Hydraulic Fracturing
Chantel Tankersley
Everest University
Professor Sarkar
EVS1001-30
Natural gas is a hydrocarbon gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, but can include amounts of higher alkanes such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen and or hydrogen sulfide. Natural gas is an energy source often used for heating, cooking and generating electricity.
Hydraulic fracturing is the use of fluid and material to create or restore small fractures in a formation in order to stimulate production from new and existing oil and gas wells. This process allows natural gas to flow out of the rock, well operators force one to nine million US gallons of water mixed with a variety of different chemicals through a wellbore casing into the rock. The high pressure breaks up or “fracks” the rock, which releases trapped gases. Sand is then added to the water to keep the fractures in the rock open, allowing the gas to flow into the casing and up to the surface.
Advantages to fracking are that natural gas releases two to three times less carbon into the atmosphere then coal. It also generates electricity at the same cost as if you were using coal. Finally, natural gas plants are relatively cheap to build, and they can be scaled to meet energy demands. Disadvantages to fracking would be that fracking can cause small earthquakes. It uses overwhelming amounts of water that contains chemicals and other environmentally harmful materials. Lastly it brings up land rights issues, since fracking involves horizontal drilling, disputes often arise over whether or not the company should have access to these underground land segments.
Considering the pros and cons of fracking I think that it should not be legal here in the state of Florida, and I’m glad we do not have any of these drilling operations here. We have a lot of lakes and wildlife that would suffer and die off due to the hazards fracking can cause.
A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by erosion of soluble bedrock, such as limestone, by percolating water. Sinkholes can also form from human activity, such as the rare collapse of an abandoned mine or salt cavern storage in states like
