Rhetorical Situation Report: Pros and Cons of Hydraulic Fracturing

I have put some considerable thought in what I should discuss and write about for my research essay. After changing my original topic, I have decided to write about the issue of hydraulic fracturing (commonly referred to as fracking). The “puzzle to be solved” is whether the benefits of hydraulic fracturing outweigh the negative potential consequences to the environment.  With President Obama’s recent regulations on fracking on federal lands, there is a lot of exigency with this issue. In order to limit the exigency and make this issue more manageable, I will just be focusing on whether the benefits outweigh the environmental dangers and not on President Obama’s recent legislation. In the “Rhetorical Situation” by Lloyd Bitzer, the exigence is defined as “an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be”. The issue of fracking is huge right now, and you could go as so far as to say that it is more important or debated than it ever was before. This is mainly due to the fact that fracking wells are being built everyday and this could potentially help or harm our country (“something waiting to be done”). In Susan L. Brantley ‘s article in The New York Times, she explains hydraulic fracking and many facts such as pros and cons about fracking. She also states “approximately one million American wells have been fracked since the 1940s” (Brantley). This important statistic explains the exigency and circumstances for this rhetorical discourse.

Fracking will have an effect on many different audiences on different levels. Such audiences that have a stake in this issue are all types of corporations in the energy industry such as exploration and production, energy services, and midstream companies. Other audiences that have a stake in this issue besides energy companies are US citizens who live near and around these fracking sites, consumers who use energy products, and mainly the government officials who deal with the energy industry. According to a Forbes article, “at least 15.3 million Americans lived within a mile of a well that has been drilled since 2000” (Gold). The issue of fracking affects a diverse audience from large corporations to small communities around frac sites. I currently am tossed between the two sides of fracking. I have researched numerous amounts of benefits (energy independence, job creation, cheaper energy) and negative consequences (mini earthquakes, global warming, polluted water) and I am still on the fence whether or not the fracking benefits outweigh the negative consequences. In order to make this issue manageable, the target audience I will be writing to will be the people who are undecided about the overall pros and cons about fracking. I am deciding to mainly consider these people because as Bitzer put “rhetorical audience consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change”. In order to fully inform the audience, I need to further research the legitimacy of the consequences of fracking and whether they are positive or negative.

Sources used in Blog Update:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/opinion/global/the-facts-on-fracking.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/03/24/how-many-people-are-affected-by-fracking/