Resolved: hydraulic fracturing should continue to be used

Intro: we can call agree energy is important and is needed to thrive as a nation so for that reason I go neg today is because, hydraulic fracturing has been the best way to obtain energy and contributes heavily to the economy it is a more effective way to save the environment rather than less advanced ways to get natural gas and petroleum Intro part 2: There are some negative effects of fracking undoubtedly. Of course there need to be improvements like finding a way to completely minimize environmental impact but currently this is our best option in domestic energy and also a good temporary job creator while we explore other energy avenues. Solar energy is generally useless currently as the most high tech panels are only reaching a little above 30% efficiency while wind energy requires certain conditions and windmills. Not saying they can't be improved but until they are fracking is our best option until renewable sources are optional and fully functional. 1.Direct Economic Impact "The direct benefit of increasing oil and gas production includes the value of increased production attributable to the technology. In 2011, the USA produced 8,500,983 million cubic feet of natural gas from shale gas wells. Taking an average price of $4.24 per thousand cubic feet, that's a value of about $36 billion, due to shale gas alone. "The Yale study group also looked at the potential benefit to consumers of replacing oil consumption with natural gas by converting fleets from gasoline and diesel to compressed gas or LNG. The math works like this - It takes 6 mcf of gas to get the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil. The authors assume an average natural gas price of $5 per mcf (nearly double today"s price) and an average oil price of $100 per barrel (about $20 more than today). Thus, you need $30 worth of natural gas to replace $100 of oil, a savings of $70 per barrel. Replacing just 1 million barrels per day of oil demand with natural gas would save $70 million a day, or nearly $26 billion a year. 2.More efficient then coal According to the Environmental Protection Agency, natural gas-fired electricity generates half the carbon dioxide of coal-fired production. It is also cheaper than coal when it comes to usage 3.Can help with foreign issues/relations "Fracturing has eliminated the need for natural-gas exports from Iran, removing Iran"s ability to use energy diplomacy as a means to strengthen its regional power or to buttress its nuclear aspirations. Shale gas will also ease American and Chinese dependence on Middle Eastern natural-gas supplies, limiting the incentives for geopolitical and commercial competition between the two largest consuming countries and providing both with new opportunities to diversify their energy supply away from coal"whose carbon footprint, air particulate and mercury pollution, and water use burdens are far higher than those of natural gas. 4.Uses less water 90% of the hydraulic fracturing fluid is water, and around 5 to 7% sand. Most of the alleged chemicals in frack fluid are slickeners. Hydraulic fracturing surprisingly uses less water. Fracking requires just 0.6 to 5.8 gallons of water per million Btu of energy produced. By comparison, "renewable" and "sustainable" corn-based ethanol requires 2,510 to 29,100 gallons per million Btu of usable energy. Biodiesel from soybeans consumes 14,000 to 75,000 gallons of water per million Btu. Also, in a study of 200 water wells near fracking sites, the water quality stayed the same before and after except in one case. The myth about fracking causing earthquakes has not been confirmed. 5.Fracking directly doesn"t cause leaks "The process of fracking is not the problem, but rather poor maintenance. 6 to 7% percent of wells are built incorrectly, causing the leaks. A mobile water evaporator, for example, can eliminate the wastewater before it leaks. So basically a solution would be to ensure better construction of the wells and improve maintenance not remove fracking. 6.Fracturing can continue to provide jobs "There are 1.7 million jobs supported by fracking, and jobs will increase to 3 million by the end of the decade Examples of jobs provided, providing tax revenues to the government and creating much-needed high-paying American jobs. Engineering and surveying, construction, hospitality, equipment manufacturing and environmental permitting etc. "$2.5 trillion in cumulative federal, state and local tax receipts between 2012 and 2035. - "Looking at GDP growth, the IHS study found that, 'the shale gas contribution to GDP was $76.9 billion in 2010, will increase to $118 billion by 2015, and will nearly triple to $231 billion in 2035,' all in 2010 dollars. Responses/extra things for speech 1.No ground contamination / is safe 2.Even though 90% of oil and gas wells in the United States (one million wells total) have undergone fracturing to stimulate production, there have been no confirmed cases of contamination of underground sources of drinking water. Water is safe 3.Current industry well design practices ensure multiple levels of protection between any sources of drinking water and the production zone of an oil and gas well. "In no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemical contamination of groundwater." (Fox News, April 27, 2013) And: "I'm not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water." (Congressional testimony, May 24, 2011) "A 2011 report for the Secretary of Energy counted 19 times that water from hydraulic fracturing operations has been released, out of thousands of wells drilled. None of these instances included groundwater contamination. Hydraulic fracturing allows improved recovery of valuable energy resources and production of greater volumes of hydrocarbons from each well. The size of the area drained by a hydraulically fractured well is larger than wells that are not stimulated by the process. Therefore, fewer oil and gas wells need to be drilled if hydraulic fracturing is utilized, which in turn minimizes waste volumes and surface disturbance associated with oil and gas drilling. Scenario for if the so called spills were to happen and the low cost compared to the economic benifits "costs for a scenario that assumes 100 spills a year out of 10,000 new wells drilled each year. They figure that if 5,000 gallons of polluted hydraulic fracturing fluid were to spill into a field, the cost to scrape up a hypothetical 5,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and dispose of it at an offsite landfill would be on the order of $2.5 million. Furthermore, if potable water wells were polluted by hydraulic fracturing, the cost to haul in a potable water supply and drill new water wells would be about $5,000 per well. Given 100 incidents in a year, the clean-up costs associated with hydraulic fracturing accidents would be roughly $250 million. Comparing $250 million a year in phantom damages against the $100 billion in savings and economic benefits, it is reasonable to conclude that benefits exceed costs to by 400-to-1. Website links: "http://www.americanthinker.com...