Some facts on Hydraulic Fracturing.6 Aug 2018 14:18
OPPOSITION to fracking has been considerable, if not unanimous, in the global green community, and in Europe in particular. France and Bulgaria, countries with the largest shale-gas reserves in Europe, have already banned fracking. Protesters are blocking potential drilling sites in Poland and here in England. Opposition to fracking has entered popular culture with the 2013 release of “The Promised Land,” starring Matt Damon. Even the Rolling Stones weighed in with a reference to fracking in their single, “Doom and Gloom.”
Do the facts on fracking support this opposition?
On the macro downside fracking allows us to put a previously inaccessible reservoir of carbon from beneath our feet into the atmosphere and unless carbon capture is built into the system this self-evidently contributes to global climate change.
However in assessing the pros and cons, decisions should be based on existing empirical evidence and fracking should be evaluated relative to other available energy sources which without ongoing availability will not support our way of life.
Some of the local effects of drilling and fracking have gotten a lot of press but caused few problems. For example, of the tens of thousands of deep injection wells in use by the energy industry across the United States, only about eight locations have experienced injection-induced earthquakes, most too weak to feel and none causing significant damage
The Pennsylvania experience since the 1940's with potential water contamination is also instructive. In Pennsylvania, shale gas is accessed at depths of thousands of feet while drinking water is extracted from depths of only hundreds of feet. Nowhere in the state have fracking compounds injected at depth been shown to contaminate drinking water.
Europe is currently increasing its reliance on coal by reversing earlier policy ( Germany says all of its nuclear power plants will be shut by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan ), and continues discouraging or banning fracking. If we are going to get our energy from hydrocarbons, blocking fracking while relying on coal looks to me like a bad trade-off for the environment.
LOR
Sign In
Follow the stocks
