...1, The economic arguments in favour of fracking Enter “fracking,” the process used to access the country’s massive natural gas and oil reserves and the latest energy extraction method to come under intense fire. Ironically, it’s because of fracking that the United States now has enough oil and gas to potentially meet what has been an insatiable need for energy. (1) The economic arguments concerning fracking can be derived from two aspects, national and international. Because everything related to a country’s economy is always from these two parts. National: 1, It has already driven down natural gas prices to the point where utilities are replacing dirty coal-fired power plants with cleaner natural gas-burning plans and increasingly vehicles are burning natural gas instead of dirtier gasoline. 2, As the shale gas is increasingly explored, the coal and other fuels will be replaced. It can lead to country becoming energy independent to reduce some threats. 3, Fracking is a big industry, which can give a boost to national and local economies in forms of revenue. 4, Fracking need much more people to join in to play different roles such as geologists, well drillers, office workers, truck drivers, construction workers. International: 1, This will reverse the global energy scarcity woes, rising shale gas production has increased alternative liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies to Europe in the form of LNG displaced from the American market. (2) 2, For some country, it is...
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...Is Natural Gas Worth It? Fracking, what is it? Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is the fracturing the shale rock to release the natural gas inside by drilling or injecting fluid into the ground at high pressure. According to thedangersoffracking.com each job uses from 1 to 8 million gallons of water mixed with chemicals to make fracking fluid. The fracking fluid contains up to six hundred chemicals including numerous carcinogens and toxins. In this essay I will be explaining why fracking should be stopped. First, the air quality around the fracking sites has become dangerous. The emissions are leaking from wells; the most notable offender being methane which is a greenhouse gas commonly is linked to being a component of global warming. The air has contained chemicals like benzene, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. These chemicals have been known to cause lung related issues as well as several types of cancer. In high enough doses these chemicals could cause death, in humans and livestock alike. Volatile organic compounds are released into the atmosphere from the waste fluid produced during fracking. These waste fluids are unsafely left in open air pits to evaporate creating acid rain, ground level ozone and contaminated air. All of these unnatural occurrences are devastating to surrounding communities, and ecological systems. The once pristine fields in Wyoming now have an ozone count higher than LA on its worse days (Jackson 3). The amount of children with asthma has risen...
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...Santos 5 3.1 Share price history 5 4. Recommendation 7 References 8 Executive summary Evaluating companies for their ethical and financial performance are important processes before deciding whether these firms could be invested in. The report aims at analyzing the energy company of Santos and to assist the client who is interesting in making ethical investment. This report focuses on environmental concern with pollution and the financial performance. The results indicate Santos did not perform ethically. The way of fracking could cause water pollution as well as fracking would endanger the health of human beings. In terms of financial performance, analyzing of financial performance of share price history over five past years indicated decrease. Overall, the graph shows that the share price fall dramatically in these years. It is recommended that not to invest in Santos, due to the ethical issue of fracking would pollute environment and damage health of people and the decline of the share price over five years. 1. Introduction This report was prepared for a client to advice whether Santos is an appropriate company to invest in. The definition of ethical investment can be defined as decisions of investment which investors made depend on whether behaviors of the company are ethical (Hudson 2005, p. 641). The one of largest mining companies, Santos was founded in 1954 and it has...
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...threatening the reliability of the world’s resources at a startling rate, effectively destroying water and air supplies with chemical contamination. What happens when water no longer flows from the faucet, shower, or hose? What happens when the air outside is no longer breathable? This is a frightening prospect which has led to one solution, the process of hydraulic fracturing should be banned to avoid many significant environmental risks. Research has shown hydraulic fracturing has been the cause of numerous environmentally damaging incidents, the most significantly documented is the ground water contamination specifically the detrimental chemicals. “Drinking water sources have been contaminated with explosive methane, as well as other dangerous substances, such as benzene and arsenic, that can cause cancer and other serious illnesses.” (Thompson 2013). The fact that these chemicals are leeching into the public’s drinking water and private wells shows the severity of the impact that fracking is having on the environment. "We don't know if they're connecting to another natural seam in the formation that lets gas or possibly toxic fluids migrate into water supplies," he said. "We do know from a study by Duke University in Marcellus Shale that 68 water wells in New York and 51 in Pennsylvania have been contaminated with hazardous levels of methane, where the risk of explosion in the water supply is very real." (McClatchy 2012). This proves we have documentation of the contamination...
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...of regulations on fracking is leading to air and water pollution, droughts and undisclosed chemicals which are used in the process. II. What is the Fracking? A. Fracking is a process to harvest Natural Gases from the earth core. 1. There are two different processes of fracking, Hydraulic and horizontal fracking. 2. Chemicals are released into wells to harvest the gas. B. The current regulations for fracking are left to each state to determine how the process works. 1. A FRAC Act requires the companies to tell what chemicals are used, but there is loophole. 2. EPA is barred from regulating the ground water. III. II. There are two main benefits of fracking; better source of energy and long term quality. A. Natural gas is a better quality of energy for the United States. 1. Natural gas is clean, safe, colorless, shapeless and odorless. 2. Natural gases burn at lower temperatures so they last longer. B. With Natural gases the dependency on foreign oils will decrease. 1. The price of oil is on the rise. 2. Natural gases are harvested in the United States. IV. III. Although the benefits of natural gas are extremely affective, the effects of the process to harvest the gas is extremely damaging to the environment. A. During the process of fracking there are chemicals...
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...The World Health Organization reports that “indoor air pollution from solid fuel use is responsible for almost 2 million annual deaths and 2.7% of the global burden of disease. This makes this risk factor the second biggest environmental contributor to ill health, behind unsafe water and sanitation. Acute lower respiratory infections, in particular pneumonia, continue to be the biggest killer of young children and cause more than 2 million annual deaths. (World) In many communities like Libby, Montana, woodstove heating is a large contributor to wintertime pollution. Because wood burning typically occurs in residential areas, the intake fraction of pollutants inhaled to pollutants emitted was comparable to that of traffic pollution. To address this, Libby conducted a woodstove exchange program that encouraged residents to replace older stoves with newer, cleaner burning models. In all, 90% of woodstoves were replaced or removed. Concentrations of woodstove pollutants have been reduced by 20% - 64% during the November to February period. Additionally, preliminary analysis across the four winter seasons following the exchange shows decreased reporting of childhood wheeze. (Giles) Numerous interventions have been found that reduce indoor air pollution and the associated health effects. These interventions target the source of the pollution, the living environment and the behavior of the user. For instance, the largest reductions can be realized by transitioning from solid fuels...
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...Agnes Kurthy BUS 140 – Research Paper December 2, 2013 Should the State of California Permit Fracking on a Large Scale Despite a recent decline attributed to a relatively nominal growth over the past couple of years, California continues to rank among the top 10 of the world’s largest economies. It is currently ranked as the world’s ninth largest economy, surpassing many developed nations with an annual GDP exceeding two trillion Dollars, according to a report by CNN last year.1 California’s crude oil and natural gas deposits are located in six geological basins in the Central Valley and along the coast. California has more than a dozen of the United States' largest oil fields, including the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, the second largest oil field in the contiguous United States. California is sitting on a massive amount of shale oil and could become the next oil boom state. But only if the industry can get the stuff out of the ground without upsetting the state's powerful environmental lobby. Running from Los Angeles to San Francisco, California's Monterey Shale is thought to contain more oil than North Dakota's Bakken and Texas's Eagle Ford, both scenes of an oil boom that's created thousands of jobs and boosted U.S. oil production to the highest rate in over a decade. In 2010, California produced 12% of the natural gas, 71% of the electricity, and 38.11% of the crude oil it consumes. The remaining electricity and natural gas was purchased from Canada, the Pacific Northwest...
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...of methane found deep in the earth in formations known as shale. In mid-1997, George Mitchell, an independent prospector made a discovery that would change the natural gas exploration industry for the twenty-first century. (Hinton, 2012). The modification of the well completion technology known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling allowed the oil and gas industry the ability to tap into natural gas reserves trapped in shale deposits miles beneath the earths’ surface. (Hinton, 2012). Mitchell found that forcing fracking fluid at extremely high pressure into the shale formations created fissures in surrounding rock releasing the hydrocarbons and capturing them in the well head. The fracking fluid, also referred to as slick water, is made up of water, chemicals, and sand. Heywood (2012) reports that members of the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives said that between 2005 and 2009 the oil and gas service companies were using over 2,500 fracking products with 750 different chemicals. Some of these chemicals are harmless including salt and citric acid. However, some are extremely hazardous to include benzene, arsenic lead, and methanol. The exact makeup of the fluids used by the industry is unknown due to protection by trade secret laws. In 2005, Congress passed an energy bill excluding the oil and gas industry and the process...
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...Clean Water The Controversy Up until the mid-20th century it was practice for cities to use bays, harbors, and rivers as dumping grounds and sewage run off. In fact major industrial parks built their waste pipes to spill directly into some of the rivers and lakes we use today as recreation (Congressional Digest, 1985). These are some of the Point Sources of water pollution. These are places that can be directly identified as points of pollution like city storm and sewer drains, sewage treatment plants ("Clean water act," 1972). Then there is a non-point source which is a combination of smaller sources that collect into lakes, rivers, and streams. These can come from agriculture farms or even contaminated wash from our freeways and roads. There are almost an infinite amount of water pollutants that run off into our waterways each day. Pathogens such has salmonella, novo virus, and parasitic worms grow and thrive within our waters. Chemicals such as insecticides, herbicides run off from farms and other agriculture areas. Storm water runoff can introduce many types of fuels and oils, and heavy metals. Then there is immense amount of industrial waste like ammonia, sulfur dioxide from power plants, trash from illegal dumping (Pitt, 2001). It’s it important to ensure our fresh water resources are protected and ensured. Although in most industrialized countries access to clean water is at 100 percent; in places such as Uganda and Mozambique where only 52% of the...
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...including goiter and myxedematous cretinism.” (Bunnell) Another area of geology I would be focusing on is groundwater; groundwater as we know is the largest reserve of fresh water to humans. So how can water something essential to human life be harmful? The answer is contamination. Contaminants in water, even present in trace amounts, can be deemed culprit for delayed brain growth, cancer and many other problems. As stated in Robert Cook‘s article, ‘Geology crosses over into medicine’, “The story of contamination of drinking water began more than 500 million years ago. As rainwater makes its way down through the cracks in rocks, it dissolves some of the minerals and, in certain conditions, releases contaminants into the water supply.” (Cook) Arsenic being one of the most common and dangerous contaminants present in the...
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