Fracking is a Swear Word to Some in the Drilling Industry (NPR)
(AUDIO. 4:27 Minutes) Mention the recent surge in oil and natural gas production in the U.S. and one word comes to mind for a lot of people: "fracking." Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial technique that uses water, sand and potentially hazardous chemicals to break up rock deep underground to release oil and natural gas.
Chris Tucker of
Energy in Depth, a project of the
Independent Petroleum Association of America, suspects the reason fracking has taken off — especially among the industry's opponents — is the word itself.
"It starts with F, ends in C-K," he says. "It sort of has this naughty connotation to it."
Tucker says fracking has been distilled down to a curse word, "and that's important for press releases and bumper stickers and everything else. Horizontal drilling hasn't been distilled that way."
"In our organization we talked about fracking maybe eight years ago," says Bruce Baizel, with
Earthworks' Oil and Gas Accountability Project. "I never would have predicted that it would have become the catchall term."
Fracking has evolved to mean more than just hydraulic fracturing. Baizel says people now use it to refer to just about anything to do with producing oil and gas.
"It means either drilling or ... hydraulic fracturing or it means the truck that ran off the road and spilled whatever the waste was it was hauling away from the well site," Baizel says.
Groups like Baizel's that regularly go up against huge oil companies have embraced this expanded definition of fracking. Oil and gas drilling employs complicated technology that can be difficult to explain to the general public. But with one common word — especially one like fracking that just sounds bad — it's easier to rally opposition.
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