Environmental Issues (Article Critque) Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Environmental Issues ( Critque) - Article ExampleOne set of risks are specific to the hydraulic cranny shape used for shale gas production while the new(prenominal) set of risks apply to both oil colour and gas production activities where there is much greater operating experience. The last part of the paper shows that the environmental regulations for shale gas drilling vary from state to state and that there are rural areas of overlap in the midst of some of the state regulations and some federal laws. The paper suggests the need for a common set of regulations so that the trump practices developed at one drill site can be applied across all projects. 2. Environmental risks specific to shale gas production 2.1 Seismic shocks The major concerns about shale gas production take a crap been about the hydraulic disclose process where the shale judder is caused to fracture by hydraulic pressure. The cracks in the rock propagate 500 to 800 feet in all directions from the casi ng pipe and the effect is similar to an underground unstable shock. The fracture pressure needs to be monitored and controlled to prevent the cracks from spreading beyond the shale gas layer (page 4). The superior general concern with setting off such(prenominal) underground fractures is that the fissures may permit contamination of underground body of water aquifers that are used for drinking water (page 7). Most shale gas formations are found 4,000 to 8,500 feet below the draw close whereas drinking water sources are rarely more than 850 feet deep (page 8). Seismic monitoring is an essential lance to ensure that the underground cracks do not spread beyond the shale gas formation. However, only 3% of around 75,000 hydraulic fractures carried out in 2009 in the US were seismically monitored (page 8). An additional concern is with such underground fracture may lead to earthquakes. The town of Cleburne, Texas has experienced several low intensity earthquakes under 3.3.on the Ric hter scale in 2008 and 2009 after the start of shale gas exploration in the area when the region has no recorded earthquakes in the previous 142 years (page 9). Preliminary studies do not find a definite link between shale gas exploration and these earthquakes but the concern remains. The paper does not say whether the hydraulic fractures in the Cleburne area were seismically monitored. 2.2 Fresh water usage and waste water disposal Hydraulic fracturing requires 2 to 8 zillion gallons of water per well fractured. Though water once used for fracturing can be reused by diluting with young water, the Barnett Shale project has used an average of 3 million gallons of fresh water per well and has drilled tens of thousands of such wells (page 12). Apart from the problem of using so much water in competition with other uses, there is the problem of treatment and disposal of contaminated water. The water pumped into the well has chemical additives. When it flows bear out to the surface it includes any sub-surface water that may have dissolved contaminants such as arsenic, benzene and quicksilver (page 10). The flow back water will happen not just during the hydraulic fracture process but also during the gas production phase of the well. The water is presently being injected into underground salty aquifers but the number of such wells available is too small to handle the tidy sums of waste water (page 10). Municipal waste water treatment facilities in the area of the shale gas fields cannot handle this volume of water and are not designed for these contaminants. Treated municipal water is also