Let's get fracking!

Some years ago I was given a Master-class in fracking by an American oilman. That does not make me an expert but I guess I know a little more about it than the Greens, Friends of the Earth, No Dash for  Gas and others of the ragbag  from Rent-a-Skiver currently infesting the village of Balcombe.

 

Let’s get started on some myths.

 

Contrary to the conventional view, there is nothing new about fracking. It is not the latest technological miracle that will save the planet or destroy it.

 

Fracking has been around in some form since 1868. The modern technique was developed 50 years ago. It began to take off in a big way in 1975. The great breakthrough came  around 20 years ago with the development of horizontal drilling. Since the 1980’s over 200 wells have been sunk in Britain, and 300 fracking licences have been issued

 

A site in Nottinghamshire has been providing gas since 1963. One nodding donkey provides 300 barrels of oil and 1 million cubic feet of gas each day. It supplies energy to 21,000 homes. The Fylde field has long been providing the equivalent of 50% of North Sea gas output.

 

Fracking is applied not only to natural gas but to oil, water, disposal of difficult wastes and other uses. It provides most of Germany’s natural gas. It is now being used in the Karroo to supply water to one of South Africa’s most arid and poverty-stricken regions.

 

Now to the environmental impact.

 

There is not one scrap of scientific evidence that fracking contaminates water. Hundreds of thousands of fracking operations have been carried out in the US. Contamination of aquifers? Zero! The film ‘Gasland’, which showed flames coming out of a man’s kitchen tap was a deliberate distortion of the truth. The homeowner had actually drilled his own borehole into a pocket of methane.

 

Visual intrusion? When fully extended a nodding donkey is 15 feet high. Compare this with the wind turbines that march across the Yorkshire Dales, or the hundreds of electricity pylons from Sizewell that disfigure the Suffolk countryside.

 

Effect on wildlife? There is absolutely none. The Nottinghamshire nodding donkey is inside a RSPB bird sanctuary. The effect of wind turbines on bird-life is considerable.

 

Much hysteria has been generated about the so-called seismic effect. The eco-warriors tell us that fracking in Lancashire will cause damaging earth tremors in Blackpool. The truth is that earth tremors caused by fracking, mining or any other intrusion into the earth’s crust are miniscule. The strongest recorded on the Richter scale was described as ‘micro’, about the same as a bus passing a house.

 

Let’s examine the economic and geo-political impact.

 

The largest known reserves of shale-gas are in China, and we can be absolutely certain that they will be exploited.

 

The US has the capacity to produce 2 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is between 50 and 100 years demand. Fracking will supply 70% of natural gas in the near future.  And here’s the amazing news. Anticipated reserves in the UK are only a little less than America’s.

 

The effect on the American economy is striking. Abundant and cheap energy from fracking has led to a manufacturing boom, with a year-on-year growth of 5%. This has been particularly marked in the petro-chemical industry, with cheaper feed-stock gas for plastics plus lower energy bills. New factories are opening, but perhaps equally important  has been a reversal of ‘off-shoring’ as America’s manufacturing costs fall and China’s labour costs rise and productivity per capita falls.

 

The price of American gas has fallen from $13 per million British thermal units to as low as $2.7, and is currently around $4. The upshot of this is that Americans pay about one-third of the price of gas in the UK.  An interesting side-effect is that terminals that were built for the import of LPG are being converted for exports(although the US Government has always been a bit twitchy about exporting energy).

 

In the UK, we can look forward to industry becoming more competitive, falling energy bills for all, and a reduction in fuel-poverty. In future our main energy source will be the most environmentally friendly of all fuels.

 

To prevent the lights going out in the not-too-distant future, the alternatives are nuclear or coal or, most likely, both.

 

The geo-political impact will be game-changing. The US is rapidly approaching energy self-sufficiency. Its interest in MENA will diminish alongside dependency on Gulf oil. The outcome for Russia could be dramatic. Its economy is largely energy-based, and alternative sources of cheap gas would diminish not just its GDP but also its political clout. It is no coincidence that the pressure groups caused fracking being banned in Bulgaria were largely funded by Russia.

 

So back to Balcombe.

 

The entire hullaballoo is based on an untruth. Cuadrilla is not fracking. It doesn’t even have a fracking licence. It is drilling an ordinary exploratory well on a site that was previously drilled without the intervention of Bianca Jagger and the March 1987 Playmate of the Month. If there is oil in commercial quantities that flows normally there will be no fracking.

 

So far, the sole impact of the eco-warriors at Balcombe has been to destroy 24 acres of  sheep-pasture that will now have to be ploughed and re-seeded.