Fracking and Earthquakes

With fracking they pump a slurry of water and sand at VERY high pressure into the bore hole. The slurry fractures the rock, the sand packs in and keeps the cracks open when the pressure is released. Some chemicals are added to the slurry (I believe they are to lubricate), but nobody seems to know what the chemicals are. The drillers say the mix is proprietary and so won't disclose it. I think the earthquakes happen after the gas is extracted. The fractured rock simply settles. This is the extent of my knowledge on this subject.

I understand the earthquakes come from the injection wells, as the op mentioned.

I certainly don't know all the chemicals involved, but I do know it varies from formation to formation. Slickwater (HCl) is often used around here as some formations contain a type of clay that expands when wet, which is kind of counter productive if you want to open up the formation.

There is also a process called nitrogen fracking which uses liquid nitrogen as the fluid. Of course, it expands greatly at the bottom of the hole. I don't know much about it, but it is never mentioned in connection with ground water contamination or earthquakes. It probably costs more.

Farging bastiches . . .

I live in NY State and we have put a moratorium on fracking. I wish someone would figure out a way to do this without the chemicals so we could start tapping into wealth that's right under our feet. Do you know of any ground water contamination near you from fracking, or any other problems?

...iceholes! I wish I could get some of that fracking gas..

I'm not aware of ground water contamination in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, but that certainly doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Remember, they used to use nitroglycerine. That was discontinued due to certain drawbacks having nothing to do with groundwater.

I only once heard someone say that they used diesel as one of the chemicals. I guess they use different chemicals for different situations. Tell me if you know, are the chemicals added only for lubrication or are there other reasons? I watched a documentary about this but I think it was biased against the practice. In it, local residents complained of contaminated water from their wells. I can't remember where they were located. I have not heard any stories coming out of Pennsylvania of contaminated ground water.

As I mentioned, HCl water is the only chemical I'm actually aware of, though there are many more. I have never heard of diesel oil being used, and kind of intuitively, I really think I would have heard it. In fact, I would almost bet that everything used downhole is water soluable.

I used to work for a couple of well servicing companies, but accounting clerks don't get very much involved in field work.