Environment international
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Environment international · Apr 2016
Investigating the traffic-related environmental impacts of hydraulic-fracturing (fracking) operations.
Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has been used extensively in the US and Canada since the 1950s and offers the potential for significant new sources of oil and gas supply. Numerous other countries around the world (including the UK, Germany, China, South Africa, Australia and Argentina) are now giving serious consideration to sanctioning the technique to provide additional security over the future supply of domestic energy. However, relatively high population densities in many countries and the potential negative environmental impacts that may be associated with fracking operations has stimulated controversy and significant public debate regarding if and where fracking should be permitted. ⋯ Likewise, excess noise emissions appear negligible (<1dBA) when normalised over the completion period, but may be considerable (+3.4dBA) in particular hours, especially in night-time periods. Larger, regional scale modelling of pad development scenarios over a multi-decade time horizon give modest CO2 emissions that vary between 2.5 and 160.4kT, dependent on the number of wells, and individual well fracking water and flowback waste requirements. The TIM model is designed to be adaptable to any geographic area where the required input data are available (such as fleet characteristics, road type and quality), and we suggest could be deployed as a tool to help reach more informed decisions regarding where and how fracking might take place taking into account the likely scale of traffic-related environmental impacts.