That’s the title of an article in The Economist. “A shale well does use a lot of water—an average of up to 22m litres (5m gallons) over its lifetime—but this is no more than a golf course in Florida consumes in three weeks, according to one estimate. Most of that water stays in the well, but 20% returns to the surface as flow-back in the days and weeks after fracking. This must be stored and disposed of or recycled safely. Still, the MIT report points out that shale-gas extraction uses less water than other industries, and indeed than other sources of energy. In America’s big shale fields it gets through much less water than local mines or local livestock.”
Read it all.