What the...frack?

What the…frack?

It is estimated by the Department of Energy that by the year 2020 shale gas will make up 20% of the country’s supply of national gas. However, at what cost? The process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” is the process of injecting water, sand, and a chemical cocktail under high pressure thousands of feet below the earth’s crust in order to fracture the shale and release the natural gases trapped within. When asked about the significance of natural gas to America’s energy future, Administrator Lisa Jackson of the EPA said, “I see an increasing role for natural gas in general […] the corollary is that you can see fracking playing a larger and larger role in obtaining that natural gas.”

The benefits cannot be ignored. Large-scale fracking in over ten states is creating thousands of jobs each year, helping the environment by providing more clean burning fuel to the nation, and the presence of companies like Cabot Oil and Gas and Halliburton have helped to salvage some of the poorest parishes in the county like DeSoto in Louisiana. “People who went to bed one night poor woke up the next day rich […] like the show ‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’” says a resident of the parish.

Although fracking has existed in the United States for many years, predominantly in the south and southwest, the subject has recently become very volatile with its expansion into northeastern states like Pennsylvania. Many residents who leased their land to these gas development companies, sometimes for $5,000 per acre, are realizing they may have leased their drinking water as well. “I knew the water went bad when we could light it,” Bill Ely, a resident of Susquehanna County in Pennsylvania, said. "From the fracking standpoint, we don't believe the process is contaminating the groundwater. As a technology, it's proven and safe," says George Stark, a spokesman for Cabot.

However, the issue has stimulated enough unrest in these areas that the EPA has been subpoenaed the gas development companies for information on their fracturing chemicals. Although the EPA does not have any evidence of contamination of water from fracking chemicals currently, it has initiated a congressionally mandated study to look into the impact of fracking on the drinking water supply of the country and will help determine what restrictions or regulations might need to be in place to protect the nation’s drinking water.

Up until recently, the federal government has left the regulation of fracking to the states. As a result, some states require more information about the chemicals and the fracking process than others. This is a key point in the fracking controversy. Supporters of state regulated fracking, like Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, fear that nationalizing safety and disclosure requirements will freeze the industry completely. As a result of America’s federalist system and the division between state and national legislatures it has been difficult to establish a national regulatory solution that will capitalize on this homegrown energy source while protecting the public health of the nation. “The American who chooses to develop natural gas recourses on their property may be impacting peoples’ property and wells that they don’t own. That’s why the federal government needs to take a look. That’s why the government has to get involved,” says Lisa Jackson.