fracking

1. (oil industry) Hydraulic fracturing.Examples: "Still, environmentalists look to the U.S., where drilling with fracking is now a “megatrend” and where thousands of wells dot the landscape in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado. They worry about higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional natural gas—because of the energy used to get the gas—and water contamination."; "There is strong resistance in much of Europe to fracking, the practice of forcing liquid and sand into wells to release trapped oil and gas. France has a ban on fracking, Germany has imposed a moratorium, and opposition has cropped up and sometimes delayed shale exploration in Eastern European countries like Romania and Poland."; "Slowly, they marched toward a bigger role in the fracking industry. When competing Texas frackers looked to freeze the brothers out from the companies that distribute the sand needed to drill, the siblings opened their own sand quarry to thrive."uncountableusually