Hydraulic fracturing in the US

Hydraulic Fracturing in the U.S
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Hydraulic Fracturing in the U.S
Introduction
Hydraulic fracturing (HF) along with horizontal drilling has transformed shales that were previously not productive into the biggest natural gas fields in the globe. In the United States, the process of hydraulic fracturing is used in 9 out of ten natural gas wells, where millions of gallons of chemicals, water and sand are pumped into the ground in order to break apart the rocks to release gas. Concerns has been raised by scientists that chemicals which are used to fracture rocks could create a threat not just underground, but also when the waste fluids are mishandled and spilled out on the surface (Yew, 2007).
Literature review
Valko & Economides (2005) stated that hydraulic fracturing refers to a process which can enhance the flow of gas or oil from a well. This procedure is typically carried out by pumping liquids down a well and into underground rock units under extremely high pressures that fracture the rock. Usually, the objective is to form a network of fractures that are interconnected, which will serve as pore spaces for the movement of natural gas and oil to the well bore. The first industrial use of the process of HF was in 1903 and prior to that year, the procedure was employed at the Mt. Airy quarry in North Carolina where it was extensively employed in separating blocks of granite from bedrock (Brady & Brown, 2007). Conversely, the initial application of HF in stimulating natural gas and oil wells in the United States took place in the 1940s at the Hugoton gas field in the state of Kansas. One thousand US gallons of gelled gasoline as well as sand obtained from Arkansas River was inserted into the gas-generating limestone formation located 730 m underground for the well treatment. The procedure was successful in increasing the rates of well production and the practice then spread rapidly. In 1949, a patent on this procedure was issued and an exclusive license awarded to the company that invented it – Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company. This company then on March 17, 1979 carried out the first two commercial HF treatments in Archer County, Texas and Stephens County, Oklahoma. Today, the HF procedure is used worldwide each year in thousands of wells (Zoback, 2010).
According to Jaeger, Cook and Zimmerman (2007), massive or high-volume HF treatment was first used in the United States by a firm called Pan American Petroleum in 1968 to a well in Oklahoma’s Stephens County. Five hundred thousand pounds of proppant was injected into the rock formation. Geologists from the United States in the 1960s became more and more aware of large volumes of gas-saturated rocks whose permeability happened to be very low to economically recover the natural gas. The government of the United States tried out with the use of underground nuclear explosions to fracture the rock and allow the recovery of g...