The Depths of Hydraulic Fracturing and Accompanying Water Use Across the United States

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• 作者：Robert B. Jackson ; Ella R. Lowry ; Amy Pickle ; Mary Kang ; Dominic DiGiulio ; Kaiguang Zhao
• 刊名：Environmental Science & Technology
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：August 4, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：49
• 期：15
• 页码：8969-8976
• 全文大小：390K
• ISSN：1520-5851

文摘

Reports highlight the safety of hydraulic fracturing for drinking water if it occurs 鈥渕any hundreds of meters to kilometers underground鈥? To our knowledge, however, no comprehensive analysis of hydraulic fracturing depths exists. Based on fracturing depths and water use for 鈭?4鈥?00 wells reported between 2010 and 2013, the average fracturing depth across the United States was 8300 ft (鈭?500 m). Many wells (6900; 16%) were fractured less than a mile from the surface, and 2600 wells (6%) were fractured above 3000 ft (900 m), particularly in Texas (850 wells), California (720), Arkansas (310), and Wyoming (300). Average water use per well nationally was 2鈥?00鈥?00 gallons (9鈥?00鈥?00 L), led by Arkansas (5鈥?00鈥?00 gallons), Louisiana (5鈥?00鈥?00 gallons), West Virginia (5鈥?00鈥?00 gallons), and Pennsylvania (4鈥?00鈥?00 gallons). Two thousand wells (鈭?%) shallower than one mile and 350 wells (鈭?%) shallower than 3000 ft were hydraulically fractured with >1 million gallons of water, particularly in Arkansas, New Mexico, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California. Because hydraulic fractures can propagate 2000 ft upward, shallow wells may warrant special safeguards, including a mandatory registry of locations, full chemical disclosure, and, where horizontal drilling is used, predrilling water testing to a radius 1000 ft beyond the greatest lateral extent.