Earthquakes, Water Pollution and Increased Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Fracking – Strike Number Three?

The last decade has seen a sustained campaign by the hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking") industry against its critics, as the fracking industry in the U.S. alone was worth an estimated $76 billion in 2010 and is projected to grow to $231 billion in 2036 if only those pesky environmentalists can be sidelined. According to Washington’s energy Information Administration, production of shale gas in the United States in 2010 totalled 4.87 trillion cubic feet (tcf) compared with 0.39 tcf only a decade earlier. The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has already transformed North America’s natural gas market in less than half a decade. In 2000 shale gas was 1 percent of America’s gas supplies; today it is 25 percent. . . . → Read More: Earthquakes, Water Pollution and Increased Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Fracking – Strike Number Three?