Australians have always delighted in a wealth of resources; we
even sing about them in our national anthem: “Our land abounds
in nature’s gifts”. However, because Australians tend to think
of our resources as boundless, we forget or overlook that not
everything come in infinite supply. Fossil fuels are finite
resources, and – as the original sources are used up – methods
for obtaining coal, petroleum, crude oil, tar and natural gas
have become more aggressive. Hydraulic fracking is the process
where gas-bearing shales or coals seams are cracked and
fractured (hence the name) by the high-pressure pumping of a mix
of water, a cocktail of chemicals and sand into the shale. The
mixture is then pumped back out and the cracks are used to
collect and extract the natural gas. The chemical cocktail is
complex and not every fracking company uses the same cocktail
(most fracking companies refuse to publically share the complete
list of chemicals used); however, there are similarities in the
types of chemicals need in th