“It’s dead in the water,” he declared recently. And while its bust has unfortunately led to the laying off of thousands of workers, it has also provided some breathing room to examine the technology that created the boom in the first place — fracking.
Fracking is a revolutionary technique in the extraction of oil and natural gas. Its main benefit is its ability to unlock vast amounts of oil and gas deposits that were previously out of reach to conventional drilling techniques. It has turned several states, such as North Dakota and Oklahoma, into boomtowns. It also led to the very low gas prices that consumers have been paying at the pump, because fracking created a glut of oil.
Too much oil meant the boom went bust. Most of the American fracking operations have shut down, but they stand ready to restart if oil prices rise enough to make it worth their while.
This new technology has caused many troubling side effects, and hopefully, this period of falling oil production will give experts time to examine what exactly fracking is doing to the environment.
In Oklahoma, thousands of people can tell you what it is doing, because they feel it in their very bones.
A decade ago, before fracking began, Oklahoma registered anywhere from one to three earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude per year. Last year that number soared to 890, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times. Fracking is literally shaking the state apart.
“This last one, I thought the building was coming down,” Jason Levings, 29, told the Times as he described what happened to the feed store where he works. The feed store still stands, but the effect of fracking has created tremendous concern in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma isn’t alone. There’s been increased earthquake activity in several states where fracking is being conducted.
Fracking involves deep vertical drilling, and the drilling of horizontal shafts at great depths below the surface of the earth. Specific types of rock formations are targeted for the horizontal shafts, as they are both relatively easy to shatter and they serve as conduits to oil and gas deposits. Into those shafts water, sand and plastic balls are pumped at extremely high pressure, shattering layers of stone and allowing oil and natural gas to escape. The oil, gas, and contaminated water are brought to the surface, and much of the contaminated water is repumped deep into the earth.
The repumping of the contaminated water back into the earth is believed to be the cause of the earthquakes. It’s also believed to be causing contamination to groundwater.
A controversial study released last year by the federal Environmental Protection Agency concluded it had found no widespread evidence of contamination, but also conceded that it lacked sufficient data to make a definitive conclusion. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence has been piling up in states across the nation — from Pennsylvania to California — indicating fracking has indeed caused groundwater contamination.
The science and research into this phenomenon is still in its early stages, and as would be expected, it suffers from intense political battles pitting oil and gas companies against environmentalists, and Republicans against Democrats. Amid the politics and posturing, it is hard to sort out the truth.
While the technology of fracking has helped lower oil and natural gas prices, it clearly has detrimental side effects. The earthquakes alone tell us that fracking is fundamentally changing the structure of the earth.
The nation needs to understand the scientifically true environmental impacts of fracking, before the next fracking-driven oil boom occurs.
©2016 The Salem News (Beverly, Mass.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
