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A Brief Look at Fracking

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In 2000, shale beds where the number one source of America’s constant need for gas. Most of that production increase has come about to the growing need of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking”, which is a process used to release oil or gas from underground formations that are otherwise too hard to mine with other tools. Over the past few years, advances in fracking technology have made huge reserves of natural gas in America economically recoverable. According to the Energy Information Administration, shale gas plays, or fields, in the United States, most notably the Marcellus, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York, and the Barnett, in Texas, are said to contain enough natural gas to give power to the country for a hundred and ten years. With the everlasting specter of energy independence, some have argued that such efforts to recover natural gas need to be expanded. Activists concerned with fracking’s potential environmental hazards view the new process as a serious threat to our environment. There are many different opinions on wether or not fracking is a safe way to gain our gasoline, and to meet the growing demands of gasoline around the world. The process of fracking creates cracks that come from wells into oil and gas formations by pumping highly pressurized fluids, ceramic beads, sand, and a mixture of chemicals, into the gas formation. As this fluid holds the underground fissures open, oil and gas fly up the well to the surface where they are

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