[Smokin' Joe]

Marcella, I have been working as a geologist in the oil patch for 35+ years now, and while Carbon Dioxide can be used to frac a well, more often it is done using high pressure fluid (mostly water) to crack the rock, and sand or ceramic pellets as proppants to hold those fractures open. Carbon Dioxide is a pretty stable oxide of carbon, and doesn't explode downhole. As a gas, it is compressible and will expand rapidly once the rock breaks, but that isn't the same as a chemical explosion where the initial constituents are altered to something else, more like when a steam pipe bursts.

It’s plain oil and plain gas that came out of rock.

Precisely, fracking just makes the extraction more efficient.

[Marcella]

I believe the carbon dioxide is liquid going down the well, then becomes gas and expands as you said - expands is a better description than exploding. I know sand and pellets are used to hold fractures open. Also know water is used. What I don’t see are toxic chemicals the writer said was used and the nearest component to “toxic” would be the carbon dioxide which wouldn’t be toxic to end up in human beings as I believe the writer intended to imply. The point is, none of those “ingredients” used is toxic.

[The Cajun]

Precisely, fracking just makes the extraction more efficient.

Dang, I was a hoping to *git* me some of that higher octane, more volatile, been fracked out of the ground gasoline, LOL!