From Guest Blogger Zac Aldridge: The Oxymoron of Our Independent Energy Future and Hydraulic Fracturing

There’s a bitter irony that strikes us all in our quest for total energy independence and a sustainable, clean energy future. Few will argue that natural gas is our ticket to the freedom of domestic energy production. It’s clean, cheaper than ever, and bountiful throughout the continental United States.

The natural gas that lingers between the Earth’s shallow soil layers are close to becoming depleted in the next decade or two. But about 10,000 feet down across the county lays the mother of all natural gas reserves – about 1,887 trillion cubic feet in total – which can be tapped with a process called hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for short, is a process by which water, sand, silt is pumped at high pressure deep underground through existing, depleted or abandoned wells, or new wells developed specifically for extraction, to crack the layers of rock and shale that traps the abundance of natural gas we have throughout the Heartland of America.

Why fracking is an oxymoron

First, let’s discuss the benefits of fracking. It’s labor-intensive, which bodes well for workers. The natural has industry employs about 1.2 million people in the U.S. today, and should the projected increases in natural gas assumption and production become reality as expected, that number should double or more. Workers are employed to do everything from man the wells, build and maintain the gas pipelines, and sell the gas to end consumers.

Aside from the obvious benefits of relieving our dependence on foreign oil consumption, natural gas is also cheaper today to acquire, transport and sell than it has been in a decade. Prices for natural gas are controlled by financial market traders that have been collectively driving the prices lower and lower for the last five years. Also, as gas becomes more expensive, consumers will start turning towards low-cost alternatives like natural gas in bigger numbers.

So what’s the problem with fracking? Well, there are plenty.

First, it’s pretty dangerous. When the gas is released through fracking, it travels back up the well and then collected – but it’s not the only thing that comes up. Volatile organic compounds (VOC) are also released, some of which are extremely poisonous to humans, even in just the smallest concentrations. Those chemicals have to be disposed of permanently and properly, without escape, and the industry hasn’t quite figured out how to do that yet.

Fracking also requires a tremendous amount of water. Each well requires between one and 800 million gallons of water to produce the fractures in the rocks that release the gas. The water has to go somewhere – and unfortunately, studies have found it to end up in local municipal reservoirs. Other times, the water is just stored on the surface of the earth, and then reused. Unfortunately, we don’t really yet know what the long term effects of these practices are.

Today, about 30% of all natural gas comes fromfracking; the remaining percentage is gas that is relatively simple and easy to pull from the ground because of its close proximity to the surface of the Earth. But there’s little argument against the importance of large-scale fracking as the single most effective process in tapping the abundance of deep, subterranean natural gas.

Still, I suppose there’s a price to pay for anything in this world. And our country’s journey towards energy innovation and independence from foreign oil and collective, domestic energy consumption is no exception.