The process of hydraulic fracturing is a mining technique which
uses injected fluid to propagate fractures in a rock layer to
release hydrocarbon deposits that would otherwise be
uncommercial. Developed in the U.S. and first used in 1947 for
stimulating of oil and natural gas wells, the use of “fracking”
soared in the past decade as thousands of wells have been
drilled into the Marcellus Formation, also referred to as the
Marcellus Shale, a deposit of marine sedimentary rock found in
eastern North America. While initial environmental protests of
the technique centered around its possibility of polluting
underground water aquifers as a number of known carcinogenic
substances are used in the procedure, more recently research has
focused on an even more ominous byproduct of the technique – the
increased possibility of earthquakes. While in the U.S. the U.S.
Geological Survey and the state governments are investigating
the link, in Britain the Department of Energy and Climate Change
on 17 April published an indep