Public concern list

1 how does it affect the environment?

2 does it increase the greenhouse effect drastically?
3 Could it have a negative effect on our drinking water?
4 Does it cause earthquakes?
5 if any are true whose fault is it, the government for lack of regulations or the company for not
being careful?
Main land use policies exemptions
1 safe drinking water act.
Fracking is of no concern unless diesel is used in the processing.
2 clean water act
Oil and gas drilling seem to be exempt for the moment. Issue for concern?
3 clean air act
This is a very strict policy but has many easily accessible loopholes.
4 resource conservation and recovery act.
Oil and gas usage needs to be regularly tested.

The economic benefits of fracking.

Fracking has recently become a widely used procedure to extract natural gas from deep in the
earth. When the fracking industry jumped around 2009 there was a massive drop in the price
of natural gas just because of the huge volumes that were being produced in such a short
period of time. This drop allowed people to witness and obvious effect on the energy market.
Just about everything you can think of that involves combustion energy became cheaper.
Things like gasoline your electrical bill and even some products that involve oil in their
production took a huge dip in price. The overall drop in natural gas bills dropped about 13 billion
from 2009 to 2013. (http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brookings-now/posts/2015/03/economicbenefits-of-fracking) For most people this is an amazing surprise. Something we personally
just witnessed in a recent boom among other things was a massive drop in gas prices at about
$1.50 per gallon. The wide use of fracking as long as it is properly regulated will be an amazing
way to keep prices dropping and the employment under it growing. This growing field of oil and
gas extraction has been able to employ a massive amount of people allowing skilled craftsmen
and engineers to make a good wage for their honest hard work. Most should view this as a
massive opportunity that we need to take advantage of. To put it into perspective in 2003 there
was a massive 50% employment drop in the oil industry and only holding about 118200 jobs,
but since the new fracking industry introduction that number has climbed about 67% to a
whopping 198,400 jobs. I like to look at these numbers as families. In that regard the fracking
industry was able to put food on about 80,000 family tables. These are the things we need to
focus on when it comes to the pros and cons of fracking. Now to wrap this all up and really see
the big picture you can relate similar data to other countries around the world that are helping
lead the industry. This data is only from the USA just imagine the amazing positive impact that

this could have on the job market of the entire world. It will also lower the average cost of living
around the world.
1 how does it affect the environment?
Fracking has many potentially harmful effects on the environment. The biggest and most widely
concerning is the effect that a leak could have on a body of water. Many harmful chemicals are
used in the fracking solution, if these toxic chemicals ever reached a large body of water it
would ravage the nearby ecosystem. Many people believe that a spill like this would never allow
the local population of life to ever recover. Another concern is the possible air pollution. If there
are more fracking pumps put in all over the world over time the amount of leaked methane
would not help our current environmental situation. Although currently the leakage does not
account for much at all we should refine the tech that stops the leaks before we create more
pumping locations.
2 Does it increase the greenhouse effect?
The answer to this is not a simple one. It depends on a lot of relative comparison. If you
compare the methane leaks in fracking to the methane leaked from livestock and almost every
other mammal fracking accounts for almost none of it. Although if you compare it to a perfect
fracking system with little to no leaks then yes it does leak a lot. Personally i do not currently
think it should be a high priority.
3 Does it cause earthquakes?
No. This is a major myth. Earthquakes are caused by massive earth displacement. Most
earthquakes carry more energy than an atomic bomb so to say that fracking is causing
earthquakes is outrageous. The comparison we are talking about here is just this. Atomic bomb
is equal to 907,000 metric tons of TNT. seems like a lot right, wrong a 8.0 earthquake is equal to
about 6,270,000 tons of TNT. to even prove this point more a 9.0 is equal to 99,000,000 tons of
TNT so yeah fracking doesn't cause earthquakes. In case you were wondering 1 ton of TNT is
equal to 4.184 * 10^9 J. and if you think these numbers are too far apart for the magnitude, just
know that the mag rating for earthquakes is exponential. If you still dont know what that means
go back to highschool.
4 who do you blame if fracking goes wrong, the government or the company?
This is up to you but do know that these companies will do anything to save their name. They
are a business afterall.
There are a few major laws that surround and regulate fracking. The biggest of them all is the
SDWA or the safe drinking water act. This law protects all drinking water that is stored above or
underground. The reason this law needs to be in place is so drills don't accidentally infect the
water we drink with the water used for fracking. This law prevents the companies from drilling
within a certain distance or any water that is in use or that could be used for something other
than fracking. The biggest reason that they have this law implemented is because the chemicals
in the fracking solution are very hard to treat so most of the water used can never be cleaned in

a factory instead they will most likely end up pumping the water far into the earth so it filters over
time and doesn't hurt anyone.
The second biggest law surrounding fracking is UIC or the underground injection control.
This law is also specifically aimed at fracking. It is in a sense the same as the SDWA but is
covers more than just water. Its main use is to restrict the drills from being too close to towns
and other areas just in case something went wrong at the pump. It also prevents them from
drilling in national parks or anywhere close to them. This can also be used to keep the workers
safe as they aren't able to drill near volcanic activity either.

Regulations that should cover fracking but are avoided.

The clean air act of 1963. This regulation is very self explanatory, its main use is to make
sure that the wells reach certain standards or they will be shut down. These standards are
normally how many ppm of a certain pollutant are being released. Its exemption is that the act
covers each well individually instead of the entire group making the impact seem less harmful.
This allows the fracking companies to keep pumping even though they are obviously hurting the
environment.
National environmental act of 1969. This one is also self explanatory. This requires
federal agencies to assess the pollution risk of certain factories or plants. The exception to this
is that the energy policy act of 2005 excludes all oil and gas drilling facilities. Once again this
doesn't have any effect of the fracking companies because they are drilling for oil and gas.
The clean water act of 1972. This is used for surface waters specifically. It was mainly
used to protect rivers from pollutants during industrial booms. The reason that it doesn't cover
fracking is because the fluid used is not yet considered a pollutant so federal agencies can't do
anything to stop the companies until they cause a problem. Until the fluid is considered
dangerous by the government they can keep using it which makes the fracking industry that
much more profitable.
Safe water drinking act of 1974. This regulation is used to protect underground sources
of clean water for the nation. This includes city wells, treatment plants, and personal wells. An
amendment in 2005 excludes the wells used for fracking. Note that in 2005 fracking was a
relatively new science and it was not yet widely used so one might think that there was no fear
surrounding it. This could lead to wide spread well and lake pollution which is obviously not
good for people that are trying to drink their well water.
Resource conservation and recovery act of 1976. This regulates the amount of waste
produced by a factory facility. It makes sure that it is being treated properly to keep human
health at the highest priority. The exemption that fracking has with this regulation is the waste
from oil fields was exempted in 1982. This means as long as you are fracking for oil you don't
need to worry about this regulation.

The energy policy act of 2005. regulates excerpts from the federal energy policy. This is
still a little vague to me but the apparent reason that fracking is exempt is because as long as
diesel fuel isn't used in the fracking fluid the federal agencies can't do anything when it comes to
this regulation. All of these exemptions put the government at fault and almost into question.

http://environment.yale.edu/envy/stories/fracking-outpaces-science-on-its-impact

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35608703

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/17/3750240/methane-leaks-erase-climate-fracked-gas/

http://www.nrdc.org/legislation/policy-basics/files/policy-basics-fracking-FS.pdf

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fracking_regulations
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/energy-hurricane-volcanoearthquake3.htm
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/MuhammadKaleem.shtml