Pros and Cons of Fracking: Essay Tips

Table of Contents

What is Fracking?

Fracking involves digging deep into the rock and elevating a highly pressured stream of water, sand, and chemicals underneath the wellbore. This forces a network of little cracks to open up and spread through the impermeable rock, releasing pockets of gas within the rock to leak out.

The breaks or ‘fissures’ in the rock are then held open with the sand and chemicals that have been added. Through these fissures, the gas or oil then escapes.

It slowly makes its way up to the surface where it is collected carefully and stored, ready to be processed and then sent on to be used for heating homes and cooking food, amongst other things.

However, recently there have been a lot of arguments against using fracking to get access to the very deepest of the natural deposits of fossil fuels. Several environmental problems need to be taken into account to understand the full effects of fracking.

Pros of Fracking

There are many pros of fracking, which is why it has so undeviatingly come to be used for a lot of the extraction of fossil fuels in current years.

Some of the pros are as follows:

Access to more gas and oil
Lower taxes
Self-dependant
Better air quality
Reduced dependency on foreign oil
Plenty of jobs

Access to More Gas and Oil

Because fracking can reach measurements that other extraction techniques cannot, we now have a path to many more natural deposits of gas and oil than we ever made previously. This indicates that we have more gas and oil to use for food, heat, and power our cars, for the case.

Lower Taxes

A knock-on impact from having a way to more extra gas and oil is the lowering of taxes on first things like gas and oil. Oil for cars as well as gas for cookery will become easier to obtain and, hence, more affordable.

Self-dependent

Geopolitics – they can be an absolute nightmare. A lot of the international relationships between some of the most prominent and most influential countries have to do with who has the most access to fossil fuels.

Being able to access more gas and oil in our own countries, however, will give us better peace of mind should other countries start to hoard fossil fuels for themselves, for example.

Better Air Quality

Fossil fuels have long been said to be bad for the atmosphere because of the chemicals that they discharge into the air. At least, this is true of coal. Still, access to more gas may indicate that we begin to use more gas, and the burning of gas, less carbon-dioxide is discharged into the air.

This means that gas is a much more decent fossil fuel, and, if more personalities begin to use gas, the state of air will start to develop.

Reduced Dependency on Foreign Oil

Fracking helps countries to explore domestic sources of oil. As the community proceeds to increase, it makes more reason to look out for alternative sources for oil and gas at home rather than depending on other nations to reach social needs.

Plenty of Jobs

The fracking industry has already generated thousands of jobs in the recent past and is expected to generate plenty of jobs shortly.

Cons of Fracking

However, fracking is not at all safe, and there are some very urgent reasons to stop fracking in favour of concentrating on cleaner techniques of producing electricity; for the case, solar or wind energy.

Some of the Cons of Fracking are as follows:

Less Focus on Renewable Energy Sources
Increased Water Pollution
Increased Number of Droughts
Consistent Noise Pollution
Increased Spread of Toxins
Nature of Mixture Used

Less Focus on Renewable Energy Sources

If we are relying on fossil fuels and we have discovered a way to be able to rely on them for longer, we are going to suspend our research into dilemma (and cleaner) energy sources.

When we thought that the world was running out of fossil fuels, we had started to look into alternative energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy, and hydropower.

Increased Water Pollution

Although above we said that the general quality of air would be improved if more people used gas as opposed to coal or oil, fracking could end up leading to more pollution in general.

Because fracking applies so much water (as much as a hundred times what other, normal drilling uses to get to gas and oil sediments), it has been connected to a reduction in the water supplies in and nearby regions where fracking has taken place.

Increased Number of Droughts

Because fracking, as mentioned above, uses so much more water than other techniques employed to extract fossil fuels from the earth, there has been an increased number of droughts in and around areas in which fracking has taken place.

Consistent Noise Pollution

As well as an increase in water pollution in areas where fracking is taking place, noise pollution is on the rise. Fracking is a very loud process and goes on for ages.

For people living very close to places where fracking is taking place – since it can take place almost anywhere, including areas that are otherwise highly populated – the continuous noise of heavy vehicles appearing and running for days on end can have a significant influence on daily lives.

Increased Spread of Toxins

Fracking organizations are not yet legislatively obliged to confess what sort of chemicals they are inserting into their water mixture – all we understand is that water is being mixed with sand and some chemicals to perform fracking more relaxed and more effective.

Nature of Mixture Used

There is no certainty as to what chemicals and sand organizations use to earn access to precious natural gas and oil. The wells underground have an extensive collection of oil and natural gas. It is not known how the mixture is prepared and if the combination can cause any harm to the health of workers while blasting is done.

What is Fracking?