All the problems you list are found with coal mining and burning coal. The multi-pad is for drilling multiple wells maybe up to eight, thus eliminating 4 or more pads and the roads and pipelines to connect them. Mining, petroleum drilling, nuclear and hydro-electric all have environmental issues, finding what is appropriate is the task. Of course natural gas is considered cleaner than coal and has a lesser impact than burning coal and warming the planet more.

Does fracking cause earthquakes? I guess you could say if it did it is such a slight risk compared to the total number of quakes that occur but it is unknown as are the effects of mining and hydro-electric projects. It should be considered as EPA stated, though it will be the Chinese that make that call.

It is natural to fear the unknown and always good to be questioning new technologies. With little history to evaluate the results in this area, fracking could be potentially hazardous though it is less likely to be any scarier then the coal mining it will replace. Until more studies and drilling are done it will be difficult to know for sure. Earthquake hazards maybe more difficult to evaluate, the same as trying to evaluate the earthquake hazards with all the dams built in the Yunnan and Sichuan areas, these too are said to alter the weight distribution and change stress along the fault lines. Conditions are so variable that in one area your fine and in another you're not. This area of China is deemed more difficult to drill due to the rough terrain, fractured nature of rock and of course faulting. I've visited the area were some of the drilling for oil and shale gas will take place, though not as rugged as many places here it is still difficult. The road I drove had detours around rock slides from the May 12, 2008 quake that took near 100,000 lives. Visit the USGS (earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/) for real-time and historic earthquake information.

The horizontal oil wells I have seen proposed for Sichuan are deep, close to those in North Dakota (ND). The wells in ND are deep going to 9-10,000 feet (3-3.33 meters) before turning horizontal, the horizontal section being nearly two miles long or 8,000 to 10,000 feet. This is the section that is hydraulically fracked using large string of compressors to create the pressure to fracture the rock formations; historically they used directed explosive charges to frac the pay zone pipe and rock.

As you get closer to the surface the risk of gas reaching the surface goes up. In coalbed methane (CBM) drilling the wells can often be shallower, generally 500 to 1,500 feet deep. These are often fracked under much less pressure. I saw one well (out of maybe 500) were the gas went into an adjacent water well, but the rancher said when the water well was drilled he could light it, with the CBM drilling he might be able to produce commercial volumes from his water well. More often was the case where one CBM well would affect an adjacent CBM well raising pressures and releasing gas to the surface in a well up to a quarter mile away.

The water issues with fracking at depth are more about using up the valuable water resource, in kind the frac sand is going to be valuable for this work. Minnesota has experience a frac sand boom, mining it has hazards that include silicosis from inhalation. Silicosis and other inhalation hazards also exist in the Zhaotong area coal mines, these coals contain a higher than usual silica content from volcanic activity during the coal formation.

All things considered the development of shale gas in the Sichuan and Yunnan area will continue and if it has the effect it has had in the US it will depress the demand for coal to produce all that electric power to make our cell phones, factories, electric bikes, computers, and rice makers work. So it will over all be cleaner, but still and unknown since it has never been done on this scale. Pipelines are essential for natural gas production unless they opt for the more expensive liquefying the gas for rail or truck transport but all have hazards. I have cleaned up many in the past.