Can the US tails his way to freedom?

4:25 AM freedom, tails, US No Comments

| By Charley Blaine, MSN Money

Use of new technologies to tap huge underground deposits, holds out the promise of American energy independence-along with care of the environmental and health dangers. The stakes could not be higher.

Fracking. The mere utterance of the word excited investors in energy companies, the big oil and gas found in shale deposits in North Dakota, Texas and Appalachia.

It makes environmentalists shudder because it includes so many unknown.

Make no mistake, however: fracking is a big deal. It is allowed to develop oil and gas companies land oil and perspectives, which almost nobody had thought could be associated with hope of profitability in the market. It is one of the most important factors for the resurgence in the U.S. production of natural gas and oil, which brings the country closer to the long-sought goal of energy independence.

The United States imported 41% of its oil in the first five months of 2013, the Department of energy says, down from 65% in 2005. Some forecasts say the combination of the US energy could be self-sufficient, even though the country is still an importer of oil new supplies of fracking and alternative sources of energy and energy savings of conservation by 2030.

Fracking is "Hydraulic fracturing," technically meaning that with small explosions and much blocked water and small amounts of chemicals to share oil and gas resources in rocks, which are far below the Earth's surface.

Fracking has an enormous upswing set in natural gas exploration and production in Texas, North Dakota, Montana, and the Appalachian mountains. It was largely responsible for a jump from 14.4% in U.S. oil production in 2012 to 6.47 million barrels a day-the most since 1995.

On the way it has North Dakota into the country which turns on the fastest growing Senate for three years in a row and has attracted thousands to Texas, searching for jobs in energy.

The success secret of the fracking is that exploration engineers figured out, such as:

Drilling 5,000 feet below the ground surface in shale deposits, which is densely packed with oil and Erdgas.Beugen you the drilling pipe, so wells drilled as far as several miles out side can be.Free count small explosions in the hard shale deposits, oil and gas.Release pump water, chemicals and sand at high pressure, the gas and oil and bring it all to the surface.
The modern form of the fracking evolved after World War II, but big fracking emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. As oil analyst Fayed Gheit Oppenheimer & co. MSN Money said fracking "completely transformed" the domestic oil and gas industry.

Fracking came so fast that even the mighty Exxon Mobil (XOM) recognized that there have not the knowledge potential, especially in the exploration for natural gas. So it bought XTO Energy, one of the largest natural gas producers for some $31 billion in stock.

Fracking has made a lot of money for his investors. EOG Resources (EOG), which split off from Enron in 1999, its shares rise 1,520% since the year 2000 and 160% since the market has seen below in 2009.

Fracking, but not by the laws of supply and demand. So much natural gas came onto the market, the prices in the year 2012 reduced.

And doch-- and that is a big "and even"-fracking is reviled by many and feared by many more. Partly this the energy industry is to blame. No one will forget, the May 2010 BP (BP)-Olpest in the Gulf of Mexico. When the industry created a chaos, he created a big mess.

Fracking created fears that the water sand and chemical brews are concrete casing installed in virtually all U.S. oil and gas wells to escape and contaminate aquifers under ground or that turns to combustible gas in domestic water. Here you will find videos like this on YouTube, the people to ignite more water from your kitchen faucet.

One reason for the fear before: in the 2005 energy policy Act, the fracking industry specifically injury exempted under federal law for safe drinking water. State regulations were not affected, but the question is whether State regulators have to act the will or the resources.

The energy industry like to say that there has never been a case where fracking has caused harm to an aquifer, but the related problems is growing. A New York Times report documented contamination in Jackson County, W. Va., in the mid-1980s. And an article of the magazine Vanity Fair documented groundwater pollution issues around Dimock Township, a small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania, wells drilled by Cabot oil & gas (COG). The controversy was the basis for the fracking film "Gasland."

Fracking has been stopped in 2010 after regulator, that faulty Cabot drilling allowed to leak methane found in 18 Dimock water wells. Drilling was allowed back last summer after many complaints of local residents and lawsuits from the State of Pennsylvania filed were settled. Cabot continues to claim that it was not responsible.

Due to the controversy, it is believed that drilling and environmental practices have improved significantly. The industry set a voluntary reporting database of FracFocus called so people used in many drilling sites research can the chemicals. But a report by Bloomberg News said many fountains are not included on the database, and a study this spring, said Harvard Law School FracFocus offers only spotty coverage, is a searchable database of missing and enables a "too broad" aid for trade secrets.