[SA Chris]

General dislike of Cameron aside, what do people think about fracking in general?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23662583

Personally it scares the crap out of me pumping all these nasty chemical underground, but how likely are they to actually get into groundwater? My geological knowledge is a bit limited.

[Johnny Brown]

One point in its favour - its a bit cleaner than coal. Everything else seems to go against it for me. The fact that the government are falling over themselves to invest in fossil fuels at this point in time speaks volumes; reducing CO2 output seems to have fallen off the political agenda completely... I despair.

[tomtom]

Briefly (I have work to do today...)

the fracking planned/suggested for the UK is much deeper than many of the places in the US where there have been problems - and a much greater distance between the gas deposits and any aquifers. This greatly reduces chances of contamination. There is still an opportunity to contaminate water supply where the pipe goes through the aquifer and this depends on how well sealed the pipe is. AFAIK UK regs on this are pretty tight. So I would suggest its probably 'safe' in a general way in the UK. Of course transporting chemicals etc.. across the country, pumping them into the ground, ensuring their disposal, where to get large quantiies of water from etc.. are all opportunities for fuck ups and to lead to bad stuff happening... When operational they can sell the gas via the existing pipeline infrastructure which reduces our needs to import LPG etc..

BUT - for me the real kicker no-one in the media seems to be picking up on here is that its a carbon heavy form of energy. It would add to our CO2 outputs not reduce them.. In bigger picture terms its BAD for the world.. It might be great for the UK economy in the short term but... *sighs*

Fracking UK will also get very very generous tax breaks - and I lament how further advanced our RE industry might be if it were to receive such tax breaks... Whilst not a U turn, the coalition seem to have 'slowed down' on their promises for the renewable sector and greening the UK energy industry.

Overview: It'll probably be safe in the UK - but I disagree with it happening in the first place.

[Johnny Brown]

When I've looked at the US, it seems to involve huge numbers of wells in a grid to exploit an area. Presumably that would be the same here? I'm not sure how it will work given our rather denser population patterns.

[masonwoods101]

I work in a lab that tests chemical waste before it gets treated and there is a bottle of 'fracking water' on the side.... May have a look what's its got in it....

[andyd]

The fact that we're all online all day shows that we has a great reliance on electricity. Our economy relies on it. Therefore we need, at this point, to use this reserve. There are some safety/environmental issues with fracking that must be acknowledged, however they seem to be far less significant than the damage done to areas such as the Niger delta through leaks/arson/terrorism etc. At least (global warming aside) it's our mess.

[SA Chris]

There's no denying we need (and perhaps consume excessive amounts of) energy, but we need fresh water more. For ourselves and the food we eat. Alternative sources should be investigated, but I don't think fracking is a viable one.

As others have mentioned above the tax breaks could probably be better spent on RE options.

[Stubbs]

JB first of all I hope you know that the lighting your taps thing has nothing to do with fracking, but is naturally occurring in that area, I wanted to watch that film but the more I read about it the more I realised that there was a lot of bull in there in between facts.

I think if fracking was just happening in the North West and not Sussex then it probably wouldn't have the media spotlight so much.

What I didn't realise before is (correct me if I'm wrong) that this gas can't be used in power stations, and will only form domestic supplies, and as such they need a shit load more infrastructure to get it into households.

As a slight aside, from what I've read it sounds like successive governments have fucked up our energy policy to being at the point in the next few years that they may have to reinstate some coal power stations to make sure we have some breathing space in power production and don't start getting black outs.  Just another area where attempting to tender to private companies has failed. [socialist emoticon]

[andy_e]

Overview: It'll probably be safe in the UK - but I disagree with it happening in the first place.

TomTom's on the money.

The video you posted Johnny and many others like it have since been proven to be fake apparently. Even if it were caused by groundwater carrying dissolved gases as a result of the fracking process, it would be a lot less likely to happen in the UK. In the US, the laws on casing and securing well bores onshore are a lot less stringent than those in the UK, hence it's likely to be more safe.

On the issue on high density of wells, this is also an entirely valid point. Fracture density is important to extract gas from the very low permeability shale, you can't just pop one well in and expect it all to flow to the well as would happen in a conventional hydrocarbon accumulation in a permeable reservoir unit. Therefore, multiple wells are needed to open a large network of fractures (or reopen an existing network of fractures). A lot of older (some up to 30-odd years) fracking operations in the US rely on many wells in a small area in order for fractures to propagate around the well and join up with each other, and the easiest way to do this is to drill hundreds of vertical wells. However, since horizontal drilling and multiple well-head technologies have been developed, it's possible to drill many wells from one location and drill horizontally with one well to do the job many wells used to do, and also to drill many horizontal wells from the same location, greatly reducing the need for multiple well-heads as seen in the US. As the Bowland shale is very extensive and quite thin however, it'd still need a quite a lot of wells to exploit it, but not on the scale of the US (their prime fracking basin, the Marcellus shale, covers an area of two or three times that of the UK if I recall correctly).

Drilling and fracturing fluids used are often quoted to be 97% water (I think it has to be fresh, not saline) and the rest made of surfactants ("ones found in most household cleaning products") to keep things moving and proppants (physical fracture-keeping-open things) such as sand. One of the most important issues is that fracking is very intensive on water supplies, with water needing to be piped (but more likely carried in lorries) to the well-head. As water supplies in the UK are already at a tipping point (no new reservoirs have been built in the UK in the last 40 years, leading to an increased reliance on abstraction of water from rivers, endangering habitats and causing supplies to be running short) this is no good thing.

Of course, with such a valuable resource under our grounds, you'd think it'd be a good idea to let people exploit them and tax the frack out of it so we can pump that money in to renewables. Great idea, unless you're a Tory and your chums need to make a quick buck.

Fracking? For me, no, from an environmental and economic point of view. From a geological point of view, it's perfectly safe if wells are designed and cased properly (remember, natural hydraulic fracturing has been occurring underground for about 4.56 billion years and will continue to do so as long as there's water under the ground).

[i.munro]

Would there be a ukb political party that I could vote for please?

[SA Chris]

Lets face it we couldn't do much worse.

As said before dense for PM.

[hongkongstuey]

Suggest you watch the film 'Gasland' for a slightly biased view of how f'ed up the US got its approach to Fracking - there's no doubt it's caused some issues there but that's mostly due to poor control of drilling fluids rather than the Fracking process itself.

As for supposed issues with micro-tremors the media like to hype on about every once in a while, it's basically not an issue and bigger ground vibrations are induced by human activity all over the place on a daily basis.

With the correct controls in place I have no gripes with it as a potential energy source as, lets face it, it'll be a long haul before any of the 'alternatives' form a viable mainstream source of power supply.

[tomtom]

With the correct controls in place I have no gripes with it as a potential energy source as, lets face it, it'll be a long haul before any of the 'alternatives' form a viable mainstream source of power supply.

Sadly - in the UK RE and in particular wind could have (by now) taken up a load of the slack fracking will probably fill... If we'd given the RE better tax breaks as well maintaining higher feed in taffifs for things like domestic PV we might not need it... There have been several days this summer when greater than 50% of German electricity production has come from domestic PV.. It can be done..

Working in Hull, its heartbreaking watching a fledgling RE industry stall because major European companies (in Hulls case Siemens) are holding back on investing - because of doubts on the coalitions commitment to RE and the EU....

Both RE and Fracking are in many ways sticking plasters to get over a short term gap in energy before more nuclear plants can be constructed - but I know which plaster I prefer...

[tomtom]

(sorry if the above is a bit ranty... typing in haste..)

[Johnny Brown]

Sadly - in the UK RE and in particular wind could have (by now) taken up a load of the slack fracking will probably fill... If we'd given the RE better tax breaks as well maintaining higher feed in taffifs for things like domestic PV we might not need it... There have been several days this summer when greater than 50% of German electricity production has come from domestic PV.. It can be done..

Working in Hull, its heartbreaking watching a fledgling RE industry stall because major European companies (in Hulls case Siemens) are holding back on investing - because of doubts on the coalitions commitment to RE and the EU....

What he said.

[i.munro]

, lets face it, it'll be a long haul before any of the 'alternatives' form a viable mainstream source of power supply.

If you're correct, and I very much fear you are as long as  politicians continue to do their best to make sure of it, then we're all in very deep dog doo-doo indeed.

[Fultonius]

I'm absoluately amazed that climate change has been so effectively wiped off the agenda. Such amazing short termism.

I knew that the recession was clearly going to hit renewables a bit, but I hadn't expected the wholesale "fuck the environment, we need to make LOTS OF DIRTY MONEY" attitude. I suppose most of the current raft of polticians puppets of the rich will be long gone by the time it really hits so they don't give a fuck.

I guess the fact that we will ALL have to take a bit of a hit to our living standards to prevent catastrophic climate change is just too big a pill to swallow...

[outlawed]

Switch to Ecotricity. Same price as big 6 suppliers plus about 20 quid a year, but all electricity sourced from renewables.

http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/

Nice people too. Happy to discuss all issues with you, and not afraid to take a principled stand on non energy issues.

[andyd]

A clear conscience for 20 quid. Bargain. 

[outlawed]

A clear conscience for 20 quid. Bargain. 

makes great sense with yer clean conscience. Electricity all from wind, solar and tide. Gas from food waste and algae.

No fracking, no nuclear. What more can you get for your 20 notes to make the world more sustainable?

[Stubbs]

Ecotricity can't actually control where the energy that comes out of your plug socket comes from, or the gas in your boiler?  I thought the idea was that they just invested your extra £20 in these technologies.

Be happy to be proved wrong.

[outlawed]

Ecotricity can't actually control where the energy that comes out of your plug socket comes from, or the gas in your boiler?  I thought the idea was that they just invested your extra £20 in these technologies.

Be happy to be proved wrong.

that's where the extra optional cost comes in. It guarantees that the energy you use will be put into the national grid from renewables. You can have the standard tariff without the extra which does as you say. It's all in their details.

Happy to prove you wrong

[tomtom]

I'm increasingly coming to the view that carbon taxes and trading on these taxes/levys is the best way to deal with controlling CO2 production... Would require global co-operation etc.. So probably never happen but...

[tomtom]

Outlawed, it's a nice idea, but that electricity was being made by RE anyway.. Though if enough people went that way they would raise the demand for RE sufficiently to increase output in theory.

We need Falling Down to comment on this. Iirc he has things to do with the energy industry and might be in a far better place to comment...

[outlawed]

However you cut it tomtom, id rather support a RE company than the nuclear or fossil fuel industry.

Even the government chief science bod said on radio technically the UKs energy needs could be met through RE alone.

I put my money where my mouth is and back RE.