Identifying Cost Centers and Environmental Impacts Needs Assessment for Fracking Life Cycle in the United States

Energy have been always on the forefront of every nation's priority list, more importantly, affordable energy is one of the main objectives for every country. Hence, the fracking process have dominated the last decade because of its contribution to a more affordable energy. In the meantime the fracking process proved to have several negative impacts on the environmental sustainability. Therefore, the net cost of fracking have to be identified and its benefits have to be weighed against its negative sustainability impacts as well. This paper presents an identification of the major cost centers and the impacts needs assessment for the fracking process across the phases of its Life Cycle from the exploration and acquisition to the well completion. The paper is also serving as a step forward to estimate the real value and worth of the fracking process as a whole.