Fracking: An Essential Ingredient In The UK Energy Mix – Part I
Editor’s note: This is part one of a two part series on
fracking.
The UK has closed down its Coal Mining Industry. We import huge amounts
of coal from abroad. We import massive amounts of wood pellets from the USA to
fire very inefficient generators; decimating the US forests, using more oil to
send ships to pick up the pellets and bring them back while closing down
efficient cheap coal generators. All to save Carbon Dioxide emissions which have
no effect on the climate.
Let me first address the (Not in My Back Yard) NIMBYs. No one wants to
have a drilling operation at the bottom of their garden. However there are ample
opportunities to drill for gas without having drilling operations and a final
gas farm at the bottom of your garden, or causing concern, discomfort, danger,
or annoyance to people local to fracking operation. This has already been proven
in the UK and USA with sites being selected some considerable distances from
habitation.
In England the first fracking well was drilled in the reserve of the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) at Beckenham Marshes near
Balcombe, Nottinghamshire in 1963 (yes, that’s 54 years ago) and has been
successfully producing 300 barrels of crude oil and 1 million cubic feet of
shale gas daily ever since, without harm or damage to the environment. This
produces enough electricity to power 21,000 homes every day. Furthermore, most
people interviewed in the locality were not even aware of the existence of
fracking well so close by. There have been 2000 onshore oil wells drilled in the
UK by BP in the last 30 years, 200 of them using the fracking
process.
In the USA there has been a massive investment in fracking, resulting in
energy prices falling by 50% largely due to this now well-proven technology. I
repeat ‘well-proven technology’. In the early days some mistakes were made by
individual companies in the USA and some bad effects were felt. But is this any
different from other new technologies? As a further indication; the desire to
claim compensation from anyone on any pretext was unfounded and did not
succeed.
In January 2017, Friends of the Earth admitted false fracking claims.
This green campaign group has agreed not to repeat misleading claims about the
health and environmental impacts of fracking after complaints to the advertising
watchdog. Friends of the Earth spent more than a year trying to defend its
claims, which were made in a fundraising leaflet, but has been forced to
withdraw them. The group’s capitulation is a victory for a retired vicar and a
retired physics teacher who has been working for years to expose what they
believe is scaremongering about a safe technique for extracting shale
gas.
The Rev. Michael Roberts and Ken Wilkinson complained about Friends of
the Earth’s anti fracking claims to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA),
which also received a complaint from the fracking company Cuadrilla. ASA found
that Friends of the Earth (FoE) failed to substantiate claims that fracking
could cause cancer, contaminate water supplies, increase asthma rates and send
house prices plummeting. The ASA produced its draft ruling in July but was
forced to delay sending it to its council for approval because FoE repeatedly
requested more time to challenge the findings. The group finally agreed not to
repeat the claims in a deal with the ASA under which it has avoided having a
formal ruling against it. The ASA said:
We have told Friends of the Earth Trust Ltd and Friends of the Earth Ltd not to make claims about the likely effects of fracking on the health of local populations, drinking water, or property prices in the absence of adequate evidence.
Mr. Wilkinson, who said that he had no connection with the fracking
industry and was acting purely to ensure the public received accurate
information, welcomed the ruling. “It is outrageous that FoE used false
information to raise money,” he said. “We need a frank debate about fracking and
its potential impacts but it should be based on facts, not scaremongering.”
Francis Egan, chief executive of Cuadrilla, said:
FoE’s repeated falsehoods have been exposed as nothing more than scaremongering designed to frighten the public into giving it money. It is the unacceptable face of the charity sector.
He called on the Charity Commission to take action against FoE, which he
said had breached a previous commitment to the charity regulator to stop
campaigning against fracking. Cuadrilla is planning to start constructing a
shale gas exploration site near Blackpool. In October, the government overruled
Lancashire county council, which had rejected Cuadrilla’s plans to drill and
frack four wells at Preston New Road.
Ken Cronin, chief executive of UK Onshore Oil and Gas, which represents
fracking companies, said that the ASA had consulted with “numerous independent
scientific, health and regulatory experts before concluding that the
anti-fracking myths perpetrated by Friends of the Earth were fundamentally
false.” He added:
The opponents of onshore oil and gas development must withdraw their scaremongering rhetoric and argue on the basis of the facts, which quite clearly show that the risks associated with fracking can be mitigated by the strong regulation and world-renowned best practice that we benefit from in the UK.
Friends of the Earth declined to respond directly to questions about its
agreement with the ASA. A spokeswoman said:
We continue to campaign against fracking, alongside local people, because the process of exploring for and extracting shale gas is inherently risky for the environment.
I don’t think that the fact that ‘Friends of the Earth’ have been caught
lying will come as any great surprise to any of us. Note: the revenue of Green
Peace in 2014 was £303 million per annum.
There will be the ‘anti-brigade’ for everything and anything to do with
energy unless it is wind mills, solar panels or tidal methods of producing what
is called the highly desirable ‘renewables’, regardless of cost and
consequences. Greens, Friends of the Earth, the World Wild Life Fund, and
similar are driven by:
- A lack of scientific knowledge and/or:
- Ill-informed scientific knowledge and/or:
- Deliberately ignoring and/or distortion of factual scientific information.
- Encouragement and pecuniary gain from those making huge profits from wind farms, solar panels, some hydro systems and associated jobs in government and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs).
Above all, they are driven by the belief or pseudo-belief and the
resulting ‘feel good’ factor from believing they are saving the planet and
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