A commentary, “Truth and Lies about Hydraulic Fracturing” by Prof. Terry Engelder, was published in the magazine ‘AAPG* Explorer’. Prof Engelder has experience of hydraulic fracturing of gas shales since the 1970s and gained notoriety in 2007 when he published his results on the technically recoverable reserves of the Marcellus gas shales. In the above commentary he declares six major mistakes from the early days of hydraulic fracturing for which industry were responsible:

1. Baseline water chemistry was not established before drilling began.
2. Casing was not cemented to a deep enough level.
3. The use of air-drilling to penetrate the vertical legs of wells resulted in turbidity of groundwater and other problems.
4. Industry lobbied for elements in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (e.g. the right to have undisclosed fracking additives)
5. The volume of discharged flowback into injection wells was large enough to trigger earthquakes
6. Water management at the surface was unsatisfactory (e.g. leaking open pits).

The result of these mistakes was public fear of hydraulic fracturing technology. Technological progress is continuing and knowledge about the issues is increasing however, and nowadays most of these early mistakes have been rectified and/or regulated upon. For example, baseline groundwater monitoring programs have started, casing technology has been revised, the disclosure of frack-additives is voluntary and in some states in the US it is now mandatory, it is now forbidden to store flowback in open pits.

Read the full commentary here.

*American Association of Petroleum Geologists