When you are filling your car with gas, do you ever wonder where that gas came from? I don’t mean the fact that it’s a fossil fuel from the ground. I’m talking about the way people get it from the ground. The process from going deep in the earth’s crust to the gas pump in your very hand. Well the most common way to gather these valuable resources is done through a process called Fracking.To simplify what Fracking is, it’s the process of injection liquids at a high pressure in to subterranean rocks for the purpose of forcing open existing fissures and extracting oil or gas.
It’s a common way to drill for fossil fuels. The word Fracking is short for Hydraulic fracturing, and it has been used commercially for about 70 years now. The whole process can not begin without first finding Shale rock, also known as Shale gas. Shale is a compressed fine grained type of sedimentary rock, and Shale gas is a the natural gas trapped within the tiny pore spaces in shale formations. Shale rock can contain many different type of hydrocarbons, for example it can contain ethane gas, propane, and butane. Once the the Shale rock has been found, the next step is start drilling down for it.
Typically it’s about several thousand meters deep to reach this rock. Once the drill reaches the shale rock it turns ninety degrees horizontally. They do this so that it enlarges the recoverable reserves, and increase the productivity of the fossil fuels. Once the drill is done this is when the Hydraulic fracturing will begin. What the fracking will do is it will cause fractures in the shale formation to release the gas. Then the fracking process will continue by injecting a fracturing fluid that is pumped under high pressure into the drilling pipe to widen the fractures or cause new ones. The fluid consists mainly of water, but can contain three to twelve different chemicals.
Approximately fifty to seventy percent of the water solution is recovered. The remaining water stays underground. Any water recovered from the fracking the process is either transported or directly disposed in treatment facilities.
Fracking has made America the largest producer of shale gases. Hydraulic fracturing has raised from two percent in 2000, to twenty three percent in 2010 in over all gas production. Thanks to Fracking it has continued to rise since. As fracking grows, the USA gains many different economic benefits.
The main benefit is that gas prices will lower for the average consumer. So far fracking has caused gas prices to drop forty seven percent so far. This adds up to about 200$ per year for gas consuming households. All types of energy consumers saw economic gains totaling to about seventy four billion every year from the increase of fracking.
