Work is underway on how to improve performance
of hydrofractures in horizontal wells, Patzek added.
This publication is a systematic, objective review of documented types and rates
of hydrofracturing - fluid - and chemical - related incidents affecting human health, to date, in the region of the Marcellus Shale Play.
For example, a recent ice sheet model sensitivity study finds that incorporating the physical processes
of hydrofracturing of ice and ice cliff failure increases their calculated sea level rise from 2 meters to 17 meters and reduces the potential time for West Antarctic collapse to decadal time scales.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil was investing its massive $ 45 billion in earnings in maximizing extraction and processing of oil and gas, including the controversial use
of hydrofracturing (fracking) to extract fuel from tar sands and the expansion of offshore oil drilling.
Not exact matches
Indeed, a shortage
of accessible natural gas threatens to cause more manufacturing losses in the region, where the state has banned shale gas production via high - pressure hydraulic
hydrofracturing.
Several environmental organizations, boosted by the popular movie «Gasland,» have claimed that using
hydrofracturing can endanger public water supplies, in part because
of potentially toxic chemicals that are sometimes used to help extract the gas.
«By analyzing the basic physics underlying gas recovery from
hydrofractured wells, we calculated a single curve that should describe how much gas comes out over time, and we showed that production from thousands
of wells follows this curve,» Marder said.
The study's well sample is made up
of about half
of the 15,000 existing wells in the Barnett Shale, the geological formation outside Fort Worth that offers the longest production history for
hydrofractured horizontal wells in the world.
In
hydrofracturing — the process implicated in the infamous break - up
of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 — rainfall or meltwater that pools on the glacier's surface drains into cracks.
The more dynamic picture in the new simulations suggests that the rate
of change in the first half
of this century — which does not involve a significant contribution from processes like marine ice - cliff instability, or
hydrofracturing — is essentially uncorrelated with the rate
of change later in the century.
More recent research, however, suggests that collapse could happen sooner; processes such as ice cliff failure and
hydrofracture, omitted from most ice - flow models, might initiate a collapse
of the Thwaites Glacier within a few decades (DeConto and Pollard 2016, Scambos et al. 2017).
It expanded extraction using
hydrofracturing in tar sands to increase activity in offshore oil drilling all over the world, thereby maximizing its rate
of fossil fuel extraction and processing.
The statistical truth is that
hydrofractured wells are marginally productive sources
of natural gas and oil.
And older climate models did not include dynamic ice sheet vulnerabilities — like high latent - heat ocean water coming into contact with the submerged faces
of sea - fronting glaciers, the ability
of surface melt water to break up glaciers by pooling into cracks and forcing them apart (
hydrofracturing), or the innate rigidity and frailty
of steep ice cliffs which render them susceptible to rapid toppling.
These approaches, however, haven't taken into account some physical processes that can quickly increase ice sheet discharge, such as the collapse
of terminal ice cliffs and the breakup
of floating ice shelves caused by a process known as
hydrofracturing.
The study's major achievement is the addition
of two key ice melting processes left out
of all Antarctica - wide models to this point: Meltwater ponding and crevasse formation on the surface
of ice sheets — so called «
hydrofracturing» — and the tendency
of ice sheets that are grounded on marine bedrock to rapidly retreat.
The more dynamic picture in the new simulations suggests that the rate
of change in the first half
of this century — which does not involve a significant contribution from processes like marine ice - cliff instability, or
hydrofracturing — is essentially uncorrelated with the rate
of change later in the century.
Natural gas
hydrofracturing took a public relations hit this month, when a British energy company admitted that its fracking operation in England was the direct cause
of several small earthquakes earlier this year.
There are a number
of economically sound State energy policies, such as North Dakota's development regime and California's Senate Bill (SB) 4 (
hydrofracturing regulations) and others.