Climatewire | Energy & Sustainability
Can Fracking and Carbon Sequestration Coexist?
Drilling for natural gas and storing CO2 deep underground may be headed for a collision
| March 16, 2012
UNDERGROUND CONFLICT: Fracking for natural gas may require shattering geologic formations that efforts to store CO2 permanently underground require to be impermeable.Image: Wikimedia Commons/Richard Bartz
Natural gas production and carbon sequestration may be headed for an underground collision course.
That is the message from a new studyfinding that many of the same shale rock formations where companies want to extract gas also happen to sit above optimal sites envisioned for storing carbon dioxide underground that is captured from powerplants and industrial facilities.
The problem with this overlap, the researchers found, is that shale-gas extraction involves fracturing rock that could be needed as an impenetrable cover to hold CO2 underground permanently and prevent it from leaking back into the atmosphere.
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