The process of injecting fluid into a shale bed at high pressure to crack the shale and release oil and gas has far more criticism than I realized. After googling the term to learn more about it, I was returned with far more political material than I had expected. There is quite a bit of protest against fracking and the pollution it is said to cause.
It seems the main cause of this protest is the pollution it is said to cause. Fracking uses a mixture of water and different chemicals underground. There is an argument that these liquids are never fully extracted and seep into the water table, contaminating drinking and agriculture water. This is, apparently, the primary argument against fracking. There are examples of people being able to light their tap water on fire do to the high amount of methane in the water. This has been blamed on fracking. Many oil companies say this is not due to fracking but will not reveal what chemicals they are using in their fracking process claiming it is proprietary and would hurt their competitive edge.
It seems as though oil companies should be more transparent with their operations. Not that they should reveal their exact techniques but searching fracking on the internet returns little from oil companies themselves. Their is quite a bit of dissent to be found.
