Fracking
What Is Fracking?
In the United States, the term “fracking” has come to be a catch-all term for oil and gas drilling, at least onshore.
Fracking is short for [hydraulic fracturing,] which is one of many processes involved in developing an oil and gas well. After the well has been drilled, water, chemicals and sand are blasted down the hole under extremely high pressure to crack open the rock formation and release oil and gas.
The sand props the cracks open. Among other things, the chemicals serve to reduce the friction between the water and the well pipe.
Fracking is not a new thing. The process was developed in the late 1940s and was primarily used to get more oil and gas out of existing wells.
But about 20 years ago, oil and gas companies found new fracking techniques that could extract gas from formations that could not otherwise be tapped. The newer methods use far more water and pressure. Combined with recent technologies to drill wells sideways underground and guide them precisely as they go, it spread oil and gas development into areas that hadn’t seen drilling in generations.
One of those places is Pennsylvania, which is part of what is now sometimes called the Shale Crescent, with Ohio and West Virginia Fracking also revived production in places such as North Dakota, eastern Montana and Colorado. But the new technologies also revived drilling in widely recognized oil states such as Texas and Oklahoma. [Note: Fracking in western Pennsylvina you encountered a “Paraffin Based Oil” meaning WAX. To liquefy this paraffin so Oil could flow, companies used a chemical [Toluene] and water under high pressure to melt this wax. You used a “Straddle Packer” to segregate these formations.
But fracking, as a term, has come to be associated more broadly with the spread of drilling to new places that started in the years before 2010. That drilling boom has made the United States the leading producer of oil and gas in the world.
Generally, fracking excludes conventional wells, where the hole is drilled straight down without turning. Offshore wells are mostly conventional, vertical wells. Onshore, conventional wells usually do not produce as much. And they are still often fracked in order to stimulate greater production.
[Note: Fracking in western Pennsylvania encountered a “Paraffin Based Oil” meaning WAX. To liquefy this paraffin so Oil could flow, companies used a chemical [Toluene] and water under high pressure to melt this wax. You used a “Straddle Packer” to segregate these formations.]
How much fuel does fracking produce?
All new wells in the United States are fracked at some point, especially onshore. According to S&P Global Commodity Insights, a firm that provides energy information to industry professionals, fracked wells account for 97 percent of all U.S. onshore production of oil and gas — measured in barrels of oil equivalent to account for both oil and gas.
When offshore is included, fracked wells account for about 93 percent of all U.S. production.
Last year, according to the Energy Information Administration, the United States produced a total of 39.25 quadrillion British thermal units of gas and averaged 12.9 million barrels of oil a day. A barrel is 42 gallons, so U.S. oil production equaled more than 540 million gallons.
How Does It Affect The Environment?
Fracking is often presented as dangerous to groundwater. But the hydraulic fracturing process itself — the pressurized injection of chemical-laced fluid deep underground — has not been commonly found to contaminate groundwater.
The spread of oil and gas production to new areas, however, has brought with it all the environmental downsides of oil and gas production to those who live and work near it. That includes truck traffic, noise, emissions of volatile organic compounds and greenhouse gases and sometimes leaks that contaminate groundwater and surface water.
On newer, fracked wells those problems can be larger and worse than with conventional wells that are smaller. Because wells can now be drilled horizontally, many are often grouped on one well pad, concentrating traffic and pollution in one place.
and environmental groups say the newfound bounty of oil and gas has prevented a desperately needed shift away from fossil fuels.
But the oil and gas industry says fracking has helped the environment by providing an abundance of natural gas to replace coal for electricity generation.
The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest lobbying group, says switching from coal to gas-fired generation accounts for 60 percent of power sector emissions reductions in the last 20 years. Gas does burn more cleanly than coal. But its increased use can lead to more leaks of methane — a particularly potent greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere.
As for oil, producers often stress that the United States has stricter environmental regulations than other oil-producing countries.
“Fracking is the reason the US leads the world in emissions reductions by unlocking vast amounts of clean, affordable natural gas that has displaced higher-emitting energy sources,” Quoting Anne Bradbury, chief executive of the American Exploration & Production Council, which represents some of the top U.S. independent producers of oil and natural gas.
Hydraulic fracturing has also been found to cause earthquakes in places such as Oklahoma and Texas. But the most powerful and damaging earthquakes linked to oil and gas activity there were from underground disposal of wastewater from drilling. The massive increase in wastewater in need of disposal is a by-product of the fracking-driven oil boom.
Could A President Ban Fracking?
In a word: No. By himself or herself, a president cannot ban fracking. It would take an act of Congress, and the idea has never gained traction on Capitol Hill under Republican or Democratic control.
The federal government does not have direct jurisdiction over most oil and gas production, as the majority occurs on private land. Fracking, and oil and gas production in general, is regulated at the state level, by state legislatures and state agencies.
Several states have banned fracking, most notably New York. Others banned it even though they do not have much production, if any. New York’s ban, enacted in 2014, still allows low-volume fracking, which would be used on conventional wells.
In 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, New York’s roughly 14,500 wells produced more than 228,000 barrels of oil and nearly 10 billion cubic feet of gas.
The last time federal officials legislated on fracking was in 2005, in then-President George W. Bush’s signature energy bill. A short provision in that bill became known as the “Halliburton Loophole,” named for the oilfield services company where former Vice President Dick Cheney had previously served as chief executive.
Understand this; A federal appeals court had ruled that fracking should be regulated the same way as disposal wells under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The 2005 provision from Congress put that idea to rest by exempting it from a portion of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The effect of the “loophole” has often been exaggerated to mean that drilling is completely exempted from federal regulation, But Is Not.