Oil and natural gas companies have developed a method of drilling for natural gas, a process called hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Natural gas is a flammable gas mixture composed of methane and numerous other hydrocarbons that occur naturally underground. Natural gas is used as a fuel for heating, cooking and even in some automobiles such as “RideOn” buses. This technique has only recently become economically feasible with rising fossil fuel prices, and there is great potential for natural gas recovery through fracking. However, fracking produces many waste products and unusual side effects caused by the unnatural forces and materials used. Fracking has a harmful effect on the surrounding environment due to pollution and earthquakes. Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from layers of shale rock deep inside the earth. One of the largest natural gas deposits in the world is found in the Marcellus Shale, located in the Appalachian Basin and extending through New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and portions of Kentucky and Tennessee. “Plays” are areas where companies are actively searching for natural gas within shale rock formations. The deposits are drilled for natural gas using hydraulic fracturing in a two-step process. First, a production well is drilled thousands of feet into the ground and then gradually graded so that the drill bit moves horizontally through the ground. The second part of the process is what it gets its name from “fracking” because in the second stage of the process a mixture of sand, water and chemicals, many of which are known to be harmful, is forced at extremely high pressure down into the shale across the horizontal part of ...... half of the paper ......289. Retrieved from the Gale Science in Context database. (A264004904) Natural Gas Drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shales: Environmental Regulation Basics [Fact Sheet]. (n.d.). Retrieved from Agriculture and Natural Resources, Ohio State University website: http://wayne.osu.edu/topics/agriculture-and-natural-resources/gas-and-oil-lease-information/2011-wayne-county- oils -and-gas-lease-meeting-resources/Marcellus_Shale_Fact_Sheet.pdfFracking: the new global water crisis. (2012, March). Retrieved from http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/FrackingCrisisUS.pdfHealy, J.H., Rubey, W.W., Griggs, D.T., & Raleigh, C.B. (1968, September). The Denver earthquakes. Science, 161(3848), 1301-1310. Extracted from JSTOR database. The myth that gas is "clean energy" [Fact sheet]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/myth.html