Resources

What is Fracking ?

Modern high-volume hydraulic fracturing is a technique used to enable the extraction of natural gas or oil from shale and other forms of “tight” rock (in other words, impermeable rock formations that lock in oil and gas and make fossil fuel production difficult). Large quantities of water, chemicals, and sand are blasted into these formations at pressures high enough to crack the rock, allowing the once-trapped gas and oil to flow to the surface.

***

Different chemicals are added for different purposes, based on the rock type and other specifics of a fracking site. Acids, for example, are used to dissolve minerals to help fossil fuels flow more easily; biocides eliminate bacteria; gelling agents help carry proppants into fractures; and corrosion inhibitors prevent steel parts of the well from being damaged by fracking fluid. The EPA identified 1,084 different chemicals reported as used in fracking formulas between 2005 and 2013. Common ingredients include methanol, ethylene glycol, and propargyl alcohol. Those chemicals, along with many others used in fracking fluid, are considered hazardous to human health. Meanwhile, and perhaps more disconcertingly, the potential human health impacts of the majority of chemicals used in fracking formulas are simply unknown.   Fracking 101, NRDC 2019, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fracking-101

A growing and substantial body of research reveals fundamental problems with the entire life cycle of operations associated with fracking and its infrastructure. Independent, peer-reviewed analyses indicate that fracking is an unpredictable process with innate engineering problems that include uncontrolled fracturing, induced earthquakes, and well casing failures that worsen with age. Intractable problems also include radiation releases; abandoned wells that serve as pathways for contamination; and venting, flaring, and blowdowns that result in methane releases. Compendium of Scientific, Medical and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure, 9^th Edition, 2023 (“Compendium”) Physicians for Social Responsibility, Concerned Health Professionals of New York, and Science & Environmental Health Network, https://concernedhealthny.org/compendium/ 

Virtual Encyclopedia on Dangers of Fracking

The Concerned Health Professionals of New York, Science & Environmental Health Network, and Physicians for Social Responsibility describe the Compendium as “a fully referenced compilation of evidence outlining the risks and harms of fracking.”

Based on more than 2,300 studies, the Compendium summarizes the evidence as follows: “Our examination uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which human health depends.”

NOFRAC Ignoring the Evidence Report

NOFRAC’s report, Ignoring the Evidence: Premier Tim Houston’s Reckless Plan to Frack for Gas, outlines significant issues of concern in the SERDIP agreement between the Province and Dalhousie, in the context of present day scientific knowledge about the risks of the onshore fracked gas industry. A brief summary appears below. Both the complete report and the summary may be downloaded separately below. The report includes authoritative resources, some of which are also addressed separately below.

Water Impacts

Fracking uses, and contaminates, massive amounts of fresh water through normal operations.

a. Effect on Availability of Water.

Because the same water resource can be used to support hydraulic fracturing and to provide drinking water, withdrawals for hydraulic fracturing can directly impact drinking water resources by changing the quantity or quality of the remaining water. Although every water withdrawal affects water quantity, we focused on water withdrawals that have the potential to significantly impact drinking water resources by limiting the availability of drinking water or altering its quality… If, …multiple oil and gas production wells are located within an area, the total volume of water needed to hydraulically fracture all of the wells has the potential to be a significant portion of the water available and impacts on drinking water resources can occur. Hydraulic fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources in the United States, US Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA Water Study”), December 2016, https://www.academia.edu/30501567/Hydraulic_Fracturing_for_Oil_and_Gas_Impacts_from_the_Hydraulic_Fracturing_Water_Cycle_on_Drinking_Water_Resources_in_the_United_States

Fracking consumes a massive amount of water. In the United States, the average can run between 1.5 million and 9.7 million gallons of water to frack a single well, according to the USGS. The amount depends on a few factors, including the type of well and rock formation. (A fracking operation in the Horn River Basin in Canada, for example, used almost 16 million gallons of water.) Water used for hydraulic fracturing is typically fresh water taken from groundwater and surface water resources.  Fracking 101, NRDC 2019, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fracking-101

In another study of six geographic fracking areas in the U.S., the authors found significant increases in the use of water (using cubic meters of water, each of which is about 260 gallons of water):

“[W]ater use per well is increasing (Fig. 2 and tables S1 and S2). The Marcellus region (Pennsylvania and West Virginia) had the lowest increase in water use (20%), from a median value of 23,400 m³ per well in 2011 to 27,950 m³ per well in 2016, while the Permian Basin (Texas and New Mexico) had the largest increase in water use (770%), from 4900 m³ per well in 2011 up to 42,500 m³ per well in 2016. Median water-use volumes varied largely among regions, with the Bakken region using the least water (21,100 m³ per well in 2016) and the Permian basin using the most water (42,500 m³ per well in 2016).” The intensification of the water footprint of hydraulic fracturing, Kondash, Sci. Adv. 2018, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6093634/

Similar increases were found in fracking in B.C. and Alberta:

“Over the 2012-2019 period, a total of 39 million m  of water was used for fracking in the Montney. The volume of water used per well has increased steadily over the eight-year period, from an average of 7077 m  per well in 2012 to 22,054 m  per well in 2019.” Hydraulic Fracturing, Cumulative Development and Earthquakes in the Peace River Region of British Columbia, Canada, Chapman, 2021, Journal of geoscience and Environmental Protection, https://www.scirp.org/pdf/gep_2021052514175330.pdf

“Overuse of groundwater is an increasingly serious problem that leads to land subsidence, reductions in surface water flows and ultimately unsustainable water supplies.23 Groundwater sources—from water in the soil to deep aquifers—are interconnected with one another and with surface water resources. Precipitation ultimately replenishes groundwater supplies, but in many cases this process can take decades, if not centuries or even longer ….24 Surface and groundwater are in reality, a single resource although regulators and end-users often have historically viewed them separately.” Hydraulic Fracturing & Water Stress: Water Demand by the Numbers, 2014, Ceres/Freman, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306199871_Hydraulic_Fracturing_and_Water_Stress_Water_Demand_by_the_Numbers

b. Contamination of Water Supply.

Drilling and fracking activities, and associated wastewater disposal practices, inherently threaten groundwater and have polluted drinking water sources. Studies from across the United States present irrefutable evidence that groundwater contamination occurs as a result of fracking activities and is more likely to occur close to well pads. In Pennsylvania alone, 343 private drinking water wells have been contaminated or otherwise impacted as the result of drilling and fracking operations over an eight-year period. 

Evidence of instances and pathways of water contamination exist even though scientific inquiry is impeded by industry secrecy and regulatory exemptions…As a result, fracking chemicals have been protected from public scrutiny as “trade secrets.” The oil and gas sector is the only U.S. industry permitted to inject known hazardous materials near, or directly into, underground drinking water aquifers. At the same time, in most states where fracking occurs, routine monitoring of groundwater aquifers near drilling and fracking operations is not required, nor are companies compelled to fully disclose the identity of chemicals used in fracking fluid, their quantities, or their fate once injected underground.

Nevertheless, of the more than 1,000 chemicals that are confirmed ingredients in fracking fluid, an estimated 100 are known endocrine disruptors, acting as reproductive and developmental toxicants, and at least 48 are potentially carcinogenic. Adding to this mix are heavy metals, radioactive elements, brine, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which occur naturally in deep geological formations and which can be carried up from the fracking zone with the flowback fluid. A 2020 study identified 1,198 chemicals in oil and gas wastewater, of which 86 percent lack toxicity data sufficient to complete a risk assessment. Between 2012-2022, highly toxic polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS or so-called “forever chemicals”) were used as ingredients in fracking fluid in more than 9,000 oil and gas wells in multiple states, including New Mexico, Texas, Ohio, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. Compendium, at Page 139.

An extensive summary of water contamination from fracking is found in the Compendium at Page 139.

Fracking Wastewater Impacts.

“Drilling an oil or gas well brings used drilling fluids and drill cuttings to the surface. Fracking…creates flowback fluid that comes up to the surface and needs to be disposed of.” A Hot Fracking Mess: How Weak Regulation of Oil and Gas Production Leads to Radioactive Waste in Our Water, Air and Communities, NRDC, July 2021.

Disposal of millions of gallons of highly contaminated fracking wastewater is one of the significant unresolved challenges of the fracked gas industry. .“A cache of government documents dating back nearly a century casts serious doubt on the safety of the oil and gas industry’s most common method for disposing of its annual trillion gallons of toxic wastewater: injecting it deep underground.” https://www.desmog.com/2026/02/12/the-oil-industrys-latest-disaster-trillions-of-gallons-of-buried-toxic-wastewater/

Fracking wastewater is often euphemistically referred to as “produced water.”

Fracking companies often do not disclose all of the chemicals which are used in fracking their wells, claiming they are “trade secrets.” When government cloaks frackers with a legal privilege to not disclose all substances used, government deprives the affected public of the public’s right to now, and deprives the affected public, affected municipal and other water utility systems, and any regulatory agency, of the ability to monitor resulting contamination of the air and water by the frackers.

“Of the known chemicals, 14 are known or possible human carcinogens, and many are linked to developmental health and reproductive problems.5

In addition to the original fluids that are pumped under ground, drilling and fracking can bring naturally occurring contaminants like brines and radioactive material from underground to the surface in the produced wastewater.6 The precise constituents of the wastewater vary depending on the geology of the extraction site,7 but it can contain salts (chlorides, bromides, and sulfides of calcium, magnesium and sodium), metals (barium, manganese, iron and strontium), oil, grease and dissolved organics (benzene and toluene) and radioactive material (radium-226).8 These chemicals can cause cancer, disrupt the endocrine system, affect the nervous, immune and cardiovascular systems, and affect sensory organs and the respiratory system. 

There are no safe ways to dispose of or manage fracking wastewater.10 Sometimes the wastewater is used to frack more wells, but it can also be discharged into surface waters or stored in pits until it evaporates into the atmosphere or percolates into the ground.11 When awaiting disposal in storage pits, ponds or surface impoundments, radioactive materials can become concentrated.12 For disposal, underground injection is the most common method.13 But this practice can put aquifers and drinking water at risk and has been linked to increased earthquake activity.14 In California, companies have injected oil waste-water directly into aquifers.15″ https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/fs_1910_fracking_wastewater-web.pdf

Although requiring extensive setbacks from fracking wells to residences, schools and other occupied sites provides some benefit, it is unlikely that these will be sufficient even if they were measured in miles rather than feet. If an aquifer or watershed is contaminated, everyone who is dependent upon the water source will be affected and the effects will likely be long term. Impacts over extensive distances are likely to occur as toxins evaporate, and laterals extending underground from fracking wells extend further and further. To give some sense of how far contaminants may travel underground: “[f]racking wastewater, injected underground for permanent disposal, traveled 12 miles through geological faults before bursting to the surface through a previously plugged West Texas oil well in 2022, according to a new study from Southern Methodist University.” https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/07/texas-oil-fracking-wastewater-injection-blowouts-permian-basin/

Ongoing Costs & Liabilities.

Fossil fuel industry is rarely held to account for its harm. And when industry is caught, the government sanctions of any, are often nominal and written off as a cost of doing business. Industry giants do not directly expose their vast income and assets to claims. Instead, leases and permits are issued and passed along to thinly capitalized companies, who are prone to “dump and run” when the productivity of their wells run down.  Fracking often leaves the public with the loss of property values, damage to public roads, costs of extensive water treatment systems or alternative sources of water, costs of properly sealing wells, the cost of monitoring resulting contamination, and costs of attempt to remediate to some degree, runoff from well pads and wastewater ponds, together with all of the other environmental damage and health care cost arising from the damage done by industry.

As fracking and other fossil fuel extraction continues, the problems the industry creates become further removed from potential redress. For example, from 2014 to 2015, the number of abandoned wells in Alberta soared from 162 to 702. The Alberta agency charged with responsibility for addressing these abandoned wells, was only able to deal with an average of 30 a year. CBC News, Johnson, April 15, 2015, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-sees-huge-spike-in-abandoned-oil-and-gas-wells-1.3032434

By 2023, the number of abandoned wells in Alberta which had not been remediated, soared to 90,000. The Tyee, Fluker, October 24, 2023, https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/10/24/Alberta-Abandoned-Wells-Crisis

Fracking probably makes the situation even worse. “In the 21st century, the proliferation of shale gas and tight oil development, which typically involves deep, horizontally drilled wells, has raised concerns that decommissioning costs for these wells may exceed those of conventional wells because of the former’s greater depths and associated pressure…” Decommissioning Orphaned and Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells: New Estimates and Cost Drivers, Enviorn. Sci. Technol. 2022, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.1c02234?ref=article_openPDF

Regulation/Enforcement

“I]dentifying cases where contamination of drinking water resources occurs due to oil and gas production activities—including hydraulic fracturing operations—requires extensive amounts of site and operational data, collected before and after hydraulic fracturing operations.” Hydraulic fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources in the United States, US Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA Water Study”), December 2016, https://www.academia.edu/30501567/Hydraulic_Fracturing_for_Oil_and_Gas_Impacts_from_the_Hydraulic_Fracturing_Water_Cycle_on_Drinking_Water_Resources_in_the_United_States

Without full disclosure of the substances used by companies who are fracking, and secure financial commitments for the staff, equipment, testing and laboratories required to actually monitor the fracking fluid, air, ground and surface water, and noise, there is no meaningful way for government or the public to actually know what is transpiring as a result of fracking, and it is very unlikely that government will have regulations in place which prohibit substances which cannot be used safely, and dictate industry monitoring and testing for introduced and released carcinogens and other contaminants. At the same time, it is inconceivable that any security/collateral or insurance required of industry will be sufficient to cover any more than a fraction of the actual harm frackers will bring.

With reports of fracking laterals extending far underground, wastewater traveling miles further, and reports of contaminated air 30 miles from well pads,  we have no certainty how far the fracking contaminants will travel from the well pad site, both in the air and underground. How can the Provincial government or even industry provide the plethora of monitoring equipment and monitoring wells, and staff which would be required to cover such expansive areas.

And who is going to pay for the baseline/background, near and long term ongoing costs of monitoring and regularly testing for the multitude of contaminants. It seems the burden will be on each private property owner with a well, and each municipal and other water utility system to establish their water supply’s pre-existing condition before fracking begins, and for the foreseeable future thereafter. But without knowing what contaminants the local fracking industry is employing, it would be an impossible guessing game to do so on the part of the affected property owner and utility system. 

We don’t even know if the laboratories serving the public in Nova Scotia have the capability of testing for all of the potential contaminants in all of the potentially affected wells and other water supplies.

Moreover, no amount of regulation, monitoring or testing will avoid the adverse consequences of fracking.

“Studies reveal inherent problems in the natural gas and oil extraction process, such as well integrity failures caused by aging or the pressures of fracking itself, in the process of extracting fracking fluids from the well, and in the waste disposal process. These issues lead to water contamination, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution with carcinogens and other toxic chemicals, earthquakes, and a range of health, environmental and other stressors inflicted on communities.  

“Some of fracking’s many component parts—which include the subterranean geological landscape itself—are simply not controllable.

Compounding the innate unpredictability of the fracking process: The number of wells and their attendant infrastructure continues to proliferate, creating burgeoning cumulative impacts, and the size of individual wells keeps growing. With the horizontal portions of a single well now extending as far as two miles or more underground, fluid injections, once typically three to five million gallons per fracked well, now can easily reach 10 to 20 million gallons per well.” Compendium, at Page 49.