Fracking in Texas

Home to two of the country's nearly productive unconventional plays, the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford, Texas leads the nation in oil and natural gas production. ("Unconventional" refers to oil and gas resources in less-permeable and less-porous rock.) The state also serves equally a cautionary tale for the many health and ecology consequences of fracking and other methods of fossil fuel extraction. Texas'southward industries make it the top emitter of smog-forming ozone pollutants in the U.s., and earthquakes are on the ascent. Studies take found increased levels of harmful chemicals in water virtually fracking sites, suggesting that further monitoring is in social club. Meanwhile, a state regulation designed to protect the public from the health impacts of fossil fuel extraction may be only loosely enforced, co-ordinate to a report by Dallas news station WFAA.

Fracking in Pennsylvania

With approximately 3-fifths of the country atop the Marcellus Shale play, Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas, generating virtually one-5th of America's supply in 2017. Output is expected to continue to abound—though not everywhere. In 2018, the Delaware River Basin, a watershed that spans parts of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, was marked off-limits to fracking (although the threat to drinking water and the surround hasn't been eliminated, since some proposed regulations would nonetheless allow wastewater to be disposed of in the watershed). Meanwhile, statewide concern about fracking's hazards is mounting: Co-ordinate to one 2018 poll, 55 percent of residents believe fracking's potential environmental risks outweigh its potential economic benefits—up from 37 percent in 2014. In some cases, Pennsylvania has already seen fracking's risks play out in the form of contaminated drinking h2o supplies and polluted air.

Fracking in New York

In 2015, New York became the first state with significant natural gas reserves (its southern swath sits atop the Marcellus Shale play) to prohibit fracking. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation ended that the "meaning agin public health and ecology" threats the extraction method posed far outweighed "the limited economic and social benefits that would be derived."

Fracking in California

California'due south Monterey formation was once billed equally America'due south "black aureate mine," estimated to hold equally much equally two-thirds of the country's unconventional oil resources—that is, until a 2014 revision slashed that estimate by most 96 percentage. However, as of 2017, California was yet the fourth-largest producer of oil in the nation due to significant ongoing conventional production, from the largely rural Central Valley to some of the densest urban drilling sites anywhere in the globe in Los Angeles and surrounding municipalities. A 2014 analysis of oil and gas development in California showed that approximately v.4 meg people live within a mile of one of the 84,000-plus existing oil and gas wells, three,000 of which had used either hydraulic fracturing or acidizing, which is the process in which acid is pumped into a well to dissolve rock and increase permeability. When fracking does occur in California, information technology differs from elsewhere in the The states, every bit it often occurs at shallower depths and in closer proximity to drinking water sources, increasing the risk of h2o contamination. Nevertheless, the Trump administration has made moves to open up more than than one 1000000 acres of public land in the state—much of which supplies h2o for agricultural and urban areas—to oil and gas drilling.

Don Martin stands with his granddaughter in front end of the Murphy Oil site, located side by side door to his flat in West Adams, Los Angeles.

Sarah Craig/Faces of Fracking

Fracking in Northward Dakota

Home to 20 of the country's 100 largest oil fields, North Dakota sits atop the Bakken Shale and underlying Three Forks formations, themselves located in the larger Williston Basin (which spans portions of South Dakota, Montana, and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan). The nation's number ii rough oil state (behind Texas) since 2012, North Dakota shattered its ain production records in 2018, in large part due to the improved efficiency of its fracking operations. This nail in product has come up at a cost, however, particularly to land, air, and water resources. According to a 2016 Duke University written report, wastewater spills from fracked oil wells in the Bakken region accept caused "widespread and persistent" h2o and soil contamination with "clear bear witness of direct water contagion." And while North Dakota produces only 2 percentage of the nation'south natural gas, its operations however flare a "substantial" amount, producing significant air pollution. According to a 2014 report past the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, drilling and fracking operations in the Bakken oil and gas fields alone contributed as much as 3 percent of global emissions of ethane (a greenhouse gas and precursor for ozone formation).

Fracking in Florida

Although fracking is typically associated with big producers like Texas, states with far more limited oil and gas reserves are affected too. According to an skilful study obtained by NRDC, both current production and the prospects for time to come expansion in Florida are minimal. However efforts keep to develop these modest amounts of oil and gas, at the expense of Florida's sensitive natural resources, including the Everglades. Florida has two oil‐producing regions: one at the western terminate of the Panhandle, bordering Alabama, and another in the southern office of the land, in and effectually the Big Cypress National Preserve, a fundamental role of the Everglades ecosystem.

Oil well stimulation techniques such as fracking and acrid matrix stimulation, or "acidizing," facilitate product from unconventional oil deposits. Acidizing dissolves portions of the oil‐bearing rock formations through the injection of acid mixed with water and other chemicals, allowing oil to more hands period to the well bore. In Florida, acidizing is more probable to exist used than fracking due to the state's geology. Aquifers—crucial sources of drinking h2o—are vulnerable to contamination because large areas are characterized by sandy soils and porous limestone. Since Florida oil fields generally lie deeper than the shallow aquifers that provide the state with fresh drinking h2o, acidizing techniques threaten groundwater resources. Additionally, wastewater from acidizing techniques can contain hazardous pollutants and pose threats to underground aquifers. Proposals for a statewide legislative ban on fracking and acidizing techniques have been introduced, with bipartisan back up, in both houses of the state legislature.

Dozens of counties and municipalities have already said no to fracking within their corresponding borders—and for good reason. Oil and gas product threatens public lands, natural resources, wildlife, water supplies, and Florida tourism, a vastly larger manufacture in the country than oil.

Laws and Regulations

Although prove continues to mount virtually the negative touch of fracking on our water, air, and health, the industry remains seriously underregulated. Oil and gas operations do good from a range of exemptions or limitations in regulatory coverage inside the bedrock environmental statutes that are meant to protect Americans from contaminated water, hazardous waste, and polluted air.

Consider the "Halliburton loophole," nicknamed for the largest oil and gas services visitor in the state and passed every bit part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (while sometime Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney was vice president). Unless diesel fuel is used in the fracking fluid, it exempts hydraulic fracturing from regulation nether the Underground Injection Control Plan of the Safe Drinking Water Human action, the law protecting our drinking water from pollutants.

The oil and gas manufacture enjoys an exemption for sure exploration and production wastes from regulation as "hazardous wastes" under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Such oil and gas exploration and production wastes could include used fracking fluids, produced h2o, and many other types of waste. The manufacture besides enjoys a loophole in the Make clean Air Act that exempts oil and gas wells, compressor stations, and pump stations from aggregation every bit major sources that would otherwise have to implement pollution controls once emissions hit a certain threshold. As to the Clean Water Act, Congress exempted stormwater runoff from oil and gas exploration, production, processing, or treatment operations or transmission facilities from certain permitting requirements, provided that such stormwater is not contaminated. Bills seeking to close these and other statutory loopholes and exemptions were introduced in Congress in 2017 merely have made niggling progress .

Meanwhile, the Trump assistants is aggressively opening up more public land to fracking and proposing rollbacks of existing regulations on oil and gas operations. This includes a scaling back of methane protections as well every bit a repeal of fracking rules canonical in 2015 by President Obama'due south Bureau of Country Direction. The rules, which take been held up in the courts, impose safeguards to protect h2o supplies from fracking on federal lands—safeguards that health and environmental advocates already believe practise non go far enough.

Stricter federal oversight of the oil and gas industry would get a long style toward protecting our communities and environment, but state and local agencies can besides play a significant role in governing the industry. Every bit a weigh to the Halliburton loophole, for example, many states have some level of fracking chemical disclosure laws on the books (though companies often manage to skirt even those). For the almost part, however, states accept failed to provide acceptable oversight of fracking operations, with regulations often left largely unenforced and few if whatever requirements to notify the public of violations and spills. Merely non every state is ignoring the science. Some—New York, Maryland, and Vermont—have banned fracking altogether and others, like California and Colorado, are taking important steps to provide meaningful oversight.

Alternatives to Fracking

Though natural gas produces less carbon pollution than other fossil fuels when it burns, it is far from a "clean" energy source—especially when it comes to u.s. thanks to fracking. As the science increasingly shows, the extraction of natural gas or oil via fracking can release significant amounts of air and water pollution that imperil the health of our communities and environment. It is for this reason that many municipalities have rallied against the fracking industry.

Wind turbines and solar panels in Palm Springs, California

Vanja Terzic/iStock

Instead of increasing our dependence on fracking and fossil fuels, the United States needs to continue to transition toward a truly make clean free energy economy. That means continuing to develop renewable ability and improving energy efficiency, which has really contributed more to the nation'due south energy needs over the past 40 years than oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear power. It'southward non just the health of communities that is at pale. Every bit the latest report past the Un Intergovernmental Console on Climate Alter (IPCC) warns, the earth needs to speedily wean itself off fossil fuels—on a global scale—to avert the catastrophic effects of a changing climate.

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