 Once the wells are drilled into the shale, they must be hydraulically fractured. The shale itself has very low permeability, meaning that gas or other hydrocarbons cannot flow through it readily. The hydraulic fracturing process opens up fractures in the shale by injecting water at high pressure. Along with the water, there are an addition of chemicals and propant, which is typically sand, which is used to keep the fractures open. So for every gallon of water that's sent down into a shale well, you have about a pound and maybe upwards of two pounds of sand that acts as a propant to keep those fractures open. A typical well will use about a million gallons of water for every thousand feet of shale being fractured. So for instance, these wells may have laterals that are on the order of five thousand feet long, meaning that on the order of five million gallons of water were used, along with five million pounds of sand, along with the chemicals added to the fracturing solution to enhance the overall process.