preview

Oil Production Through Horizontal Fracking

Decent Essays

Summary More than 60% of New Mexico is currently in a moderate to extreme drought. Water is a scarce resource in New Mexico, and care should be taken to limit excess water use. Oil production through horizontal fracking requires large amounts of purified water. Each well drilled requires between 3 and 7 million gallons of clean water. In 2012 alone, 482 new wells were drilled in New Mexico, producing more than 3 billion gallons of water waste. Under current regulations, wastewater must be cleaned or disposed of and cannot be reused. Fracking water is difficult to clean, leading many companies to dispose of much of the water deep underground. The water is stored so deep that it is essentially removed from the water cycle. New …show more content…

Since the 19th century, natural gas has been able to be extracted from deposits that are shallow (Schmidt 2013). Just recently, horizontal fracking has become a cost effective option to collect natural gas in shale deposits. This development has caused a boom in the fracking industry. In fact, “in 2010 shale gas contributed 23% of domestic natural gas production, compared with 2% in 2000” (Schmidt 2013). Horizontal fracking involves pumping a mixture of water and chemicals deep underground in order to fracture shale, thus releasing natural gas trapped therein. While natural gas may be the “cleanest fossil fuel available,” the process of collecting it is not without environmental concern. At the forefront of environmental issues in fracking are the large use of freshwater in wells and the production of large amounts of wastewater. Hunter (2012) points out that as the fracking boom began, “speculators rushed into hydrofracking … with little attention to how much water would be needed or the best practices for managing the water when they were done with the wells.” As mentioned before, in the year 2012 alone, more than 3 billion gallons of fracking water waste were produced in the state of New Mexico. While “conventional gas production generates 65% more wastewater per unit of recovered gas than fracking does” (Schmidt 2013), the use of water by fracking is still of particular to concern to a state like New Mexico

Get Access