With all of the hype about Keystone XL Pipeline, I was curious about the pros and cons of fracking. With a new republican majority controlling the house and senate, the Keystone XL Pipeline will most likely be put into place as soon as the bill is passed. Sure this maybe will stimulate the economy, but I do not believe that the government is looking out for the best interest of the Environment. Many people believe that fracking is not bad for the environment but there is a lot of evidence that point the other way.
Fracking is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground in order to break or “fracture” shale rock to get the natural gasses from the rock. According to many scientists, fracking leads to many problems relating to the environment. The website dangersoffracking.com lists many examples of these problems. Each gas well used for fracking requires 400 tanker trucks. This wastes a lot of energy and chemicals. It is also requires a ridiculous amount of water. Fracking requires 1-8 million gallons of water for each job. This process leads to 40,000 chemicals used to make the water and sand into the natural gas and oil. This results in 600 chemicals being used for fracking fluid which include toxins and carcinogens. Then this is pumped underground into a pipeline where the excess contaminates sources of water. So sure this process creating a lot of gas, but at what cost to the environment?
With this information available, I am curious to why republicans believe it is alright to encourage fracking. Is it because they don’t believe it, or they just don’t care. There are also arguments in that this use of extracting natural gas lowers the leakage of methane. A study conducted by the university of Texas explains that when companies use state of the art fracking equipment, and methods they can lower green house gas emissions and methane leakage. The problem with this study though is not all fracking sites use these state of the art technology and methods, which can result in more spillage. This study needs to conduct more measurements, and have a larger range of sample sites, not using just the ideal one. Once they do that, people will have a clearer idea of the effects from fracking. Sure fracking may seem better than just burning coal, but are there hidden problems that go along with it, or is it truly the safer option.
Sources:
http://www.dangersoffracking.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/18/fracking-may-not-be-as-bad-for-the-climate-as-we-thought/
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