Hydraulic Fracking

Hydraulic Fracking

Introduction

Fracking is an Anglo-Saxon term to refer to the technique of hydraulic fracturing for unconventional gas extraction. It consists in extracting natural gas by fracturing the bedrock (shales and schists). To remove the gas trapped in the rock drilling uses a mixed technique: first drilled to 5000 meters vertically and then horizontally drilled several kilometers (2 to 5). Water is then injected with sand (98%) and a series of chemical additives (2%) at high pressure. This causes the rock to fracture and the gas is released and rises to the surface through the well. The process is repeated along the grain of gas rich rock. Part of the injected mixture returns to the surface (between 15 and 85 %). The hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a technique used to optimize long exploitation of conventional oil reservoirs. This technique relies on the use of hydraulic force to fracture the rock.

In current practice, these names cover two very different applications (www.hydraulicfracturing.com):

The development of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.

The development of deep geothermal reservoirs.

However, the abstraction of these objectives leads to an amalgam and a trivialization of the extreme of the inherent exploitation of hydrocarbon source rock industrial risks.

Discussion

The extraction technique called unconventional gas fracking takes years to apply in several countries, especially in America, where they have found a number of problems associated with this type of farms. Among the problems caused by fracking to the environment of the farms where this technique is used can include:

Pollution of surface water and groundwater.

Air Pollution.

Human health conditions.

Alterations of scenery and terrain.

Soil pollution by closing the wells.

Seismic risk.

The objective of this is to mount the term fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) applies especially to the development of unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs, that is to say, relatively impermeable rocks containing oil or gas. In return, the term hydraulic ...