There’s an old public enemy committing a new public crime. With the recent earthquake in the Midwest, more and more people are hearing a new term: Fracking. Well, it’s new to them, anyway. The process of “Fracking”, or Hydraulic Fracturing, was first used to harvest and sell natural gas in 1949. I wasn’t really surprised to see that Halliburton was the first company to extract and sell natural gas using this method. What I was surprised, or at least slightly more surprised, to read is that Halliburton is behind a dangerous loophole that was formed from sketchy legislation in the last decade that allows some of the most dangerous chemicals to be used in the process.
Fracking is the slang term used for fracturing shale to release natural gas. Oil companies drill into the earth and pump millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals to create enough pressure to blast apart shale. Natural gas is released in this processed and collected by the oil company. Inevitably, some of the chemicals cannot be contained and work their way into the ground water. The recent earthquake in northern Ohio is suspected to be the result of Fracking, in which the hydraulic pressure triggered the movement of tectonic plates. This may be the first time a natural disaster was caused by humans!
It seems a little off that oil companies are allowed to pump all of those chemicals straight into the ground. Well, I suppose if they can do it legally there isn’t any harm that can come from it, right? The EPA should have a pretty strong chokehold on oil companies, especially in our “green movement”. It turns out, and this may be shocking to some, that Former President Bush, with the help of Former Vice Villain Cheney, passed an energy bill in congress that exempts natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act! The SDWA (I’m assuming that is the short version) protects Americans from deadly natural and man-made chemicals. I know, I never would have expected that an owner of one of the biggest oil companies, that pioneered natural gas fracking (which directly affects the quality of surrounding drinking water), would try to pass legislation that protects said companies from scrutinizing and restricting their processes by banning some of the deadly chemicals they use in those processes.
What chemicals could these be? And are they really that toxic? Well, yes… yes is the answer to that question. A study was recently completed by the Committee on Energy and Commerce to acquire the type of chemicals used in Fracking directly from the oil companies, and found a disturbing list of nasty crap that may seep into the water table. Astonishingly, the oil companies were open to providing some of the chemicals they used. However, they were not obligated to give the names of the chemicals for anything they deemed a “trade secret”. Some of the companies said they simply did not know what chemicals they were using, because they acquired the chemicals from a third party vendor that labeled them as trade secrets. So some of these oil companies don’t even know what they are pumping into the ground. IT doesn't matter though - they could legally pump whatever they want as long as it is for natural gas drilling, thanks to Bush and Cheney. The committee found that there are as many as 750 different types of chemicals used in the process. Of the 750 chemicals, 29 are known carcinogens. These are the type of chemicals that cause cancer, abnormal growths, and other deadly diseases. Some of these carcinogens are Benzene, Lead, Diesel, Formaldehyde and Sulfuric Acid. A large product of the Fracking process is Methane as well, and there have been some reports of flammable drinking water due to a build-up of methane in the water table near some of these Fracking wells.
So, once again, big oil has ignorantly placed the lives of the consumers in jeopardy in order to maximize profit. If natural gas drilling were susceptible to the same rules as harvesting any other energy, or any other process that directly or indirectly affects drinking water, they would not be able to use any carcinogenic or any other potentially lethal chemical in their process. They would be forced to find another method of extraction, which is undoubtedly possible. Instead, they relish in the loopholes of the system, knowing (or even worse in some cases not knowing) what chemicals they are pumping into the drinking water. Largely unethical, extremely dangerous yet disturbingly tolerated. The question is how long will it take before we acknowledge that the risks are just too, well, risky and hold natural gas drilling to the same standards of all other drilling. Probably quite a while, unfortunately. It’s like big oil has some sort of advantage over us. As if we actually need natural gas to continue functioning as a society. They could really take advantage of that situation is they ever became aware of it! Anyway, you can read more about it here:
TL;DR Big oil is a fracking mess. They fracking take advantage of every unethical loophole and constantly fracking extort the consumer at every fracking turn. Now they are fracking fracking so they can maximize profits, and in return they are spilling fracking carcinogens directly into the drinking water. And guess what? Everyone fracking knows it! What the frack!
