"The natural gas industry defends hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, as safe and efficient. Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a pro-industry non-profit organization, claims fracking has been “a widely deployed as safe extraction technique,” dating back to 1949. What he doesn’t say is that until recently energy companies had used low-pressure methods to extract natural gas from fields closer to the surface than the current high-pressure technology that extracts more gas, but uses significantly more water, chemicals, and elements..." continue reading here.
I find this article particularly interesting because it delves into the change in the industry over the last few years to switch from low-pressure drilling to these high-pressure techniques that have shown to contaminate well water in towns, rivers and streams, to the point where people can light their tap water on fire, as well as a major contributor to recent seismic activity (earthquakes) in such states as Alabama, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The rhetorical question is: why did they need to switch to this new technique? Money, money, money...
