Review of Hydraulic Fracturing Technology and Practices

Download or read book Review of Hydraulic Fracturing Technology and Practices written by Space, and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology House of Representatives and published by . This book was released on 2012-08-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The primary focus of today's hearing is our study on hydraulic fracturing, and hydraulic fracturing, so far as I understand it, or fracking, is the process by which water, sand, and a small amount of additives are pumped into a well to create enough pressure to fracture formations deep within the earth. That is pretty simple, but that is what they wrote out for me to say here. Advances in this 60-year-old technology, combined with horizontal drilling, have transformed the production of natural gas along with the natural gas industry. Access to shale gas that was until recently uneconomical and technically unrecoverable is driving state and local economic growth all around the country with providing new sources of domestic energy to meet growing demand. As with all energy development, deep gas drilling is not without risk and concerns about potential environmental effects. This has to be examined.