Noble Energy, Inc. plans to use hydraulic fracturing to drill as many as 20 exploration wells around Tabor Flats, near the city of Wells.  “Fracking “is a highly controversial method of extracting oil and natural gas from deep in the ground.  SB390, a bill that will regulate hydraulic fracturing in Nevada, has been introduced into the Nevada Legislature.

Since fracking is new to Nevada, Dawn Harris with Frack Free Nevada has posted news, links and other resources on the Frack Free Nevada website: at https://sites.google.com/site/frackfreenevada/.

 

The following general information on the process comes from the Frack Free Nevada site:

The Method

• A method of oil and gas extraction that injects millions of gallons of water laced with toxic chemicals and sand at high pressure deep underground, pivoting horizontally for up to one mile, to break apart shale formations.
• It takes between 2 and 5 million gallons of water to fracture a single well one time, and each well may be fractured multiple times. Between 15% and 35% of the fluids stay underground in the well itself, while the remainder returns to the surface and must be either re-used or disposed of.  This means billions of gallons of this fluid is left underground, while tens of billions more must be either re-used or injected in deep disposal wells (called Class II injection wells).

Some of the environmental and health issues

• Communities have seen a corresponding increase in harmful air emissions, water contamination, and serious problems associated with the disposal of horizontal fracking waste fluids.
• The fluids used during fracturing contain many hazardous chemicals and heavy metals, including lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, diesel methanol, chlorinated formaldehyde, and benzene.

And current federal regulations on the process:

• Currently, no agency regulates where drillers send their fracking waste, how they transport the waste to a disposal site, or how it is handled once at the site.
• Ohio State officials actually closed disposal wells after a magnitude 4.0 earthquake hit Youngstown, Ohio, on December 31, 2011. This was the eleventh earthquake to strike the area in 2011, an area that was not previously considered seismically active.