Examining the Effects of Fracking on Groundwater: A Comprehensive Data Analysis of United States Fracking Well Data Nationwide
Keywords:
Fracking, Fracking Wells, Underground Water Consumption, FracFocus.org, Machine Learning, Random Forest ModelAbstract
Ever since fracking technology, drilling downward and then horizontally, was developed to extract oil and gas from underground bedrock, a growing number of fracking wells have been drilled at an accelerating speed, and the amount of underground water consumed has also increased enormously. The goal of this paper is to address this alarming environmental and climate threat from the proliferation of fracking wells accompanied by a surge in underground water consumption by analyzing the up-to-date registry data available as of October 2023 from FracFocus.org on the fracking wells nationwide. The paper starts with a literature review to study the existing research findings on fracking water consumption issues. Next it provides a comprehensive data analysis of water consumption by fracking wells at both national and state levels. It also explores the relationships between the water consumption with various other factors such as the vertical depth of the wells, the chemical ingredients of the fracking fluid, and the purposes of the additives, and aims to provide insights from the correlation and causality analyses that may offer potential strategies to reduce underground water consumption in the fracking industry. In addition, the paper employs machine learning techniques such as Random Forest model to see whether a prediction model can be built to identify wells that have a high likelihood of causing a water contamination issue so that proactive controls can be developed to reduce the occurrence of water quality issues.
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