Fracking: note the deep shaft
Can they get over the paralysis induced by their climate obsessions and get on with what the US has done successfully for years, or are they just looking for another report to hide behind? The days of thinking gas could always be reliably imported at moderate cost are over.
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Senior Tories are calling for an end to the ban on shale gas extraction to help secure energy supplies, says BBC News.
The government has ordered a new report on the impact of fracking, days ahead of publishing its energy supply plan.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has given the British Geological Survey (BGS) three months to assess any changes to the science around the controversial practice.
Fracking was halted in the UK in 2019 amid opposition from green groups and local concerns over earth tremors.
But senior Conservatives have been calling for a rethink in recent weeks.
They claimed fracking would give the country a “competitive and reliable source of energy” amid concerns over security of access and rising energy prices.
But other MPs and campaigners have warned against a change in direction, with Labour’s Ed Miliband saying the new report had “nothing to do with the energy needs [and] everything to do with the Conservatives bowing to their backbenchers”.
Fracking firms claimed the report was a “tentative first step” to overturning the ban and “exploiting [the] potential” of shale gas.
At the time of the moratorium, ministers said they would not change their minds without “compelling new evidence”.
Full article here.
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Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
Woop de doo …. ” He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a first in both subjects[9] and twice winning the Browne Medal” etc …. Meanwhile, in the country where we live … y’all know the rest. Time for change.
Plenty of “compelling new evidence” that the government tremor limit of 0.5 Richter was a bad joke.
Scientific review ! its been operating successfully for however long time in USA ????
I suspect the review will be a ‘political’ exercise not scientific, similar to reviews conducted on Ivermectin use to treat you know what, so we all know what the outcome will be most likely.
Allowing full scale fracking for a plentiful cheaper source of energy would undermine the investment already made by landowners & off shore subsidy wind farms ( Charlie Boys Crown Estates in both), so I’ll be very surprised if common sense prevails.
The propaganda & associated brain washing will continue to keep the greater population compliant.
Ignorance is bliss I suppose 🙂
I wonder how many coal mines the likes of Warren Buffet have been buying up cheap ?
The problem with totalitarian bureaucrats is they have no responsibility for what they regulate. They can, and often do, kill what they regulate.
That you have to import natural gas is not their problem. Your having energy supplies is not their problem.
As you say Oldbrew, UK fracking was deliberately spiked prior to the moratorium last time round by the setting of absurd seismic limits on their activities. Take a bow former UK ‘energy’ minister, Ed ‘lib dumb’ Davey who claimed back in 2019, ‘I’m proud that you’re looking at the person who stopped the fracking industry in this country”. No doubt, if these absurd operational limits remain, Kwasi Karteng will be saying something similar in due course.
The main beneficiaries of a UK fracking ban are American frackers. We don’t object to shipping gas in, only to getting our own.
I wish someone would show the above graphic to those dumb clowns who are our ‘rulers’
As one who spent 20 odd years in the oil industry in the North Sea (when we had men of steel and rigs of wood) ‘fracking’ by companies like Schlumberger was the only method of recovery of the BILLIONS of North Sea oil which was squandered by the Westminster politicians on Socialist boon daggles.
I have no reason to expect that any benefit from the recovery of land based energy will benefit those who really need this largesse.
The BGS are hardly the right people to ask, as they are now infiltrated by anti fossil fuel activists q as seen in the setting of a “threshold level” for stopping drilling at below almost all the natural tremors that Occur on the UK, over 1,000 times below any tremor that people can notice, less than a lorry passing you front door. I attach a BGS chart from the priod when fracking was stooped because of tremors, I have annotated it to show the levels. As in Lancashire, there have been NO significant “earthquakes” associated with fracking around the World, as both the BGS and the Government report of 2013 also confirmed. The current traffic light level is unsupportable on any rational grounds, its purely politics. Here is the DECC’s report from 2013, it says, worth doing, no probelms likely,small and manageable if they happen.:
Click to access Developing_Onshore_Shale_Gas_and_Oil__Facts_about_Fracking_131213.pdf
The BGS were also involved, but saw no threat from low level tremors, well below actual detection level for humans.
http://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/research/earthquake_hazard_shale_gas.html
Sic: “The report also concludes that further small earthquakes cannot be ruled out, however the risk from these earthquakes is low, and structural damage is extremely unlikely.”
Just implement a “No fault compensation” scheme for alleged fracking damage. Prior to licensing drilling/fracking all those in a radius around a proposed site photograph there property walls, inside and out. Upload photo to gov.uk website. If and when (it already been stated that damage will be extremely rare) damage is reported, an independent structural engineer has a look, new photos etc, quick report and estimate to fix the damage at no cost to the property owner.
In one fell swoop, the main concern has gone.
just going through the entrails of the “goat” to find an omen that will allow them to keep from fracking the shale. Kabuki for the cheap seats.
Energy strategy: UK plans eight new nuclear reactors to boost production
Published 31 minutes ago
Key points of the new energy strategy
Nuclear – The government plans to reduce the UK’s reliance on oil and gas by building as many as eight new nuclear power stations, plus two new reactors at Sizewell in Suffolk. A new body will oversee the delivery of the new plants.
Wind – The government aims to reform planning laws to speed up approvals for new offshore wind farms. For onshore wind farms it wants to develop partnerships with “supportive communities” who want to host turbines in exchange for guaranteed cheaper energy bills.
Hydrogen – Targets for hydrogen production are being doubled to help provide cleaner energy for industry as well as for power, transport and potentially heating.
Solar – The government will consider reforming rules for installing solar panels on homes and commercial buildings to help increase the current solar capacity by up to five times by 2035.
Oil and gas – A new licensing round for North Sea projects is being launched in the summer on the basis that producing gas in the UK has a lower carbon footprint than doing so abroad.
Heat pumps – There will be a £30m “heat pump investment accelerator competition” to make British heat pumps which reduce demand for gas.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61010605
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Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng added: “Scaling up cheap renewables and new nuclear, while maximising North Sea production, is the best and only way to ensure our energy independence over the coming years.”
‘cheap renewables’ — so cheap they have to be heavily subsidised 🙄
Britain to be powered by oxymorons.
“Kabuki for the cheap seats.”
Exactly. They have made their decision. The study was commissioned to affirm their decision. Those conducting the study were told the outcome before they started. So patently obvious one wonders why they even bother.
Government accused of being in denial of energy cost crisis
Thursday 7th April 2022 | Press Release
Net Zero Watch has branded the government’s energy security strategy an exercise in magical thinking and accused Boris Johnson of being in denial of the severity of the energy cost crisis.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/government-accused-of-being-in-denial-of-energy-cost-crisis/
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Their targets for wind, solar and nuclear are pie in the sky. Solar is a dead loss in winter anyway.
Fracking ‘Unlikely’ to Cause Dangerous Earthquakes in the UK – Report
7 Apr 2022
A study that will inform a government review of fracking has found that the controversial gas extraction process poses little risk of creating dangerous earthquakes in the United Kingdom.
Although previously utilised in the country, the use of fracking as a method of gas extraction in the UK was originally mothballed back in 2019 over safety fears and an effective lobbying campaign against the technology.
However, a new study due to be published by Newcastle University which is set to inform a government review of the practice has reportedly found that the actual risk posed by fracking is quite minimal, and is unlikely to lead to the creation of dangerous seismic activity.
Instead, the process is likely to create much smaller tremors similar to those experienced when coal was actively mined in the UK.
“We lived with them without much concern during the coal mining era,” The Telegraph reports Prof Richard Davies, the petroleum geologist at Newcastle University as saying.
“During coal production, vast numbers of earthquakes were created in the UK right until the 1980s and the coal miners’ strike,” the expert continued. “Effectively Margaret Thatcher stopped the earthquakes, and they were never very big.”
“It’s the same set of rocks,” he concluded. “The risk of seismicity is high, but the impact is low.”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/04/07/fracking-unlikely-to-cause-dangerous-earthquakes-in-the-uk-report/
Cambo: Ithaca Energy pledges to develop controversial oil field
Published 11 hours ago
Ithaca’s chief executive Alan Bruce said Cambo and Rosebank were “two of the largest undeveloped and most strategically important discoveries” in UK waters.
Developing them, Mr Bruce added, was a “huge opportunity to not only help secure the UK’s energy future for at least another quarter of a century, but also to create thousands of direct and indirect jobs in the process.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-61031088
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Scottish government insists imports are a better idea?
Jim Ratcliffe attacks ‘ignorant minority’ as he calls for freedom to frack again
Billionaire seeks to drill test well that can prove controversial process is safe
10 April 2022
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has hit out at an “ignorant minority” for preventing an energy revolution powered by fracking as he appealed for permission to drill at a test site.
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Sir Jim said that Ineos had spent £250m on fracking projects before it was banned. The investment was “destroyed with the flick of a political switch, with no offer of compensation and not even the decency of an apology”, he said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/04/10/jim-ratcliffe-attacks-ignorant-minority-calls-freedom-frack/
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
We have been Fracking since around the 1940s so we know all about out it. If Kwasi Kwarteng doesn’t then he shouldn’t be in the job. All he needs to do is read the literature, where he will find that 0.5 on the Richter scale is less than a lorry passing by; so he could sort that out for starters.
Another scientific enquiry is just an irresponsible shunting of decision making onto others at huge expense to the rest of us.
The gas is there beneath our feet please,please just get on with it and start using it.