Hydraulic fracturing and environmental inequality

Since the mid-2000s, unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production transformed the US from an oil importer into the world’s top producer of hydrocarbons. UOG production has been accompanied by an array of environmental, social, and spatial injustices. Drilling wellpads, for instance, may be located only hundreds of feet from homes, schools, and other high-occupancy buildings. UOG production can disrupt communities, ecosystems, and governance processes. Production generates distributive inequities - with environmental, public health, and economic risks concentrating among people living near production and often among minoritized groups. It also generates procedural inequities - where people living near production, or otherwise affected by it, often do not have opportunities to meaningfully participate in making decisions about where, whether, and when production occurs. In this chapter, we offer an extensive review of research on these disparities. We show how the oil and gas industry possesses significant metapower - where they control the rules of the game across multiple political and economic processes. We argue that their power helps shape multiple environmental injustices and perpetuates systemic inequities, while encouraging continued dependence on fossil fuels.