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.

[Spinflight]

Long term risks?

It's been going on since the 1950's. Oddly fracking only became an issue in this country a few years ago when Cuadrilla announced they had hit shale gas.

Over a million fracks since the 50's, it is afterall just a way of stimulating and otherwise tight well. The action takes place thousands of feet underground, so if you think of it as someone drilling through Mt Snowden horizontally and then blasting high pressure water out of the other end how much do you think you'd notice from your side?

There are far more invasive ways of stimulating a well, using steam, chemicals and even explosives. Again all with a long history behind them.

Nothing is completely safe though with fracking the risks are no different to operating heavy machinery at ground level.

[flipflop21]

Isitmebut

"We NEED to trust parliament.."

Really?

This government is made up of a number of people who have vested interests in the oil industry so will gain personally from the development of the fracking. How can they protect the public interest objectively?

Other reasons why I don't trust the goverment with regard to this issue:

• It is is ignoring scientific research which highlight the risks of fracking
  

- It is stating it has a strict regulatory system in place yet is streamlining the processes involved in the development of onshore oil development and making funding cutbacks in the monitoring agencies

• It argues that people who oppose fracking are irrational luddites (who are afraid of digging holes for example - that message has made an impact on you isitmebut) - instead of addressing their concerns and responding
  

- It is bribing communities to accept fracking in their local area
- It is over stating the benefits - misleading people into thinking that it will reduce the price of gas and bring loads of jobs with it. This has been widely disputed.
- It has successfully managed to convince people that fracking has been going on for decades in the UK which is a blatant lie...
- It is not thinking ahead - how many wells there will need to be? How much waste will need to be disposed of? How we transport the gas to the refineries from these new sites often in rural settings - pipes? Massive tanks?


So no - I don't trust the government.

Spinflight:

Only one well has been fracked using high volume slick water fracking in the UK - see //www.frackfreebalcombe.co.uk/page61.php - That was in 2011 at Preese Hall in Lancashire, It caused an earthquake which resulted in minor damage to property.

It has not been going on for years.

They use chemicals and pressure a peforation process similar to an explosion in high volume slickwater fracking.

I think you are misunderstanding the both the process and the risks.

[Spinflight]

Flipflop,

It has been going on since the 50's worldwide, as I say on over 1 million occasions.

Generally at a depth of thousands of feet ( the source rock is likely to be immature otherwise ) though I'm sure there are examples of shallow fracks too. Some of the Bowland shale is shallow though I'm not sure what the target depth is in Cuadrilla's case as I have never been invested.

As for earthquakes, by the anti-fracking definition used of an earthquake I am assured that my snoring would be considered an extremely serious earthquake! At least 100 times more serious the missus tells me....

Oddly enough I knew a fair bit about fracking etc long before a chap in work, who is member of the Green party, turned up to work telling us all about the horrors. He had been to a meeting where someone gave a talk about this 'brand new evil'. Couldn't understand why I was laughing so much.

The only accidents that I'm aware of regarding fracking are when they deliberately use di-hydrogen oxide, which has been linked to hundreds of deaths every year in other uses. It is also used to cool nuclear power plants and the Fukashima nuclear disaster was a direct result of ingress of di-hydrogen oxide.

So whatever floats your boat, if you don't like it then I respect that. I wouldn't drown my sorrows if fracking were stopped, nor would I cry tears of joy if it proceeded.

It's all water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned...

[flipflop21]

Spinflight: this article here confirms that fracking has been going on since the 1940s. It also describes the difference between fracking porous rock and fracking shale.
www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/opinion/global/the-facts-on-fracking.html?_r=0

It states that :
" Approximately one million American wells have been fracked since the 1940s. Most of these are vertical wells that tap into porous sandstone or limestone. Since the 1990s, however, gas companies have been able to harvest the gas still stuck in the original shale source. Fracking shale is accomplished by drilling horizontal wells that extend from their vertical well shafts along thin, horizontal shale layers.

This horizontal drilling has enabled engineers to inject millions of gallons of high-pressure water directly into layers of shale to create the fractures that release the gas. Chemicals added to the water dissolve minerals, kill bacteria that might plug up the well, and insert sand to prop open the fractures."

They are now fracking the source rock not the reservoir. It's very different. The horizontal drilling and the associated technology presents new risks which weren't there before.

With regards to your point about earthquakes so far have been minor but the signigicance is that they can, as at Preese hall where Cuadrilla fracked an existing geological fault, be strong enough to damage the well. This means that potentially the chemicals within the well (flowback fluid) can leach into the ground rather than stay in the well as intended. The problem with earthquakes is not so much the damage on the surface thats the problem, but the potential to damage the integrity of the well.

The risk of dismissing rational arguments as solely "green" scaremongering is that people stop looking at the actual details of what is actually being proposed. The devil is in the detail.

[Spinflight]

Damage to the well integrity is ( usually ) several thousand feet beneath the surface and may lead to the well being plugged and abandoned, which is a realistic worst case scenario. Costly to drill another well but not that unusual and has also happened countless times. This is nothing new or exciting. With even the best prospects realising success rates of 20% there are millions of plugged and abandoned wells throughout the world.

As for horizontal drilling I believe you are taking the name somewhat too literally. As your article mentioned this is drilling vertically in a conventional manner and then horizontally, not as you appear to infer, drilling horizontally from ground level. (?!)

Again nothing terribly exciting, or for that matter uniquely different, from the way drilling has gone for well over 100 years.

[flipflop21]

Spinflight - I do realise they drill down before they drill horizontally thank you very much. At the Balcombe site Cuadrilla drilled to a depth of approximately 800m and then drilled horizontally. At Preese hall, Lancashire it was approximately 3000m.

Well failures happen throughout the length of the well - so yes some of it is thousands of feet below the ground - but it also follows that it's joined to the bit at the top. Wells are drilled through sensitive formations such as aquifers and the fluid passes through the whole length of the well. If the well is damaged the seriousness of that depends upon whereabouts the damage is - near the top is a higher risk than at the deeper levels.

Shale fracking well production levels deplete at a faster rate than conventional wells. A shale well is not the same as a nodding donkey quietly pumping out oil for 20 years - as at Wytch Farm, Dorset for example.

Shale fracking requires lots of drilling pads across a given gas/oil producing basin. They need to be 2-5 miles apart in order to access the hydrocarbon trapped in the rock. So if Lancashire is to become a shale producing area how many well pads will be required in order to produce from the gas from the Bowland Shale?

[flipflop21]

This explains leaky wells better than I can.
thetyee.ca/News/2013/01/09/Leaky-Fracked-Wells/
Food for thought really.

[Spinflight]

Lots, the bowland shale is rather extensive. The rewards of course are astronomical.

As for leaky wells, yes it can happen, though it isn't the sort of thing a drilling company wants and could easily cause the multi-million dollar well to be plugged and abandoned.

"if fracturing fluids have been injected to a point outside of the well's capture zone, they will not be recovered through production pumping and, if mobile, may be available to migrate through an aquifer."

This caught my eye though, as migration of the sort they are describing here takes millenia not years. You'll find migration pathways that lead to natural leaks ( well documented and relatively common from before the days of drilling) tens of kilometres from the source.

Also an oil well leaking gas is very distinct from a gas well leaking gas, for obvious reasons. In the former case the gas might merely be burned off ( though there are limits on how much they can burn) until a solution is found, in the latter case you have a problem which has to be fixed or the site will be closed down.

Generally a leak such as those described would be fixed with a down hole pump, though somewhat dependant upon the economics of the well.

[flipflop21]

Ok - so gas leaking in places where they expect it to would be burned off. What about the methane leaking through pre-exsiting faults along the length of the well - what will be done about this? Am odourless, colourless potent green house (and at high concentrations flammable) gas?

Also wouldn't fluids that have leaked move at a quicker rate if they were under pressure - say from a high pressure injection of fluid in the formation below them?

Also, who would require the company to close down the multi-million pound well to be closed? The company habving invested in it would not be quick to do so - as you say they would have invested millions.

Re the number of wells - you say - "lots" - what does that mean? To put it this way if each drilling pad is about the size of a football pitch and can have about 10 wells extending from that - how many football sized drilling pads do you think there would be at full production when the "astromical rewards" come into play?

[flipflop21]

Sorry for typos. What's a down hole pump? Thanks

[flipflop21]

Just saw this and wondered how much harm it could do if the well was say less than a km away from a residential area? Fire started on Tuesday - burnt for at least 72 hours. Maybe well fires have always happened - but wells have not always been proposed in highly populated areas as is now the case.

grist.org/news/just-a-natural-gas-well-exploding-into-flames-nothing-to-see-here/

[Spinflight]

How many football fields? Lots.

Everything is at high pressure thousands of feet down, and gas at these depths is implicitly under a solid seal ( exploration actually looks for potential seals more than it does hydrocarbons) else it would have migrated to the surface millenia ago.

Very true about the risk of fire. A far more rational concern in my opinion than the fracking itself...

[ThatBloodyWoman]

Love the song.

bonny all power to you.

We need to stop raping the earth to satisfy our greed.

[flipflop21]

Spinflight - "Lots" is very vague - compared to none ten seems like a lot to me - is that what you mean - 10 well pads in the Bowland Shale? 20? How many do you think will be needed in order to make astronomical amounts of money?

The risk of the fire is there because of the fracking - you can't separate the two.

The risks of spillages and blow outs - not a new problem as such - and things can be put in place to mitigate the risk, but the risk to human health is greater when they are drilling in or close to residential areas than when they drill in the middle of the North Sea or a Texan plane...

Re the solid seal - what about geological faults? These can act as conduits to the surface.

[Spinflight]

Faults are usually part of the seal.. Remember this is thousands of feet underground, with different strata between the source rock and the surface.

I'm not qualified to say how many lots is or could be. More than you're imagining though I feel...

[flipflop21]

Spin flight -I think you are holding out on me.

Alan Whitehead (MP) has suggested that we will need around 100,000 wells across the whole country. That's approximately 10,000 pads. They wouldn't all be operating at once. Each well would have an average life of about 8 years. But each pad would require infrastructure, thousands of litres of water and would produce thousands of litres of toxic waste. The landscape will be changed forever. Did you know that aready? Or is that news to you?

There's a bit on faults here: www.davidsmythe.org/fracking/cuadrilla%20sussex%20critique%20V1.pdf

[Spinflight]

More than I thought. By an order order of magnitude or two.

[flipflop21]

As I recall the figure is based on an average life of a well being 8 years, producing 1.25bcm of gas and extracting 10% of the shale reserves in the UK. The estimates are based on shale well production rates in the US.Of course until exploratory drilling has been undertaken in the UK, the industry cannot (will not?) say with any certainty how many wells will be needed - but drilling just a few will not be economically viable.

Wytch farm on the other hand has been pumping out oil from the same well since 1979. Shale gas/oil wells don't last that long - so you have to drill another and start all over again - with all the noise, trucks, water use and waste production.

[flipflop21]

Is it just me or is that just too many wells?

[flipflop21]

thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/17/3299221/north-dakota-blowout/

[Spinflight]

That is a lot, and you are correct about oil wells.. Indeed some I believe have been producing for over 100 years.

1.25 Bncm would be a good result from a well, equivalent to about 3000 barrels of oil per day for 8 years ( or more likely 6000 bopd dropping off due to pressure decline ). Maybe a tadge on the high side, not all wells would be that successful.

100,000 of those .... About 80 trillion dollars worth at current prices.

Say 10 trillion per decade for 80 years squished and you are looking at a boom to the economy in GDP terms of nigh on 50% nationally.

Of course the price of energy would drop through the floor, as it has in the states, though it isn't a zero sum game. Cheap energy equals cheaper and more efficient industry, well paying jobs for your children and miles cheaper utility bills. There are few downsides to cheap energy. If the history of energy prices in the US holds up to be true then still a good 15% of GDP, enough to put the North in general, and Lancashire in particular back where it belongs at the pinacle.

But yes, the impact of all those wells would be considerable, almost 5% of Lancashire by area, not including infrastructure such as roads and whatnot.

So it's a tradeoff between economic growth and environmental protection which as I'm from Lancashire is close to my heart.

Of course there is also the issue of who would benefit most. The drilling companies or the people.

At which point I can't help but plug UKIP's policy of a sovereign wealth fund from fracking profits. Would easily clear the national debt within a decade by my calculations...

I doubt anyone would ever agree on the correct extent or formulation, some would consider a single well to be too many and others ( especially those lovely politicians living in Kensington who once saw the North on tele and didn't like it) wondering why only 100,000 wells.

At the end of the day it is for the locals to weigh up the costs and benefits. Some costs though are generally unforeseen or involve losing things which cannot be replaced. Wildlife habitats, natural beauty and peace and quiet being three I can think of.

As for the unforeseen I would caution anyone with $ signs in their eyes to think again, Norway's oil boom was spectacularly good for their economy and they wisely invested the profits ( as Tony Benn wanted to do with our North Sea Oil ) with only 4% available yearly and the rest into their sovereign wealth fund.

Some of the downsides however were unforeseen. When a seaside shack would sell to an oil company for over $1m it gradually pushed the locals out. Easier to sell up and let them build a warehouse or whatnot than stay and watch your hometown change beyond recognition.

I want the best for Lancashire and I certainly don't know where the balance should lie.

[flipflop21]

My main question then is : when you say it's up to the locals -how will local people be given the say as to whether they want it or not?

There has been some debate as to whether gas prices will fall dramatically - it will be sold on the European Market to the highest bidder - so we are not likely to see the prices fall as they have in the states.

If the companies that are drilling are not UK owned, will they pay UK tax and how does the effect GDP?

Have attached a link to shale fields in USA. 5% of Lancashire could make it sound insignificant but if you look at how the fields are spread and connected it shows the imact fracking could have.

i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01543/shale2_1543452b.jpg

[flipflop21]

Air quality problems now emerging ...
www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/raising-health-air-quality-concerns-texas-fracking-frontier/

[Spinflight]

I don't think 5% is insignificant at all! Quite the opposite. I calculated it because I expected it to be a shocking figure... And was suitably shocked.

Maybe when I said it is up to the locals I was thinking more of how I think things should be run, rather than how they are run. I would be outraged if large scale drilling went ahead just because a few councilors had been bought off, or a few promises not kept. If left up to the North hating eurocrats in Westminster I think we all know what the result would be...

This indeed happened some time ago in my local area, the local councilors promised that if a landfill site were built on our doorsteps then so would a leisure centre and other goodies. Naturally the huge landfill went ahead and nothing else...

Currently the EU imports 40% of it's gas so there is certainly a large market. Indeed when our domestic industrial rates go down Deutsche Bank is one of the largest buyers. We are talking about a lot of gas though, and not in isolation so I would expect prices to drop, if over a long period, considerably.

Your last point is an awkward one as it depends where in the EU they are registered. Domestic companies would pay UK tax but increasingly companies merely offshore their head offices to Ireland or Switzerland as they have the lowest levels of corporation tax. This is why Google and Ebay hardly pay a penny into our tax system, Ireland gets it instead.

Not that our domestic companies have any form of advantage here, look at the North Sea and you'll see plentiful fields operated by foreign firms.

A tick in the box here, a rubber stamp there and next thing you know a tory or labour MP ends up with a £200,000 a year directorship in a foreign firm for 2 days work a month.... That chap at the environment agency had 11 jobs. My he must be a real hard worker!

Back in 2010 46 of the 50 largest companies in the UK had an MP on their board of directors so keeping the snouts out of the trough is highly unlikely.

Whilst I have no scientific or engineering problems with the process of fracking I do have many with the impact and politics of it. If you are from the North and don't have trust issues with our elected scumbags then I'd like to know how you manage it!

I'd say the anti-fracking lobby has a big image problem though. Scientific or engineering based scaremongering is remarkably easy to check out on t'interweb and spot. Whilst evidently vocal and passionate if the facts don't stand up to scrutiny credibility is quickly lost, indeed making the lobby itself look remarkably like the politicians themselves.

If the loud clear message was that we don't trust the London first elected scumbags with our environment and safety then I think the impact would be much larger. Ruin our landscape to pay off the bankers mistakes? Only noticed the North when they found oil etc...

Earthquakes and dodgy geology have, in my opinion, rather blunted what should have been a forthright and important debate...

[flipflop21]

Spinflight - we agree on somethings then. I do not trust the government. I do not believe the government has our best interests at heart. when they say frack 800m from homes, streamline regulation, let the companies monitor themselves, arrest people who protest peacefully, ignore local objections, don't undertake environmental impact surveys prior to drilling.. I could go on.

Whilst I agree that lots of the anti-fracking message has been sensationalism there is a growing body of scientific evidence which suggests fracking maybe detrimental to human health ( and I am happy to provide details of this). The other aspect is that without the proper regulation fracking certainly will be harmful. Many of the prerequisites which ensure that harm will be minimised remain as recommendations not regulation. It is not good enough.

I would say that earthquakes and geology have blurred the debate rather than blunted it. However for some people the fracking debate has brought home just how corrupt the government is and how it is using local councils, police and other agencies to support it's own agenda.