To Frack, or Not To Frack...?

silverwhistle

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23724657

silverwhistle

sacsquacco wrote: »

The Yorkshire towns, where I live, are criss crossed througout by mineworks, subsidence is not at all uncommon in all our towns, yet we all live with it .[SNIP]

Not sure I understand your point. Are you saying Yorkshire people have any choice in the matter? Of course they live with it.

Are you also suggesting that they are stupid and don't learn from experience? That they want more such problems?

Personally I've learnt from experience that when I have a headache I find a quiet place and don't go down the pub...

penrhyn

The rise of Nu Luddites.
Now we see that old hag Vivian Westwood giving us the benefit of her insight into energy policy. Presumably she has a new collection of expensive rubbish clothing that noone can wear coming out.
In other news its nice to see our tax money being used to fund these professional protesters. ( Some I guess are trustafarians as well a dole scroungers)
If they had been around a couple of centuries ago the industrial revolution would never have happened.

The Industrial revolution was a terrible thing of course as demonstated by the leftards in charge of the Olympic opening ceremony. IK Brunel what a b'stard.

JamesMason_2

The question and debate in my view should be to look at UCG instead. The potential quantity of gas production is startling.

tberry6686

I don't understand what the fuss is about. Fracing has been going on in this country for at least 20 years already, fracing causing earthquakes is at best a dubious claim considering UK gets plenty of small earthquakes every year (and occasionally some decent sized ones).

molerat

Watched a small clip on the "One Show" last night with a seemingly unbiased university guy answering questions on both sides of the argument. Seemingly several earthquakes have been caused in this country by conventional coal mining. The protesters started getting agitated and pushed the camera away when asked scientific fact based questions. A couple of weeks ago one of the protesters complained "we have tried the democratic route and it did not work" !!

giraffe69

It seems obvious that the conventional forms of fuel will not last forever. Also that there is not one magic fuel that can replace them so a number of solutions are needed. You can understand people objecting to wind farms if they are very close and cause a noise problem or fracking if this brings a large increase in noise and traffic. There are also remaining reservations about nuclear power heightened by Fukushima.
It seems to me that many of the protestors against the fracking possibility at Balcombe are just jumping on a bandwagon which is essentially "we will protest against anything that moves us forward" It makes sense to me to investigate this. If it goes ahead efforts should be made to stop it being a scar on the landscape. The example of the gas field near Poole Harbour is an object lesson in how to do this.

penrhyn

I have it on good authority that there are plans to drill up to 4000 holes in Lancashire near Blackburn.
Its time for Swampy and co to head north.

polskiegowLondynie

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

I did not respond to the survey because it assumes that more carbon in the form of fracking will make bills lower than they would otherwise be, I however do not think our bills will be lower by even one penny with fracking

Quite. I seem to recall somone from the govenment admiting this when questioned.

Further to that was this from the FT this week;

From Mr Tom Brown.
Sir, Your support for UK shale gas (“Make haste slowly on UK shale gas”, editorial, August 6) based upon “the reduction in energy prices and the improvement in energy security” is unjustified on both grounds. Even if the extraction, transmission and eventual environmental reinstatement costs were lower than those of Norwegian conventional gas, the end user, industrial or residential, will pay the same and the benefit of the presumed (but at this point unproved) higher operating margin for onshore shale gas extraction will accrue entirely to equity and debt investors in the extraction companies and to the exchequer through corporation tax and petroleum revenue tax.
The only way it could be cheaper would be if the government sought to penalise gas imports through higher duties, which would be illegal under EU and World Trade Organisation rules. As for energy security, it is absurd to imply that gas extracted from the Norwegian sector of the North Sea is less secure than from the UK sector, unless you expect FT readers to believe that Norway could be overthrown by a hostile regime.
Import substitution would, of course, benefit the balance of payments (BoP), but you do not mention this and there has been little (if any) economic analysis to suggest that the UK will run into an unmanageable BoP problem because of gas imports alone. Wider issues of competitiveness and whether the UK can continue to attract foreign direct investment if it suicidally exits the EU are far more likely to weigh on the external position over 20 years.
Above all, the pursuit of shale gas is wrong-headed because it distracts from the overriding public policy objective of de-carbonising the economy.
You report today (“A rising power”, Analysis, August 9) how the surge of efficient Chinese production of solar panels has led to an 80 per cent drop in the capital cost of solar photo-voltaic production and how Germany is already producing 22 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, manifestly without any noticeable impact on overall German competitiveness.
Consequently, the suspicion is that the UK government’s support of shale gas is a political sop to its climate-change-denying supporters – led by Lord Lawson – which, however, may yet backfire as it becomes clear that it risks industrialisation of the English countryside.
With a global glut of conventional gas, which has seen the value of Russia’s Gazprom slashed, the sensible course is to continue to work with our excellent Norwegian and Qatari friends to secure plentiful gas imports by pipeline and liquefied natural gas transportation.
Tom Brown, Senior Credit Executive, Norddeutsche Landesbank, London EC2, UK

sheffield_lad

polskiegowLondynie wrote: »

Quite. I seem to recall somone from the govenment admiting this when questioned.

Further to that was this from the FT this week;

but what good old Tom forgets is the Germans did not have a deficit they loaned money to households to encourage PV long before we had FIT and they still need GAS to heat the majority of German homes just like us!

On the argument of no significant saving to the end user if we frack he seems to also forget that it will protect us from the massive price hikes last seen in 2008 when the Russian pipeline was under threat (40% rise).

The other benefit to all of us is the revenue this will create for the country. We are talking billions of pounds in tax which we would be paying (well those who work), in tax for pensions, NHS, education etc.