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One fracking minute: an animated explainer on hydraulic fracturing

There’s an oil and gas boom in North America thanks to an innovation known as “hydraulic fracturing.” In energy-rich regions around the U.S., oil companies are setting up so-called "fracking wells" to get natural gas and oil trapped in the shale rock deep underground. It's become a booming business in pockets of the U.S. -- and not without its critics -- and is the subject of a new series of stories on Marketplace about the country's potential to be a new Petro State and its impact on manufacturing.

Here’s how it works:

A drilling site is located, and a well is set up. Then the drilling begins - into the shale rock layer, sometimes a mile or two down. Then, the drill bit takes a turn and goes sideways for another mile or two. The well is lined with concrete cement, then drillers use a series of tiny charges to make initial holes into the rock.

Then... the frack. A secret cocktail of water, sand and chemicals is shot into the well, hitting the rock and fracturing it -- ergo,  fracking. It can take five million gallons of water – enough water to fill a thousand trucks -- to frack one well. Some fear that process can contaminate nearby drinking water. Critics are nervous the cocktail of fluids can leak in, or natural gas could migrate up. Industry says the key is to seal the well properly, and that they do. What do you think?


MORE FROM THIS SERIES:
- America's energy boom revives Ohio's steel industry
-
The real energy gusher produced by Ohio fracking: Oil

About the author

Scott Tong is a correspondent for Marketplace’s sustainability desk, with a focus on energy, environment, resources, climate, supply chain and the global economy.
patricksievert's picture
patricksievert - Oct 24, 2012

The only thing I'll add is that when you say the well is lined with "concrete," you lose all credibility.

paulheckbert's picture
paulheckbert - Oct 23, 2012

An animation is a good idea, but yours didn't explain the issue sufficiently. Rather than put a peppy animated "ENERGY INDEPENDENCE!" gas industry slogan in your animation, why not do a little more journalism and show the viewer not just how shale gets fractured by fracking, but also where the frack wastewater goes.

So far you mentioned water contamination as merely a "fear" in the narration ("Some fear that process can contaminate nearby drinking water. Critics are nervous the cocktail of fluids can leak in, or natural gas could migrate up" but you did not diagram it.

You could:
Make your strata diagram a true cross section (lose the confusing stream that appears to go below-ground).
Add a scale (ground=0 ft, Marcellus shale = 5000 ft or so).
Add an aquifer layer.
Add a Marcellus shale layer (duh!).
Diagram the strata more carefully - see a geology textbook. Use color.
Show what can happen if there are other nearby wells: water wells, and perhaps abandoned conventional gas wells with flawed cementing.
See this story: http://www.ewg.org/reports/cracks-in-the-facade for examples of just this problem - fracking results in polluted groundwater probably due to migration up nearby abandoned gas wells.

Show carefully (zoom in) the consequences of a bad cementing job: frack waste leaves the well bore and migrates out at various depths.
Discuss the expected life of cement, and what the condition of these wells will be in 50 years.
Show that some of the frack water / frack wastewater stays underground while some of it is forced back to the surface.
Show that heavy metals underground get mixed into the frack water, and some of it comes back to the surface.
Show an impoundment on the surface, and how sprinklers cause chemicals to become airborne.
Show what would happen if an impoundment leaks.
Show how the impoundment is covered with dirt at the end of fracking, and where the sludge at the bottom of the impoundment goes (nowhere).
Show how some frack wastewater is recycled a few times, but after it becomes too dirty it can no longer be recycled and it often gets trucked off to Ohio where it is pumped underground (sometimes causing earthquakes).
Show that over the life of a well, there can be a period of explosive release, where some natural gas escapes into the atmosphere (methane is 20x more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide).
Show that gas production declines over time (exponential decay) for a few decades, until well is retired, unless it is re-fracked.

Beyond the diagramming and animation, you could correct the text/narration to point out that:
It's not just a "fear" of "critics", but a fact, that:
* wellwater has become contaminated in a number of cases (though the Gas industry won't admit it, and will coerce claimants to sign gag orders in return for settlements);
* fracking has caused higher levels of natural gas to enter wellwater and to bubble up in streams, adding some risk of explosions;
* some of the chemicals used in fracking are carcinogenic;
* direct listeners to the the photo exhibition "The Marcellus Shale Documentary Project" on display through January in Pittsburgh, http://pittsburgharts.org/marcellus-shale-documentary-project , where people can see pictures of homeowners' polluted wellwater, horses drinking bottled water, methane bubbling up in streams, forests dug up for pipelines, homeowners displaced by the industrial influx, etc.

Heaviest Cat's picture
Heaviest Cat - Dec 7, 2012

Paul ,I think ,you're exptecting too much from Marketplace. Oh yes, you're right to expect a public radio program to conduct more critical inquiry into the environmental and health consequences of fracking, but if you heard the story about the "Father of Fracking" ,George Mitchell, you will hear yet another egregious example of how "public" radio has been hijacked by corporate underwriters. Inshort ,marketplace was too busy crafting a PR piece for the industy to bother with the kind of critical, independent reporting, they tout at every fundraiser.

S.A.47's picture
S.A.47 - Oct 23, 2012

Thank you for reporting on fracking. There needs to be more of it! Relying on a process that uses so much water (a precious resource) and 'secret chemical cocktails' to get so little is the epitome of American 1% greed at work. If it means feeding their incomes at the expense of the planet and the majority of its citizens through such a wasteful means, so be it. Ignoring that droughts are real, ignoring promoting public energy conservation, ignoring alternative fuels, ignoring the real and not so secret environmental damage, it is not at all surprising that this is where we've ended up in our country. Apparently now, anything goes as long as the gas companies get what they want. As long as we the consumers have our cheap gas, they assume we don't care the cost.

Heaviest Cat's picture
Heaviest Cat - Dec 7, 2012

S.A. WHile I agree with your comments about fracking I dont' see how you thank Marketplace for their fracking coverage which has been mostly PR for the industry. From the "sustainability" desk ,no less.

RocRizzo's picture
RocRizzo - Oct 23, 2012

It's not what I think, but what I KNOW!

These companies are in it for one thing, profits, and they will get it without regard for your welfare.

Their marketing people say that the concrete bores are impermeable, but on the contrary, they are not. They are made of concrete, and with pressure, and the chemicals that they are pumping into the bores, they crack. When they crack, hydrofracking fluids, gas, and other effluent seeps up along the outside of these bores, to the water table, thus polluting it.
When they use these charges to produce faults, they are unaware of other faults in the formations. When one of the formations faults cracks to the top, guess what? The gas, water and other effluent is carried with it, and it rises to higher layers of rock, until it comes to another fault, then goes up to find another layer, and so on, until it reaches a water table, and pollutes water.
Sometimes they underestimate how much of a charge to use, and the fracture is so large that it creates an earthquake. Though this earthquake is small, it can do damage miles from the site from where the drilling rig is. Sometimes, when they don't dump their waste fracking fluid, which contains an elixir of chemicals that has some known carcinogens in it, into a local body of water, they inject it into the well, and cap the well. Over time, the concrete of the well bore decays, and this poisonous elixir seeps upward into the water table.

These are things that the companies that do the drilling tell us are not frequent, but let me ask you this: Would you like your kids to drink water with traces of benzine, toluene and other carcinogens in it? Would you chance it, not knowing if you or your kids would contract some form of cancer from this process in their adult lives? How much is your health, and your family's health worth? One million, two million, priceless?

I could go on about the abandoned well pads, the pipelines' detraction from the landscape, and other tasks that detract from everyday life when it comes to this process, but there is only one more thing that I will mention. They tell us that this gas will make us "energy independent." This is an out and out lie, as this gas is not earmarked for the US market, but it is sold on the world market.

If you want any more information from someone who knows a thing or three about geology, and this kind of stuff, just message me.
Thanks.

JustNO's picture
JustNO - Oct 23, 2012

My other comments wouldn't post, so I'll shorten my comments this time...... DON'T DO IT!!! nearly every person that has signed has regretted it. Wall Street has pumped this industry up and all it will leave you is pollution (and that has been proven), sleepless nights, decreased property values, increased homeowners costs. You will find out that Chesapeake Energy's CEO has taken out an "Open Ended Mortgage" on your property, so now you have NO EQUITY in your home. And the royalties.....well guess what....they have now found that post production costs have also been taken from your royalty check and you now get NEXT TO NOTHING! And to top it off you no longer have your home to enjoy.....Isn't that what we all work all our lives for? Now it's gone!

Matt Berger's picture
Matt Berger - Oct 23, 2012

sorry for the technical difficulties. Thanks for sticking with it to post your comments!