32 Facts About Hydraulic fracturing

Hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, hydrofracking, and hydrofracturing, is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of bedrock formations by a pressurized liquid.

Hydraulic fracturing began as an experiment in 1947, and the first commercially successful application followed in 1950.

Drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made the United States a major crude oil exporter as of 2019, but leakage of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, has dramatically increased.

Research has found adverse health effects in populations living near hydraulic fracturing sites, including confirmation of chemical, physical, and psychosocial hazards such as pregnancy and birth outcomes, migraine headaches, chronic rhinosinusitis, severe fatigue, asthma exacerbations and psychological stress.

Since then, hydraulic fracturing has been used to stimulate approximately one million oil and gas wells in various geologic regimes with good success.

Related searches

In contrast with large-scale hydraulic fracturing used in low-permeability formations, small hydraulic fracturing treatments are commonly used in high-permeability formations to remedy "skin damage", a low-permeability zone that sometimes forms at the rock-borehole interface.

Massive hydraulic fracturing is a technique first applied by Pan American Petroleum in Stephens County, Oklahoma, US in 1968.

Massive hydraulic fracturing quickly spread in the late 1970s to western Canada, Rotliegend and Carboniferous gas-bearing sandstones in Germany, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in the North Sea.

Hydraulic fracturing operations have grown exponentially since the mid-1990s, when technologic advances and increases in the price of natural gas made this technique economically viable.

In 1997, Nick Steinsberger, an engineer of Mitchell Energy, applied the slickwater Hydraulic fracturing technique, using more water and higher pump pressure than previous Hydraulic fracturing techniques, which was used in East Texas in the Barnett Shale of north Texas.

Hydraulic fracturing is performed in cased wellbores, and the zones to be fractured are accessed by perforating the casing at those locations.

High-volume hydraulic fracturing usually requires higher pressures than low-volume fracturing; the higher pressures are needed to push out larger volumes of fluid and proppant that extend farther from the borehole.

Main purposes of Hydraulic fracturing fluid are to extend fractures, add lubrication, change gel strength, and to carry proppant into the formation.

High-viscosity Hydraulic fracturing tends to cause large dominant fractures, while high-rate Hydraulic fracturing causes small spread-out micro-fractures.

However, Hydraulic fracturing fluids have been developed using liquefied petroleum gas and propane.

Fracturing fluid varies depending on Hydraulic fracturing type desired, and the conditions of specific wells being fractured, and water characteristics.

Injection of radioactive tracers along with the Hydraulic fracturing fluid is sometimes used to determine the injection profile and location of created fractures.

Hydraulic fracturing is used to increase the rate at which subtances such as petroleum or natural gas can be recovered from subterranean natural reservoirs.

Hydraulic fracturing enables the extraction of natural gas and oil from rock formations deep below the earth's surface, which is greatly below typical groundwater reservoir levels.

Since the late 1970s, hydraulic fracturing has been used, in some cases, to increase the yield of drinking water from wells in a number of countries, including the United States, Australia, and South Africa.

Hydraulic fracturing has been seen as one of the key methods of extracting unconventional oil and unconventional gas resources.

The multi-stage Hydraulic fracturing technique has facilitated the development of shale gas and light tight oil production in the United States and is believed to do so in the other countries with unconventional hydrocarbon resources.

Primary benefit of hydraulic fracturing is to offset imports of natural gas and oil, where the cost paid to producers otherwise exits the domestic economy.

However, shale oil and gas is highly subsidised in the US, and has not yet covered production costs – meaning that the cost of hydraulic fracturing is paid for in income taxes, and in many cases is up to double the cost paid at the pump.

Research suggests that hydraulic fracturing wells have an adverse effect on agricultural productivity in the vicinity of the wells.

Related searches

In 2014 a number of European officials suggested that several major European protests against hydraulic fracturing may be partially sponsored by Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas company.

The New York Times suggested that Russia saw its natural gas exports to Europe as a key element of its geopolitical influence, and that this market would diminish if hydraulic fracturing is adopted in Eastern Europe, as it opens up significant shale gas reserves in the region.

Hydraulic fracturing is currently taking place in the United States in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Potential environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing include air emissions and climate change, high water consumption, groundwater contamination, land use, risk of earthquakes, noise pollution, and various health effects on humans.

Hydraulic fracturing has been sometimes linked to induced seismicity or earthquakes.

Countries using or considering use of hydraulic fracturing have implemented different regulations, including developing federal and regional legislation, and local zoning limitations.

Hydraulic fracturing is excluded from the Safe Drinking Water Act's underground injection control's regulation, except when diesel fuel is used.