Fracking requires an enormous amount of resources and utilizes a number of toxic chemicals. Here are some interesting facts and statistics about fracking that will give you a snapshot of the industry:

1. All told there are now more than 1 million active fracking wells in the United States.

 

2. According to a recent report from Colorado, it takes 1,400 truck trips just to frack a well, and at least several hundreds more to haul all the toxic wastewater away and dump it into evaporation ponds. (Solotaroff, 2015)

 

3. Researchers don’t know the long-term toxicity of up to 80% of the hundreds of chemicals and other materials that are used in oil production, according to Pacific Institute researcher Matthew Heberger. (Knickmeyer, 2016)

4. California’s oil industry alone produced nearly 2 billion barrels of wastewater in 2013 to obtain 150 million barrels of oil. (ibid) This does not take into account the 60% of wastewater that stays underground.

 

5. Much of the natural gas extracted from fracking is being exported to Europe and Asia, where prices are 5-times higher than they are in the S. (Goodell, 2012)