Under the watchful eye of Democratic president Barack Obama, fracking has grown substantially, a massive oil pipeline was nearly approved, trade deals have been approved without blinking an eye, and oil drilling has continued on a massive scale.
http://trofire.com/2016/09/01/obama-allows-oil-drilling-fracking-president-preaches-climate-change/
The fracking boom has made the U.S. a global leader in oil and natural gas production in just a few years. As production levels grew domestically, it caused demand for foreign imports to fall and forced more oil on the global market. The excess supply made oil prices fall, which made it less expensive for refiners to purchase oil to refine into gasoline and diesel fuel.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/cheap-gasoline-this-labor-day/article/2600895
Improvements in technologies, primarily horizontal drilling and fracking, now enable producers to extract the oil and gas from these tight formations.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/09/time-to-unlock-americas-vast-oil-and-gas-resources
The anti-fracking petition drives did not fail for lack of institutional support from environmental organizations.
http://www.boulderweekly.com/opinion/danish-plan/why-the-anti-fracking-initiatives-failed/
Wastewater poses a number of environmental risks and concerns, especially in the relatively new science of fracking. Increasingly flowback and produced water is being used as hydraulic fracturing fluid in the process of fracking. Constituents within this water include barium and strontium, various pollutants and additional unknown compounds which may have both a short and longer term impact on soil, and our drinking water.
One of the major issues that was put forward late this summer was Initiative 75 and 78 which were both issues involving fracking; the increasingly sensitive and rising topic, especially here in Colorado, that involves drilling for natural gas. Neither of these initiatives qualified for this coming election, but nonetheless fracking and other natural resource issues will be extremely important issues over the next several years and in future elections.
https://collegian.com/2016/09/stettner-fracking-must-remain-an-important-issue-in-colorado/
ORICA chief Alberto Calderon says the science on fracking is already in, with numerous studies and operations around the world showing unconventional onshore gas can be safely tapped.