. Needless to say, they turned the water heater off.

[vidtrainer110]

12:08 AM on 11/13/2011

Because of the "Haliburton Rule" we are not allowed to know the chemicals that make up fracking fluild. In 2005 Cheney and the Bush Administration managed to get fracking fluid exempted from the Clean Water and Drinking Water Acts. Without a willingness to disclose the content of said fluid I would be in favor of doing everything possible to slow down or stop the use of this practice. I do not trust the reasons why Haliburton and the oil industry worked so hard to get these chemicals exempted. Instead of working with the EPA to ensure this process is safe, they have done everything they can to prevent having to disclose information. While I love the idea of energy independence and natural gas is cleaner burning than oil, their unwillingness to reveal information tells me they have something to hide. After the gulf oil spill I have become more skeptical about trusting the assurances of the oil industry.

[bbrecht]

02:44 PM on 11/12/2011

It's not energy independence if you are trading your water resources for a short lived supply of gas.

[energydem]

01:27 AM on 11/12/2011

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST

Shale gas production is not benign, no energy production is. These are engineering issues that are manageable if we require them to be. But one slide is correct about gas being a bride to renewables -- we need time to develop and broadly deploy renewables and key enabling technologies like large scale storage could be decades away. They are also very expensive, at a minimum raising equity issues. Gas is the only option we currently have for large scale, near term CO2 emissions reductions from power generation and we need to take advantage of this or we will be unable to do anything to avoid 500-600 ppm CO2e emisisons by mid-century. We have to make massive reductions NOW.

The Huffington Post should not allow something so clearly biased and incorrect to represent these as honest points for discussion.

[energydem]

01:24 AM on 11/12/2011

I don't even know where to begin. #1. Let's start with the "recoverable barrels" of shale gas. It does not come in barrels, it's gas. EIA might have said BOE or barrels of oil equivalent, but it certainly never said an unqualified "recoverable barrels". #2. NRDC's findings are, according to this story, about pollution "belived" to be caused by fracking. This is not about beliefs, it's about facts. And of 20,000 shale wells drilled by 2010, there were 43 widely reported environmental incidents associated with fracking and none resulted in deep aquifer contamination (source: MIT Future of Natural Gas Study). #3 to put a headline, "Emits more CO2 than Coal' and to cite Howarth -- one far, far outlier academic out of thousands who say the opposite, that emisisons are significantly lower (50%) -- puts Howarth proponents in the same category as climate deniers who latch onto the one wacko out of 100, then say the science is unsettled. #3 is categorically false. #5, to use a photo of a severe earthquake has nothing, zero to do with micro-tremors you get from fracking. You get the same thing from enhanced geothermal. #9. Uses alot of water compared to what? Here are numbers for power generation that INCLUDE the water associated with the production of the raw fuel (gallons of water per unit of energy): deep shale gas combined cycle gas turbine, 204; coal steam turbine, 472; nuclear, 702; concentrated solar, 750 (source national energy technology laboratory). CONTINUED NEXT POST FROM

[bbrecht]

02:43 PM on 11/12/2011

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2070533,00.html?xid=fblike

Game over

[energydem]

11:12 PM on 11/12/2011

Do you think I haven't read the study, not just an article about it? Please, this is old news. It is the only decent piece of work out there on the topic but the study doesn't establish causation and the confusing fact is that there was methane in the water but no frac fluids, suggesting what many have said for a long time -- these problems are associated with poor drilling practices, not fracking per se and precisely what the MIT study said. We need to regulate the drilling, period. The Duke study also says we may possibly need more stringent regulations.

[IPredictARiot]

01:39 AM on 11/13/2011

Actually, fracking chemicals have been found in an aquifer in WY (in all fairness, this is a very recent development)

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/11/fracking-chemical-appears-wyoming-aquifer/44915/

[energydem]

07:58 AM on 11/13/2011

This is from a "Propublica" report. They do very shoddy work, do not believe what you read in Propublica. They do no have scientists doing this work. The Duke study was done by scientists, the MIT study as well.

[jph2132]

01:19 PM on 11/11/2011

The equation of environmental impact vs. energy independence is a false one. Where is impact on HUMAN HEALTH in that balance?

[Marla Broyer]

11:56 PM on 11/10/2011

NO NO NO NO!!!!! This is bad! Bad Bad Bad! Go lay down and never speak of this again!

[PureEnergy]

09:46 PM on 11/10/2011

Okay, not all the photos go with the issues, and the earthquake issue is a stretch, but the other eight pros and cons are the issues we should be looking at -- way beyond the brief captions presented here.

[rivrgrrl]

10:04 PM on 11/10/2011

Google Oklahoma earthquakes.

[rivrgrrl]

09:26 PM on 11/10/2011

Polluted environment, flammable drinking water, higher incidence of earthquakes - nope,

not worth it.

[vandegrasse]

09:21 PM on 11/10/2011

There are no pros to tracking!

[Kurfco]

08:34 PM on 11/10/2011

Almost every photo used in this piece is drawn from something completely unrelated to the story and was chosen to be inflammatory. The water picture looks to be in Tijuana or maybe the LA River. Haz Mat suits for chemicals. Buildings tumbled from major earthquakes, when the ones in the UK were barely perceptible and caused no damage. Steam spewing manufacturing plants. Takes photo journalism to a new low.