The Truth
Natural gas is a powerful, inexpensive energy source found in such abundance in American shale formations – an estimated 100+ years’ worth – that it could greatly reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Natural gas is cleaner burning than coal, gasoline and diesel.1 In recent years, natural gas usage has increased due to power plants switching from coal to natural gas and more cars and trucks running on natural gas – and carbon dioxide emissions have fallen to 1992 levels.2
While some activists would lead the public to believe that shale gas development, particularly through hydraulic fracturing, is a threat to public health, numerous scientific studies prove otherwise.
MYTH |
TRUTH |
| Fracking is dangerous. | Gina McCarthy, EPA Administrator, said in 2013: “There’s nothing inherently dangerous in fracking that sound engineering practices can’t accomplish.”
Steven Chu, former Secretary of Energy, said in 2013: “This [fracking] is something you can do in a safe way.” Mark Nechodom, Director of California Department of Conservation, said in 2013: “In California it [fracking] has been used for 60 years, and actively used for 40 years, and in California there has been not one record of reported damage directly to the use of hydraulic fracturing.” |
| Fracking pollutes water. | Lisa Jackson, former EPA Administrator, said: “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”
Ernest Moniz, Secretary of the Department of Energy, said in 2013: “I still have not seen any evidence of fracking per se contaminating groundwater.” |
| Fracking harms groundwater. | Tim Kustic, California Div. of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, said in 2012: “There is no evidence of harm from fracking in groundwater in California at this point in time. And it has been going on for many years.” |
| Frack fluid migrates into groundwater. | Hal Fitch, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, said in 2013: “As far as migration of gas or fracture fluids, we have never seen an instance where a fracture communicates directly with the fresh water zone.” |
| Fracking is a new, experimental procedure that needs more study. | The first frac job was on March 17, 1949 at a well east of Duncan, Oklahoma. Since then, hydraulic fracturing has been used in an estimated 2 million or more operations worldwide. Nearly every U. S. natural gas well and the majority of all oil wells are now being hydraulically fractured.
The Institute for Environmental Research, Northeastern Pennslyvania |
| All gas well cement eventually fails and chemicals leak into the water supply. | Ground water is permanently protected by several layers of steel casing and cement, as well as thousands of feet of rock. |
| Hydraulic fracturing spews dangerous chemicals into the air. | Multiple studies across the country agree that air near natural gas wells is safe: volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in the vicinity of natural gas wells have been found to be at normal levels, which are too low to be dangerous. |
| Fracking is only used for oil and gas. | Fracking has been used for stimulating everything from water wells to geothermal wells. The EPA has even used it to clean up Superfund sites. |
| The composition of fracturing fluids is a secret. | Most companies freely disclose fracking fluid ingredients and, in Texas, state law requires oil and gas companies to disclose the composition of frac fluid at FracFocus.org. Federal law requires complete ingredient lists be available to first responders in emergencies. More than 99 percent of this fluid is water and sand. The rest includes common materials millions of Americans use daily. |
| Shale gas (or fracked gas) is different from natural gas. | Shale gas is the same as any natural gas: it simply comes from shale formations instead of other rock strata like limestone or sandstone. |
| Hydraulic fracturing causes earthquakes. | There is no evidence of a link between hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Research Council. |
| There is an amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act some call the “Halliburton loophole,” that protects oil and gas companies by exempting hydraulic fracturing. | The Safe Drinking Water Act never regulated hydraulic fracturing. Oil and natural gas companies are still regulated by other provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and states have regulated the fracking process for more than six decades, with an impressive enforcement record. |
| A 2012 University of Colorado Denver School of Public Health study that allegedly demonstrated an increase in cancer among people living within 1/2 mile from a site. | The cancer risks identified in the study (which EID debunked here) are actually in line with or well below the risk for the entire U.S. population, regardless of where they live.
energyindepth.org |
| Earthquakes and sinkholes in the area are due to hydraulic fracturing. | The National Research Councilput it best: “hydraulic fracturing a well as presently implemented for shale gas recovery does not pose a high risk for inducing felt seismic events.”
energyindepth.org |
| The Colorado study that suggested methane leakage rates from oil and gas systems were twice as high as previously thought. | Methane leakage claims have become anti-drilling activists’ answer to the impressive and undeniable reductions in American greenhouse gas emissions that have resulted from an increased use in natural gas.
energyindepth.org |
| Texas Commission on Environmental Air Quality has stated there is more air pollution coming from the energy industry in Dallas-Fort Worth than all the cars and trucks in the area. | This claim relies on a study conducted in 2009 by then SMU Professor Al Armendariz that has been thoroughly debunkedby the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council.
Barnett Shale Energy Education Council |