Fracking Forum

I’m sure you know what the word “fracking” means unless you’ve been sleeping like Rip Van Winkle for the past twenty or so years.  It is a fairly recent invented word that refers to the process of hydraulic fracturing of deep layers of rock to extract the oil and gas from those subterranean deposits.

I could try to explain what the process entails, but I encourage you instead to take a few minutes to watch a very good video presentation of fracking from Voyager Corporation, a company that performs this process.

Hardly a day goes by when something doesn’t come to my Inbox about the perils of fracking.  There is a lot of secrecy about the chemicals used along with the 95% water-and-sand base that is pumped down into the rock to form the cracks and allow gas and oil to flow back up the pipes.

Many unsubstantiated and unproved reports have been made about contamination of the aquifers and drinking water supplies caused by fracking.  I even watched an episode of the television program CSI, where a rancher’s well water was supposedly set afire at the spigot due to gas contamination.  Fracking was said to be the culprit. Several states have banned the process—New York is one—due to the perceived hazard.

I’m no expert on fracking and I won’t pretend to know for a certainty how dangerous the process is, so this column is more a forum for airing ideas about it.  So here goes…

I searched for the answer to the questions, “How deep is the average water well?” and, “What is the average depth of an aquifer?”  I found that most wells are 100-200 feet deep, while aquifers (permeable water-bearing sandstone) can be 500 to 1,000 feet below ground.

Since ground water contamination is the main source of opposition to fracking, I wanted to learn how deep hydraulic fracturing takes place.  I learned that most of it is done at the 5,000 to 10,000 foot level, a mile or more beneath the aquifers and up to two miles below the average drinking water wells.  In my opinion the case for contamination is pretty weak.  But then, I’m not an expert, so what do I know?

So next I wanted to learn how deep the vast network of gas, oil and ethanol pipelines are buried.  Natural gas and ethanol must be transported via pipelines so there has to be a huge infrastructure of these lines throughout the country.  Petroleum can be shipped or transported by tanker truck or rail tank cars, but it is much more economical to pipe it.

I discovered that those huge pipes are mostly within 20 feet of the surface, and most are only buried 3-5 feet below ground.  But wait, that is between the level where drinking water is found and the surface where people live and use it. Wouldn’t that provide much more risk than fracking?  After all, those pipes have been in place for decades, and they must be subject to corrosion and leaks.  There is no concrete barrier around them like there is in the fracking process either.

The latest controversy is over the Keystone XL pipeline that is supposed to bring oil from Canada to the refineries in the United States.  Even this one is being held up and has to be rerouted to avoid the Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska.  But then the Ogallala aquifer is huge, and it extends above and below Nebraska. And it has literally thousands of miles of pipeline running through it already. Check out this video from a Canadian television network about the proposed pipeline.

Before I leave this sensitive topic, I have to point out that the long awaited and oh, so controversial drilling in the ANWR region of Alaska would be 100 percent fracking, since that’s the only way to extract that gas and oil.  Not only is the region a tundra wasteland—those beautiful mountains and lakes that you see in the anti-drill propaganda are not even close to the drill sites—but there are no people living up there, and even the caribou don’t go that far north. If they ever do stray up there, the risk of contamination of the water supply is vastly overstated.  The fact is that all the water up there is frozen anyway.

I regret that I’ve probably disillusioned or angered some of you environmentalists out there, but I cannot support a ban on the extraction of our own natural gas and petroleum to the great advantage of people who seem to be our perpetual enemies. If you care to get in on the forum with your own ideas, feel free to log in and post away.