Frakking Marvellous?

[LazyGun]

I must admit to finding this proposal more than a little disturbing.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-great-rush-government-to-give-green-lightto-mass-exploration-for-shale-gas-8372543.html

"They suggest more than 32,000 square miles – or 64 per cent of the countryside – could potentially be exploited for shale gas and is being considered for exploration licences"

I can imagine more than a little protest at this expansion of shale gas exploration......

[beso]

Huge protests are going on in Australia and the USA.

It masquerades as a "green energy" source but it is anything but green. Methane leaks which is worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide all over the place. Rivers are bubbling methane.

Peoples properties are trashed. Huge compressors run day and night to send the gas through pipelines.

Massive dams are built to hold the water that must be removed to release the gas. Often this water is salty and polluted. Water tables fall and ground water is contaminated.

They pump toxic chemicals down the well and pretend there is no chance whatsoever of those chemicals ending up in aquifers.

Governments don't give sh1t. All they are interested in is the royalties and "development". In parts of Australia the companies were even excused from paying royalties for five years to encourage them. A public outcry changed this.

The grand irony of this "revolution" in previously unreachable gas is that there is now a glut of it. The US had been doing it for several years.

Coal prices are being driven down. Investors are not seeing the returns anything like they expected.

[factor-fiction]

The potential is huge and I really couldn't see any country turning down the chance to get at this resource if it were under their land.
I think it will start slowly and I can't see it ever affecting anything like 6% of the countryside, never mind 64%

[boxtops]

they want to frack round here, somewhere between me and Baldric

[jackthehat]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/01/blackpool-earthquake-tremors-gas-drilling

[LazyGun]

I still find it worrying factor 30.I am not sure what you are basing your opinion on - that only 6% of the landmass will be affected- but even were the actual extend of frakking be exaggerated in the original article, the consequences are very real, and very messy. Earth tremors and contamination of the water supply are not desirable.

America has a little more room for such explorations than we do over here, and, given the row over onshore windfarms and the environment, I would anticipate much greater resistance to this process.

[jomifl]

I imagine this desire to produce even more carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is driven by greed and political expediency..no change there then. Makes wind turbines look quite lovely.

[pdq1]

The problem with British governments especially in the past would be to extract at the maximum rate and use it for exports in the aim of making more and more profits. Oil exploration in the North Sea was a case in point and the majority of it was exported unlike Norway which kept a lot back for future generations.

If the aim is to become self sufficient and nothing else we could use much less than the 64% of the countryside and keep this country with a valuable resource for decades to come.

[beso]

factor30 is underestimating the impact of this technology. In Australia they are talking about 50,000 wells. In some places wells are going in space 400 metres apart.

With the roads to each well head plus pipelines and dams it turns vast rural areas into industrial sites.

pdq1 is spot on about export.

In Australia the state governments signed up export contracts for decades ahead. Then when the public wholesale rejected the industry the government claimed that it had to go ahead or "we" would run out of gas.

So now we are flogging it off overseas while prices are taking a dive.

[beso]

Mining countries run the world. Governments are their puppets.