Hydrofracking Essay

691 Words3 Pages
Frack You The process of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as hydrofracking, has received a lot of attention in recent years. Hydrofracking has been around since the 1940’s but only in the last decade it has become cost effective. Hydrofracking is the simple process of digging deep into the ground, extracting natural gas, then shoot water, sand, and chemicals to fill the gap. Inopportunely, some evidence shows that hydrofracking has not been perfected and is dangerous to the community and environment. Some of these dangers are shown in the documentary Gasland. This video shows the perspective of members of a community that have been affected by hydrofracking. In one of the scenes, a man holds a lighter next to his sink and runs his water. After a couple seconds his water turned into a flowing fire fountain. This is extremely hazardous not only because of the fire but because this man’s water contains chemical properties to set it on fire due to hydrofracking. Another example from the video is when another man holds a lighter over his well water and a clear plastic-like substance formed on top. This is an extreme problem due to the fact that there are liquid chemical components of plastic in his water. To decide if these occurring problems are the cause of hydrofracking, scientists need to decide if they are biogenic or thermogenic. Biogenic natural gas is naturally released and we don’t need to worry about other toxic chemicals. On the other hand, thermogenic is released by hydrofracking. We test these by using carbon 13 water dating method. Biogenic natural gas will have varying abundances of Carbon 13. Well gas & oil gas will be mixed with various other vapors (ethane, propane, methane) that have abundances of Carbon 13 that are similar to each other. Measure the gas for carbon 13 to decide if it is biogenic or thermogenic.

More about Hydrofracking Essay

Open Document