The Pacific Institute has issued a study of issues related to hydraulic fracturing and water resources: Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Resources: Separating the Frack from the Fiction. The Pacific Institute is a non-profit research and policy organization based in Oakland, California. The study is largely a summary of interviews of environmental and industry experts and of research in the area; it provides a good summary of the present issues surrounding fracing and the literature on the subject.
The authors comment on the debate of whether hydraulic fracturing is the cause of any groundwater contamination by characterizing it as an issue of definition: those in the industry, they say, define the term narrowly as including only the actual process by which fluids are injected into the wellbore under pressure to fracture the formation. The authors elect to define the term more broadly, “to include impacts associated with well construction and completion, the hydraulic fracturing process itself, and well production and closure.” It is true that people outside the industry have tended to use the term “fracing” to include anything that can go wrong in the process of drilling, completing and producing a well and cause contamination. It is a mistake, however, to use the term to include risks of contamination from well construction, production and closure; those risks occur with all wells, whether they are vertical or horizontal and whether they are completed in shale or conventional formations.
The authors discuss the following issues surrounding “fracing,” as they broadly define it:
