Fracking Questions

Hydraulic fracturing is a technique to get more oil or natural gas from rock formations deep underground.  It involves injecting water and a stew of dissolved volatile chemicals into a well under high pressure.  The process fractures rock, freeing hard-to-get-at oil and gas deposits and increasing the production of wells.  It’s being used in new fields such as North Dakota and Wyoming with geological strata that have been hard to drill up to now, and in old fields such as Pennsylvania to squeeze more hydrocarbons out of formations that had previously been tapped but left a lot of fossil fuel underground that couldn’t be recovered using older technologies.  California is another state that has large reserves from older fields that will likely become prime industry targets due to fracking.  These are primarily in the massive Monterey Shale formation which rests beneath much of the central portion of the state, including the San Joaquin Valley.

People like me who are concerned about the environment are highly suspicious of fracking for a number of reasons.  First, we want to put more emphasis on clean, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and tidal.  Fossil fuels are what’s putting poison into our breathing air and raising global temperatures through the greenhouse effect of gasses like carbon dioxide and methane.  On the whole, we and the earth would be a lot better off phasing out fossil fuels in favor of their clean alternatives rather than finding new ways to produce more of them.  Second, we are alarmed about the possibility of toxic chemicals such as solvents being injected into the ground and contaminating the water table we use for irrigation and drinking water.  Third, fracking has been associated with earthquake activity in Pennsylvania.  To what extent will breaking up subterranean rock formations act to destabilize the crust and set off subsidence and quakes?  Is that something we really want to mess with?  There needs to see a lot more research and provisions for serious safeguards before we should be the least bit enthusiastic about opening up this Pandora’s box.