Ep. 190: What the frack is fracking?

Guest: Brad Hayes, Canadian Society of Unconventional Resources

Now that the Premier of British Columbia has gone out of his way to accommodate the building of a massive LNG production facility in Kitimat, we have to ask: where will the gas come from?

The answer, of course, is it comes from under the ground in both BC and Alberta.

Natural Gas is the byproduct of decayed plant and animal life that was compacted and pressurized by layers of sand and rock over millions of years. Deep under the earth’s crust in temperatures that exceed 120 degrees Celsius, the organic matter cooks and eventually the carbon bonds in the organic material break down and fossil fuels are formed. This is known as "Primary Gas."

Secondary Natural Gas accompanies oil which cooks for many millions of years more. Getting that gas out of the ground means drilling and it also means hydraulic fractured drilling, also known as fracking.

What exactly is fracking? How is the operation carried out and, more importantly, is it a process we want to be a by-product of the LNG industry we’re inviting to set up shop in British Columbia?

We invited Brad Hayes, the Director of the Canadian Society of Unconventional Resources, an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta and a respected expert on fracking, to join us for a Conversation That Matters about fracking.