The funding over five years will include research into "unconventional hydrocarbons", including the geological impact of the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", for shale gas, which is currently at the exploratory drilling stage in Lancashire and Sussex.
The process of hydraulic fracturing – or "fracking" – involves drilling a hole deep into the dense shale rocks that contain natural gas, then pumping in at very high pressure vast quantities of water mixed with sand and chemicals.
The process of hydraulic fracturing itself is not new, but the drilling techniques needed to drill down and then out horizontally for several hundred metres before deploying explosives and pressurised water are.
WATER injected at high pressure into rock deep underground during the process of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", often returns to the surface as brine, having picked up a lot of salt on its journey.
Companies are using the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, which pumps a mixture of sand, water and chemicals at extremely high pressure down a well to fracture the rock and release the gas.
The decline is largely because new pollution rules have made coal plants more costly, while a surge in production of natural gas through the process of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, has sent gas prices plummeting.
With the increased production of gas from shale in the United States, the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has come under fire for its potential to pollute the air and contaminate drinking water.
[The Jacksonville Oserver] In a move that is drawing qualified praise from environmentalists, Texas's oil and gas regulatory agency is updating its rules to address the entire process of hydraulic fracturing, a controversial natural gas drilling method.
In the process of hydraulic filling, sands are dredged from borrow pits, transported in water by pipelines to the filling area, and deposited there by draining off the surplus water.
The plan, as described by senior state officials to Hakim, is to proceed only in the deeper parts of the Marcellus Shale, the subterranean rock formation that holds vast amounts of gas, and only in communities that support gas drilling — which would unavoidably involve the productive but contentious process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of the shale layers deep underground.
