Fracking

By jmiller03

  • Exploding Torpedo

    In 1866 U.S. Patent No. 59,936 was issued to Civil War veteran Col. Edward Roberts. His invention was known simply as "Exploding Torpedo."
  • Period: to

    Idea of injecting a nonexplosive fluid into the ground to stimulate a well began to be attempted.

  • Stanolind Oil conducted the first experimental fracturing in the Hugoton field located in southwestern Kansas. The treatment utilized napalm (gelled gasoline) and sand from the Arkansas River.

  • Halliburton conducted the first two commercial fracturing treatments in Stephens County, Oklahoma, and Archer County, Texas.

  • Hydraulic fracturing was used for the time in the Cardium oil field in central Alberta, Canada.

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    It was discovered that shale has naturally occurring cracks in it. If you can frack it where the cracks are, the gas comes out easily. Mitchell described it as taking a baseball bat to a windshield that already has cracks in it.

  • As part of an early federal effort to investigate new methods of extracting natural gas, the Department of Energy sponsors the drilling of 2,000-foot horizontal well in the Devonian Shales of Wayne County, W.Va.

  • Hydraulic fracturing had been successfully applied nearly one million times

  • Hydraulic fracturing is used on a massive scale.

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    Companies then used fracking technology and applied it to the Bakken in North Dakota and Marcellus in Pennsylvania.

  • Hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act by the Bush administration

  • U.S. House of Representatives introduces the Fracking Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act to repeal fracking's exemption from the SDWA. The act never came to a vote.

  • The EPA, documented the first study tracing underground water pollution back to fracking after monitoring water sources in Wyoming.

  • The study showed that the water contained high levels of benzene, acetone, toluene and traces of diesel fuel in wells.

  • The US is predicted to be the largest oil producer in the world.

  • Natural gas is expected to account for a quarter of the world’s total energy.

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