Is Fracking a natural process?
I was having a dinner with my mom's boyfriends family and we were discussing politics. They live in PA where there is a lot of fracking. I made some comment like, "How could you destroy your land for a couple of bucks?" His family are all Conservatives. Then they all said, "Fracking is a natural process that has been going on for thousands of years."
I thought Fracking begins with men drilling into the ground. What is natural about that?
Comments
Your partly right; fracking referrers to Hydraulic Fracturing which is a method of extracting natural gas that is locked deep inside gas trapping rocks such as shale. Basically what they do is drill down to the gas bearing rock and detonate an explosive to fracture the rock. Then a pressurized 'fracturing fluid' is injected into the fractures to help extract the gas.
In a sense they are correct because what happens when an earthquake occurs is that rock fractures. Fracking is NOT natural because humans are CAUSING the rock to fracture instead of the stress and strains building up naturally over time until the rocks fracture. Human being are artificially speeding natural processes and making it happen much faster FOR PROFIT. Just watch how your conservative relatives react when they have to remodel their house because fracking has made their house settle unevenly or doors will not close. . I have a house in New Orleans where the whole slab needs to be leveled because it is built in former swampland that settles a 1/2 inch a year, but it doesn't settle at the same rate at all locations. I've watched the ground sink 20 inches in 37 years ( in 1997), enough that the foundation has fractured in addition to settling unevenly so the floor slopes down toward my bedroom. Subsidence is a natural process too, but I don't have the money to get the slab leveled. The person who buys the house (yes, I do have a buyer, and he knows the slab needs to leveled) will have to pay for that.
Fracking is not natural.
Fracking refers to injecting fluids at high enough pressures to induce fracturing in the subsurface rock. This makes pathways for oil and gas to travel to the surface. Fracturing does occur naturally due to stress and strain and from seismic activity. Controlled fracking does regulate how large the fractures are to avoid human induced seismic events, and a lot of hydrology research goes on to mitigate aquifer contamination from migrating fluids, especially in areas where natural groundwater contamination is already an issue.
Nope.
'Fracking' is a highly unnatural process.
The breaking up of the rock might be regarded as accelerating a 'natural' process,
but the introduction of the, (sometimes toxic), chemical agents used into the ground
water is not. (Wells have been poisoned in Pennsylvania.)
Lies. How many places do you know of that naturally cause an underground explosions, pump sand/water/chemicals into the fracked area to force low grade shale/oil to the surface and damage the water table in the process, possibly causing sink holes too. I don't know about you, but I don't.