Can Fracking Be Environmentally Acceptable?

The hydraulic fracturing or fracking and extraction of shale gas is vital to the continued success of the human race to provide a relatively clean energy source. However, there are several environmental issues that must be solved in order to make fracking environmentally acceptable. Once these issues are resolved, it could lead to a brighter future by allowing shale gas to act as a bridge to clean energy, while providing energy independence for the United States. To achieve these goals, there is a need to find suitable solutions to the following problems: methane gas leaks while fracking and during production, trigger of earthquakes due to fracking, and the disposal of the wastewater (largely comprised of fracking fluid) after the completion of fracking. To investigate the aforementioned environmental impacts, comprehensive research was performed using data for the Marcella formation. Although it is clear that additional research must be performed to fully deal with all the issues, the following s...