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If you were trying to invent with a term that sounds as scary as possible, you couldn’t do better than “fracking.” That’s industry terminology for hydraulic fracturing, the process used to get at unconventional natural gas and oil contained in tight rock layers that need to be cracked open—or fractured—so drillers can get at the [...]
Mainstream environmental groups have struggled to find the right line on shale natural gas and the hydraulic fracturing or fracking process. Gas has a much smaller carbon footprint than coal—according to most scientists—and produces far fewer air pollutants. That was enough for many major green groups to give support to gas as a “bridge fuel” [...]
Is shale gas good for us or not? Most of that argument has been over the potential risks that hydrofracking for shale gas might pose to water supplies—risks that were highlighted again this week when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came to Dimock, PA, to test groundwater in the area. You might know Dimock from [...]
RICK PERRY, Texas governor and Republican candidate for President, scolding a college student who questioned his support for shale gas fracking at an event in Decorah, Iowa. Sorry, governor—there has indeed been a proven case of groundwater contamination from fracking. Earlier this month the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft report that concluded chemicals from [...]
We already know that hydraulic fracturing—the process of injecting millions of gallons of water and chemicals deep into the earth to exploit the natural gas trapped inside rock—can likely help cause earthquakes. The British energy company Cuadrilla Resources admitted earlier this year that fracking operations caused a series of small quakes in Lancashire, and scientists [...]
If you report on the environmental issues surrounding hydraulic fracturing and shale natural gas, you’ll hear a certain line from gas industry representatives over and over: there has never been a documented case of groundwater contamination by fracking. There are angry homeowners who say that fracking has spoiled their water supply, and suspicious incidents across [...]
