Fracking for Dummies

The fracking process in a nutshell

Several months ago – actually more like two years ago, but we just ran across it again earlier this week – we mentioned the website EzineArticles.com in one of our exposés about plumbing: we made the crack that Ezine shouldn't exactly be considered "a paragon of quality"* when talking about plumbing. Oddly, we'd never followed up on that potential source of freelance dumbassery... until today. Let us present to you the first-ever DotD candidate from EzineArticles.com, Paul Mike John (think that's his real name? we doubt it...) and "Understanding The Process of Natural Gas Fracking."

As seems distressingly common when people are attempting to capitalize on the internet popularity of topics about which they know jack, Paul... Mike... heck, we'll just call him PMJ! puts his ignorance out there for all to see. Of course, it's hard to tell whether it's all ignorance or just poor writing, but when he started out with the sentence,

"The daunting issue of insufficient energy sources is a big problem for many industries. That is why in the last few years, the topic about natural gas fracking is becoming more and more popular for the masses"...

...we figured it was ignorance: "insufficient energy" isn't the point of fracking, nor are "the masses" particularly involved; not unless there's a backyard fracking movement we haven't heard about! PMJ continues by explaining why all this fracking stuff is going on: "According to studies, there is a massive quantity of natural gas that is underneath massive shale rock structures deep into the earth surface." Errrrm, PMJ, the gas is "underneath massive shale rock structures"?? no, the gas is contained within massive shale deposits! But PMJ's here so that we can "understand" the process, not the reason or the location, so let's take a look at his explanations:

• What is Fracking? "Fracking is a process of creating cracks on rock surfaces of utilizing natural cracks and injecting fluids and various chemicals under intense pressure, in order to break through natural oil and gas reservoirs deep into the earth's rocky surface." [so many misstatements, so little space to correct them...]
• What about Chemicals? "Numerous companies who will be utilizing this process would have to disclose the kinds of chemicals they use for drilling." [Well, no, not for drilling -- for the fracking itself]
• What Cracks? "Through the process of fracking or fracturing, once the right location for the gas has been located, cracks are searched or they are made by means of drilling." [cracks are "searched"? WTF does that mean, anyway?]

By this point our staffer had had enough, what with the cost of Ibuprofen for those headaches, so the rest of her notes are just things like "this idiot thinks 6% is an 'immense increase'?" However, we're pretty certain that anyone who knows how fracking works would be more than happy to endorse PMJ's candidacy for Dumbass of the Day. Truth be told, none of us would put our real names next to this crap, either...

* you can see that article here...

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SI - FRACKING