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The Importance of a Secure Energy Supply for the Future

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1.1 Introduction
Secure energy supply is vital to our modern world. As the economy and world population grow, the consumption of energy is larger than ever. Energy shortage is one of the most concerned social and economical issues to our society. Both industrial and domestic lives rely on the energy provided by energy sources from one form or anther. Petroleum, coal and natural gas are the most produced and used energy sources. Mining technologies are required to obtain the raw materials of these energy sources from nature. The energy crisis is due to the limited amount of the natural storages of the energy resources. A higher production rate of the raw materials is desired so that more resources can be extracted to meet the demand. There have been conventional technologies for gas drilling for over 100 years. However the conventional method of drilling places limitations on how much material can be extracted. Until early 1940s, a new technique of extracting oil and natural gas was experimentally carried out and it soon became commercially implemented. This drilling technique is commonly known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Fracking is widely used in the industry, because it allows the maximum extraction of oil and gas. As of now, more than 90 percent of the natural gas mining sites in the States operates on fracking. Fracking will double the nation’s natural gas production in the next two decades. As attractive as fracking is to the energy industry, there are side

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