Category Archives: Energy

There are still many questions about the possibility of irreparable environmental damage associated with the extraction process. To get this gas, you blast a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals, some of them highly toxic, down a well a kilometre or two deep. This compound fractures the shale, and gas is freed to flow upward.
There are big problems with this process, the most alarming one being the danger that underground aquifers can become contaminated. Further, it emits considerable greenhouse gases. And up to 40 per cent of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing make their way back to the earth’s surface. There, they must be treated, and disposed of in some cases as hazardous waste.
Companies involved in shale-gas production insist that these problems have been overestimated, and that contaminated water is the result of surface spillage only. But U.S. research suggests otherwise. In 2009, the investigative journalists of ProPublica published studies on the effect of shale drilling on water supply in Colorado and Pennsylvania. The organization reported that “houses, water wells, and pipelines have exploded and people have found methane levels in their water so high that they could light it with a match.” ProPublica also found 1,000 U.S. cases where the extraction process affected water supplies.
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