28 February, 2015

The Several Of Aspects Of Water For Fracking

By Earlene McGee


You may have heard about fracking in relation to mining and drilling of energy sources like oil and gas and may be wondering what this is. Well, fracking is a common method employed by many mining and drilling companies to extract oil and gas from their wells. The practice entails the use of a highly pressurized liquid substance that is flashed down the wells at high pressure to open them up. The mining companies have failed to state which chemicals it is that they use in the mixture. However, it is well known that water for fracking is a major component of the liquid mixture.

The purpose of using this highly pressurized liquid mixture that mainly comprises of water, sand and other chemicals like boric acid is to open up the rocks and create fractures. Opening up the fractures enables oil and gas to flow out of the rocks freely without hindrance. After removing the hydraulic pressure, the proponents of the mixture like sand particles help keep the fractures open.

The amount of water consumed in this process is substantially massive. It takes about 2 to 8 million gallons of water to frack out a single well. However, some wells tend to use much more than this. In some cases too, there are wells that require fracking more than once. This means using huge amounts of fluid gallons that is fresh from our water cycle.

The utilization of large water amounts on this purpose means that if it is done more frequently an imbalance may be created in our water cycle. The fluid used in this process can hardly be recycled for later use because it is greatly contaminated with acidic chemicals. Although mining companies fail to disclose the chemicals they use for this process, research on their well sites has shown that the use of boric, citric, and acetic acids is evident.

You need to have many tankers to move water and waste from the well site. Due to the large amount of this fluid required, you must acquire around 400 to 600 truckloads wit this fluid. This is a very large number of trucks travelling on a road for a single purpose.

A tanker carrying this much amount of fluid is very heavy. Some weigh up to 100000lbs. The downside of this is that the constant movement of the trucks due to their massive weight will damage the roads. This will result in need for re-carpeting and resurfacing thus resulting to the need for extra finances in your town.

Approximately half the liquid substance used in fracking is returned to the well surface. It is then stored in steel tanks for protection and away for reach by humans and animals. This composition is dangerous as it has been noted to cause contamination in areas around the storage facilities or tanks.

The other half is perceived to remain underground or where else could it go? A great guess is that this later on circulates back to the cycle hence contaminating it. The cases of contamination around the areas where fracking has occurred are many.




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