The USFG should ban hydraulic fracturing

A true gentlemen's move! And just to clarify, I am generally against fracking, just thought it’d be fun to try the other side. My case won’t necessarily be that fracking is great, but that it isn’t bad enough to warrant a ban, and that we don’t have enough information to do so presently. A ban would hurt the US economically in a couple of ways and environmentally in a couple of ways, and I will make the case that there is no consensus about whether fracking is really good or bad. And I would say really quick that I hope the voters can do their best to put aside any preconceptions about fracking when reading this debate over, I know I sure had to so I hope you will too! The first part of my case will be going through the environmental issues surrounding fracking. P1- Environmental issuesCarbonI guess I’ll start with carbon emissions. Currently, the US has lower carbon emissions than any time in the last 20 years. (3) This is largely a result of an increase in shale gas useage and a decrease in coal. Shale is cleaner than coal, so it is better for the environment. Banning shale when there are no cleaner alternatives available to be implemented on a national scale yet would do more harm than good. The reduction in US carbon emissions is a great reason not to ban fracking. According to the British government, shale produced 46% less carbon for the same amount of heat (19). WastewaterAnother concern with fracking is the enormous amounts of water it takes. Estimates vary on how much water goes into 1 well, but it is somewhere between (according to Gasland) 2-8 million gallons of water. That is a lot of water, however most of that water gets recycled. In Pennsylvania, for example, 97% of water used in fracking was reused again. So although it takes a lot of water initially, lots of that water gets reused. Also, overall the water useage from fracking isn’t that large. About .3% of water useage in 2010 was for fracking, and considering large amounts of that get recycled it isn’t that much, certainly not enough to warrant a ban. Dangers from fracking can really be seperated into two categories, above and below ground. AbovegroundThe aboveground concerns are mainly methane leakage and chemical contamination of water and air from spills and accidents. Methane leakage is actually relatively low, in a recent study by University of Texas methane leakage levels from 190 areas wells were found to be about 1.5% (8), which was much lower than the EPA estimated percentage in the ballpark of 3. Opposition activists and scientists stated in 2010 that fracking would have no benefit if leakage levels were over 2%, so even by their standards fracking is beneficial. Of course any leakage is bad, but the leakage is low enough that fracking is beneficial. Another concern of environmentally is that chemicals used in the process can poison nearby areas. Basically this can happen if there are accidents at the well site, and these accidents are due to poor well construction (having uncemented well sites for example). It’s similar to an oil spill; it’s bad but it can be avoided. Energy companies estimate that regulations would likely increase shale energy costs by 25-35 cents mcf (1000 cubic feet of gas) which is hardly an increase in price at all. (13) The point is, risks of accident aren’t directly related to fracking so they shouldn’t affect a decision to ban, but these risks can be mitigated with practically no cost to companies with regulations. BelowgroundBelowground concerns deal mainly with methane and chemicals contaminating water, but there is no consensus on this issue either. Anti-frackers claim that it sets your water on fire from your faucet (see my opponents link) and that fracking contaminates nearby wells. However, there is no hard evidence. The EPA found in the past that fracking does not contaminate freshwater wells (15) Other instances where there were concerns about fracking contaminating have been dismissed after further research as well, such as a case in Colorado involving sink water catching fire (12). There is a large concern about the dangers of contamination from fracking chemicals and methane leaking, and obviously this is an area that should be further researched. But based on the current research, a ban isn’t justified. There isn’t enough evidence currently to say that fracking always contaminates surface wells, and there is very little evidence that wells are poisoned by fracking. In some cases where companies have been accused of damaging wells (16), the drilling was performed at shallower than normal levels (usually gas deposits are at about 10,000 feet below, underground water sits at about 1,000 feet). In any case, well damage has not been connected to fracking strongly enough to warrant a ban, but stricter regulation should be in place. If more research were to come along showing that all fracking, not just negligent fracking, damaged wells, a ban would be justified, but there is no evidence that that is the case. Overall, environmentally, fracking isn’t the best. It certainly isn’t the worst thing that we do. It is cleaner than burning coal, which is what it replaces. It has lowered carbon emissions for the US and made energy cheaper. When it is done responsibly there is little risk, and most of the risks have to do with well construction and depth. The main problem is that there isn’t enough information to justify banning fracking yet, especially because there is no consensus about critical issues like well contamination. The most important thing to note is that many of the problems could be fixed with regulations instead of ban, as regulations on fracking are pretty weak at the moment (as my opponent said, fracking is exempt from parts of 7 major statutes). If my opponents burden was that “fracking is bad” he’d have an easy win, but his burden is that there should be a ban. Based on all available current information, a ban would not be justified. So now lets discuss the economic benefits of fracking, and why a ban would not be so hot for the US. P2- Economy (brifely, because character limits)To start off, there are a lot of really obvious benefits to fracking economically. Besides being cleaner than coal, shale gas is cheaper, and this will result in $2,000 annual savings according the the IHS. Fracking itself supports roughly 400,000 jobs by itself (6) and a total of 2.1 million total jobs when all of the jobs associated with fracking are counted (19). If fracking is banned, these are immediate benefits that would be lost. Also, the expected growth from fracking, an industry that could support up to as many as 10 million jobs total in the future, would be lost. Even the US Chamber of Commerce has spoken on the issue, saying speculation about the dangers of fracking and stopping fracking could endanger the economy (6). US energy exports are also up as a result of fracking, which is beneficial for our economy (19). And although exporting carbon to other countries somewhat defeats the purpose of cleaning our own energy sources(7). , fracking still has a substantial net reduction for carbon emissions overall. A ban would really obviously be bad for the US economy, and since the environmental concerns aren’t really substanted as of yet, a ban really has no legs to stand on. Regulation would be wise and would allow the economic prosperity to continue, a ban would not. Another benefit of fracking is that it is easy to convert from coal to shale (6), and since the US needs a good bridge between the old and the new sources of energy, fracking can and does provide a cheap, clean way to provide energy while the US makes that transition. Obviously incentives will have to be created to switch from natural gas to cleaner energies, but that has always been the case. Until green power is cheap and efficient enough for companies to implement nationally with no economic risk then there is no reason shale gas should not be used for power. No more characters! Banning fracking would do bad, useless economic damage when the envorinmental justification for such a ban is so lacking and is nowhere near the standard it would need to be. 1-. http://www2.epa.gov...2-http://theenergycollective.com...3http://www.slate.com...4-http://reason.com...5-http://energyindepth.org...6-http://triblive.com...;7-http://bigstory.ap.org...;8-http://theenergycollective.com...;9-http://www.huffingtonpost.com...;10- . http://cires.colorado.edu...;11-http://1.usa.gov...12-http://www.eenews.net...;13-http://www.economist.com...;14-http://bit.ly...15-http://bit.ly...16-http://www.npr.org...;17-http://www.gaslandthemovie.com...;18-http://bit.ly...19- . http://www.rtcc.org...;20-http://www.ihs.com...;