A Colossal Fracking Mess
August 3, 2011 
A shale-gas drilling and fracking site in Dimock, Pennsylvania.
Early on a spring morning in the town of Damascus, in northeastern Pennsylvania, the fog on the Delaware River rises to form a mist that hangs above the tree-covered hills on either side. A buzzard swoops in from the northern hills to join a flock ensconced in an evergreen on the river’s southern bank.
Natural gas fracking can make local well water explosive
August 3, 2011 
As most forms of energy in the US have been going up in price, natural gas has gone in the opposite direction. This is largely the result of a new extraction technique called "fracking," in which fluids under high pressure are used to fracture rock formations deep underground, releasing large volumes of gas that would otherwise be trapped in small pockets. Because of relaxed regulations in some states, the process of fracking boomed before anyone had a clear perspective on its environmental consequences.
Fracking, Natural Gas's Dirty Secret
August 3, 2011 
Ethonomic Indicator of the Day: 45% -- The amount of fracked natural gas the U.S. will use in 2035.
Natural gas is the good-looking younger brother to much maligned nonrenewable resources like coal and petroleum; it's still plentiful, and relatively low in greenhouse gas emissions (just ask T. Boone Pickens!). But the good-looking brother has a dark secret: getting gas out of the ground is a really, really dirty process. According to Methane and the Greenhouse-Gas Footprint of Natural Gas from Shale Formation, a soon-to-be-published paper in the Climatic Change Letters journal, natural gas produced from shale is actually responsible for spewing significantly more greenhouse gases than coal.
Another Fracking Mess for the Shale-Gas Industry
August 3, 2011 When I traveled through northeastern Pennsylvania in March for my TIME cover story on shale natural gas, it wasn't hard to find unhappy homeowners like Sherry Vargason. Vargason, who lives on a cattle farm in rural Bradford County, has leased her land for shale-gas exploration, and a well was drilled a few hundred feet from her front door. Not long after, she began to experience problems with her water, which comes from an underground well on her property. It turned out she had unusually high levels of methane in her water — so high, in fact, that it posed an explosive threat to her home.
'Fracking' for natural gas also splits towns and families
August 3, 2011 Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas — Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas — another message from townsfolk angry at him for signing a lucrative natural gas drilling lease on his suburban Dallas property.
Study: Gas from ‘fracking’ worse than coal on climate
August 3, 2011 Cornell University professors will soon publish research that concludes natural gas produced with a drilling method called “hydraulic fracturing” contributes to global warming as much as coal, or even more.
Natural gas from fracking is worse for climate than coal, says new study
August 3, 2011 
Photo: Erland HowdenNatural gas obtained through "fracking" -- the increasingly common process of splitting open underground deposits with high pressure chemicals -- now has an even bigger strike against it than its potential to contaminate regional water supplies. Fracking, it turns out, yields more global warming per unit of energy than coal -- at least 20 percent more, and possibly up to twice as much.
Those are the bombshell findings of a new study [PDF] released by a trio of scientists at Cornell University. It turns out that after the fracking process, when the high-pressure drilling fluid is flowing back up the well, large quantities of methane gas travel with it. These and other “fugitive” emissions amount to approximately 2 percent of the natural gas released by a fracked well, which is a thousand times more than similar emissions of methane from conventional wells.
Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas -- it's 100 times as powerful a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 20-year time frame -- which means that fracking could provide a significant kick to global warming in the near term. Over longer periods, methane is less harmful, because it breaks down faster (into CO2, ironically). But even over 100 years, natural gas from fracked wells is significantly worse for the climate than coal.
Does this mean we should return to the 19th century model of industrialization? No, say the study’s authors, who emphasize that this study is not the last word on this subject.
These results suggest, however, that the Obama administration-supported "clean energy" standard, which includes natural gas, might be in that aspect actually worse for the climate than plain old business-as-usual coal-fired power.
Critics of the study point out that natural gas has other advantages over coal -- it leads to less conventional air pollution and premature death, for one -- but given the controversy already surrounding fracking, it now appears that this process could become, on balance, no better than our current addiction to coal.
Fracking: The Great Shale Gas Rush
August 3, 2011 The Pennsylvania homes of Karl Wasner and Arline LaTourette both sit atop the Marcellus Shale, a geologic formation that stretches from Tennessee to New York and holds vast deposits of natural gas. They also sit on opposite sides of a national debate over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. That's the process that makes it economical for energy companies to tunnel 5,000 feet below ground and remove the gas—but also poses environmental risks.
'Fracking' for natural gas is polluting ground water, study concludes
August 3, 2011 A Duke University study finds high methane levels in ground water near where fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, has occurred. Fracking is a controversial practice to extract natural gas from shale.
Worries Over Water As Natural Gas Fracking Expands
August 3, 2011 Drive through northern Pennsylvania and you'll see barns, cows, silos and drilling rigs perched on big, concrete pads. Pennsylvania is at the center of a natural gas boom. New technology is pushing gas out of huge shale deposits underground. That's created jobs and wealth, but it may be damaging drinking water. That's because when you "frack," as hydraulic fracturing is called, you pump millions of gallons of fluids underground. That cracks the shale a mile deep and drives natural gas up to the surface — gas that otherwise could never be tapped.
