And when it comes to dealing with frack water, this is nothing new for the industry.
Above ground, the issue relates to the proper handling and disposal of frack wastewater.
Last year, drillers in the U.S. used 40 billion gallons of fresh water to frack.
Encouraging drillers to use this water to frack natural gas wells brings obvious environmental benefit.
And each frack job requires the injection of millions of gallons of chemical-laced water.
FORBES: Shale Gas Frackers Get Excited About ... A New Sponge?
Three Frack Off group members attached themselves to a gas extraction rig near Southport, Merseyside, in November.
BBC: Hesketh Bank fracking rig protesters guilty of trespass
Some gas companies are responding to this threat to production by innovating ways to frack with less water use.
The questions before us are not only whether to frack, but how, where and with what safeguards in place.
They worry that when frack water flows back out of the well that it needs to be treated and processed.
At the same time, drilling companies use up to 5 million gallons of fresh water for every natural-gas well they frack.
In the West, wastewater is typically stored in pits near frack sites.
Cuadrilla has applied to Lancashire County Council to frack for shale gas at its Anna's Road site in St Annes and Banks, near Southport.
BBC: Lancashire election candidates asked to oppose fracking
Another complication arose in May, when South Africa won rights to host a radio telescope in the same area where Shell wants to frack.
China has a different sort of problem: a shortage of water, of which millions of gallons can be required to frack a single well.
ECONOMIST: The ��golden age of gas�� could be cleaner than greens think
The firm has applied to Lancashire County Council to frack for shale gas at its Anna's Road site in St Annes and Banks, near Southport.
BBC: Lancashire's shale gas estimated at ?136bn by Cuadrilla
As you all know, natural gas is -- a growing amount of natural gas, the reserves, because of the ability to frack shale rock, has been increasing.
Water is a more serious problem, both because a lot of it is needed to frack wells and because local groundwater is seen to be at risk of pollution.
ECONOMIST: Shale gas��s poor image in Europe is largely unjustified
But a perennial challenge has been in getting the water clean enough that it can be reused in the next frack job or simply discharged down a river or stream.
FORBES: Shale Gas Frackers Get Excited About ... A New Sponge?
However, Frack Off claims the process is environmentally dangerous.
BBC: Hesketh Bank fracking rig protesters guilty of trespass
Advanced technologies have made it possible to not just extract more oil from conventional sources previously thought tapped, but frack and deep-water drill in spots not even thought of 20 years ago.
What is required is to make sure that the drilling fluids and frack wastewater do not come in contact with the fresh water aquifers when the wells are being drilled, completed, or produced.
Adding confidence is a study is a study just out by Pinnacle, a division of Halliburton, which looked at more than 3, 000 frack jobs done over the past decade (see article on the study here).
These innovative solutions entail reusing most of the water to frack additional wells so that ultimately, contaminated materials are reduced to a tiny fraction by volume so that it can be safely delivered to hazardous waste disposal facilities.
So the mantra should be frack-baby-frack.
FORBES: Egypt fallout -- follow Exxon and T Boone Pickens; go long natural gas and frack-baby-frack
There is a lot of potential for real innovation here, but it takes special techniques to frack that innovative potential out of the social context that works with the crushing weight of two miles of bedrock to keep that kind of change down.
First off, the technology and innovation that enabled producers to frack better and squeeze more energy out of shale rock formations originated in the U.S. as geologists and engineers worked feverishly to produce more oil and gas in preparation for high gas prices.
The report suggests that any shale gas development outside of the United States is likely five to ten years away, primarily because many of the countries that could benefit from shale production do not have the specialized equipment needed to drill and frack horizontal wells.
应用推荐