Tories grant 18 fracking licences - all north of Leicester

OldCoals said:
Opposing fracking doesn't make you an idiot.
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No it doesn't make you an idiot. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, however... Believing a lot of the propaganda output by many of the a it fracking organisations* does push you towards being one though. That's the problem the industry have in general, how do you point out the unsourced data is incorrect without people just discounting your argument "because you would say that".

Being against it after gaining an informed opinion (looking at published papers with real data and understanding that data and what it means) is perfectly reasonable if you don't agree in some way (such as from a fossil fuel perspective in general).

Many vehemently opposed people seem to have a problem with the government as well, so independent reports and government branch studies (such as the EPA and EA) are ignored as well. All the while several career speakers are touring the country riling up the local population with mistruths and sometimes downright lies.*** Remember to buy their books and videos on the moon landing and the conspiracy of GM crops as well!**

*There always needs to be opposition to things like this, it helps increase regulation, stopping Cowboys, however some organisations go too far. Personally I think Greenpeace are fighting a good campaign with generally reasonable data and a reasonable reasons to oppose it (generally CC). Organisations like FotE on the other hand are showing how it shouldn't be done...

**they aren't all like that, however there do seem to be a disproportionate number of speakers making a career out of this and other "conspiracies".

***there has been quite a lot of fighting using the ASA, to ban leaflets with incorrect information being released.
 
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OldCoals said:
Or invest in geothermal and tidal power.
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You know how they get geothermal wells working?

They do huge fracks to connect the two well bores. Then they pump water down, it percolates through the fractures and comes up the other wellbore.

Unfortunately for the UK we don't have the heat potential of places like Iceland and so far, even in the hottest places no one has been able to make it economically viable over here.
 
balky12 said:
The people who are saying fracking is a terrible idea are probably the same people who say renewables are fantastic. (In their current state).

Highlights their understanding of both. :rolleyes:
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Fracking is a bad idea, i've seen enough documentaries about it happening in the US and the two main issues seem to be what some companies pump down isn't safe and inevitably leaks into the local area, its commercial project so what ever is cheapest right as I doubt our legislation is completely up to date on covering what they may use? The other seems to be when they increase the pressure underground what they force back to the surface doesn't always go back to the plant so you see people being able to light water from taps and that sort of thing.

Nuclear is the answer even if we continue just dumping waste at Sellafield.
 
kayomani said:
Fracking is a bad idea, i've seen enough documentaries about it happening in the US and the two main issues seem to be what some companies pump down isn't safe and inevitably leaks into the local area, its commercial project so what ever is cheapest right as I doubt our legislation is completely up to date on covering what they may use? The other seems to be when they increase the pressure underground what they force back to the surface doesn't always go back to the plant so you see people being able to light water from taps and that sort of thing.

Nuclear is the answer even if we continue just dumping waste at Sellafield.
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Documentaries about the US system though as has been said won't really apply to the UK.

There is a whole world of difference between the approaches taken in the two countries, even IIRC between what is acceptable and normal in the U.S. and Canada.

We tend to have far stricter regulation in place before things happen in the UK than the U.S.
It's one of the reasons the U.K. versions of things like "American" foods tend to be made quite differently as what is considered acceptable (let alone legal) practice is different, so whilst in the U.S. they'll use the cheapest nastiest (but tastiest) ingredients even thought they're extremely bad for you, but in the UK they'll use an ingredient that tastes similar but is nowhere near as bad for you (or as cheap).
 
The problem is everyone wants power and they want it cheaply but they don't want how it's made or transported near to them, we get a lot of people complaining.

I would rather see renewable tech being invested in but unfortunately we do have times with no light and no wind, so we need the fossil fuels for old spinning stock.

We need to invest in offshore wind farms/tidal energy recovery, but the money isn't there and nimbys complain too much. Same as installing nuclear people think of the disasters which are rare.
 
kayomani said:
Fracking is a bad idea, i've seen enough documentaries about it happening in the US and the two main issues seem to be what some companies pump down isn't safe and inevitably leaks into the local area, its commercial project so what ever is cheapest right as I doubt our legislation is completely up to date on covering what they may use? The other seems to be when they increase the pressure underground what they force back to the surface doesn't always go back to the plant so you see people being able to light water from taps and that sort of thing.

Nuclear is the answer even if we continue just dumping waste at Sellafield.
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That's just incorrect.

Every chemical used in fracking has to be approved as non toxic by the EA, unlike in the U.S. where there was a lot of secrecy about chemical makeup of fluids. AFAIK there is no "list" of approved chemicals in the UK, all authorisation is done on a case by case basis.

The oil company provides a list of chemicals they want to use, along with approx. proportions to be used in their environmental application. The EA/HSE and various other government bodies then study it, request additional data if needed and then approve it if it reaches the required standard. The oil company can't just chuck whatever they want down the well.

The vast majority of leaks in the U.S. were/are from open pit containment pools, which can't be used in the UK, we need to use sealed metal tanks instead.

As for lighting taps - a significant proportion of the U.S. has naturally occurring methane in groundwater, in some places the concentration is high enough that taps connected to local wells can be lit (what you see in gasland). That said there have been some incidents where casing has failed in wells during fracking and fluids and methane have leaked into the surrounding near surface groundwater.

In the UK there is regulation in place to stop this, with triple casing through any rock that may contain drinkable water (the "aquifers"). That means there is about a foot of special cement and three 1-2 inch thick steel barriers separating the well from the surrounding rock. In the U.S. the wells that had problems generally had a single casing string (one piece of steel and a few inches of cement).

As for the possibility of the pressure increase at the frack location forcing gas and water up into the near surface groundwater - that's just impossible. The pressure increase needed to do that would be astronomical, frack locations are thousands of feet below near surface water. There have been numerous studies looking at this and not a single one could find evidence for this.
 
Moses said:
I'm guessing the answer is no, but if that's how they do geothermal wells, could that be a secondary usage for at least some fracking sites after we've exploited the oil/gas? I'm thinking because loads of the (expensive) drilling might already be done, so that might make it economically viable... but I'm thinking the answer is no because the process is markedly different, and/or the geology says no :p.


Btw, thanks for bothering to reply in this thread - it's good to get an informed opinion/information from someone who hasn't just watching flaming tap Youtube videos :p.
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Generally geothermal wells are drilled into igneous rocks which are usually hotter than the surrounding "country" rocks (think of the Dartmoor granite here - deeper down it still retains some heat from the time it was "liquid"). Igneous rocks aren't conducive to oil and gas extraction* because they don't generate any. Shale gas wells are drilled into sedimentary rocks which are usually too cool for geothermal.

That said you can still get temperatures of 100degrees C+ at the base of a well and drilling mud steams when it's at surface because of its temperature. I'm guessing adding a Ground source heat pump style system to extract some of that heat would cause problems with the drilling.

My knowledge of geothermal basically ends at that unfortunately.

No problem. As you can probably tell I work in O&G and find all the ******** spouted about it a little annoying. It's one of, if not the most, regulated industry in the country, yet some people insist it's unregulated and we can do what we want. :D

*that said there are a few cases of oil and gas fields in igneous rocks when the hydrocarbon has migrated to it. They are few and far between.

Abraxaz1 said:
The problem is everyone wants power and they want it cheaply but they don't want how it's made or transported near to them, we get a lot of people complaining.

I would rather see renewable tech being invested in but unfortunately we do have times with no light and no wind, so we need the fossil fuels for old spinning stock.

We need to invest in offshore wind farms/tidal energy recovery, but the money isn't there and nimbys complain too much. Same as installing nuclear people think of the disasters which are rare.
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Why not invest in both? Gas for the shorter term and then transition to renewables. IMO that's the best option. Investing in one doesn't mean we can't invest in another.

OldCoals said:
It was directly linked to a small earthquake in this country.
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Which had no discernable affect on anything. As I have already pointed out you get larger events when a truck or train passes your house.

The regulation has also been changed since that incident. Now companies need to shoot 3D seismic and map all the faults around a well before fracking. They have to monitor in real time any events that occur and stop operations if an event of greater than 0.5 is detected. Larger events can be predicted based on the increase in size of micro events before them so this should (it's currently untested in the UK as we haven't cracked a well yet) stop any incident like this occurring again (or at least make them very, very rare).
 
matt_fsr said:
Regulations worked well for the banks :)

Just sayin'
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They also work well to stop your house falling down (building regs), stop oil spills in the North Sea and been the reason there has only ever been one well that has leaked onshore UK out of the ~3000 that have already been drilled.

FYI that well was caught within a short time and remediated with little to no damage to the environment around it.
 
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