AIBU to think nobody here can support Unconventional Gas extraction (fracking, UCG, CBM etc)?

[deeedeee]

Mumsnet has surprised me before though...

So surely none here can think that the Government removing homeowner's rights to object to fracking under their property, and it's support for the unconventional gas industry in general, is a good and justified thing?

MoreBeta
Congratulations on your excellent post!
You have summarised the situation perfectly and there is really no more to be said.

Fracking has been going on in the UK for the last 40/50-odd years. There are loads of old fracking wells in Cornwall. No problems so far!

There is an active site right underneath a wetland / marsh wildlife preserve, and which has been fracked since at least the 60s. You know why you haven't heard about the wildlife being decimated and the marsh turning to pure poison? Because it hasn't happened.

www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/seenature/reserves/guide/b/beckinghammarshes/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23756320

I currently work for a company that specialises in renewable energy via the use of ground source heat pumps and groundwater. We specialise in groundwater and drilling. The universal opinion in the office (and actually, the opinion at the conference we were at today) is that fracking poses no significant risk.

Yes, things can go wrong. Fracking does have the potential to contaminate water. But the new nuclear site at Hinkley Point will have the potential to go into meltdown. The wells in the North Sea have the potential to start belching out oil into the ocean. Everything has a risk. For some reason, possibly because most fracking occurs in the US, where frankly they frack way too much and when you scale something up you scale up the chance for problems, people have seized on the minute risks that fracking has.

i didn't call her bonkers, i said what she was saying is bonkers, and it is.

Why are you people trying to make this about abstract arguments about truth and risk when I've quoted independent scientific reports showing that this industry poisons children and communities ?

why is the rest of AIBU too busy discussing fences and weddings?

atleas nicola sturgeon's game of chess with westminster has toughened up a little tonight , although the SNP still need to get their bloated arse cheek off the fence.

"I am sceptical and think we need to take a very cautious approach - unlike the UK government. Environmental concerns and local community views must be top priorities. SNP has already toughened up planning guidance - including introducing buffer zones for the first time - and we are planning to further toughen up already robust environmental regulation.we also oppose UK government plans to allow drilling under people's houses without any right of objection"

• Nicola Sturgeon

Good night deeedeee.
Sleep well, and don't worry about things that won't happen.

I hope they take a very long and very hard look at any proposals for fracking. However, I am biased, because I live in the area of the UK which has been earmarked for it all, and I rather like my house and the local area the way it is.

I am such a terrible NIMBY.

Here's hoping MoreBeta is correct

you're very naive sally. Night

Morebeta, your post illustrates why the Government is so keen to get Britain fracked. Short term gain, not long term energy security.

Fyrefly, I must say that I find the use of the existence of previous minor fracking operations to infer that concerns about future, vastly different operations are unfounded, to be ignorant in the extreme.

The technology is proposed to be used on a completely different scale, at a hugely different intensity. It's unrecognisable.

indeed firefly, if you read the second article you link too you'll see it makes the same point as me..

"Shale fracking and fracking are two different things.

"It's silly in a way to get drawn into a debate about shale fracking when shale fracking doesn't occur at Beckingham Marshes."

But this has not stopped people worrying.

Some contacted the RSPB with concerns after a newspaper compared the fracking around Beckingham and Gainsborough with that being protested against in Balcombe.

Andrew Austin, chief executive of IGas Energy, the company running the site, said fracking is "standard oilfield practice".

"Clearly, the world has not ended in Beckingham," he added.

So if fracking for oil and gas has not caused the world to end in Beckingham, why are people concerned about fracking for shale gas in the rest of the UK?

There has been no fracking for shale gas in or near Beckingham Marshes
Prof Richard Davies, from Durham Energy Institute, at Durham University, said people are concerned the UK could become like the US, where there is widespread fracking for shale gas.

"What's going on in America is on a completely different scale to what has been done historically; 25,000 wells are being drilled in America every year to be fracked," he said.

"Old fracking was done on a small scale in the UK but in America the scale has been ramped up. If you scale up a process, the chances that there is a problem goes up."

In comparison to the US, there are 2,152 inland wells in the UK.

According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, about 200 of these have been fracked.

Nodding donkeys, such as these in Beckingham, are used to extract oil after the fracking process
"My response to the industry that says we've already been doing it [fracking] is 'That is absolutely correct'," said Prof Davies.

"Fracking used to be used to crack the rock to keep production going and it has been at a small scale.

"But what we are looking at is a dramatic expansion in the amount of drilling and fracking in the UK."

So when a protester is described as being "anti-fracking", a less banner-friendly description could be "opposed to widespread hydraulic fracturing for the extraction of shale gas".

Fracking for shale gas would not have been economically viable in the past, but changes in technology have made it more cost effective.

A significant development has been horizontal drilling.

"If you are drilling horizontally you are able to access a larger area," said Kevin Taylor, professor of petroleum geology at the University of Manchester."

for context, planning permission to commence plans for the "widespread hydraulic fracturing for the extraction of shale gas" has only been granted twice at Preese Hall and Elswick in Lancashire

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/48787/112-120296-shale-gas-exploration.pdf

You are comparing different things are declaring their risk to be the same. That is another smoke screen.

and besides, we are not just talking about fracking for shale gas, there is Coal Bed Methane and Underground Coal gasification too.

If you actually think about fracking it IS terrifying. An oil well can be capped but the chemicals cannot be extracted once in. The problem with the debate is both sides are trying to prove a negative. Even if there is a massive earthquake in Lancashire and Rawtenstall disappeared into a sinkhole, the blame would not stick to the company fracking on the bypass (if Rawtenstall has a bypass?) because it would be impossible to prove the frackers were at fault.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should and as a country we should be turning to renewables only and putting fossil fuels in the past as soon as possible. Fracking is going to be short term gain as the gas is finite. We should not be going to these lengths for something finite. Money being spent on fracking needs to be pumped into developing renewables.

Fyrefly, you say that the US have fracked too much and that that's the problem. I'd counter it's not the only problem, but taking that statement on it's merit have you seen projected plans for fracking in the uk? If you think people are objecting to a few nodding donkeys and a process, you are mistaken. People are against the unconventional gas industry taking hold here as it has done in the us and Australia. Please have a good look at www.faug.org.uk and see the scale of their plans for Falkirk. If the scottish government don't stop it, having called in the decision from public enquiry in October, their plans will see the industrialisation of the Forth Valley against the wishes of the vast majority of it's communities. People who have researched and fought this for 2 years. This is not unscientific, I'll informed , scaremongering, nimby ism. These are intelligent hard working people like you. Your level of niavety is amazing. Please look further into it.

Definitely not.

Even more adamant because that's what my ex researched as part of his MSc.

I'm utterly against it having seen the powerful film 'Gaslands' some years ago & thought thank goodness the UK govt would never allow that here. Whole communities made to endure water which is so polluted it is flammable as it comes out of the taps causing permenant headaches, sickness, tumours.
And aren't we meant to be reversing human induced heating of the planet if we don't want our species to become extinct? We need to learn how to live with lower energy needs not rape the earth for every last blim of fossil fuels!

deeedee can i raise Aberfan? Coal still provides a third of our energy, 2 thirds in 1990 and 90% in the sixties.
On the solidity of peer reviewed journals, I give you this story from the Times, quoted as behind paywall.

There were a few problems with the scientific paper that an experienced editor should have spotted when Peter Vamplew submitted it for publication. It was very light on references. Also, technically it was plagiarised.
Primarily though, they should have noticed that it consisted purely of the sentence: “Get me off your fing mailing list.” If that passed them by, the main diagram was a flow chart — saying “Get me off your fing mailing list.” And the graph? Its Y axis was “Get me off”, and the X was “Your fing mailing list”.
Last week the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology replied to his submission. “Your manuscript has been accepted with minor changes,” its editor said.
Indeed, a peer reviewer had rated its content “Excellent”. There was only one catch. Professor Vamplew needed to send $150.
Scientists are increasingly concerned about a profusion of low-quality, or downright fraudulent, journals. With success for a researcher still in large part determined by how many papers he or she publishes, hundreds of unscrupulous journals with plausible names have emerged to make money out of scientists’ need to put publications on their CV.
There have been several recent attempts to expose these. For an article in Science, a paper was submitted to several hundred journals, all of whom claimed to vet papers before publication.
The paper contained mistakes that should have been obvious to any decent reviewer, such as control groups being treated in different ways and graphs displaying the wrong correlations. It was accepted by more than 100 journals.
This achievement has been topped by the spoof paper containing just that one, rather profane, sentence. “Get Me Off Your Fing Mailing List” was a joke created in 2005 by two scientists from UCLA, and Professor Vamplew, an associate professor at the Federation University Australia school of engineering and information technology, was not even trying to get it published when he sent it.
“I just snapped,” he said. “I was just frustrated at the amount of spam emails I was getting, and sending this seemed appropriate.” He only half registered that the spammer he had sent it to was a computer science journal.
“When the acceptance came, my first reaction was laughter. Then there was concern — it wasn’t even my paper.” Professor Vamplew is an honest scientist, and was worried about plagiarism.
He got in touch with one of the authors to apologise. There was no need. “He congratulated me on getting the paper to a stage he hadn’t managed.”
Professor Vamplew said there was a serious side to this. “I’m sure there are some scientists playing the system, and using these journals to get publications,” he said. “A fair few will be misguided though and early in their career. They don’t realise there’s a distinction between reputable journals and these.”
He looked through the papers published by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology: “The vast majority are from developing nations. Perhaps there is less access to guidance there.”
The Times asked the journal for comment. The editor, who is presumably also responsible for assessing the quality of written English, replied by email. “My email ID is hack but I am recover my mail ID. I am not accept this paper.” That clears that up, then.

Carole, as much as I respect the work you did in the eighties with flame haired power ballads, I fail to see what point you are making?

Is it

1- we're increasingly moving away from fossil fuels over the decades and?

2- because one "journal" is a scam, they all are?

3- Aberfan?

ruralbliss, I'm in agreement with you, but you need to learn more about all Unconventional Gas Techniques and the science, economics and history behind it and then talk to everyone you know about this, because as this thread is demonstrating, there is so much ignorance, misleading information and apathy about this issue .

Hello?

I support it. We need alternative fuel sources. I suspect it will be done better over here than in the US. Much of Central Scotland is a mess anyway, decimated from the mining and shale industries, which no-one has ever bothered to clean up and which no-one seems to notice now. Ah yes, shale oil - remember that? Renewable energy sources are unreliable and over-egged and put so much money in the pockets of those promoting them compared to what they deliver over a reasonable time scale, and I really hate seeing giant wind turbines all over the countryside.

And I bloody hate the assumption that every woman is a left wing woo leaning liberal who thinks the same - that alone would be enough for me to question the "earth is flat" attitude that OP seems to think prevails.

Good morning deeedeee
That's twice you have bumped your thread to keep it going.

You asked AIBU? It seems the majority agree with you and a few don't.
You have your answer.

This subject is clearly very important to you, so if you want to run an on-going campaign and convert people to your point of view you really need a more suitable medium.

With the current glut of both oil and gas on the international market (the oil price has just dropped again) it's unlikely that anyone will seriously want to start fracking in the UK any time soon, so you have plenty of time to prepare.

Good luck!

Words fail me chandler! " much of the central belt is a mess" ???? How incredibly insulting to the communities that live their and love it there and have told their council and representatives that they don't want the industry in their midst! They will not be Comforted by suspicions that things will be better done in this country .

Thanks for your concern Sally, but I'm perfectly capable of occasionally posting on mumsnet whilst campaigning in other medium and indeed living my life. I don't share your view. As you've been advocating, that's ok if we disagree. Personally I think your ignorance , complacency and niavety are dangerous .

Err, yes, much of the central belt does suffer from contaminated land issues as a result of several hundred years of industrial activity. Just because you can't necessarily see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

So is the reasoning, well it's already fucked so why worry about fucking it up some more? The people who live there don't want it. They have investigated and presented their findings to public enquiry. They know a lot more about this than the average person. Please look at www.faug.org.uk

That's not what I said. I agreed with the poster upthread that there is already a significant amount of contamination arising from industry in the central belt. Heavy metals, asbestos, hydrocarbons, PCBs, much of which has been leaching into groundwater for decades. The difference is that now we are more aware of the risks associated with industrial processes.

OPEC just failed to come to an agreement today on reducing oil output to stabilise prices.

Oil price is therefore plunging - expected to be below $70 per barrel soon for Brent crude and that essentially is a level that pretty much all fracking and shale gas is uneconomic.

Banks will not fund it below this level and Govt cant afford unlimited subsidy.

deedee Words fail me chandler! " much of the central belt is a mess" ???? How incredibly insulting to the communities that live their and love it there and have told their council and representatives that they don't want the industry in their midst! They will not be Comforted by suspicions that things will be better done in this country

True - I'm sure the people of Broxburn just love having a 40 acres shale tip visible from their windows. I'm sure the people of West Calder and Seafield have tried very, very hard to be fond of the Five Sisters, but the fact remains that they are waste shale tips and modern rules would have seen them removed. Lovely and red and natural looking they are. It must be great having such an outlook. Even the people of salubrious Livingston, itself virtually a holiday destination for its scenic beauty, must be glad they can see bings from both east and west!

I should think many in those communities would be jumping for joy at the prospect of jobs after the decimation of the mining industry, followed by silicon valley. They've just granted planning permission for a new open cast coalmine. Perhaps the surveys for fracking, etc. might reveal potential problems with unstable mine shafts that aren't visible from the surface and save a few lives - theres been at least one death recently that I can think of, of a person falling down one.

in falkirk area more than 2500 mandates were signed by concerned residents and submitted to Falkirk Council and/or the Directorate for Planning and Environmental Appeals before they stopped accepting objections in July 2013. A petition also garnered more than 1300 signatures. There have also been objections from numerous Falkirk community councils and other groups, including the West Fife & Coastal Villages Community Councils Forum. As a result of this unprecedented number of objections, the planning application is that was going to be decided in a public inquiry has been called in by the scottish parliament, such is the level of community objection.

Desperate for the jobs aye.