AIBU or is the risk of earthquakes from fracking just too high?

[IABURQO]

I've always felt slightly concerned, but just seen about the earthquake. Fair play that even tiny earthquakes are being picked up so this can be both monitored and controlled. Overall though, if just 11 days can lead to an earthquake then surely this proves that fracking just isn't safe in our densely populated country and shouldn't be allowed?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-45976219

I've got to declare a bit of interest here - I've worked in exploration drilling in the past and now work for the Energy Industry in a different capacity, much involving the safety of wells such as this as well as the eventual remediation when they are finished. I also get quite heavily involved in the later infrastructure, the pipelines the processing units and the storage facilities, I have been doing this in the U.K. and all over the world for twenty five years.

I've been rightly horrified by many of the working practices that have resulted in the bad reputation of this type of extraction in some jurisdictions, they are virtually impossible to replicate under the regulation and methods that are being employed in the U.K.

We are in fact world leaders in this type of safety technology, the equipment that is used to ensure it and the legislation and procedures that are developed to back it all up. The U.K. became the vanguard after The Cullen Report into the Piper Alpha disaster. I really can't understand why it's not being seen as a good thing that the energy gap can be filled cleanly and safely while fuelling the U.K. into becoming the best at renewables over time.

TLDR: the British are great at this sort of thing so don't worry. Engineering FTW!

Aw, shucks. Thanks folks . Turns out I may be more invested in this than I thought ( mentally, not financially...).

Flippit, you're right that there can be more than one well from each wellhead, and more than one wellhead on each well pad. This seems to be what is happening in the US and it does act to reduce the number of well pads in an area, minimising the impact on land take etc. The extent to which this model can be replicated in the UK isn't clear at the moment, as each well will take gas a certain distance from the bore ( depending on the nature of the shale and the nature of the fractures) so there's no point drilling them too closely together. And some directions may not be appropriate due to the geology/ faults etc... This is one of the things that is being looked at, in comparison to the US, I believe ( in the exploration phases).

I don't think that we can take the approach of "well, we don't have space for 4000 wells, so there's no point doing anything". Surely, if reducing imports is a good thing, we don't need to say, we'll only bother if we can reduce them by 50%. Even a 1% reduction means £££ saved and associated jobs/ tax benefit.

In terms of waste, as I understand, there isn't really much waste after each well has been drilled and fracked, once the "flow back" is taken away. It's not as if the well is constantly producing waste/ water for its entire life - I think it is generally just gas after the first few weeks. This is different for "normal" gas wells which produce water alongside the gas which then needs to be disposed of. Shale rock doesn't have much water in it, as it isn't permeable...which is why the gas is trapped in the first place.

The flow back is an issue, as something needs to be done to treat it. At the moment, it seems that sites are proposing to drive it away in tankers, with associated traffic issues, and risk of accidents. In theory it could be possible to reuse in future fracks/ future wells if more than one well is drilled at the same time. But the environment agency would need to be happy that the fluid was OK to reuse in this way, and wasn't going to be dangerous to the groundwater ( through the environmental permit for the operation), so it would need some checking and treatment. There would still need to be some waste taken away though, and infrastructure to do that would need to be considered. eg is it feasible to develop pipelines to existing treatment sites ( if they are only needed for one or two wells), or develop mobile treatment works, or develop a bespoke treatment site in the middle of a group of wells? All of which would need looking at in terms of economics/ planning/ technical feasibility etc. I understand the technology to treat the flow back/ waste is available in the UK, as it treats industrial and offshore gas waste, but capacity would need to increase as fracking waste volume increases....market demand and all... As dadstuff says, engineering isn't something the UK is bad at!

Fracking is so misunderstood. ‘Earthquakes’ is such a buzzword which scares people, but the fact of the matter is they have had to use specialist equipment to detect these quakes because they are so small! In Europe and Canada the legal limit is loads higher and it is absolutely safe at the level it is now. Those companies have invested far too much money to be shut down for health and safety, the only real impact of fracking (if you look past the scaremongering) is lots of lorries driving past and maybe some roadworks for a period of time. If you research this you will see how well regulated fracking is in this country - I won’t be surprised if they up the legal limit for the quakes as they will never get anything done with it how it is.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it if we can only produce 1% of our total gas imports, the point is that 4000 wells (at least) is the target. The industry needs to achieve a high level of output in order to recoup the high level of investment required. A small number of wells will not bring in the anticipated profit . With legislation coming into place which moves control over developments to a national level, local people will have even less say than they do now about how well pads are developed. The industry needs to develop rapidly and legislation and controls have to keep pace with this.

Industry based reports suggest that for example a well pad with 10 heads and 10 laterals will use 136,000 cubic metre of water and will have to dispense of 40,800 cubic metres of flow back fluid. It is anticipated that there is the potential of 7890 vehicle movements over a 5 year life span of the well pad. These developments are close to villages and towns and are already having an impact on the communities they are in - even at the exploratory phase. The idea that fracking promotes gas security has been sold to the general public to sweeten the pill - to win a social licence to go ahead. Yet the gas produced will have little impact until is being produced on a massive scale. It will not have an impact on gas security until it can be produced at an economical price. That's one of the media myths that bugs me more than anything.

As for the flow back fluid -it is a problem. Increasingly (in the states) it is being reused for fracking, however, the UK has limited facilities to cope with the fluid. It cannot be processed easily as contains heavy metals and low levels of radioactivity. It counts as NORM waste by the EA. Its alright on a small scale but more of a challenge as the industry grows.

Fracking is misunderstood but I do think it is misunderstood on both sides, both the pros and cons have been overstated.

I've not seen the 4000 well target, flippit. Do you know who has set that? It seems odd for any company to set such a figure until they know how productive wells are etc in order to work out the relevant finances. In any case, if they can't make it work financially, companies won't do it, and if they want to drill more wells than acceptable in an area, they won't get planning consent ( assuming everything works as it should).. I don't pretend to understand financial analysis of this kind of thing, but I would have thought that as long as they get more gas out than it costs them to prepare/ drill/ restore a well, even if marginal, it seems better than nothing...? OK, they will want to make back R&D costs over time, and I'm sure they'd love to make shed loads of profit on each well, but if they don't I can't say I'm devastated by that ( as long as they pay tax on the profit they do make)... that's a decision for the companies as to what profit is acceptable

The vehicle movements actually sound quite low in context. 8000 movements over 5 years is less than 2000 per year ( accept it may not be equally spread out over 5 years...and why only 5 years if a website can continue producing over a decade?). Which is less than 200 a month or 10 ish a working day ( I.e. 5 vehicles...a movement is a single vehicle going either in or out, so a lorry delivering and leaving again is 2 movements). I'm sure there are many developments ( supermarkets, petrol stations, dairy farms) that have similar numbers of vehicles, even in rural areas.

As I said above, I understand there isn't anything intrinsically difficult to deal with about the waste. Offshore has to deal with loads of it. Some waste treatment facilities may need to apply for the relevant permits that they don't have at the moment to cope with increasing volumes if fracking does take off. "Radioactive waste" is another of those things like earthquakes that people are scared of, but it's management is pretty routine, and basically everything has some degree of NORM. I can go into banana equivalent doses if you want . Brazil nuts are a killer, apparently.

Drilling waste, for those of you interested is really little more than what appears to be fine gravel - it's rock that has been chewed up by the drill and washed to the surface as it goes deeper.

Until it reaches the production zone it will be spitting out an indication of whatever is being cut through, this is being constantly sampled by geologists (literally minute by minute) and is essentially benign for 99% of the time as it's just limestone or sandstone chippings dependent upon what's being drilled through or even coal on occasion. NORM appears of course in the same sort of levels that you might get in your Cornish holiday home. Minor quantities of lubricant or chemicals that remain from the mud flow are essentially non hazardous

Also it's not in particularly vast quantities per well - even a 14" bore. You just end up with a pile of wet gravel. I don't know what the deal is in the U.K. currently but on my last job abroad we were running a scheme with a local cement world who processed it for road mending.

I'm not referring to radioactive waste to be alarmist. I am aware that NORM waste is normal but It's the vast quantities in liquid form which is the challenge. Dadstuff I'm describing the flow back fluid from fracking not the drilling muds.

Industry produced document:

www.iod.com/Portals/0/Badges/PDF's/News%20and%20Campaigns/Infrastructure/Infrastructure%20for%20business%20getting%20shale%20gas%20working%20report.pdf?ver=2016-04-14-101231-553

Cardiff Report

cdn.friendsoftheearth.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/FOE-Frack-Import-Report_0.pdf

I can't link to the UKOG report but they are referenced in the Cardiff Report.

Both documents have their own bias obviously.

Liquid waste can be dealt with in a number of ways - settling ponds or evaporation as well as bioremediation through "land farming"(although not if levels of NORM are too high). High rainfall does make these options a little more challenging, but not impossible.

Essentially it's about reducing the final volume of hazardous material to the smallest amount possible, produced water processed for offshore production sites these days is often cleaner than the sea surrounding it by a considerable margin.

Reinjection is also very good if managed correctly as it can also have the benefit of extending the amount of gas / oil that can be produced in conventional fields (I am not sure how useful in these circumstances) and it returns the waste product back to source.

All of these problems have existing solutions.

Yes - we don't want Cuadrilla to repeat their canal dumping solution of 2011!

There are proper solutions, and the technology is being developed. But it's not in place yet - but I guess that's Sheep's area of expertise - waste water etc.

As long as the industry doesn't repeat its mistakes of the past.

Thanks again flippit. I had seen the IoD/ Cuadrilla report previously (ages ago...yet we're no further forward in knowing how their assumptions stack up in the real world!) but not the Cardiff Business School/ Friends of the Earth report. Not sure either of them show a "target" though. The Cuadrilla report is looking at how benefits and impacts would stack up with increased production. Their "high" scenario is 100 well pads with 40 wells on each, which seems a high number of wells per pad - but not implying that this is a necessity - but that such a scenario could produce x much gas, y many jobs etc. The FoE report has taken similar data on well productivity - though choosing a lower productivity (unsurprisingly), made their own assumptions on well number per pad (again, lower, unsurprisingly) and worked out how many wells/ land take would be needed to replace 50% or 100% of imports, as an arbitrary number. I don't know which assumptions are better or more realistic. I'd have assumed the Cuadrilla report would have taken account of ongoing technological improvements in the US to make their more optimistic assumptions (e.g. multi-well-pads etc which were just taking off in a big way at the time) - which the FoE report didn't have access to. But use of US data is only of limited use in a UK context.

My gut feeling is that both will be exaggerations of what is possible and realistic though. Cuadrilla saying "oh, look, all these jobs/ cash for not much land take" and FoE saying "oh look, all this disturbance for not much gas". I still don't think we can say for sure how many wells/ well pads will be feasible (to reach any given production level) until we know how productive wells are likely to be in the UK and how many wells each pad is likely to hold (depending on geology/ environmental constraints and so on). Even then, the deciding factor will be where sites can be acceptable developed, and not where frackers would like to drill. So constrained by environmental factors rather than economic ones (even if the economics are favourable).

I'd have thought 100 new well pads (with however many wells) may be on the upper end of feasibility. However, there are shedloads of wells in the UK already. There's a funky interactive map here .

Obviously these aren't shale wells, but the general appearance and activities are similar. (I know there are some differences between shale and other wells, but its swings and roundabouts in terms of waste generation, use of chemicals and so on). Some of the wells on the map will be restored, but some are operational and I'm willing to bet many people don't notice they are there, even when there's maintenance going on (I didn't know about the 6 near me, which are still there according to google maps!). I don't think it would be beyond our ability to redevelop some of these existing wellsites, or find some more that are sufficiently far from villages/ near roads etc that would be appropriate. I remember reading someone suggesting drilling wells in industrial estates would be feasible, which would seem better from an environmental point of view than using a field.

Yes - as Dadstuff says, there are solutions - which seem to follow the principal of taking out the dodgy stuff from the water as a solid, which makes it much easier to deal with. Evaporation ponds and land farming aren't permitted in the UK, though (everything has to be enclosed in sealed containers etc before treatment) - there is considered to be too much risk of methane emissions from fluids open to the air/ leaks through membranes etc. Also, reinjection of flowback also isn't permitted. It seems that this is partly what has caused earthquakes in the US, rather than fracking itself (reinjection of water from conventional gas wells going into a formation that it didn't come out of, as well as flowback from shale wells) - so probably better steer clear of that!

The Environment Agency has produced a little sheet summarising their (much bigger!) guidance on waste management from the industry.

Re canal dumping, as long as the fluid going into the canal had been treated so that any identified contaminants were below acceptable levels, and as long as the Environment Agency knew that that was what they were going to do (which I don't think they did), theoretically I don't think its a definite no-no. Its a standard procedure for dealing with waste. Greenpeace implies People assume its the "raw" stuff that goes into the river/ canal/ sea - but assuming everything is done properly, the stuff that is discharged is not quite of drinking water standard (I wouldn't want to drink the Manchester Ship Canal, to be honest), but pretty clean.

Sadly, I don't have any practical skills in anything of any use water management, but I do work in an environmental management-y area (vague, vague, vague) so have some understanding of the principles and the role of councils/ regulators in industrial/ commercial developments. Not gas though maybe I should tout for work in the area.

Sheep, many thanks... as I said I'm
generally employed overseas... it goes to show then how high the standards are in the U.K.

Re 40 wells in a pad, that's absolutely feasible.

The footprint of an offshore platform is often roughly that of a football pitch and then an even smaller portion of that will be the well bay (if not on an even smaller separate structure) easily supporting that number of wells if not more.

It makes operational and economic sense to do so when you consider that the reach of wells can extend several km horizontally. You don't need to move the drilling or production equipment very far and thereby minimise disruption to local communities.

@Sheep The stuff that went in the canal was "raw" stuff - it was considered to be industrial waste not NORM but it should have been considered NORM and they should have had a permit and disposed of it properly. Like I said the rules have tightened up and that's a good thing. It's indicative of an industry in its infancy in the UK - regulation playing catch up.

We have 2000 existing wells in the uk, drilled over 30 years - but they are different in many ways to high volume fracking wells.

I hope you're right re environmental considerations - so far many of the exploratory wells are near villages and protected areas.
I gotta go! Good luck with the new job in the gas industry! It's a growth area!

'Industry based reports suggest that for example a well pad with 10 heads and 10 laterals will use 136,000 cubic metre of water and will have to dispense of 40,800 cubic metres of flow back fluid. It is anticipated that there is the potential of 7890 vehicle movements over a 5 year life span of the well pad.'

That works out at less than 4 per day - not exactly heavy traffic. By way of comparison, a recent road building scheme near where we live resulted in the road to our house having an estimated 32 - 50 heavy construction vehicle movements per day for a build period of 4 years.

@NotAnActualSheep the interactive map is very interesting, so many wells in the South Downs area that I had no idea about. Apart from Wytch Farm you never hear of it.

Thanks @dadstuff - I'm obviously underestimating what can be done! I appreciate horizontal drilling can go for miles which massively increases gas production for minimal additional surface effect (only the time of the drilling presumably). I just thought that this was constrained a bit in shale due to the need to avoid faults, and also not knowing how "stacking" of horizontal drilling in the shale would pan out (without further information of how far one well would "drain" the gas etc).

@flippit - <a class="break-all" href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140328145127/www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Business/6th_Dec_-Shale_gas-North_West-Monitoring_of_flowback_water-update(3).pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This Environment Agency report suggests that the water that went into the canal had been treated at the water treatment works to remove the minerals etc but not the NORM, which was within permitted levels at the time. So it was properly licensed at the time to go into the canal. The regulations changed, so the levels of NORM that could be disposed without a special licence decreased - and the flowback then was above those levels. So it wasn't discharged into the canal any more. That seems reasonable to me. It doesn't imply that Cuadrilla were illegally dumping raw waste - but that the regulations tightened independent of Cuadrilla's operation, which meant that something that was allowed, then wasn't.

Regulation tightening is a good thing, as knowledge increases (and in this case the EA report doesn't say the regulation tightening was anything to do with shale - just a routine revision). It doesn't imply that earlier regulations were dangerous or wrong, just that technology now exists to do things better, or that the process being regulated is evolving, and it's better to be as precautionary as possible to minimise effect.

(I don't know where the remaining NORM-y water that couldn't go into the canal any more eventually went - but presumably another water treatment works that is licensed to treat and dispose of the NORM.)

Shale wells aren't actually miles different from wells in other rocks. There is a false distinction drawn between "high volume" fracturing and "normal" fracturing of other wells, but it's basically the same process, just with - um - more volume.. (therefore with more traffic, water use, waste, possibly longer drilling processes etc as well - I'm not being flippant about it) - so it is totally reasonable to assume that regulation governing one will be appropriate for others, unless there is some aspect that really doesn't fit into the existing framework. In some cases regulation directs the change of an industry (so if something is banned, companies using it need to find another thing to use for their product) but in others industry changes and regulation becomes more appropriate to the current operations. Hence why we don't just have regulations controlling considerate use of horse drawn carriages, and how to throw sewage into the streets in a friendly way.

Thanks Sheep. I've found this really useful x

Was planning on disappearing but this landed in my inbox which seemed highly relevant to our conversation:

www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-consultation-on-community-involvement-in-shale-gas-proposals?utm_source=f805861d-28b7-45ed-a08a-0fc762da5a57&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_content=immediate&fbclid=IwAR2PF7dSASHwHCNTrDmAfiK2XdvqCEWnhl1BXsLF1X5wrjmcNZHGQ87JaOI

The consultation asks the following questions:

Question 1
Should community pre-application consultation be compulsory prior to applying for
planning permission for shale gas development?
Yes/No/Not sure
Question 2
By what process (if any) should prospective applicants be required to conduct community pre-application consultation prior to applying for planning permission for shale gas development?
Onshore wind development/ Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects /Other
(please specify)
Question 3
What (if any) shale gas development should be subject to compulsory community
pre-application consultation?
All shale gas development requiring a planning application/ Where an
Environmental Impact Assessment is required/Other criteria or threshold (please
specify)
Question 4
Do you have any views on the potential impact of the matters raised in this
consultation on people with protected characteristics as defined in section 149 of
the Equality Act 2004?

Me too!

As i said at the beginning of the thread, I don't have any particular love for the gas industry, but I do think in this case they are being unfairly targeted as "all that is wrong with our world today". It seems to have become the default "green" position to oppose fracking (be it on climate change grounds, pollution risk grounds or whatever).

Having looked a bit more into it, though, I don't really think that's fair. They, put crudely, are only trying to provide more of what we use/want (mostly gas central heating for me, at the moment. It's blooming freezing here...). No-one wakes up and thinks "oh goody - another source of fossil fuel - that's what we need" - but they are in that business and they want to provide more of what they sell, pay their staff and contractors and even make a profit. So they are doing just what any industry would do - try to increase production, changing their methods slightly to extract gas that wasn't previously extractable, following environmental regulations and so on. If it works, there is the potential for shale gas to help reduce carbon emissions in the medium term as renewable sources of energy increase (as well as providing jobs/ taxes etc).

Basically, I also don't think its any worse than many other industries that have the same issues and risks. Aviation is a huge climate issue for example - and although there is some push-back on that, its nowhere near the level of pain fracking is getting! (Ryanair is probably delighted!). Farming is a huge polluter of watercourses, but again people aren't calling for fertilisers to be banned. It just seems like everyone's anger is focussed on fracking for some reason - even though everyone "benefits" from having gas, or at least things that use gas in their production.

Thanks for the consultation on consultation (the government is going very Meta on this...). I thought consultation was already necessary - but I'm obviously wrong - maybe its just good practice.

I have to say, you've been very nice to "chat" to, flippit . It is an emotive topic and you've been very reasonable, and I've enjoyed reading your links. If only every discussion could be like this...

No idea if it’s linked to fracking but it’s just started near me at Little Plumpton (15 miles away) and I had a glass of tap water the other day that was very chemically tasting.

The government and Cuadrilla don’t give a shit it’s all about money

Thats odd about the water @maidsrus. Have you called the water company? Theres a bit about weird tastes etc (and the number to call - presumably you are in UU's area?) here.

have a read of the discussions going on in Westminster yesterday:

hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-10-31/debates/A9925C7E-EB6C-4C0D-80C7-2B740C2E5FAE/ShaleGasDevelopment#contribution-71F7778F-1431-408F-88BA-249014C408BF

What are the 'experts' on here then thinking about the way the associated earthquakes appear to be increasing in magnitude?

As far as the criticism of scepticism around 'experts' is concerned, it's a question of trust. None of us know who's who on the internet, and we do know Russian trolls and troublemakers of all kinds operate here. And you have to admit that geology as a science has been in bed with the oil industry for years. Academia isn't trustworthy, with the link-up both to the UK's class system and private money: government isn't trustworthy (I'm not convinced on UK's ability to regulate what needs to be regulated in the public interest): no one is. Scepticism is an intelligent choice.

@BlatheringWuther - did you read the link above?

Zac Goldsmith asked an interesting question re planning which reflects a level of scepticism within the government

"Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I am very grateful to him for initiating the debate. On that point, he has just described something that is hugely disruptive that we know is hugely unpopular. Does it not strike him as odd that we would subject that enterprise to permitted development, while at the same time making it almost impossible for the erection of new onshore wind turbines, which has been subjected almost entirely—rightly in my view—to local control? Does that not strike him as being inexplicably inconsistent and give the appearance of a policy that is driven more by ideology than anything else?"

Then later on another tory MP says:

"I am also unclear about what, as a country, we are seeking to achieve through fracking in general. The Government have not outlined any serious objectives beyond energy security, jobs and growth, and ultimately, price reductions. They have not made clear how any of those objectives can be achieved, and none of them can be achieved unless fracking is done at a scale that requires thousands of well pads, with a well pad in every village like Marsh Lane. People will not stand for it, and the proposal needs to be stopped."