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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