Offshore Drilling Effects

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform spit nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the largest oil spill in history. The 1989 oil spill surpassed Exxon Valdez's oil spill in 1989 as the largest oil spill ever seen in US-controlled waters and the Ixtoc I oil spill of 1979 as the largest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon, an ultra-deepwater offshore rig, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 41 miles off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 riggers and injuring 17 others. The fire burned for 36 hours and the Macondo Prospect delivered about 4.9 million barrels of oil before being closed and sealed on 15 July almost three months later. The oil spill in the

“In reality drilling is the slowest, dirtiest, and most expensive way to solve our energy crisis”-Lois Capps. This quote explains how there different ways to solve our problems and drilling is not the right way to solve this. In addition to costing a lot of money, it would also destroy animal habitats. While drilling, the oil can also pollute the ocean. Everyone is asking ‘Should The United States should Drill for Oil in Alaskan Wilderness?’ The best way to sort this out is by looking at the Economic factors, Environmental Factors, and Other Factors.

One of the most controversial projects for the United States to decide on was whether or not to build the Keystone pipeline. This topic forces the government to decide if economic development is worth the cost of endangering the environment. Though this pipeline will allow the United States to rely less on foreign oil, the pipeline’s lasting effects prove to be a factor that cannot be easily overlooked. The Keystone pipeline should not be built because it endangers the environment and has the ability to create catastrophic damages through pollution and habitat desecration.

Every year, in the United States alone, 565 million barrels or oil are extracted as a result of offshore drilling; totaling a startling amount of roughly 1.5 million barrels a day. Consequently, these threatening practices are negatively impacting marine mammals, sea birds, sea turtles, and fish. Although drilling offshore provides access to expensive resources such as oil, it heavily contributes to the extinction and endangerment of animals, and the disruption of marine ecosystems, thus these practices should be prohibited and viewed as unethical.

Sea otters are in danger. Sea otters have had problems for years because of being hunted for their fur. In fact, they were hunted to extinction in the area, but they were reintroduced in 1969 (“Olympic”). Sea otters play an important role in the coastal ecosystem, and they call the kelp beds home. Sea otters are another predator in this marine ecosystem that has been identified as a “keystone’ species (Stolzenburg 62). They also eat sea urchins, so this influx could benefit them. However, not all otters are specialized to eat urchins. Which means this influx in sea urchins doesn’t automatically equate to them being able to eat more of them. This learned specialization doesn’t happen overnight just because more urchins are around, so in the meantime the urchins will continue to eat the kelp. One way that the otters use the kelp is to wrap up in it while they sleep, so they don’t drift too far out to sea.

"Hydraulic fracturing, the process of extracting oil or gas by forcing fluids into the ground to fracture shale rocks, at the Eagle Ford Shale Play has produced more oil and natural gas but at the cost of environmental hazards and affect human health. The part of the process that creates the environmental hazards is the fracking fluids that are forced into the ground. For each fracking job, these fluids are comprised of 1 to 8 million gallons of water and 40,000 gallons of chemicals. Some of the 600 chemical carcinogens and toxins in the fracking fluids are lead, radium, uranium, mercury, methanol, hydrochloric acid, ethylene glycol, and formaldehyde. Once the fracking job is done, about 50 to 70 percent of fracking liquids are left in open

1. Even though fracking reduces carbon emissions, it is still harmful to the environment. For example: water pollution/contamination. There can be accidental seeping of the chemicals (possibly carcinogenic) and can contaminate groundwater around the site due to bad practice (this imposes harm to both the ecosystem and people 's health).

As technology grows with society, scientist find alternatives to everyday things such as oil and gas. Hydraulic Fracturing being a top producer of oil and natural gases by drilling into the ground and pumping fluids, to release resources. Fracking is one of the main source of heat and fuel but how safe is it. Can we expect to truly continue to rely on oil and natural gases? I feel that fracking isn 't safe because not only do men die from being on oil drills but fracking leads to environmental hazards and shows society isn 't has far into the future as everyone thinks.

Hydraulic fracking has the capabilities to change the United States economy and improve the lives of many people. Fracking produces large amounts of natural gas that can be used as fuel, but because fracking is such a new process, researchers and environmentalists do not yet fully understand the negative effects it can have on our environment over time. Fracking has been linked to the contamination of groundwater and this contamination is a danger to people who live near fracking sites. The process of hydraulic fracking requires the use of hundreds of potentially dangerous chemicals which need to be regulated to keep our environment safe and clean. Hydraulic fracking should be allowed in the United States because it provides a useful resource,

The main way that oil and natural gas reserves are acquired are through the means of Fracking. Also known as hydrofracking, this method utilizes a drill that drills down thousands of feet underground, which is then flushed with millions of gallons of water along with additive chemicals at high pressures to break the rocks sheltering the reserves. This method of attainment is quite risky as it comes with many unfavorable consequences that are quite unbeneficial. Like fossil fuel plants, fracking also releases greenhouse gasses like methane(Potential Health and Environmental Effects of Hydrofracking in the Williston Basin, Montana), which is worse than carbon dioxide and causes air pollution. Alongside that, pollutants like Benzene and Xylene also leak out during the fracking process, which is known to cause serious health conditions and even death in some cases due to the long exposure to the pollutants(Potential Health and

Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing is the way of breaking dense rocks in the ground to create a fracture network to make crude oil and natural gas flow in a wellbore to bring on the surface. The process of fracking is complex. Workers have to inject fluids like water, sand, and other chemicals into the ground. Fracking is a good way to get resources but ultimately bad for human health and the environment. There are different types of pollutants that bould be released, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), particulate matter, and methane.

Canadian company TransCanada hopes to build Keystone XL a pipeline that carries Canadian tar sand oil from Canadian border to the Golf Coast. According to Derber “the pipeline extracts some of the dirtiest oil on the planet, a process that sends many polluting chemicals into the ground waters and releases methane, the most potent greenhouse gas, into the air, creating one of the greatest climate threat” (p. 115). A leak from a pipeline carrying the tar sand oil could cause environmental damage and pollute our drinking water and agricultural irrigation. The builders of the Keystone XL Pipeline are wilders. According to Derber, “environmental wilding in the natural environment, such as reckless polluting that causes global warming” (p. 11).

Like what is said above there is a risk for oil to get into the water and there is a lot of concern in the parts of the aquifers that are just below the Sand Hills and certain areas of the aquifer the water is near on at the surface

Methane gas and toxic chemicals leak out from the system and contaminate nearby groundwater. Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking water wells near fracking sites than in normal wells(Dong). A man in Colorado went and got a lighter and held the flame by his faucet and it whistled and made a popping sound and it erupted into flames. Contaminated well water is used for drinking water for nearby cities and towns around the fracking sites causing public health concerns(Cart). There have been more than 1,000 cases of humans getting contaminated. Only 30-50% of fracking fluid is recovered, the rest is left in the ground and is non-biodegradable. The excess fluid is left to evaporate releasing deadly organic compounds into the atmosphere creating ground level ozone. In spite of the commercials telling the public how necessary it is to extract gas from U.S. soil and denying the harmful effects of the extraction process, and that fracking gives people jobs and security, fracking is terrible for our ecosystems and environment as a whole. The water that the tankers bring in have to mix the water that they bring in with sand

People complain about pollution from factories, cars, global warming, and the melting of polar ice caps, yet many people disregard the dangerous that come with fracking. Fracking is the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, and/or boreholes to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas. Fracking is causing an epidemic economically and environmentally. Fracking is continuously destroying the earth day by day. From the endless fracking today’s economy is depleting. Our natural resources are at risk every time fracking occurs. Fracking needs to be banned since it is hurting our health and that it drains our natural and limited resources required for us to sustain life.