Full Title: Hydraulic Fracturing and Shale Gas Production: Technology, Impacts, and Policy
Author(s): Corrie Clark, Andrew Burnham, Christopher Harto, and Robert Horner
Publisher(s): Argonne National Laboratory
Publication Date: September 1, 2012
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
however, not without risks to natural resources. Potential impacts include the following:
- Greenhouse gas emissions during completion and production activities,
- Air emissions that affect local air quality during completion and production activities,
- Water withdrawals for hydraulic fracturing,
- Induced seismicity from improper management of flowback water,
- Water quality impacts to surface water or aquifer from faulty well design and construction or improper flowback water
- management, and
- Additional community impacts including noise and light pollution.
Improved science-based assessments of these risks are underway, but early results indicate that the risks can be managed and
lowered through existing practices including the following:
- RECs that limit VOC, HAP, and CH4 emissions and reduce flaring,
- Engineering controls and appropriate personal protective equipment to reduce worker exposure to crystalline silica,
- Reusing flowback water to limit fresh water withdrawal requirements and reduce water management burdens,
- Drilling of multiple wells from a single well pad to reduce the footprint of operations,
- Proper siting, design, and construction of gas production and fluid disposal wells, and
- Groundwater quality monitoring coupled with fracturing fluid chemical disclosures.
With adequate safeguards in place, shale gas can be exploited responsibly in ways that protect both the environment and
human health.