n. A person who campaigns or protests against the use of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") to extract gas and oil from shale rock.
2014
In greater numbers by the month, residents across north Orange County are calling for an end to fracking, joining a growing chorus of Californians demanding a stop to the controversial oil-drilling practice. … "It seems like new campaigns are being started all the time," said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which assists fracktivists.
2014
And he and his like minded allies have a new, unflattering label, the Tea Party of the Left. Also known as "fracktivists," the group, like their conservative counterparts, is sworn to certain principles even if those beliefs cost their side of the aisle the election in November.
2010 (earliest)
The DEC draft lists hundreds of chemicals used in frack fluid, and the hazards of each are listed at each drill site, but fracktivists contend that the information is useless since it does not indicate the proportion of each item stirred into the cocktail.
The term hydraulic fracturing — the injection of high-pressure water into shale rock to create fractures that enable trapped gas or oil to flow out — has been part of the language since 1948. It was originally shortened to hydrafrac (1948), but the short-form-of-choice these days is fracking. This feels like a relatively new addition to the lexicon, but it's actually more than 60 years old, with the OED showing a first citation from a 1953 edition of Oil and Gas Journal.
