Impacts of Fracking

• Firstly, fracking sites can cause noise and dust pollution as well as traffic congestion which will greatly impact people living in the surrounding areas. This is particularly a problem in regions with high population densities such as Europe.
• Massive impacts on the natural environment from infrastructure development and fragmentation of the landscape causing ecological impacts. For example, of the 575 national wildlife refuges in the US 105 contain a total of 4406 oil and gas wells (Burton et al., 2014). 
• Although emissions are lower than coal and oil, greenhouse gases ARE EMITTED during extraction from drilling, fracturing and well completions. It is not clean energy and is highly pollutive. Shale gas is predominantly made up of methane which is a around 85 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide making it the most significant driver of climate change (Vinciguerra et al., 2015) making it potentially a more harmful source of energy at a time when we should be moving away from fossil fuels. 
• Fracking is not always economically viable to extract depending on how deep the shale gas is below the surface. 
• Natural gas is a non-renewable resource meaning it cannot be considered a long-term solution to the energy crisis. As seen in the diagram below natural gas production is expected to peak around 2025 before production will start to rapidly decline up to 8% per year until 2050.
  
   Global Natural Gas Production, 1965 to 2100 Source 
• Fracking has been known to induce seismicity as hydraulic injection can cause existing faults to be re-activated. It causes earthquakes. These induced earthquakes tend to hit a lot closer to the surface (around 2-3 miles deep) than natural quakes meaning potential damage on the surface can be a lot higher even if the magnitude is relatively low. 

QUICK CASE STUDY – one of the UK’s main fracking sites near Blackpool experienced a 2.3 magnitude earthquake in 2011 due to fluid loss into a permeable fault causing operations to be suspended for 2 months.

In my next blog I will continue looking at the impacts of fracking, particularly on freshwater use and contamination.