15 July 2014
Charles Miller gave an illustrated lecture to a well-attended meeting in Wareham on Sunday 13th July on the subject of the implications for electorates facing hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in their countryside and under their houses and villages.
Mr Miller, who has over 25 years’ experience in the Oil and Gas Drilling and Well Control Industry, maintained that a rosy picture of the benefits of fracking was being presented to the public and there seemed to be no official recognition of the considerable downside to this practice. The American experience, in particular, has shown that there are many attendant problems with this process.
Very little of the total volume of shale gas at any site is actually recoverable – between 1% and 6%. This means that wells have a very short life and the number of wells has to continually proliferate to maintain production.
Huge amounts of water are required at each well head (the equivalent of 500 UK-sized tankers per well), and 71 of the chemicals used have 10 or more toxic properties similar to nerve gases. Many reports of respiratory ailments and other health problems have been reported at these sites. Typically, there is no pre and post sampling regime of all the chemicals involved in place at such sites. Without this no claims can be brought against companies for any health problems ostensibly caused by the use of toxic chemicals as it cannot be shown that the chemicals were not already present.
The failure rate of well-bores is very high (6% to7%) and, as the wells proliferate, the potential for leakage of chemicals and gases increases.
Mr Miller pointed out that there is, as yet, no regulatory framework in place for this activity. No public enquiries are to be required. There is to be no disclosure of the chemicals to be pumped into the ground. The electorate is not fully informed about the energy situation and alternatives, nor given an opportunity to influence choice, thus brushing aside democracy.
There will eventually be a 100% failure of well-bores because the metal casings, which protect the drinking-water aquifers, corrode over time.
The process of Tectonic Plate movement that is taking place all the time poses a severe risk to the very large numbers of well-bores involved in fracking. The 20 or so minor earthquakes each year in the UK are the creaks and groans of that change actually taking place!
There are alternatives, as Mr Miller outlined. In Germany, for example, local co-operatives are being set up to provide for local energy needs. Juhnde, in Lower Saxony, produces twice as much energy as the locality needs using a combination of solar power and anaerobic digestion. The surplus is sold to the grid and helps finance the next co-operative set-up, and so on. Currently, 47% of Germany’s electricity needs are produced in this way and this figure is rapidly rising.
In Scotland, tidal power turbines are being set up and will help to make the country self-sufficient in energy supply in the near future.
A further, and possibly the greatest, defect of shale gas fracking, is that it threatens to delay the necessary transition to other, renewable forms of energy and make this transition much more difficult and expensive.
Mr Miller noted that the Green Party is the only political party in Dorset to have brought both the negatives of Fracking and safer alternative methods of solving the energy problem to the public.
The presentation was followed by a question and answer session, and was part of a series of open meetings organized for the community by South East Dorset Green Party.
Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole Green Party RSS Feed