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Page added on February 9, 2015
A Short Course on Hydraulic Fracturing
Hydraulic fracturing is little understood because fractivists have deliberately used “fracking” as an all-purpose term for the gas industry, but it’s simple.
Well, how about some facts on hydraulic fracturing?
We have been doing hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” here in Alberta, since the technology was established decades ago, with little or no discernible effect, other than making it possible to produce oil and gas when it otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
The Alberta Government has imposed has imposed some of the strictest environmental protection regulations of any hydrocarbon producing jurisdiction in North America. If the practice was harmful to the environment, they would ban it. They have not and don’t intend to.
Oil and gas exist in the pore spaces of rocks underground sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet below the surface. When you drill a well, you make it possible to produce, naturally or with something to assist, like a pump jack. It’s like putting a straw into a bottle of Coke. The assist is sucking on the straw.
After doing that, if the well won’t produce, it’s because the pore spaces are very poorly or not even connected at all. Hydraulic fracturing simply breaks up the rock so the pores become connected and the oil or gas will flow to surface.
It’s no different than pouring Drano down a clogged drain to breakup the “gunk” so that fluids will flow to where they’re supposed to. Same with toilets.
These practices, however, do much more environmental damage than fracking, which makes we wonder, given the lack of evidence the hydraulic fracturing pollutes anything, why there’s all this hype in certain US states and Canadian provinces about the dangers of fracking.
Can’t we just deal in facts?
3 Comments on "A Short Course on Hydraulic Fracturing"
SilentRunning on Mon, 9th Feb 2015 8:05 pm
>The Alberta Government has imposed has imposed some of the strictest environmental protection regulations of any hydrocarbon producing jurisdiction in North America. If the practice was harmful to the environment, they would ban it.
LOL! The Alberta government, which has allowed the enormous tar sands mining project – which is completely annihilating the environment of many thousands of square miles – is supposed to be somehow Eco-friendly!!
It’s like claiming that Al Capone was a model law-abiding taxpaying citizen! What a load of unadulterated BS!
coffeeguyzz on Mon, 9th Feb 2015 8:30 pm
The wording in the ‘anti-fracking’ law passed in California last year apparently is making it difficult (impossible?) for the routine, maintenance fracs to take place as they have hundreds of times per year for many, many decades in the state.
This past Saturday, there were thousands of protesters in Oakland demanding an end to the ‘dangerous’ practice of hydraulic fracturing.
Presumably, most of the protesters arrived and departed in their cars.
GregT on Mon, 9th Feb 2015 10:14 pm
‘Can’t we just deal in facts?’
Apparently not………………