Monday 2 March 2015

Water For Fracking And The Disadvantages

By Earlene McGee


If you have heard about fracking but have not quite understood what this term means, then you are in the right place. Fracking is the process of drilling and mining in oil and gas industries which uses some highly pressurized liquid substance to stimulate a well. This mixture substance is majorly comprised of water, sand and some chemical proponents that many companies have failed to bring to light. The process and use of water for fracking has led constant uproars from environmental and conservation bodies due to its downside effects.

The purpose of using this highly pressurized liquid mixture that mainly comprises of water, sand and other chemicals like boric acid is to open up the rocks and create fractures. Opening up the fractures enables oil and gas to flow out of the rocks freely without hindrance. After removing the hydraulic pressure, the proponents of the mixture like sand particles help keep the fractures open.

It consumes about 2 to 7 or 8 million water gallons to frack a one well in normal circumstances. However, contingent to the well type and size, more of this can be utilized. Some wells also need to be fracked out more than once and the result of this is that huge and massive quantities of liquid are drawn from our cycle for this purpose.

The utilization of large water amounts on this purpose means that if it is done more frequently an imbalance may be created in our water cycle. The fluid used in this process can hardly be recycled for later use because it is greatly contaminated with acidic chemicals. Although mining companies fail to disclose the chemicals they use for this process, research on their well sites has shown that the use of boric, citric, and acetic acids is evident.

You need to have many tankers to move water and waste from the well site. Due to the large amount of this fluid required, you must acquire around 400 to 600 truckloads wit this fluid. This is a very large number of trucks travelling on a road for a single purpose.

A tanker carrying this much amount of fluid is very heavy. Some weigh up to 100000lbs. The downside of this is that the constant movement of the trucks due to their massive weight will damage the roads. This will result in need for re-carpeting and resurfacing thus resulting to the need for extra finances in your town.

Some of the liquid mixture that is approximately half of it is returned to the surface. It is then stored locked in steel tanks that help keep it out of reach by animals and humans. The liquid has been observed to result in chemical contamination around the tank surroundings.

The other half is perceived to remain underground or where else could it go? A great guess is that this later on circulates back to the cycle hence contaminating it. The cases of contamination around the areas where fracking has occurred are many.




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