r. Fracking has been associated with water quality issues, geological disruption

Question

r. Fracking has been associated with water quality issues, geological disruptions, and poor air quality. Fracking has also allowed the natural gas industry to boom here in the United States, lowering the price of energy, allowing for a means of energy independence, and creating jobs. With so many variables at play, an introspective and unbiased look at fracking is necessary. Explain your stance from the view-point of being pro-fracking.

What evidence makes your stance preferred over the opposing stance in the on-going fracking debate within the United States (e.g., economic benefits do or do not outweigh the risks, the negative publicity fracking has received is or is not well-founded, etc.)?

How has your stance spurred technological advancements in the energy sector?

From your stance, what regulatory changes would you implement in the United States over the next five to ten years?

Explanation / Answer

Fracking-the high-pressure injection of water, chemicals and sand into shale deposits to release the gas and oil trapped within the rock-in recent years has been combined with horizontal drilling and other improvements in technology to harvest stores of gas and oil that previously were thought commercially unfeasible to access.

The industry supports 1.7m jobs - a considerable accomplishment given the relative newness of the technology. That number could rise to 3 million by 2020. In 2012, this revolution added $62 billion to federal and state government revenues, a number that we project could rise to about $113 billion by 2020.2 It is helping to stimulate a manufacturing renaissance in the United States, improving the competitive position of the United States in the global economy, and beginning to affect global geopolitics.It is a bridge fuel to slash our oil dependence while buying us time to develop new technologies that will ultimately replace fossil transportation fuels. Natural gas is the critical puzzle piece RIGHT NOW. It will help us to keep more of the $350 to $450 billion we spend on imported oil every year at home, where it can power our economy and pay for our investments in a smart grid, wind and solar energy, and increased energy efficiency

While taking advantage of this gift in the short run, treating gas a 'bridge' to a low-carbon future, it is crucial not to allow the greater ease of the near-term task to erode efforts to prepare a landing at the other end of the bridge.

Significant parts of the United States and many other countries around the world possess natural gas and oil deposits bound up in underground shale. Some shales are naturally fractured, making it easy to get to the gas and oil; those deposits have been harvested for decades. Nationally, the economic benefits are even more impressive. Fracking makes energy independence feasible: The U.S. is well on its way to becoming a natural gas exporter instead of a natural gas importer, and Middle Eastern oil potentates wield appreciably less political power than they did a few years ago. And fracking exerts downward pressure on energy costs: home heating costs; commuting costs; trucking costs. Because fracking has significantly reduced the cost of gas, hundreds of power plants have switched or are thinking of switching from coal to gas, with impressive environmental benefits. Even shale oil is environmentally preferable to many other sources of oil.

. Local activist groups that fight fracking do so mostly because they are concerned about local environmental impacts. But national and international anti-fracking advocacy is run largely by groups that may privately admit that shale gas is a good interim energy source, but believe that even a good interim energy source will do more harm than good because it will postpone the desperation needed to motivate the renewables revolution.for the economic benefits of fracking, a lot of those new local jobs are filled by non-locals, brought in because they already have the skills the industry is looking for.

following  methodology was adopted:

1.

Establish the duty cycle of hydraulic fracturing hardware in the context of single and multi-stage fracs;

2.

Identify the typical pressure and flow required to fracture low permeability rock at the required depths;

3.

Detail all the elements of the mechanical systems used to generate the high pressure used during hydraulic fracturing;

4.

Use a parametric mathematical model to quantify the behaviour of the pumps for any configuration;

5.

Develop optimisation algorithm to explore possible efficiency improvements and identify best set of design parameters;

6.

Use exemplar scenarios based on frac-site case study to compare power and performance requirements from current and next generation of pumps;

7.

Quantify the environmental benefits that enhanced pump performance could offer for hydraulic fracturing operations

Here are a few of the efforts to make fracking greener:

Water-Free Fracking

Eliminating Diesel Fumes

Using Recycled Water or Brine

Plugging Methane Leaks

these are some regulatory changes from my stance.

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