People power has shut the doors on fracking in the UK

padington

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

I think that perception does the public at large an injustice ... many already see the protest and chaos as being the preserve of a very small vocal & mobile minority .... it's not uncommon to see the same faces popping up in different places ....

Anyway, London and Brighton is a long way from 'the North' ... I doubt that many of the ex-mining and manufacturing communities north of (say) Cheshire/Staffordshire/Derbyshire would welcome the 'great unwashed' with open arms as readily as the those in the relatively wealthy South-East ... so maybe it's a good thing, just see it as a transfer of wealth and investment from the South to the North for a change - after-all, it probably wouldn't be fair to see it 'kick off big time' again in Brighton - they're still distraught enough about a couple of weekends of Mods & Rockers having a little fun over 50 years ago to even notice that the economy has been pretty much screwed-up over the intervening years and we, as a country don't really produce anything that's not 'virtual' anymore ......

HTH
Z

We produce the odd fun thing ...

http://www.brightoni360.co.uk

silverwhistle

There's plenty of evidence from the US (the New York medics report as an example) about the secondary impacts of fracking on the environment and health, similar stuff in Oklahoma (and other places) and impacts on the agricultural community. Not quite the same, but if you've ever crossed Oklahoma by Greyhound bus you'll appreciate the different circumstances!

We've also had minor earthquakes in Lancashire from test fracking. The precautionary principle should still reign. If not the companies involved should post bonds against potential issues. For those people who say our regulatory framework is better than the US I reserve my most withering/disparaging/despairing/where's my thesaurus look!

Mistermeaner

silverwhistle wrote: »

There's plenty of evidence from the US (the New York medics report as an example) about the secondary impacts of fracking on the environment and health, similar stuff in Oklahoma (and other places) and impacts on the agricultural community. Not quite the same, but if you've ever crossed Oklahoma by Greyhound bus you'll appreciate the different circumstances!

We've also had minor earthquakes in Lancashire from test fracking. The precautionary principle should still reign. If not the companies involved should post bonds against potential issues. For those people who say our regulatory framework is better than the US I reserve my most withering/disparaging/despairing/where's my thesaurus look!

Your opinion is based in ignorance I'm afraid. You have no idea. Have you ever been through an NSIP's application?

princeofpounds

This is the sort of thing most people imagine when they think about fracking:




Those are examples of the construction phase, which lasts just a few weeks. And from jurisdictions that don't make much accommodation for sensitive development.


Below is what it looks like when finished. For scale, that's probably about 4 feet high. You wouldn't even notice it if you weren't looking, and the large stoned area around it isn't even necessary - the pad itself is only about 6-7 foot square. In Eastern Europe they often farm potatoes right up to the pad.


You have a collection of those feeding into a central facility which can vary in size but often smaller and definitely less ugly than an electricity substation.




Furthermore, the one large onshore hydrocarbon facility at Wytch Farm in Poole has been drilling and fracking for years and the impact has been pretty modest.

cells

People lose all their common sense and reasoning and stop thinking. Here are some common sense arguments which tell you that it is safe and does work.

Risk of chemicals: I just poured down my drain an extremely dangerous acid to to literally burn and eat away the blockage. Right into the water supply you will be drinking in a few days time. Thousands of chemicals are flushed into the water supply on purpose. Bleech acids dishwashers soaps !!!! dead pets salt vegetation nappies plastics paper oils paint and probably everything you can think of. Clearly there seems to be a way to fix all that as the same water is pumped back for you to drink.

Industrialising the countryside: at a cost of maybe ~£100 million per pad there literally isn't the money to build hundreds of thousands of these. 10,000 pads might cost ~£1 trillion pounds. Which company has 1 trillion pounds? There clearly is going to be a lot less than 10,000 pads. I would put 1000pads as an upper limit built out over 40 years. By comparison to this 1,000 pads the UK has ~40 million buildings

Not a lot of gas not worth it: again at a cost of £100m a pad there better be a lot more than £100m worth of gas come out or they are going to stop doing it pronto. In fact you probably need in excess of £400m worth of gas coming out to cover all the costs and taxes and risks and royalties.

Will lower my house price. Will it if people can't see the completed pad? These are not wind mills or electricity pylons visible for miles they are about the size of a bungalow

padington

cells wrote: »

People lose all their common sense and reasoning and stop thinking. Here are some common sense arguments which tell you that it is safe and does work.

Risk of chemicals: I just poured down my drain an extremely dangerous acid to to literally burn and eat away the blockage. Right into the water supply you will be drinking in a few days time. Thousands of chemicals are flushed into the water supply on purpose. Bleech acids dishwashers soaps !!!! dead pets salt vegetation nappies plastics paper oils paint and probably everything you can think of. Clearly there seems to be a way to fix all that as the same water is pumped back for you to drink.

Industrialising the countryside: at a cost of maybe ~£100 million per pad there literally isn't the money to build hundreds of thousands of these. 10,000 pads might cost ~£1 trillion pounds. Which company has 1 trillion pounds? There clearly is going to be a lot less than 10,000 pads. I would put 1000pads as an upper limit built out over 40 years. By comparison to this 1,000 pads the UK has ~40 million buildings

Not a lot of gas not worth it: again at a cost of £100m a pad there better be a lot more than £100m worth of gas come out or they are going to stop doing it pronto. In fact you probably need in excess of £400m worth of gas coming out to cover all the costs and taxes and risks and royalties.

Will lower my house price. Will it if people can't see the completed pad? These are not wind mills or electricity pylons visible for miles they are about the size of a bungalow

What about earth quakes ?

princeofpounds

Earthquakes are not a special product of fracking. They happen already at onshore hydrocarbon sites across the world simply due to hydrocarbon extraction changing the subsurface properties. The actual frack is something like -1 or -2 on the Richter scale (really small).


For example, the Groningen field in the Netherlands, one of Europe's largest, is having its output restricted due to concerns over this sort of thing. This is following some Richter 3 quakes that might be linked. Indeed almost all hydrocarbon-linked earthquakes are in the 1-3 range, I think the highest ever was 3.7 (but don't quote me on that)


There are over 100 000 Richter 3 quakes globally each year. There have been some in the last 50 days alone here in the UK. They don't really do anything.


http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html

zeupater

padington wrote: »

What about earth quakes ?

Hi

What about earthquakes ? .... funny how this becomes a 'sticking' point - here's an answer from a previous discussion in 2013 ....

zeupater wrote: »

... I approached the issue from a purely neutral viewpoint and have researched many claims and found them to have extremely shaky foundations (far more shaky than the earth-tremors which have been blamed on the process .... we experience similar scale events around the country on a regular basis, there have been 11 in the past month - http://quakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html and, as usual, hardly anyone noticed because they didn't suit a particular agenda). If I really thought that the process was significantly more hazardous than accepted practices elsewhere I would have come to a different conclusion ...

... probably could make a difference, but the question really revolves around the question of statistical significance and magnitude ..... http://quakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html ...

HTH
Z

System

cells wrote: »

shale gas is extremely energy dense moreso than even nuclear energy

How come? You mean there is more energy in a gram of shale gas than in a gram of uranium? Why don't we hear of shale gas bombs?

cells

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

How come? You mean there is more energy in a gram of shale gas than in a gram of uranium? Why don't we hear of shale gas bombs?

shale energy produces more energy for a given unit of surface land used than a nuclear power station does

A nuclear plant is about 250 acres in size (and then some into the sea) while a shale pad is closer to 1 acre

When you do the sums and even turn the nat gas to eletric it works out to ~10x as land energy dense as a nuclear plant over a 50 year lifetime for both

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also going back to the common sense approach, if the hole in the ground is costing you £100m it better be producing a lot more than £100m worth of nat gas to be a worthwhile task. say £300-£500m worth of nat gas comes out of the 10 inch hole on a 1 acre site. sounds like a pretty dam good way to use 1 acre of land to generate £300-500m worth of taxes employment and value added.

funny enough even the square mile in london doesnt generate value added at £500m an acre