Since , hydraulically fractured horizontal wells have accounted for the majority of new oil and natural gas wells developed in the United States, surpassing all other drilling techniques.
Texas is the top producer of crude oil and natural gas. North Dakota ranks second for crude oil and Pennsylvania second for natural gas. The most productive U. The fossil fuel industry has also set its sights on areas that offer much less potential output, such as in the Florida Everglades, including the Big Cypress National Preserve, despite tremendous environmental risks. The state also serves as a cautionary tale for the many health and environmental consequences of fracking and other methods of fossil fuel extraction.
Studies have found increased levels of harmful chemicals in water near fracking sites, suggesting that further monitoring is in order. Meanwhile, a state regulation designed to protect the public from the health impacts of fossil fuel extraction may be only loosely enforced , according to a study by Dallas news station WFAA. Output is expected to continue to grow—though not everywhere. In , New York became the first state with significant natural gas reserves its southern swath sits atop the Marcellus Shale play to prohibit fracking.
However, as of , California was still the fourth-largest producer of oil in the nation due to significant ongoing conventional production, from the largely rural Central Valley to some of the densest urban drilling sites anywhere in the world in Los Angeles and surrounding municipalities.
A analysis of oil and gas development in California showed that approximately 5. When fracking does occur in California, it differs from elsewhere in the United States, as it often occurs at shallower depths and in closer proximity to drinking water sources, increasing the risk of water contamination.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has made moves to open more than one million acres of public land in the state—much of which supplies water for agricultural and urban areas—to oil and gas drilling. This boom in production has come at a cost, however, particularly to land, air, and water resources. According to a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, drilling and fracking operations in the Bakken oil and gas fields alone contributed as much as 3 percent of global emissions of ethane a greenhouse gas and precursor for ozone formation.
Although fracking is typically associated with big producers like Texas, states with far more limited oil and gas reserves are affected too. According to an expert report obtained by NRDC, both current production and the prospects for future expansion in Florida are minimal.
Aquifers—crucial sources of drinking water—are vulnerable to contamination because large areas are characterized by sandy soils and porous limestone. Since Florida oil fields generally lie deeper than the shallow aquifers that provide the state with fresh drinking water, acidizing techniques threaten groundwater resources.
Additionally, wastewater from acidizing techniques can contain hazardous pollutants and pose threats to underground aquifers.
Proposals for a statewide legislative ban on fracking and acidizing techniques have been introduced, with bipartisan support, in both houses of the state legislature. Dozens of counties and municipalities have already said no to fracking within their respective borders—and for good reason. Oil and gas production threatens public lands, natural resources, wildlife, water supplies, and Florida tourism, a vastly larger industry in the state than oil.
Although evidence continues to mount about the negative impact of fracking on our water, air, and health, the industry remains seriously underregulated. Oil and gas operations benefit from a range of exemptions or limitations in regulatory coverage within the bedrock environmental statutes that are meant to protect Americans from contaminated water, hazardous waste, and polluted air.
Unless diesel is used in the fracking fluid, it exempts hydraulic fracturing from regulation under the Underground Injection Control Program of the Safe Drinking Water Act , the law protecting our drinking water from pollutants. Such oil and gas exploration and production wastes could include used fracking fluids, produced water, and many other types of waste. The industry also enjoys a loophole in the Clean Air Act that exempts oil and gas wells, compressor stations, and pump stations from aggregation as major sources that would otherwise have to implement pollution controls once emissions hit a certain threshold.
As to the Clean Water Act , Congress exempted stormwater runoff from oil and gas exploration, production, processing, or treatment operations or transmission facilities from certain permitting requirements, provided that such stormwater is not contaminated.
Bills seeking to close these and other statutory loopholes and exemptions were introduced in Congress in but have made little progress. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is aggressively opening up more public land to fracking and proposing rollbacks of existing regulations on oil and gas operations. The rules, which have been held up in the courts, impose safeguards to protect water supplies from fracking on federal lands—safeguards that health and environmental advocates already believe do not go far enough.
Stricter federal oversight of the oil and gas industry would go a long way toward protecting our communities and environment, but state and local agencies can also play a significant role in governing the industry. As a counterbalance to the Halliburton loophole, for example, many states have some level of fracking chemical disclosure laws on the books though companies often manage to skirt even those. For the most part, however, states have failed to provide adequate oversight of fracking operations, with regulations often left largely unenforced and few if any requirements to notify the public of violations and spills.
But not every state is ignoring the science. Some— New York , Maryland , and Vermont —have banned fracking altogether and others, like California and Colorado, are taking important steps to provide meaningful oversight. As the science increasingly shows , the extraction of natural gas or oil via fracking can release significant amounts of air and water pollution that imperil the health of our communities and environment.
More than 1. Put simply, hydraulic fracturing is the process of injecting liquid and materials at high pressure to create small fractures within tight shale formations to stimulate the production and safely extract energy from an underground well after the drilling has ended and the rig and derrick are removed from the site.
The process takes about three to five days, on average, to complete from start to finish. Fracking is a uniquely American success story that has provided immense benefits around the nation. From to , annual U. A study , commissioned by the U. Chamber of Commerce, projected fracking will create a total of 3. In fact, there is ample evidence that increased natural gas use — made possible by fracking — has improved public health by dramatically improving air quality in recent years.
This is not to say there are no risks, but the full body of research on this issue shows that those risks are manageable. Several state departments of environmental protection have also installed air monitors at well sites and found that emissions during oil and natural gas development do not exceed public health thresholds.
Visit EIDHealth. No fewer than two dozen scientific studies have concluded that fracking does not pose a major threat to groundwater. Most notably, a landmark U. Very rarely. Although induced seismicity particularly in Oklahoma has made headlines in recent years, earthquakes attributable to the actual fracking process are exceedingly rare and generally below the magnitude that people can actually feel.
There's a lot of oil and gas in shale, so this breakthrough led to a drilling boom in states like North Dakota, Texas, and Pennsylvania. The "fracking boom" has reshaped the American energy landscape. Domestic production of oil and natural gas has risen sharply, leading to cheaper energy and a reduced reliance on imports.
Advocates often argue that fracking is creating jobs, boosting manufacturing, and helping to tackle global warming by reducing the amount of coal we use. Opponents often argue that the industry is poorly regulated, the global warming benefits are overhyped, and that fracking has led to increased air and water pollution around the country.
Using hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to extract oil or gas from shale rock involves a number of steps. Let's walk through a basic fracking operation for natural gas in, say, the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania:. This shale layer can sit more than 5, feet underground and drilling can take as long as a month. The well is lined with a steel casing to prevent the contamination of nearby groundwater. The fluids crack open the shale rock. The sand holds those cracks open.
And the chemicals help the natural gas seep out. A typical well can produce gas for 20 to 40 years, pumping out thousands of cubic feet of gas each day. That's a very rough overview of the fracking process. There are plenty of variations, depending on the geology of the region or the technologies used.
Often other particles besides sand are used, for instance. And here's a partial listing of some of the different techniques used in North Dakota, for example. This interactive map from the Post Carbon Institute shows the location of more than 63, shale oil wells and shale gas wells around the country. These aren't the only oil and gas wells in the United States shale represents about 29 percent of total oil production and 40 percent of gas.
But they're the ones that tend to rely heavily on fracking. Since the late s, the amount of oil and natural gas produced in the United States has risen dramatically, thanks to fracking, horizontal drilling, offshore drilling, and other advanced techniques.
Supplies are projected to grow further in the years ahead:. Crude oil: By November , the United States was producing 7. Oil production is now expected to keep growing until it reaches a peak of 9. Natural gas: US natural gas production has also reached new historical highs, to 24 trillion cubic feet in November Supplies are currently expected to grow until at least Note that these predictions are far from perfect — ten years ago, few were predicting the fracking boom.
The oil and gas boom — driven by fracking — has had all sorts of effects on the US economy. Here are a few of the big ones:. More jobs in some states: More drilling means more jobs. The oil and gas industry added , positions between and — growing ten times faster than the nation as a whole. Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania have seen some of the biggest gains:. Higher economic growth: The oil and gas industry is a fairly small portion of the overall US economy, but analysts tend to agree that the fracking boom has helped bolster the country's growth a bit.
JP Morgan estimates that the oil and gas boom added 0. Other models suggest that the boom could add 0. Lower energy prices sometimes : Oil is still quite expensive — because the price of crude oil depends on global supply and demand factors. But US natural gas prices have fallen significantly since the mids though they rebounded during the cold winter, as heating demand surged.
That's saved consumers money. It also means that power plants are more likely to use natural gas for electricity. The decline of coal power: Many electric utilities have taken advantage of cheap prices to switch from coal to natural gas as their preferred power source. That switch has reduced a variety of air pollutants, as well as carbon-dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
This trend is hurting the coal industry — and one reason why one-fourth of the nation's coal power plants have closed since A boost for US manufacturing: America's glut of cheap natural gas is also luring some manufacturers to the United States.
Factories being built in Texas and Pennsylvania will convert natural gas into ethylene, a key ingredient in plastics and antifreeze. That said, it's unclear how many companies this will affect — as a note from Morgan Stanley points out, energy is still a small fraction of costs for most industries.
Lower imports: The United States is importing far less oil and natural gas than it used to — one reason why the trade deficit has dropped to its lowest level since Indeed, many companies are now arguing that US government should loosen its restrictions on selling American oil and gas abroad. It can. As fracking operations have spread out across the United States, they've triggered protests over air and water pollution.
Here's an overview of some of the key concerns:. Groundwater contamination: One big concern is whether the chemicals used in fracking or the natural gas itself could contaminate people's drinking water. There's the worry, for instance, that natural gas leaks could make people's tap water flammable. There are two big ways this might happen. One is through accidents or contamination near the surface.
In recent years, fracking wells have blown out in states like North Dakota. In another incident, thousands of gallons of fracking fluid leaked out of a storage tank in Dimock, Pennsylvania. And poorly constructed wells with cement problems can allow fluids or gas to migrate upward.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently conducting a big study into this type of contamination and how to prevent it. A second question is whether chemicals or natural gas could somehow migrate from the fracked shale layer thousands of feet up into the groundwater — even if the wells are perfectly constructed.
This second possibility is considered unlikely, since there are dozens of layers of rock separating the shale from groundwater. Still, the EPA had been studying one relatively shallow well in Wyoming where chemicals appeared to have seeped into the water. View Citation. Valder, J. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report —, 22 p. Year Published: Estimating national water use associated with unconventional oil and gas development The U.
Carter, Janet M. Carter, J. Geological Survey Fact Sheet —, 6 p. Year Published: Myths and facts on wastewater injection, hydraulic fracturing, enhanced oil recovery, and induced seismicity The central United States has undergone a dramatic increase in seismicity over the past 6 years Fig.
Rubinstein, Justin L. Year Published: Trends in hydraulic fracturing distributions and treatment fluids, additives, proppants, and water volumes applied to wells drilled in the United States from through data analysis and comparison to the literature Hydraulic fracturing is presently the primary stimulation technique for oil and gas production in low-permeability, unconventional reservoirs. Gallegos, Tanya J. Year Published: Water quality studied in areas of unconventional oil and gas development, including areas where hydraulic fracturing techniques are used, in the United States Domestic oil and gas production and clean water are critical for economic growth, public health, and national security of the United States.
Susong, David D. Water quality studied in areas of unconventional oil and gas development, including areas where hydraulic fracturing techniques are used, in the United States; ; FS; ; Susong, David D. Filter Total Items: 6. Date published: December 10, Date published: May 31, Date published: October 26, Date published: May 27, Date published: January 27, Date published: June 20, Virgin Islands. Filter Total Items: 9.
List Grid. May 31, Oil and gas operations are "inducing" these earthquakes. The earthquake rate has dropped by more than 50 percent due to changes in industry. March 14, A typical drill pad in the Marcellus Shale gas play of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Attribution: Energy and Minerals.
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