Recently concluded US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hearings at locations around the United States have yielded substantial information about the dangers to human health and the environment posed by the natural gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking. The final hearings in the series, held last week in Binghamton, New York, had to be postponed twice in order to make arrangements to accommodate the large numbers of participants.
EPA is conducting these hearings as part of the congressionally mandated preparation of a review of the hydrofracking process, which is in use in a number of areas around the country. Hydrofracking has the potential to unlock large, but otherwise difficult to retrieve supplies of natural gas from extensive shale beds located in various regions across North America. This large energy potential, along with deep-water oil drilling and other energy initiatives, fits into US strategic plans to establish domestic “energy independence,” while seeking military control over foreign sources of gas and oil, notably in the Middle East and Central Asia so as to gain leverage over international rivals...
Hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) is used to access natural gas trapped in shale deposits. This process allows retrieval of gas that is unavailable by more conventional extraction methods. It is more complex than the simple drilling of a vertical well to tap an underground pocket of gas. The process involves horizontal drilling within deeply buried shale beds, followed by the high pressure injection of water, mixed with sand and a variety of chemicals (many are known carcinogens), to fracture the rock (hence the term “fracking”) and release the gas. Millions of gallons of water are needed for each well...
Companies involved in hydrofracking have mounted massive public relations and lobbying campaigns to minimize its environmental and public health risks and to pressure legislators and government agencies to permit their drilling operations to proceed with minimal regulation. They have, for example, strongly resisted disclosure of information regarding the toxic chemicals used in the fracking fluid and repeatedly denied that their operations are the source when such substances are discovered in the drinking water of nearby residential wells. The companies have also claimed that hydrofracking has been safely used for many decades. This is highly disingenuous since the vast majority of those earlier operations were simple vertical wells in which the fracking procedure was limited in scope and the volume of fracking fluid small compared to the extensive horizontal fracturing now being undertaken. The substantial amount of wastewater generated by the latter procedure creates an exponentially greater risk to the environment and human health. The profitability of hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale would be significantly impacted if all of the “hidden” costs were fully taken into account...
In addition to the heavy influence of industry on politicians and regulatory agencies, a recent study by ProPublica reveals that the Pennsylvania state Office of Homeland Security has been conducting surveillance of anti-hydrofracking groups and passing the information on to the industry...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/hydr-s28.shtml 
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