...Fracking is becoming a worldwide conversation. Hydraulic fracturing is what fracking really is. It has become a debate on whether it is good or bad for the earth. Fracking has negative effects against the earth. This happens by how fracking is done, and what happens to the earth when fracking is made. Fracking has also a big effect on human health. It can cause many health problems for the people, especially those who live by the site. Fracking is done by injecting very high pressurized mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into the earth to break shale rock to release oil and/or gas to be used. Doing it this way has been connected to earthquakes occurring. Many people do not like this side effect of fracking, and are therefore discarding the idea of fracking. Fracking can also use fresh water to push out the oil and/or gas. By doing it this way a large amount of fresh water is used instead of providing freshwater for those in need. Facking sites are also very close to water systems, which makes it easy for the fracking chemicals to get absorbed in the water. The chemicals from fracking mixtures can get mixed into the water causing many health problems. The health problems have become a huge decision on whether fracking should stay or go. Since the fracking mixture can get into water, water pollution has...
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...Fracking Fracking is a process used by drilling companies to release gas or recover oil found under the ground below the shale rock. The process involves drilling horizontally into the ground using a high pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals. The goal of the drilling is to release the gas or oil located in pockets under the ground. This process is known as fracking because the drilling process causes the rocks under the ground to fracture. Fracking is the current method used to release gas and oil from under the ground but the process creates many concerns due to its danger to human life and the environment. The use of fracking to release natural gas from the earth has created major concern. Currently the gas and oil industry are on a hunt for natural gas and oil...
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...FRACKING: GOOD THING Natural gas is rapidly emerging as a major fuel of the world economy, meeting the rising requirements of natural gas is hard to achieve. Fracking is one of the most important technologies for natural gas production. Fracking has been used widely in oil and gas industry for decades; it is a technique used to get gas and oil from shale rock. The process of fracking is injecting the mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the rock at a high pressure to release gas (BBC, 2013). Fracking technology experiences long time of development. In 1947, Stanolind Oil conducted the first experimental fracturing to stimulate natural gas; in 1949 Halliburton conducted the first commercial fracturing to extract natural gas (Montgomery and Smith, 2010). Until 2003 fracking was used widely, energy companies actively expand natural gas exploration in Texas and Pennsylvania (Eecworld, 2010). fracking played an important role in America's natural gas resources for many years and countries such as Canada, England and China are actively pursuing implementation of fracking. Nationally, fracking can boost energy industry and promote economic grow in countries. However, like any advanced technology, it can also raise environmental concerns, cause water and air pollution. Therefore, whether the advantages of fracking worth the disadvantages? Yes, it worth. fracking is good, so it should be used on a massive scale to contribute to the increasing demands of energy. There are three economy...
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...completion process that has been proven. It allows producers to recover natural gas and oil safely. This process reduces our national carbon dioxide, reduces our reliance on foreign fuel imports, and accelerates our transition to a carbon light environment. The development of natural gas and oil is critical to America’s energy needs and economic renewal. The process of hydraulic fracturing is using water pressure under tight controls to create fractures in rock that allow oil and natural gas to escape and flow up out of the ground. While in this process “fracturing fluids” are mixed in using high pressure. This creates fissures that allow resources to move freely from rock pores where they are trapped. (Chesapeake Energy) First, the way hydraulic fracturing works is a production drill is drilled through the rock layers to intersect the coal seem that contains coal bed methane, CBN. Second, fractures are created or existing fractures are enlarged in the coal seem so that the CBM can be drawn from the well and pumped to the surface. These fractures are created or enlarged by using a thick water-based fluid which is gradually increased by rate and pressure. Third, over time the coal seam is unable to keep up with the fracturing fluid which results in high pressure causing the coal to fracture along the weaknesses within. Sand is pumped into these fractures to keep them ‘propped’ open after the pressures are released. After a period of fluid recovery or groundwater extraction is when the...
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...issues 3 3. Evaluation of financial performance of 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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...power all of our growing industries. The newest means if called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracking is the process of drilling about 2 miles, or 10,650 feet, in order to reach the shale level of the earth. The shale holds an abundance of shale gas that is formed by the decomposition of plant materials over millions of years. Once they get deep enough they pump water, sand, and a slurry of chemicals down into the shale layer in order to expand the shale thus, giving the gas the means to travel to the surface. Fracking is a very beneficial alternate means of retrieving natural gas from the ground, in the sense that it would...
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...CEOs and publicists of oil and gas corporations declare fracking as a minimal risk procedure; however, many inhabitants residing in fracking sites have voiced various detrimental by-products produced from the fracking process. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, has elicited substantial concerns in health, water availability, water contamination, air pollution, land pollution, and in causing earthquakes. Still, with dated federal regulations, oil and gas companies have meticulously maneuvered fracking procedures by releasing insufficient data to the public; and, appealing to them, and the government, with the possible benefits of generating jobs, economic stimulus, and energy independence. Thus, oil and gas companies blur the harmful impact of fracking with economic incentives....
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...The Effect of Fracking on Water and Public Health Jennifer Casey Concordia University Wisconsin I chose to study water quality for my research article. During my research, I found some articles on hydraulic fracturing “fracking” of shale deposits to obtain natural gas. Fracking has been found to affect the environment through air and water pollution, among other ways. Air and water quality are crucial to the health of the public and I will explore the research on fracking’s effect on water and potential human health consequences of ingestion of contaminated water. The main research article I found, “Environmental Public Health Dimensions of Shale and Tight Gas Development”, is a meta-analysis of several studies on fracking and...
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...United States (U.S.). Natural gas is an odorless, colorless hydrocarbon composed mostly 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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...Working Outline Thesis: The use of hydraulic fracturing or “Fracking” to provide natural gas is immoral because the risks far outweigh the advantages on an environmental and ethical scale. I. What is Fracking? A. Used to release oil or gas from underground formations of shale beds that are too hard to mine. 1. It can pollute local water systems * Toxins from the fracking leak into water systems and poison them * The toxins can get into the drinkable water supply and ruin them 2. The chemicals used damage the environment * The greenhouse emissions from fracking are almost less than half of what we get from coal furnaces. They still have an effect on the air, so one form of pollution changes with another, when there are clean air energy alternatives that have not been utilized effectively. * The recovered water that is used during fracking is usually held in open pits close to the well site causing contamination to nearby wildlife. II. Fracking consumes over one million gallons of water, which only half is recoverable. A. The amount of water used to frack some wells is well over a million gallons. Only 30 to 50% of that water is recoverable. B. 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used per well in fracking. Many of these chemicals haven’t been disclosed to the public at all. III. Fracking can cause a buildup of methane gas in groundwater in surrounding areas. A. Methane gas is a highly flammable, colorless and odorless gas....
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...Fracking has become a game changer in the current economy increasing oil importation in the USA because of the new reserves of natural gas are being uncovered by this new method. However, fracking has the potential to ruin the land that it takes place in as well as ruin the economy locally and nationally in the long run. The main objective of fracking is to release natural gas from deep underground reservoirs, however, this allows gases, primarily methane, to contaminate several aspects of the environment. Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and currently, the estimated 4% of methane escaping from these wells is equivalent to the carbon emissions from 1-3 million cars. Other byproducts of fracking are known carcinogens and can cause short-term illness, organ damage, nervous system disorders, birth defects, and even death. Results of fracking...
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...house’s value decreased to only 29,000 dollars from 150,000 dollars; they had to install a methane monitor in their basement and had to add a methane-water filtration system. Their neighborhood was already evacuated once before due to the high methane levels. Cassie states, “We [Cassie’s Family] moved here because we love the woods. We wanted to stay here our whole lives,” and then continued to say, "We're not asking for a lot and now they're taking it all away. In a million years, I never would have thought that people could do...
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...known as “fracking”. Natural gas is an extremely flammable gas mixture that consists od methane and a few other hydrocarbons that occur naturally under our soil. The technique of fracking has only recently become economically available with rising prices in fuel. Facking has many waste products and some side effects that are caused by the unnatural forces and the materials that are being used. Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas rom layers of shale rock deep within the earth’s surface. Areas that are being drilled are known as “Plays”. Plays are locations where oil and gas companies actively search for natural gas inside of the shale rock formations. There is a two-step process for drilling natural gas by using hydraulic fracturing. The first is that a production well id drilled thousands of feet deep into the earth’s surface and the gradually leveled so theat the drill bit is traveling horizontally through the ground. The second step is where the name fracking comes from because this is where the process of mixing sand, water, and chemicals (many which are known to be harmful) are forced under very high pressure down into the shale rock through the horizontal part of the drill. The extreme pressure causes the shale rock to fracture releasing the natural gas within. The added chemicals help reduce problems such as a buildup of bacteria and mineral deposits. Fracking is a very water intensive process and uses up to four million gallons of fresh water for each...
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...4 Chapter-2: Water Crisis 6 Chapter-3: The environmental effects of Hydraulic Fracturing 8 Air: 8 Water: 8 Deforestation: 9 Health: 9 Climate: 9 Faulty Wells: 9 Chapter-4: Hydraulic Fracturing: A Controversial Topic 10 Chapter-5: Conclusion and Recommendation 12 5.1 Water Scarcity Issues and Factors: 12 5.2 Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Scarcity: 14 Bibliography 15 Appendices 17 Appendix-1: Shale Gas Extraction 17 Appendix-2: Components of Fracturing Fluid 18 Appendix-3: Percentage of Global share by gas types 19 Appendix-4: Reducing Surface Footprint with Horizontal Drilling 20 Appendix-5: Satellite view of a Hydraulic Fracturing fluid storage 21 Appendix-6: Possible risks of Hydraulic Fracturing 22 Appendix-7: Global physical and economic water scarcity 23 Appendix-8: Survey conducted in Yangon, Myanmar 24 Chapter-1: Introduction Hydraulic fracturing is the process of obtaining natural gas by drilling into shale rock layers deep within the Earth. This process was made possible by advances in drilling technology in the past 100 years (www.energyfromshale.org/). Hydraulic fracturing of shale gas is also known as “fracking”. Hydraulic fracturing involves usage of vast amounts of a water mixture directed under high pressure at layers of shale to release the gas. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation states that approximately 2.4 to 7.8 million gallons of water are needed per fracturing process. The water mixture contains...
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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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