| |
PGE Professor Mukul Sharma gave a presentation on June 27th to the Summer Internship Program on the facts and fictions of the hydraulic fracture process.
Although the fracing process has been used since the 1950s, recently the process has become controversial and its treatment in newspaper articles and documentaries
has had fracing specialists dismayed by the misinformation that some of these media included in their coverage. Fracing is a complicated process and Dr. Sharma's presentation,
Fracing: Facts and Myths, which is available at the Cockrell School website, endeavors to
dispel these misunderstandings and distortions.
One of the myths that has worried the public is the claim that fracing can cause earthquakes. Sharma's response, "Yes, fracturing does cause earthquakes. However, on the
Richter scale on average they would be negative, or put another way, one million times smaller than a typical California tremor. In fact the magnitude of these earthquakes is often
measured using microseismic monitoring techniques" If the public is not worried by heavy trucks on our roadways causing a micro quakes, they need not worry about the
seismic effects of fracing.
Another falsely based fear is the fear of groundwater contamination. The documentary "Gasland" shows a Pennsylvania resident who is able to light his tap water on fire;
the resident believes that this is the result of nearby gas well fracing. According to Sharma, such claims in the documentary are misleading because natural gas has been
known to seep into water wells decades before hydraulic fracturing was used. He said an example of such occurrences is found in New York's Eternal Flame Falls, a natural
waterfall over shale that emits natural gas and produces flames when lit. The chemicals used in fracing are not a mysterious toxic soup, but materials that have been used in
oil and gas wells for the past 100 years. Sharma supports the recent Texas legislation requiring oil and gas operators to publicly disclose the specific chemicals used in fracing,
adding that the reporting process should not be onerous, but he believes that their disclosure should allay public concern about the fracing process.
There is one other important myth that Sharma dispelled.
Sharma also pointed out that fracing is spelled without a k, and has been for over 50 years, in the technical literature, should anyone bother to read it.
|
Dr. Mukul Sharma |
