Fracking Pros and Cons

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is revolutionizing oil and gas drilling across the country. However, without rigorous safety regulations, it can poison groundwater, pollute surface water, impair wild landscapes, and threaten wildlife.

As a result of fracking, U.S. production of oil and natural gas has increased dramatically. This increase has abruptly lowered energy prices, strengthened energy security and even lowered air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions by displacing coal in electricity generation.

• Access to more gas and oil reserves. Accessing oil and gas from shale, though still finite, helps mitigate the exhaustion of oil and gas resources from conventional extraction methods.
• Self-sufficiency.
• Reduced coal production.
• Jobs creation.
• Energy security.
• Reduced water intensity compared to coal.

Illinois and North Carolina are the most recent states to allow modern fracking, with their state legislatures passing new rules in 2015 and 2014, respectively, and regulators are now waiting for applications.

Fracked communities had significant economic gains. They produced an additional $400 million of oil and natural gas annually three years later, and had increased total income (3.3-6.1 percent), employment (3.7-5.5 percent), salaries (5.4-11 percent), and housing prices (5.7 percent).

This has had a massive effect on natural gas prices. One study found that banning federal leasing and fracking on public and private lands would cost 7.5 million American jobs, and a cumulative loss in GDP of $7.5 trillion by 2030, among other economic disruptions.

It helps to keep energy prices low in our homes. In addition to helping you save more money at the pump, fracking can also help you save on your energy bills at home. That means that the average households that use natural gas save about $200 per year on their energy bills.

Fracking impacts on atmosphere are mainly through two ap- proaches. First, fracking deforestation reduces forests as discussed above. Methane emission from fracking is another major contribution to fracking impacts on atmosphere. Methane is the second most preva- lent greenhouse gas.

Fracking is a hotly debated environmental and political issue. Advocates insist it is a safe and economical source of clean energy; critics, however, claim fracking can destroy drinking water supplies, pollute the air, contribute to the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and trigger earthquakes.

In addition to causing pollution, fracking is also responsible for being extremely water intensive. In the U.S. in 2010, the EPA estimated that fracking used between 70 billion and 140 billion gallons of water to extract oil and natural gas from 35,000 wells, according to EarthWorks.

Fracking requires more water than conventional gas drilling; but when natural gas is used in place of coal or nuclear fuel to generate electricity, it saves water. Unconventional drilling’s water demand can be better or worse than alternative energy sources, the study finds.

Howarth finds that if the lighter methane of shale gas production is explicitly accounted for, “shale-gas production in North America over the past decade may have contributed more than half of all of the increased [methane] emissions from fossil fuels globally and approximately one-third of the total increased …

Fracking is a process that splits deposits of natural gas deep underground, using high pressure chemicals. A new study at Cornell has revealed that the process releases large quantities of methane, and other harmful gases, yielding 20% more global warming per unit than coal.

20 to 40 years

At $120 per barrel, fracking is a very profitable business. At lower prices, companies are forced to weigh the cost of expensive fracking compared to less expensive extraction methods. The maintenance cost on the wells does not decline with oil prices, and these wells become unprofitable around $40 per barrel.

U.S. Shale Patch Reduced Breakeven Costs By 20% This Year According to BloombergNEF’s estimates, U.S. oil producers have cut their average breakeven costs from an average of $56.50 per barrel last year to $45 a barrel now.

Despite lax regulations and low-interest loans, the high cost of fracking wells, coupled with oil prices hovering around $50 per barrel, made it impossible for drillers to turn a profit. Between 2012 and 2017, the 30 largest shale producers lost more than $50 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal estimate.

Natural gas emits about half of the greenhouse gas emissions of coal per unit of energy. The main reason for this shift is that fracked natural gas is cheaper than coal for the energy it produces.

Bahrain

Shale oil is a high-quality crude oil that lies between layers of shale rock, impermeable mudstone, or siltstone. Oil companies produce shale oil by fracturing the rock formations that contain the layers of oil.

All of this adds to the cost of the well. That means there are a lot of shale oil deposits sitting idle when crude oil prices are hovering around $50 a barrel. Shale oil drilling and extraction are far more labor-intensive than conventional oil extraction, making the process necessarily pricier.

Shale oil refers to hydrocarbons that are trapped in formations of shale rock. Oil shale is different than shale oil in that oil shale is essentially rock that contains a compound called kerogen, which is used to make oil.