We are recording a show tomorrow

With Deborah Ballin from the Union of Concerned Scientist, and thought you'd like to see this blog she posted which is one of the subjects we will cover tomorrow.  Don't forget you can find all of our TV/radio shows, 24/7, at renewablenow.biz:

We'll post in two parts, starting with this:

Fracking or Hydraulic Fracturing? What’s in a Name?

Deborah Bailin, analyst, Center for Science & Democracy

July 12, 2013

A few weeks ago, I was telling my mother about the work I do here at UCS’s Center for Science and Democracy. “We’re putting together a forum next month about recent developments in natural gas and oil extraction and public access to information, “ I said, “It’s called Science, Democracy, and Community Decisions on Fracking.”

In her 70s and a longtime resident of Illinois where new fracking regulations have just been passed, my mother scowled in puzzlement: “Fracking? I don’t know what that is, but I don’t like the sound of it.”

Now, my mother is not an environmentalist. She still throws away recyclables, despite my best efforts at retraining. Nor is she politically engaged. Unless someone were to set up a drill rig in her backyard garden on top of her rose bushes, my mother isn’t much interested in where her electricity comes from. She was simply reacting to the word “fracking”—not the practice or the policy or the public controversy—because she hasn’t been following any of that.

Hydraulic etymology

My mother’s reaction, in fact, probably had very little to do with hydraulic fracturing. Had a sentence or two been given to it on the evening news in the midst of a story about proponents and opponents squaring off over the new Illinois regulations, I imagine she might have hit the mute button.

Hydraulic fracturing, technically, is just one step in the many stage process of getting oil and gas out of rock formations deep underground. Engineers and scientists use the term hydraulic fracturing—shortened to hydrofracking, fracturing, or just plain fracking—to mean this very specific activity. Hydraulic fracturing is the step in the process that involves injecting large amounts of water combined with “fracking fluids” and proppants (sand and other solids) down a wellbore. Fractures in the rock are created that allow the oil and gas to migrate up the well, where they can be captured.

Constructing a well pad, drilling the well, and preparing the well with steel casing and cement all must precede hydraulic fracturing itself. After fracturing occurs, the oil and gas must then be captured and transported and the wastewater properly disposed of. Other activities also surround the process, such as an influx into communities of workers and traffic. Combined with additional technological advancements like horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, though not itself a new technology, has made accessible previously inaccessible oil and gas reserves.

Why so much confusion in the public dialogue?

Unlike technical experts, who use fracking to mean a very specific thing, nontechnical stakeholders have broadened its meaning to encompass the entire scope of operations involved in recent oil and gas development. The word, in popular usage, includes not only the specific step of fracturing the well but pre- and post-fracturing activities, as well as community impacts—real, potential, or merely perceived.

This difference in usage causes confusion in the public dialogue. For example, at a recent forumheld by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, environmentalists and industry representatives sparred over whether fracking had caused water contamination. Opponents insist fracking could potentially cause drinking water contamination. Supporters claim there are no documented instances of water contamination—that fracking is safe.

But are these two sides talking about the same thing?