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That's not the only competition for water. In Texas somewhere between 10-50% (depends upon location) of fresh water is used for fracking, not to be used again
by stevenwoo 8y ago
That's not the only competition for water. In Texas somewhere between 10-50% (depends upon location) of fresh water is used for fracking, not to be used again for human consumption for generations, if ever. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-use-rises-as-fracking-expands/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-use-rises-a...
IIRC it's even encroaching upon Dallas' suburbs.
- maxxxxx 8y ago10-50% is nuts, especially for technology we ideally should want to get rid of and replace with cleaner energy.
- ianai 8y agoTo say nothing of all of the other negative external costs of fracking. I wish one of the carbon cost agreements had gone through.
- zubiaur 8y agoThe fracking I’m familiar with tries to reuse the fracking fluids as much as possible. Still some oil and gas activities do consume large quantities of water: pressure maintenance injection and Steam assisted gravity drain, the last one is used a lot in the Canadian tar sands.
- stevenwoo 8y agoThis article is five years old, they don't because recycling costs more than fresh water from the ground and injecting used fracking water is easy and cheap. Contrast to Pennsylvannia where they recycle 90% (and I don't think they had the same drought conditions Texas went through for a long time before 2017). https://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/19/texas-recycling-oilfield-water-has-far-go/ https://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/19/texas-recycling-oilf...