The controversial gas-extraction technique called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking", is a highly water-intensive process. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a New Delhi think tank, says that India's lack of water is a “red flag" in the development of its shale gas, and that the country may be better off buying gas from Australia, the Middle East, and the United States.
India became the world's sixth largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2011, and is the fourth largest energy consumer in the world after the United States, China, and Russia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Natural gas “fracking" is occurring throughout the U.S. as the country seeks to diminish its dependence on foreign energy sources. Fracking, the fracturing of rock by a pressurized liquid, is highly damaging to the environment, soaking up vast quantities of water, contaminating groundwater, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, and triggering earthquakes.
According to a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research by Won-Young Kim, a researcher at Columbia University, a single fracking wastewater well triggered 167 earthquakes in and around Youngstown, Ohio during one year of operation.
The earthquakes overlapped precisely with the period of time in which frackers pumped wastewater from various drilling projects into a 9,200-foot deep injection well. The first quakes were imperceptible to local residents, but they grew in intensity until homes were shaken by a temblor of 3.9 on the Richter scale on December 31, 2011. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources ordered the well shut down because of the escalating flurry of earthquakes. Kim found that the quakes' frequency and intensity were closely linked to the daily pressure levels in the well. He also found that every quake occurred either at the well or along a fault line to which it was connected.
Kim's research builds on a growing body of scientific evidence linking earthquakes to fracking wastewater injection wells. A string of quakes in central Oklahoma in the United States in late 2011 were caused by fracking, including the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the state, at a ground-shaking 5.7 magnitude.
Author: Jennifer Scarlott
Sources: Grist & International Business Times.Â
