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Results of 1 spill:
1,400 barrels of fracking slurry mixed with crude oil had drained off the wellsite owned by Enduring Resources and into a snow-filled wash. From there, that slurry – nearly 59,000 gallons – flowed more than a mile downstream toward Chaco Culture national historical park before leaching into the stream bed over the next few days and disappearing from view. The rolling, high-desert landscape where this happened is Navajo Nation off-reservation trust land, in rural Sandoval county, New Mexico. Then three days after the spill, something ignited and exploded 2,100 feet away on another wellsite owned by Enduring Resources, starting a fire that took local firefighters more than an hour to put out.
The two accidents account for just 1% of oil- and gas-related incidents in north-western New Mexico in 2019, according to statistics kept by the New Mexico oil conservation division (OCD). Since those two, there have been another 317 accidents in the region as of 29 March, including oil spills, fires, blowouts and gas releases.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/04/navajo-nation-fracking
It takes about three to five days to create a fracking well. Most will produce gas or oil for two to four decades. Source: Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development
Fracking produces 30 percent to 100 percent more methane emissions than traditional natural gas wells, according to researchers at Cornell University. The heat-trapping gas is a major contributor to global climate change.
Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology, told the Cornell Chronicle that the main takeaway from his research is that if you project forward 20 years, gas production from shale is “worse than conventional gas and is, in fact, worse than coal and worse than oil.” Howarth advised that renewable energy is the only good option.
Source: Climatic Change journal
According to an Environmental Protection Agency analysis, 173 chemicals used in fracking are toxic if consumed regularly by mouth.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency
A 2014 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council claims that fracking is contributing to an array of dangerous air pollutants including: Ozone smog, Pollutants, such as formaldehyde, benzene and other toxic hydrocarbons, diesel emissions, and a component of “frac sand,” silica can cause serious lung disease in fracking workers
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health took 116 air samples from 11 fracking sites in five states to see how much silica workers were encountering. Of the samples taken, 47 percent revealed silica exposures larger than the OSHA permissible exposure limit (PEL), and 79 percent exceeded the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommended exposure limit. Unfortunately, the toxic effects of silica dust can take a long time to show up. Acute silicosis, which almost always causes disability and death, usually occurs after several months or years of high exposure to silica. Accelerated silicosis appears within five to 10 years and has the same outcome.
Oklahoma experienced more than 2,400 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or higher between 2014 and 2017.The Sooner State has surpassed California as the country’s hotbed of earthquake activity.
In 2014, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources concluded that fracking had produced tremors southeast of Cleveland in Poland Township.
Source: Office of the Secretary of Energy & Environment
A 2011 study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives looked at 68 private drinking wells in New York and northeastern Pennsylvania and found elevated levels of methane in those near fracking wells.
Residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania, claimed that their drinking water became contaminated with methane after Cabot Oil & Gas began fracking there in 2007. In some cases, the tap water had so much methane in it that it could be set on fire. Some Pennsylvania residents filed fracking lawsuits, and a jury awarded two families a $4.2 million verdict.
Canadian officials concluded that three earthquakes that occurred in Western Canada in late 2018 were caused by the fracturing process itself. According to Global News, the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission concluded that the earthquakes, which ranged in magnitude from 3.4 to 4.5, were caused by hydraulic fracturing operations being conducted by the Canadian Natural Resources.
In 2018, Canadian researchers published new findings in Geophysical Research Letters that show that injection-induced earthquakes are more common in areas like northern British Columbia where “tectonic strain rate” is high.
B.C.'s Peace region is experiencing roughly 1,500 small earthquakes a year and most of them are connected to fracking operations, according to a new study.
Researchers set up 15 earthquake detectors around the region and recorded 5,757 tiny earthquakes that were otherwise undetected between 2017 and 2019.
"The vast majority of them seem to be connected with hydraulic fracking operations," said Alessandro Verdecchia, one of the study's lead researchers, during an interview on CBC's Daybreak North. The research was published in the Seismological Research Letters journal in July.
A new study has found homes close to where fracking was used to extract natural gas in British Columbia have higher levels of certain organic pollutants, which may lead to short- and long-term health effects.Elyse Caron-Beaudoin, lead author and a professor in the department of health and society at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, said researchers took water and air samples from the homes of 85 pregnant women in the Peace River area of B.C. for one week. Pregnant women were recruited for the study because of the potential negative health effects of living close to natural gas wells using fracking, including higher rates of pre-term births, low birth weight and heart malformations, she said.Source:Science of the Total Environment