WELCOME TO VAGABOND GEOLOGY WHERE GEOLOGY ROCKS!
Hydraulic Fracturing or fracking (a.k.a., frac'ing) is an Enhanced Oil (or Gas) Recovery (EOR) method used in the oil & gas industry to alter the characteristics of rock properties in-situ to enhance the production capabilities of an oil or gas well. It has been used since the 1950's usually without incident. In recent times a video was made of a gas field in the Dimock Township, PA that showed a resident lighting natural gas that was escaping from a water well faucet. Clearly water faucets are not supposed to be flamable, but the video fails to explain that in this community it had been well known and documented that natural gas had NATURALLY seeped into the local water aquifer. Instead, the video maker attributed the "flamable water" to fracking in the area failing to mention that natural gas in the water had been there for 40 years before fracking had been done in the area. Needless to say, the video was posted on the internet and became a "fact" regardless of what the real facts were. A movement started to ban fracking based on this video and others like it.
To avoid the hype and hysteria based on lies, we've put together an overview of Fracking to explain what it is, why it's done, how it's done and the numerous studies by MIT, UT and others that conclude that there is no evidence that fracking, when done properly, ever contaminated an aquifer. This is a work in progress (2012) and is due for an upgrade. I hope you will get a balanced view of this important process that one day may help the US to become energy independent.
| fracking_overview.pptx |