FRACKING

Wow at your last post. Who are they? The DECC?

Like I have said elsewhere on MN from time to time. The Government, that is any Government of any political persuasion anywhere, can actually do what the heck it likes.

Yes, I couldnt see how it would be lack of regulation. This country is not known for its lack of regulation about anything these days.

Cuadrilla do appear to be getting away with things. Difficult to tell whether the DECC are being light handed, or whether Cuadrilla is keeping things quiet. My guess would be a combination of the two.

Recommendations though. Not much use for anything in life.
Until there is a disaster or 5.

Sounds like the DECC are working after the event so to speak.

Oh -and no Environment Impact Assessment is required despite it being a hazardous activity taking place in environmentally sensitive areas.

And they are streamlining the whole process to make permit applications, planning applications quicker and easier and have removed the rights of county councils to comment on flaring, venting and seismic activity.

Well more precisely lack of enforcement of regulation. For example if a drilling company damages a well they have to tell HSE ( Health and Safety Executive) and DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change). However Cuadrilla continued to frack a damaged well for six months and no one knew about it and received nothing more than a slapped wrist. www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/13/fracking-cuadrilla-halts-operations-lancashire

There is a fracking report by the Royal Society which outlines 10 recommendations for good practice - these are recommendations not regulations. Many of these have not been adhered to.

Planning applications have been at best ambiguous and at worst inaccurate.

DECC appeared to have no knowledge of the horizontal arm they were drilling in Balcombe...

How is it that it is possible for flaring is being allowed to take place so close to people's homes? Because the regulations are those that are used for offshore drilling - so no regulation exists to monitor that...

lack of regulation?

True Insacerre - so much evidence about drinking water being contaminated making people ill, frack fluid spillages causing fish kills harming cattle, well blowouts, earthquakes (that damage the wells which then can cause seepage into the ground and ground water), and the enormous volumes of water which will be used and then lost out the water cycle.......and as for the lack of regulation.....

The site looks as dead as my local one. I couldnt find any talk about it on there - perhaps I didnt spot it?
I am not local to that area.

I am not sure about the cracks underground.

It doesnt seem that MN posters seem very bothered about fracking.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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]

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.