The technology of hydraulic fracturing is responsible for unlocking natural gas that has been hidden away in shale deposits for hundreds of years. However, the hydraulic fracturing process uses water; about 4 to 5 million gallons of water is required to drill and hydraulically fracture one Barnett Shale natural gas well.

For a natural gas field in North Texas that barely existed 10 years ago, the Barnett Shale demonstrates a compelling case for drilling. Did you know that the number of natural gas wells that are producing, or have produced, natural gas in the Barnett Shale is 15,675 according to the Powell Shale Digest and the Railroad Commission of Texas.

Ed Ireland’s Remarks to TCEQ SIP Hearing

July 14, 2011

TCEQ’s June 8, 2011 “Revisions to the State of Texas Air Quality Implementation Plan for the Control of Ozone Air Pollution” (SIP) contains an estimate of VOCs from oil and gas facilities in the Dallas/Fort Worth 9-county non-attainment area.  These estimates are in Table 3-18 on page 3-28 of that document.  In that table, total VOC emissions for oil and gas production for 2012 in the DFW 9-county non-attainment area are estimated to be 113.1 tons per day.

Fracking, fracing or frac'ing, are all shorthand terms for hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing is a procedure that creates small fissures in the layers of rock that contains natural gas and oil. The fracking process consists of pumping water, sand and other additives under high pressure into natural gas and oil bearing rock formations more than a mile and a half below the surface. The fracking process allows natural gas or oil to flow into the wellbore.