Fracking for the Scientifically Clueless

Schematic of fracking job

The more often a term shows up in search results, the more often freelancers will seize on it in hopes of collecting a few hit. Who knows, their junk might even go viral (though quite probably not). A case in point, the term "fracking" generates more than thirteen million hits at google. Wanna bet that a substantial number of them link to content generated by freelancers? By that, we mean people like Sam Jones, who jumped on the SERP bandwagon with a piece at InfoBarrel.com he cleverly titled "Fracking: Putting the F-Word in the Energy Business."

Jones was all over InfoBarrel in the days before the Panda update killed so many content farms, pumping out trash on just about any topic that showed up near the top of google keyword results. Like many of his ilk, Sam mainly reworded other content (though to his credit, he at least didn't just run it through a spinning algorithm). Problem being, of course, that when you write about everything under the sun without sufficient background knowledge, you get stuff wrong – and Jones gets stuff wrong... like

"Low natural gas prices and increased production rates have increased the popularity of fracking in the last decade..."

What's wrong with that? Fracking a well makes it more expensive to drill, so low prices are likely to decrease the "popularity" of fracking. Besides Sam's strange use of the word "popularity," there's more: there's always more...

"Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is a new drilling technology used to extract natural gas from shale deposits. The process begins by drilling deep vertical wells under the surface, until the shale sections are reached. Water, sand and chemicals are injected at high pressure to induce fractures in the rock, so that natural gas mixes with water and flows back to the surface. This well stimulation process increases the amount of recovered natural gas, especially in the reservoirs where the gas is highly dispersed in the rock."

He's wrong on several points:

1. Hydraulic fracturing has been practiced for more than 50 years, it isn't a "new... technology." Neither is it a "drilling technology; it's a stimulation technique.
2. Most shale gas wells are completed as horizontal wells, not as "deep, vertical wells."
3. "...highly dispersed..." is bullshit written by someone who doesn't understand what fracking does: increase the permeability of the shale.  

And still Jones goes on:

"...Furthermore, it's been hypothesized that fracking may cause earthquakes in the extraction areas due to displacement of air and water in the bedrock, thus endangering the lives of local residents..."

Maybe it's been hypothesized by dumbasses like Sam Jones, but not by reputable scientists. As of this writing, there are only two known cases of earthquakes that can be felt by humans near sites of hydraulic fracturing. The vast majority of earthquakes trumpeted in news reports are only indirectly related to hydraulic fracturing, as they have occurred at sites where waste water from fracturing is being injected into deep wells.  Political views aside, Jones' "...displacement of air and water in the bedrock..." is scientifically illiterate rubbish. Fault movement doesn't take place because of "displacement of air and water," it takes place because the stress field changes over a large area. The injection of a few million barrels of water in a fracking job, most of which is soon recovered, doesn't change the stress field. The injection of the waste water recovered from several tens of frack jobs into an underground reservoir can change the stress field; and that's why disposal wells have caused earthquakes. For what it's worth, geologists have been studying this phenomenon since the 1960s.

So whether Sam got rich off his fracking post or not, he clearly knows nothing about the topic. Here at the Antisocial Network, we think that's sufficient cause to receive the Dumbass of the Day award.

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