Hydraulisk spräckning – i debatten omnämnd som fracking – är en kontroversiell energiteknik som väckt starka känslor. Genom att borra horisontella cementrör i skifferformationer och sedan påföra en kemikaliespetsad vattenblandning under tryck har bunden gas kunnat utvinnas. Fracking medför en rad miljörisker och adderar ett nytt fossilt bränsle i en tid när världen står i behov av att lämna den fossila eran. Tekniken har mellan åren 2010-2013 påverkat den globala energisituationen i allmänhet och den amerikanska marknaden i synnerhet. EU:s strävan att kopiera the US shalegas-revolution innebar att en komplicerad teknikdebatt tog fart under 2012. Energisystem är bärare av en bred uppsättning värderingar varpå samhället vilar och utvecklas. Med hjälp av aktörs-nätverksteorin (ANT) har jag kartlagt aktörer och aktörsnätverkens utveckling i EU kring fracking under år 2013. Studien gör en fördjupning av utvecklingen i Sverige och jämför med Polen och Frankrike. I Sverige och i synnerhet Frankrike har de lokala mikro-aktörerna varit framgångsrika i att bilda aktörsnätverk och lyckats beskriva teknikens negativa påverkan. I Frankrike finns ett nationellt förbud mot fracking som åtnjuter brett stöd. I Polen där ett nationellt energioberoende är avgörande på nationell makro-nivå är stödet för fracking solitt. Utvecklingen av aktörsnätverken i USA har haft stor påverkan på den europeiska utvecklingen. I EU lyckades inte de aktörsnätverk som stred för en hårdare reglering att övertyga kommissionen att föreslå ny lagstiftning. Kommissionen föreslog, i strid mot Europaparlamentet, endast icke-bindande rekommendationer för fracking i EU. I Sverige har de lokala aktörerna lyckats med många översättningar och de har expanderat sitt aktörsnätverk så mycket att fracking sannolikt inte kommer i fråga. För utvecklingen av samtliga aktörsnätverk har vatten varit den artefakt som alla aktörer har tvingats förhålla sig till. Fracking kräver stora volymer vatten, förorenar vatten, påverkar det omkringliggande vattentäkterna och kräver transport av vatten. Vatten är en tydlig obligatorisk passagepunkt för fracking. / Hydraulic fracturing – fracking – is a controversial technology that generates strong feelings. Hydraulic fracturing is horizontal drilling and fracturing of shale rock by a pressurized liquid with water, sand and chemicals. Fracking involves a number of environmental hazards, and adds a new fossil fuel at a time when the world needs to leave the fossil fuel era. Fracking has between 2010 and 2013 affected the global energy policy in general and the U.S. market in particular. A complex technology debate took off in 2012 when European Union desire to copy the U.S. shale gas revolution. Energy politics is a carrier of a broad set of values upon which society is based and developed. With the help of the actor–network theory (ANT) I have mapped the development for actors and networks in the EU on fracking in 2013. The study describes the development in Sweden and compare with Poland and France. In Sweden and especially France, the local micro-actors have been successful in developing networks which has spread knowledge of the negative impacts of fracking. France got a broad support behind the national moratorium against fracking. In Poland, where the national energy dependency is of crucial macro importance the support for fracking is overwhelming. The development of actor-networks in the U.S. has had a major impact on the development in EU. In Europe the network who fought for stricter regulations failed. The Commission only enforced non-binding recommendations on fracking against the will of the European Parliament. In Sweden, the local actors succeeded with many translations and expanded its network which implies that fracking is not likely to expand. In all networks, water has been the artifact that all actors have had to address. Fracking requires large volumes of water, pollute the water, affects the surrounding water sources and require transportation of water. Water has become an obligatory passage point for fracking.

Shale gas exploration by means of Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) has been on the South African (SA) energy agenda since 2010 as a potential alternative energy source to coalmining. Internationally, the desirability of fracking is debated due to increasing evidence of the environmental and health risks fracking poses. However, experts favouring fracking propose this technology as a greener alternative to conventional energy sources such as coal. Limited scientific evidence is available internationally related to knowledge and risk perceptions of fracking and evidence is limited to studies conducted in the United States (US). South African risk perception studies relates to mining, farming, travelling in SA as a foreigner and sexual behaviour. The president of SA called fracking a 'Game-Changer' using industry jargon in the 2014 presidential address. However, SA has failed to produce exploration regulations to date despite oil and gas companies pushing their agendas. Public participation in the process thus far has been limited. This cross sectional study explored the knowledge, health risk perceptions and information sources related to fracking amongst 102 Central Karoo residents through a household survey. Beaufort West municipality was selected as the study site as this is one of the closestareas to Cape Town demarcated for fracking exploration. This study found that 40% of Central Karoo residents do not know what fracking is or the potential risks and benefits thereof. Media is the main information source of 59% of participants. Only half of participants trust their information sources. Those with more trust in their information sources perceived fracking as posing a greater risk. In contrast those believing fracking to pose a low risk were more likely to trust the government and oil and gas companies. More than half of participants (53%) believe that fracking poses an extreme health risk and 78% thought fracking will harm their health. Most commonly listed causes why fracking will make Karoo residents sick includes water pollution (47.4%) and air pollution (19.6%). Higher education was found to have an inverse relationship with trust in the national government A limitation of this study was that farms could not be randomly selected, affecting the representativeness of the sample. There is a major lack of knowledge pertaining to fracking among those living in the Central Karoo which has important implications for managing the process of public participation in the approval of shale gas exploration.

Hydraulic fracturing has become increasingly popular in the United States during the last ten years. It is a process that is used for the majority of new oil and gas wells, and is used to access the abundance of natural gas in the US. The largest shale bed is the Marcellus Shale which spans the area underneath many states in the Northeast, primarily New York and Pennsylvania. Policy and science have failed to keep up with the boom in fracking that has occurred across the US, which has led the process to be regulated at varying levels of stringency and a lack of understanding of the potential risks associated with fracking. New York decided that the potential adverse effects of fracking outweighed the economic benefits of job creation and increased tax revenue. New York was the 2nd state in the US that banned fracking, and the decision can be attributed to the unique environmental and political factors present. There were six major environmental reasons that New York decided to ban fracking: decreased respiratory health, drinking water contamination, soil contamination, seismic activity, climate change, and boomtown economic effects. Drinking water contamination is especially important in New York because New York’s reservoirs provide water for over 17 million people. These six environmental factors are not unique to New York, but their impact would be more widely felt than in many other states where fracking occurs. The political factors in New York are also critical to understand. New York is a blue state that is being governed by Governor Cuomo who after his re-election desperately needed to re-align with the left wing of New York’s democratic party. The analysis completed in this paper demonstrates that New York is unique in many ways and the decision to ban hydraulic fracturing there may not be easily replicable in other states.

Thesis advisor: Alan L. Kafka / Discerning the interrelated effects of space and time on the potential for wastewater well injection to induce earthquakes in Oklahoma is important for accurately mapping seismic hazards. This study explores how distance from wells and time after initiation of injection affect the possibility that injection activity might induce earthquakes under different conditions of operational lifetime, injection volume, and well depth. A unique feature of this study is filtering of the injection well database to isolate, as much as possible, the effect of specific well injection on the potential to induce earthquakes. The method used here is a modified version of “Cellular Seismology”, termed “Modified Cellular Seismology” (CS, MCS), where “CS Predictability” (CSP) is used as an operational definition of the extent to which injection wells are associated with earthquakes. I hypothesize that earthquakes associated with injection are most likely to occur within about 15 km of wells and within approximately the same year as active injection. Evidence shows that induced earthquake activity peaks primarily between about 2.5 and 3.5 km away from any given well, and this distance increases while CSP decreases over time. Temporal analyses suggest that CSP decreases by an average of about 5% over a period of five to seven years for any given well (or about 1% decrease per year), though there exists considerable scatter in this relationship. This change is variable across wells of different conditions, ranging from a decrease of 26% to an increase of 8% over the five to seven years covered by this study. Additionally, CSP tended to peak at least a year after injection for the most spatiotemporally isolated wells, suggesting that there may be, on average, at least a year of lag before any given well is likely to induce earthquakes. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Cause-specific mortality (CSM), among other global health estimates, has garnered prominence in the contemporary public health field. CSM has been associated with several factors, however, research comparing CSM for prefracking versus postfracking periods is sparse. Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a technique of extracting oil and gas from deep underground. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the difference among mean CSM scores from 1975 through 2015 in the available cities and counties of residence in Colorado and to determine the impact of gender, marital status, county of residence, and city of residence on CSM scores (prefracking period 1975-1977 versus postfracking period 1999-2015) among adults aged 45-70 years. In this retrospective quantitative study, the socioecological model of health was used to analyze 73,251 cases obtained from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. One-way analysis of variance and multiple regression were used to analyze data. Results showed that Denver County had a higher mean CSM score compared to other counties in Colorado. Regression results revealed a significant but weak association between CSM scores and gender, marital status, city of residence, and county of residence. If gender, marital status, and county of residence can be significant predictors of CSM, this information could have social change implications by influencing decisions regarding CSM and fracking.

No description available.

The town of Millerton, Pa., has always been a small, rural farming community. Settled atop of the famed Marcellus Shale in the foothills of the Appalachians, there have always been rumors of natural gas in the hills around town. In 2008, natural gas companies arrived and began drilling. For a select few lucky enough to have property around the gas wells, their arrival means big money. But not all residents will get so lucky. For many folks in Millerton, the arrival of the gas companies means more traffic, more pollution, more crime and more inconvenience without a monthly royalty check to buffer the pain. The sheer amount of natural gas scientists predict is in the Marcellus Shale will forever change how the U.S. and the rest of the world use energy. Politicians tout it as liberation from foreign oil. Scientists see it as an alternative to “dirty” coal. For this small town, natural gas means change. The money the natural gas companies are pumping into this local economy will change the lives of the townsfolk- and the town itself- forever. / text

As hydraulic fracturing gains popularity in the energy industry, the state of Texas finds itself in a very advantageous position. With multiple regions which could have great potential for oil and natural gas extractable via the production technique, Texas has assumed a new importance for the energy industry. However, in order to fully utilize its advantages, the state of Texas should revise its oil and gas regulations, particularly with regard to groundwater use and contamination, air emissions, and discretion for municipal regulation of oil and gas operations, insofar as they may apply to hydraulic fracturing. This course of action only will this allow the state to efficiently utilize the production method while better balancing against the technique's risks. / text

BACKGROUND: Over the past decade hydraulic fracturing, the high-pressure injection of water and chemicals into an oil or gas well, has been widely adopted to maximize oil and gas recovery despite debate about potential health impacts. Often the debate is contentious and complicated by incomplete information. The purpose of this dissertation was to implement and assess the usefulness of a process for communities to identify, prioritize, and respond to potential health effects of hydraulic fracturing. METHODS: The study was conducted in a community in Kern County, California, the epi-center of hydraulic fracturing in the state. Mixed methods were used to develop an inventory of known or potential health effects associated with exposure to hydraulic fracturing: a systematic review of literature published before April 1, 2017 to determine health outcomes reported in exposed communities; a Delphi study to elicit expert opinion; and focus groups to determine residents’ health concerns. The resulting inventory of 60 health effects derived from one or more of these sources was presented to community residents in ballot form and multi-voting was used to prioritize health effects. Focus group and multi-voting results were used to develop an action plan. RESULTS: The Delphi panel endorsed 13 health outcomes associated with hydraulic fracturing for oil and/or gas; all but one were reported in the scientific literature. Focus groups generated 17 health effects; 13 of these were reported in the scientific literature and/or endorsed by the Delphi panel. Multi-voting results indicated that priority health effects were: problems with sleep; breathing; eyes, ears, nose, and throat; heart disease and hypertension; cancer; headache; nausea; and a group of symptoms known as “Shale Gas Syndrome”. CONCLUSION: The process described in this dissertation could be used by communities across the US that are debating the potential health impacts of hydraulic fracturing. It engages community residents, requires few resources, and can be completed in a relatively short period of time. The results can inform a community-specific response to the priority health concerns identified.

Abstract TECO advertisements promote the use of natural gas as an energy source because it claims that natural gas is an environmentally responsible alternative to other sources of energy. However, these advertisements do not reveal the not-so-green process, namely hydraulic-fracturing, or fracking, by which natural gas is produced and the consequences that it can and does have on public health and the environment. Even though the conversation about fracking has been on the rise in recent years as certain companies and politicians have pushed for an increase in natural gas production, scholars have yet to examine the communicative strategies used by energy companies, such as TECO, to disregard the environmental dangers associated with fracking and present natural gas extraction as both environmentally friendly and safe for consumers. Although there are numerous ways of analyzing the relationship between communication and greenwashing, I chose to examine the rhetorical choices, both written and spoken, and image choices embedded in TECO's greenwashing advertisements for natural gas. The use of communicative strategies in TECO's advertisements aim to create a dominant discourse of green consumerism, which works to shape society's understanding of what it means to be a consumer who strives to be environmentally responsible. My analysis was informed by Stuart Hall's theory of Encoding and Decoding (1973) and his theory of representation (1997). I argue that TECO presents the dominant code of the green consumer and my analysis offers an oppositional reading. The use of grounded theory provided me with a viable method to analyze TECO's advertisements because I was able gather and analyze data from ten commercial advertisements, examine each individually for themes, and then discuss the ways in which TECO uses specific language, both written and spoken, and visual images, in its advertisements, in order to construct the meaning of natural gas and the identity of the natural gas consumer.