We hear so much these days about energy sources and our future. Many speak out against oil and coal as being outdated and dangerous as well as toxic to our environment. Many communities as well as countries have turned to natural gas for power because of this. Natural gas burns cleaner and is normally found in pockets in our earth and easily retrieved through conventional drilling with no real harm to the planet.
Yet over the last 30 years, energy companies have found another type of gas and oil that are not so easily and cleanly obtained. These are coal seam gas and shale oil.
Coal seam gas, or CSG, is obtained by drilling horizontally through underground coal beds that are too deep to mine. They then fracture this bed with small uranium tipped charges and capture the gas from within as it escapes. This process is called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”. And this is what I wish to bring to your attention.
Fracking is an invention of Halliburton, and as many of you know, Halliburton is a major player in drilling and the nation’s largest defense contractor. They build and maintain many offshore oil rigs as well as own all the patents in fracking. It was first used in the mid-1960’s, and back then, considered too dangerous and expensive to use. But as oil and coal seem to be getting scarce, and we search for new ways to power our infrastructure, it has been taken up again.
Many people support fracking but don’t seem to understand the impact it has on water and our planet. It takes two million gallons of water to frack one well. In California alone, there are over a million fracking wells. If this isn’t bad enough, fracking uses many chemicals that are kept secret from the general public due to the “Cheney Loophole”, a law put in place in 2007 by then Vice President Dick Cheney who was the CEO of Halliburton before coming into office. He made fracking exempt from the clean air, water and land acts that protect the public and the earth from poor drilling practices often used by drilling companies. Like many others, I saw this as criminal being that he owned a major part of the company doing this. But the process is still going strong, and many regions even have nondisclosure laws preventing people from even telling others what is being used.
(This article will be continued in the February, 2017 edition of the People’s Tribune)
