The process used to extract natural gas hidden beneath our planet’s surface is highly controversial – and for good reason.
Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is the process in which industries use water, sand, and chemicals to penetrate solidified rock. This frees trapped oil and gas inside, to be used for various purposes.
Although a highly effective way to unearth these natural resources, fracking comes with some significant repercussions, especially its impact on freshwater resources.
First, it is important to acknowledge the quantity of water used in fracking operations. Studies from Duke University have found that water use and wastewater production have increased at a profound rate. From 2012 to 2014, annualized water use hovered over 116 billion litres each year for shale gas extraction, while 66 billion litres were used per year for extraction from unconventional oil sources.
Major shale gas and oil production has also resulted in a 770 per cent increase in water well usage, from 2011 to 2016. Within the first year alone, the volume of water used proliferated by 550%. This only serves to exacerbate the availability of our freshwater resources, when the use of it in fracking operations is factored into the larger picture.
Of course, the sheer amount of water used to extract these natural resources is not the only impact found within the fracking discourse. The negative environmental effects are just as profound.
When drilling technologies and production operations advance, the collateral effect it has on the surrounding bodies of water also increases. The leftover fluid from fracking operations can sift through fractures in the underlying rock, inevitably causing contamination, which directly affects the groundwater sources contained within and below.
Wastewater also becomes an unintended side-effect of contamination too. During fracking production, wastewater spillage may leak into local ponds and rivers, before settling. This affects the respective wildlife in the region, who rely on the drinking water for sustenance.
Fracking also invariably affects those same sources of drinking water for human beings who live near operation sites. Watersheds that are contaminated, due to fracking processes, can affect upwards of millions of people, even if they are hundreds of miles away from the actual production site.
Furthermore, the consequences of fracking don’t simply cease with the impacts on our water resources. Fracking procedures are also known to emit significant greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to being a cause of fissions, tremors and earthquakes. Just last year, a 4.4 magnitude tremor was experienced in west central Alberta, forcing operations to be suspended outright.
To prevent these unwarranted repercussions from continuing to build, federal and state-level regulation is required. In Canada, the attempts at regulation have been mixed, although there have been some strides made in controlling the overall impact it has on water sources.
Canada’s Oil and Natural Gas Producers, or CAPP, have stressed the importance of finding alternative resources to be used in fracking operations. This is to mitigate the extreme usage of surface water and groundwater, when used to extract natural resources from below the surface.
Contemporary wells used during sourcing are now being built to protect groundwater from contamination.
In addition, plans such as the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program, which is an industry-funded environmental monitoring program, identifies issues pertinent to oil sand-heavy regions like the Athabasca oil sands area. This is to ensure that impacts of fracking developments can be preemptively identified and addressed accordingly.
The debate on the viability of fracking persists, but the repercussions on water sources globally, are significant. With continued community-based activism, along with government and industry-led regulation, better alternatives to extraction are bound to be discovered.