Name: Yuzhu Gong Due Date: 2015/1/13
Article Title: Fracking
Author/Source: Scientific American
Article Title: Fracking
Author/Source: Scientific American
A: List major ideas, concepts or key points - point by point
- All had assembled to help the agency determine whether fracking, accused of infusing toxic chemicals and gas into drinking-water supplies in various states, is guilty as charged.
- The basic technique of “hydraulic fracturing” has been used in conventional-style wells since the late 1940s.
- When a vertical well shaft hits a layer of shale, chemically treated water and sand are blasted down at high pressure to crack open the rock and liberate natural gas.
- Only recently, however, has the technique been combined with a newer technology called directional, or horizontal, drilling—the ability to turn a downward-plodding drill bit as much as 90 degrees and continue drilling within the layer, parallel to the ground surface, for thousands of additional feet.
- The technique is the cause of political conflict in New York, where the Department of Environmental Conservation recently unveiled a plan to give drilling companies access to 85 percent of the state’s portion of the Marcellus and Utica Shale formations.
- The actions essentially replace a previous statewide ban on fracking, despite the fact that the EPA is only midway through a major safety study due in preliminary form in late 2012.
- These kinds of impacts can be blamed on fracking if the term refers to the whole industrial process—but not necessarily if it means just the underground water blast that fractures the rock after the drilling is done.
- That’s where the EPA study comes in. The agency is examining a variety of ways in which drilling could contaminate water supplies—from unlined and leaky storage pits, to faulty well cementing, to the possible communication of deep fractures with the surface.
B: Summarize the author's main point or idea
Summary of Author's Main Points:
Fracturing a deep shale layer one time to release natural gas might pose little risk to drinking-water supplies, but doing so repeatedly could be problematic. If fracking is taken to refer to the entire process of unconventional gas drilling from start to finish, it is already guilty of some serious infractions. The massive industrial endeavor demands a staggering two to four million gallons of water for a single lateral. Most recently, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection fined Chesapeake almost $1 million for contaminating 16 families’ water wells with methane as a result of improper drilling practices. None of this constitutes evidence that fracturing a horizontal shale layer has directly polluted an aquifer. Fracture propagation via large scale hydraulic fracturing operations has proven difficult to predict. The agency added that fracture lengths might extend farther than anticipated because of weaknesses in the overlying rock layers.
Summary of Author's Main Points:
Fracturing a deep shale layer one time to release natural gas might pose little risk to drinking-water supplies, but doing so repeatedly could be problematic. If fracking is taken to refer to the entire process of unconventional gas drilling from start to finish, it is already guilty of some serious infractions. The massive industrial endeavor demands a staggering two to four million gallons of water for a single lateral. Most recently, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection fined Chesapeake almost $1 million for contaminating 16 families’ water wells with methane as a result of improper drilling practices. None of this constitutes evidence that fracturing a horizontal shale layer has directly polluted an aquifer. Fracture propagation via large scale hydraulic fracturing operations has proven difficult to predict. The agency added that fracture lengths might extend farther than anticipated because of weaknesses in the overlying rock layers.
C: Reaction to the article
My Own Thoughts on the Topic:
The irony of this article is that although it is very possible that gas companies have been guilty of carelessness in how they drill wells and dispose of waste, fracking technology itself may be exonerated. The yard signs would be wrong, yet the fears would be right. I believe that the cons of fracking are outweighed pros, we should care about the health first instead of finance.
My Own Thoughts on the Topic:
The irony of this article is that although it is very possible that gas companies have been guilty of carelessness in how they drill wells and dispose of waste, fracking technology itself may be exonerated. The yard signs would be wrong, yet the fears would be right. I believe that the cons of fracking are outweighed pros, we should care about the health first instead of finance.