FRACKING

[bonnyclark]

My husband and I are very much against fracking, we have been down to Balcombe a few times to support the protest. My husband is a published songwriter and has donated a power protest song, called 'We Will Never Surrender', (Published by World Domination Music Ltd), all profits going towards the fight against fracking. You can download this song at //www.nelsonking.bandcamp.com/track/we-will-nver-surrender
If you go into 'Fracking at Balcomber', you will see just how serious the situation is, and how much damage is being done to the planet. If we dont stop this 'assault', our children will never forgive us.
Thankyou.

[claig]

Link not working due to spelling mistake. Should be

nelsonking.bandcamp.com/track/we-will-never-surrender

[dreamingofsun]

i'm not totally convinced by the facts yet so haven't made my mind up either way. On TV it looks a bit as if people have jumped on the protesting bandwagon without thinking things rationally through.

I'm interested in your arguments against, if you can present them in a logical way?

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

Be honest. It's not the planet in danger, it's leafy Sussex... There are great swathes of the North East/North West that would be quite happy to see the reintroduction of grand-scale coal mining and, by inference, fracking wouldn't be a problem for them either.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

Be honest. It's not the planet in danger, it's leafy Sussex... There are great swathes of the North East/North West that would be quite happy to see the reintroduction of grand-scale coal mining and, by inference, fracking wouldn't be a problem for them either.

[frazzled1772]

Leafy sussex is in danger but so are many places. In the next round of licensing for oil exploration the potential areas covered will mean that it will be happening in many areas around the country. If you look at fracking oil/gas fields in the USA you can see how large an area they cover. They will need to frack 1000s of wells in the UK to make it viable.

[insancerre]

cog
I live in the northwest and we have fracking here too and guess what- we don't want it either
stopfyldefracking.org.uk/latest-news/
we have already had earthquakes
we had two only last week- wasn't publicised very much though

[frazzled1772]

insancerre - it's cuadrilla isn't it near you? Their track record is appalling.

[insancerre]

yes, cuadrilla
if you read the website I linked to, some of the resident's experiences are awful
What really scares me is the fact that most of the area is already subsiding as it is all built on sand. I am fearful that the fracking will have catastrophic consequences. We literally could all just disappear down a big hole.
The nearest fracking site to me is only a mile or so away. The nearest houses to that site are already sinking- they have a big green and a duck pond but it is really a pumping station to pump the excess water away. Lots of houses have had to have their back door steps highered and the electricity company are in the process of raising all the electricity meters too.

[frazzled1772]

What bugs me the most is the fact that the government is making all these claims about the how wonderful fracking will be for our economy and dismisses anyone opposed to it as being a nimby, ignorant or some kind of eco-nutter. Cuadrilla seem to have a license to do what they want regardless.

[Havea0]

how much damage is being done to the planet
it is statements like that that make me doubt protestors.

The areas involved with fracking are never very large, are they.

[timidviper]

I am up near insancerre and can confirm the earthquakes. We were away and missed the last two but felt the first couple.

I object very strongly to the attitude of some that fracking is ok as long as it isn't in the south-east. The environmental risks are the same everywhere.

I can guarantee you that any profits will be siphoned off into the pockets of the rich and powerful, ordinary citizens will not benefit, we will just pay the price.

[frazzled1772]

Havea0 the areas involved with fracking are never very large???That is not true. An individual well pad is about the size of a football pitch. From there you have about 10 wells drilled 1000s of metres in opposing directions. That is one well pad. To get the gas/oil out of a layer of shale they gave to put 100s of these pads across the area. So for example at the moment there is one well in Balcombe, the whole of The Weald (which I believe is most of Sussex, parts of Surrey and Hampshire Hampshire) will have these well pads positioned every two miles or so apart. The whole area becomes covered in football pitched sized drill pads.

[Havea0]

And then what happens. They find the best ones, or start drilling at all of them?

[frazzled1772]

What I mean is this is a drilling pad:
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/08/05/article-2385107-1B280FE9000005DC-675_964x554.jpg

And this is what an fracking area would look like:
i0.wp.com/www.uswateralliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hydro-Fracking-Field.jpg?fit=1000%2C1000

you need a network of drill pads to extract the gas/oil from the shale. The photo is from the USA on an open plain - yet in the UK it's happening within metres of villages and homes.

[frazzled1772]

Each drill pad is fracked for a number of years - they then cap the well and move on. They drill all of them. When they have finished they cap the wells - leaving pipes, flow back fluid etc under the ground.

[Havea0]

The first one looks tiny.
The second picture looks bizarre.

Though I would have thought, perhaps naively, that the network of drill pads, if they happen, will have to be on at least brown sites?

[sorry didnt get back sooner, missed this from last night]

[Havea0]

Is it really as bad as all that though?
I may be a bit biased as our area could do with the money, and areas that size dotted about, wouldnt necessarily be a bad thing?

[frazzled1772]

No they are not on brown sites. Balcombe and the next one up for exploratory drilling in West Sussex are both in areas of outstanding natural beauty and within 500m of homes. They look bizarre - but when active the pads have flares burning 24 hours a day, drilling 24 hours a day, 120 HGV truck movements a day. In the USA the network of drillpads are on vast open landscapes. We don't have the equivalent here. Compare the size of Texas or with the UK and you see the difference in how it works over in the states and here.

[Havea0]

Cant see there being many pads over here. But I could be wrong.

[frazzled1772]

To make fracking viable over here they need to drill the high number of wells. For exploratory purposes they are looking at 50 or 60 sites over the next 3 years. But this is just he exploratory phase. In the production phase there would have to be many more. I've read that there could be 3000 wells drilled in in Lancs - even if you have which would be at least 300 drill pads across the Bowland Shale.

[frazzled1772]

Sorry that should read - even if you have 10 wells per pad there will be at least 300 drill pads..

[Havea0]

There would be some uproar at each and every pad I would have thought.
So much hassle that the drilling people would get bogged down in paperwork for ever more.

[frazzled1772]

Well that's what's happened in Balcombe... the protests have put the village on the map. This link explains the number of well pads better than I can. www.facebook.com/EastKentAgainstFracking/posts/604960489526041

[insancerre]

havea0
It's not about what it looks like, it is about the environmental impact, not just on the local residents, but on the planet as a whole. Making large cracks underground just can't be a good idea.

[Havea0]

See, I am not so bothered by the environmental side of things. I live in an old mining area. I have grown up and am used to holes in the ground, and other paraphinalia that goes with that and another industry that somewhat blots the landscape.

I think I am a realist. I realise that for us to have energy, or transport, or whatever, some parts of Britain are going to be have to be dug up.
And windfarms are hardly lovely to look at are they. They are visible for many miles around, whereas a pad may not be?