Fracking: The Big Bad Monster?

I don't care what Dunkin' Donuts tries to preach: America does not run on donuts-America runs on oil and natural gas.Commonly abbreviated as "fracking," horizontal hydro-fracturing extracts natural gas from underground.This increasingly common method is implemented when gas would be difficult, if not impossible, to extract using conventional methods, such as oilrig drilling.Even though fracking has just recently become a large contributor to America's oil production and extraction, the technology has existed for much longer (Merrill 972).The rise in the use of fracking has become a hot news topic for many reasons.Opponents of fracking insist the environmental implications overbear any positives associated with it, but I aim to investigate what benefits exist using this technique and whether or not it may be as bad as the public perceives it to be.For decades, petroleum engineers sought a way to retrieve the gas trapped in the earth.In conventional drilling, a vertical pipe is drilled from the surface to an oil or gas reservoir in the ground.When the pipe penetrates into the reservoir, the pressure from the rock and soil above cause the oil or gas to flow through the pipe and up to the surface (Merrill 971).The process is easy because the oil or gas is pressurized from the natural subsurface environment, and the petroleum industry has been extracting crude oil for over 100 years this way.However, not all the gas and oil below us lies in these underground deposits.Frequently, the gas to be extracted lies in shale deposits thousands of feet below the surface.This is where fracking comes in.Fracking companies pump high-pressure hydraulic fluid into these permeable layers of earth, forcing the gas out the shale.This fractures the shale and releases the gas trapped inside.The depth from which the gas is extracted is called the "pit," or the well's source of water for the fracking operation.Elizabeth Kolbert, in her article for the New Yorker, explains that until the last twelve or so years the technique was not economic or efficient enough to use on a large scale.But due to "advances in drilling technology, extracting the gas [has become] a lucrative proposition" (Kolbert).This lucrative proposition has helped to spawn the widespread use of fracking.Fracking has been called a "newaged gold rush" and an "Energy Renaissance" by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes.She reported, "some ten thousand wells are to be drilled in some of the poorest areas of the United States" (Stahl).Shale gas is abundant in the United Look HereTo see a map illustrating where shale gas is found in the United States, go to: http