Americans are divided on whether they support hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the drilling method that’s incited a United States oil and natural gas boom while raising fears about water pollution, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.
Equally 40 percent of respondents are either opposed to or back fracking, with 19 percent offering no opinion, the poll said. Support was higher among Republicans, with 66 percent advocating fracking, while just 26 percent of Democrats were boosters of fracking, which involves blasting a high-pressure cocktail of water, sand and chemicals into tight-rock formations to tap hydrocarbons.
Thirty-five percent of independents supported fracking, while 44 percent opposed it.
“As of now, the public is split evenly in support and opposition of fracking, and as the debate continues, it will be interesting to see if one point of view begins to grab the upper hand in Americans’ minds,” Gallup said.
While fracking supporters contend the drilling method has been used for decades, recent technological advances such as drilling horizontally have significantly changed the practice. That’s boosted its effectiveness and adoption in the process, helping turn the U.S. into the world’s top oil and natural gas producer.
Although it was conducted beforehand, the poll comes just days after the Obama administration released the first-ever regulations for fracking on federal lands, which it said were necessary to keep pace with how fracking is now employed. But Republicans and industry say the rules are duplicative and unnecessary, contending that concerns about groundwater contamination from fracking are unfounded.
The Gallup poll noted that it wasn’t just the potential for water pollution that unsettled respondents. Many ascribed an uptick in seismic activity in Oklahoma to fracking and cited a recent report that people who live near oil and gas wells that use fracking are subjected to air pollution from chemicals such as benzene and formaldehyde.
Older Americans were more likely to support fracking, the poll showed. At 52 percent, respondents aged 65 and older were most likely to support fracking, while those between the ages of 18 and 29 were the least likely to tout fracking, at 32 percent.
The poll was taken between March 5 and 8, before the Interior Department fracking rules were released. The cellphone and landline-based poll of 1,025 adults has margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
