China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Innovation and Competitive Advantage
Published in Michael Parent, The Lean Innovation Cycle, 2022
As mentioned above, the most common way traditional innovation creates barriers to entry is through decreasing supply costs. Technological inventions that reduce the cost, time, or effort in earlier stages of the value stream translate to higher profitability for the firm that develops these techniques. Mentioned cautiously in the previous chapter, hydraulic fracking is an illustrative example of how technological innovation can create supply-side competitive advantage. For the companies that possess the capabilities and technologies of hydraulic fracking, they can supply natural resources to their customer at substantially lower prices or at the same price with higher profitability. Because fracking produces a greater yield with less resources, the operating costs are greatly reduced compared to other forms of extraction. And since fracking can extract natural gas and oil in more varied geological scenarios, oil and gas companies have more flexibility on where to mine, thereby decreasing scarcity of land resources and further improving their position. Enough about fracking, please don’t write me letters.
Natural Gas Purchasing
Published in Stephen A. Roosa, Steve Doty, Wayne C. Turner, Energy Management Handbook, 2020
Stephen A. Roosa, Carol Freedenthal
Fracking expedited the development of natural gas supplies from the shale reservoirs. Shale deposits are rock formations where the gas is held in porous and tight formations. New methods were developed to free the gas from these formations. Well frackings release the natural gas in places where the tight formations trap the gas. The fracking or shattering of the holding strata frees the gas enabling it to flow to the surface where it is collected and processed for use as fuel.
Linking water and food security and nutrition (FSN)
Published in Lyla Mehta, Theib Oweis, Claudia Ringler, Barbara Schreiner, Shiney Varghese, Water for Food Security, Nutrition and Social Justice, 2019
Lyla Mehta, Theib Oweis, Claudia Ringler, Barbara Schreiner, Shiney Varghese
Some newer forms of energy generation compete for both water and land resources, and sometimes also for labour, with agriculture. Among these are biofuels (HLPE, 2013) and hydrofracking. The drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking,’ as it is more commonly known, is the process of injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into wells at high pressure to crack dense rock formations and release oil or gas. Fracking has raised concerns about its potential impact on water pollution (Myers, 2012). A national study in the United States, on the impacts of fracking on national water resources concluded that because of data gaps and uncertainties, it was not possible to fully characterize the severity of impacts (US EPA, 2016). On the other hand, a recent study reviewing major shale-producing regions in the United States, assessing the water footprint of the full life cycle of the fracking process in six basins, found that there have been substantial increases in both water-use and wastewater (flowback and produced water). From 2011 to 2016 the water-use per well rose by up to 770% while wastewater volumes increased by up to 1,440% within the first year of production. The large increase in water-use across these areas as a result of hydro-fracking not only increases competition for other uses but also loads of wastewater (Kondash et al. 2018). Agricultural communities are especially impacted as frack-sand mining and fracking takes place primarily in rural agricultural areas, where farmers lease out their land to the oil and gas industry and mining companies.
Understanding public perspectives on fracking in the United States using social media big data
Published in Annals of GIS, 2023
Xi Gong, Yujian Lu, Daniel Beene, Ziqi Li, Tao Hu, Melinda Morgan, Yan Lin
There currently is a dearth of research considering factors from multiple categories together to understand their associations with people’s attitudes towards fracking. Residents living closer to a hydraulic fracking well may be exposed to higher levels of water and air pollution, and could therefore experience increased health risks (Meng and Ashby 2014). People’s geographical proximity to fracking regions could potentially affect their attitudes towards fracking, but this relationship remains understudied. Moreover, the influence of these factors may operate at different geographical scales, and the aforementioned associations can vary across geographical regions. This study fills this literature gap by investigating the associations between these factors and people’s attitudes towards fracking at the county level across the United States.
Methane flux from flowback operations at a shale gas site
Published in Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 2020
Jacob T. Shaw, Grant Allen, Joseph Pitt, Adil Shah, Shona Wilde, Laurence Stamford, Zhaoyang Fan, Hugo Ricketts, Paul I. Williams, Prudence Bateson, Patrick Barker, Ruth Purvis, David Lowry, Rebecca Fisher, James France, Max Coleman, Alastair C. Lewis, David A. Risk, Robert S. Ward
Energy production through the combustion of fossil fuels is associated with the emission of greenhouse gases. The burning of natural gas, which largely comprises methane (CH4), directly produces carbon dioxide (CO2). Hydraulic fracturing (colloquially referred to as “fracking”) of shale gas formations for the extraction of natural gas has gained wide-spread attention in the past decade. Energy derived from the hydraulic fracturing processes has been proposed as a “cleaner” alternative to the carbon-intensive combustion of coal in the UK energy sector. However, this assumption depends on the proportion of CH4, a prominent greenhouse gas, released to the atmosphere through intentional venting, accidental leakage (fugitive emissions) or as a non-combusted component of flaring.
Unexpected bright spots: how the pandemic, climate change and biodiversity loss are shaping the evolution of the nexus
Published in Water International, 2022
Nathanial Matthews, Bart Schoonbaert, Elizabeth Burlon
The long silence on the value of water is being broken by the rise of renewable energy and, in the wake of the Covid pandemic, a shift in the dialogue about the energy transition from cost to value. Until recently, energy policy and investments have been made in isolation, without real consideration of their implications for other sectors or the wider environment – including water. We can see this in fracking for natural gas in water-stressed areas of the United States: a politically popular policy of energy independence through domestically produced natural gas has led to unintended consequences when groundwater became contaminated or, in some cases, ran dry because of a process that was more water intensive than the water supplies could support.