For Frack Sakes: how much water are they really using?

So in our last post, it was pretty clear that fracking can cause water contamination issues for residents in the area. But digging further into the subject you may not realize how much water is actually used every time a well is built. As the majority of our planet is going into serious drought right now, this is a topic that really needs to be brought to the surface. Today we will get to know about that how much Water Use in Fracking.

In order to start a well, you first need 400 tanker trucks full of water at the site. It takes approximately 1-8 MILLION gallons of water to complete each job. Finally, about 70% of that water that was used is deemed no long reusable once the job is done. Talk about bringing a higher meaning to the word wasteful.

If we do a little math here for you, we can break it down even further…

500,000

Active gas wells in the US

X

8 million

Gallons of water per fracking

X

18

Times a well can be fracked

=

72 TRILLION gallons of water + 360 BILLION gallons of chemicals

(I can’t even remember the last time I used trillion to describe something, yikes)

Now it’s clear how much Water Use in Fracking. with this information, let’s talk about the severe droughts happening around our planet. California, for example, is in their 4^th year of drought and it’s only continuing to get worse. Residents of the state have had to cut down their consumption by more than 25%. Have the oil and gas industry had to do the same? Nope. Now their argument is that the majority of water is used for agriculture and in comparison, they are only really using around 9% of the allocated water. BUT if they were to reduce their consumption by 25% as well that would be a whopping 18 trillion gallons saved.

Not to mention the photo below showing the water near a drilling site that both animals and human use for consumption. Water Use in Fracking also comes into our drinking water. Green Kool-Aid anyone? Recently California had to shut down 11 wells over the fear that they were contaminating potential sources of water.

Everything eventually does come to an end though and the oil business is no different. The US has predicted that this energy boom will not last beyond the next decade. There has been talk of moving to the Arctic as soon as possible to start drilling. What are your thoughts on this?

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