Life cycle assessment impact of fraking shale gas in Tunisia

This paper presents an analysis of the environmental impacts during hydraulic fracturing process of shale gas in Tunisia. The different steps of hydraulic fracturing process of shale gas such as site preparation, exploration, development, production, distribution and closing wells are described to analyze operation of the process. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was achieved out focusing on both exploration and development stages of hydraulic fracturing process. The SimaPro Software based on ReCip Endpoint version 1.06 methods was used as the assessment tool to indicate the environmental impacts quantitatively. The results of LCA affirm that the process of hydraulic fracturing contributes to the impact category such as climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, ionizing radiation, climate change ecosystems, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, agricultural land occupation, urban land occupation, natural land transformation, metal depletion and fossil depletion.