During tonight’s national coverage fracking was a topic brought up on multiple occasions. Can someone explain what it is and the pros and cons of it? Need it because a google search did not help :/
In: Biology
There are different types of rocks underground. Some types of rocks are basically a solid mass of rock. These don’t have oil in them. Other rocks are really tiny rock particles mooshed together. An example is sandstone.
Depending on how closely mooshed the (let’s say) sandstone is, it might be possible for liquid to seep through it. For example, stalactites form in caves because water seeps through. Or, if your bathroom isn’t properly sealed, water seeps through the wall and bubbles the paint in the next room.
If liquids seep through sandstones underground, you don’t need fracking. You just stick a pipe in, and the extremely high pressure pushes all the oil up the pipe.
Some sandstones are mooshed much more closely together. So closely that there’s still space to store oil, but it can’t move anywhere. If you stick a pipe in, you might get a tiny bit of oil, but that’s it. That’s where fracking might be useful.
To do fracking, you pump some high-pressure liquid *down* the pipe, and hammer the rock until it starts to crack (“fracture”). Once it has cracked, the liquid in it can flow freely, and the high pressure of being underground pushes the oil up the pipe.
Some environmental concerns:
* The chemicals used in fracking might pollute the environment.
* It’s hard to accurately predict how much the rock is going to crack. It’s not good if oil that was previously stuck in the rock can suddenly leak into underground water sources.
* All criticisms of fossil fuels generally also apply to fracking.
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