The Greatest Industry Of Hydraulic Fracking And Its...

The Eagle Ford Shale is located in South Texas, stretching from the boarder of Mexico from just north of Laredo to about 50 miles northwest of Houston, covering a 9,500 mi2 area (Scanlon). It lies about 50 miles west of Austin and 25 miles south of San Antonio. The dimensions of the Eagle Ford Shale are about 50 miles wide and stretching 400 miles long. The Eagle Ford Shale is one of the most oil rich parts of Texas but yet is still one of the driest with only 21 inches of rainfall a year at the heart of the shale, Carrizo Springs. The reason we are interested in this area is to discuss the very fast growing industry of Hydraulic Fracking and its environmental impact. To understand why this area is so rich in oil and natural gas we must†¦show more content†¦Black shale is relatively brittle making it easier for hydraulic fracturing to extract the oil and gas from its pores (King). Hydraulic fracturing is also called hydro-fracking or just fracking, so how is it preformed? Af ter an area of tight shale formation is found drilling begins to reach oil and gas deposits. Once the drilling has reached the right depth it starts drilling either right or left for up to 6,000 ft. into the shale to reach as much oil or gas as they can. The vertical wellborn has casing to protect the ground water and the horizontal wellborn has small holes to allow water and other particles to be injected into the shale all along it. This is when hydraulic fracturing takes place, water and other things are injected into the shale at an extremely high pressure and cracks the rock. The additives and sand holds open the cracks and allowing the oil or gas to find its way to the surface and keep flowing for year and maybe up to decades (Kershner). Hydraulic fracturing started in either the Hugoton field of Kansas in 1946 or near Duncan, Oklahoma in 1949. Although the exact date and place is not certain when hydraulic fracturing was first used it became utilized on a large scale in 2003 by natural gas companies. Texas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wyoming, Utah, and Maryland are where the exploration for natural gas in shale reserves was beginning to take off (Zrinski). As for the Eagle Ford Shale the first well was drilled in 2008 by Petrohawk.