"Fracking", a Way to Extract Natural Gas, Stirs Debate
Land is cleared for drilling in Pennsylvania’s Loyalstock State Forest (Photo: Pennsylvania DCNR)
On a job in northern Pennsylvania, Chesapeake Energy Corporation trucks ship in water, sand and production chemicals for fracturing. (Rosanne Skirble/VOA)
Gas operations are common in rural Pennsylvania, which since 2005 has issued 4,000 drilling permits. (Rosanne Skirble/VOA)
The 15-20 million liters of water used to hydraulically frack each well are either trucked to the site or pumped over ground from nearby water sources. Credit: Marcellus Shale U.S.
The well head on a gas well is often called the “Christmas Tree.” (Photo: Bob Donnan)
Beverly Romanetti thinks of the gas lease on her Pennsylvania farm as a “cash crop.” (Rosanne Skirble/VOA)
An aerial view of June Chappel’s property where the fracturing waste pond has since been removed. (Photo: Bob Donnan)
June Chappel says she was terrorized by the gas wells flaring next to her home. (Photo: Bob Donnan)
Protestors at a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania call for drilling to stop in the Marcellus Shale, the largest reservoir of natural gas in the United States. (Photo: Jacques Jean Tiziou)
Drill bit used to dig more than a kilometer through layers of rock to reach shale deposit underground. (Rosanne Skirble/VOA)
Nearly one-thousand tanker water trucks are needed to service a single hydraulically fracked natural gas well. (Photo: Marcellus Shale U.S.)
Twenty to forty percent of the fracturing fluid flows back out of the well and is contained in large waste pools excavated near the gas site. (Photo: Marcellus Shale U.S.)
EPA field tests in Pavillion, Wyoming study link between hydraulic fracturing and ground water contamination. (Credit: EPA)
Wyoming farmer John Fenton gets preliminary results from a U.S. EPA study that links his contaminated water with chemicials used to extract gas from a nearby well. (AP)
Natural gas development is growing in and around farms and forests in rural Pennsylvania. (Rosanne Skirble/VOA)