SHALE GAS FRACKING - and some facts about it.

[Phil Perry]

I WOULD JUST LIKE TO HIGHLIGHT SOME NONSENSE ABOUT 'FRACKING' FOR SHALE GAS.

 

They found both oil and shale gas in Lidsey West Sussex in 1991. They decided to go for the oil as N Sea gas was relatively plentiful, therefore Lidsey has had American oilfield style 'nodding donkeys' pumping oil (still producing £250k worth of crude a month) for the last 26 years. . . .

 

There were no local protests at the time, quite the reverse. The present campaigns are politically inspired rubbish. The EU tried to seize our shale gas a few years ago and the reason it's had the bad press is to preserve the resource until the EU could exploit it somehow. . . .

 

1) A drill is there for 6 months max. Once down to the shale bedrock, it's dismantled.

 

2) Shale gas is found in bedrock thousands of feet below the water table.

 

3) Fracking chemicals are the same as in Marmite or ice cream. ( Aussies could use Vegemite of course. . . )

 

4) There is no need in this country for gas tankers annoying the public thundering around country lanes visiting a wellhead. There's an invention called the (underground) gas pipeline. As Shale is found in some of the most populous areas in he country it's very cheap to pump from wellhead to end user.

 

5) In West Sussex where the most gas and oil is located, the soil is green sand, with a soft sandstone bedrock. Very easy to dig trenches for underground pipelines to the nearest towns and villages.

 

6) No need to build storage facilities - it's already stored underground.

 

7) This is a picture of a fully operational shale gas well head. Obviously located in a valley so they don't need to drill so far... therefore no significant visual disturbance to the countryside.

 

Look at the picture of the tiny wellhead. . .not exactly a blot on the landscape is it ? ? ?

 

 

When we ( The UK ) finally get rid of the political nonsense with regard to this process, we can exploit the VAST reserves of this Gas thereby removing the need to import the stuff from Qatar and pay through the nose for it. AND, for that matter OIL from Saudi Arabia either Loads of that down there too. . . Just need to lynch a handful of really Stupid Pollies from some Westminster lamp posts. . .

 

 

[Phil Perry]

The UK has quite a large network of Gas / Oil pipelines already, and many wartime airfields were fed with fuel pipelines too . .so some of the infrastructure already exists to move shale gas to where it's needed, even to Ireland and the continent . . .

 

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[pmccarthy]

Agreed the opposition is nonsense. In Victoria it is now illegal to drill for oil or gas.

 

 

[facthunter]

Pretty one sided view so far. Enlightened farmers are some of the most concerned about destruction of farmland and excess water use and poisoning of aquifers (Underground water reserves) by chemicals they won't even declare the composition of to the public. The situation in the UK is nothing like Australia.( One of the world's driest continents with shortage of arable topsoil critical as well as reliance on artesian water from as far a way as PNG highlands. A fairly unique situation and quite delicate . CSG gas has a bad name here and farmers views are being ignored, and they are Bullied off their land frequently . Gas being sold overseas at rock bottom prices by overseas interests who generally pay NO tax cheaper in Japan than we can buy it . Can't get any here for the local market because any extra may still go overseas. Nev

 

 

[nomadpete]

Our MSM have gone curiously quiet about the millions of tons of salts which will be brought to the surface as a result of our Queensland coal seam gas fracking. As far as I know there is no plan to remove this residue, and no thought given to the long term consequences of leaving all that salt where it can permanently contaminate large tracts of farming country.

 

Also, just because the gas is at a different level from the aquifers, doesn't mean there isn't a risk of cross contamination or leakage. How airtight do you think the ground is, after you drill a hole through all those layers, and attempt to seal the bore casing by pumping wet cement down the outside to try and keep all that fracking liquid away from the porus aquifer layers?

 

And I heard that there are about 30,000 csg bores in Queensland.

 

 

[facthunter]

Generally the damage is never rectified. The company goes broke and can't afford it, (so they say). Most profit goes overseas so "Their country" is OK. France didn't do it's atomic tests in it's own backyard, and the Brits didn't clean up the atomic waste here properly and we used our own people as guinea pigs. Charming. Nev