Fracking North Yorkshire.

[Workingman]

Fracking in the UK will happen one day, it is inevitable, and this could be it.

Kirby Misperton is in an area not heavily populated, only a handful of small villages or hamlets are nearby, but it is home to Flamingo Land adventure park and right next door to the Howardian Hills Area of Natural Beauty.

But looking at it through the eyes of government it is the ideal place. Drain water from the river Rye, mix it with a load of chemicals and sand then pump it in the ground and hope all goes well. If it doesn't only a few hundred families will be disrupted, and N. Yorks isn't Surrey or Sussex.

[TheOstrich]

I think there is a concern over the number of rural folk who obtain their water from wells in that area. I'd like it to be certain that these folk aren't going to have their supply disrupted or contaminated ....

[Workingman]

I think there is a concern over the number of rural folk who obtain their water from wells in that area. I'd like it to be certain that these folk aren't going to have their supply disrupted or contaminated ....

You hope that would be the case, but with the government pledged to 'go all out for shale' who can tell? Somewhere is going to be the first place where serious extraction of shale gas takes place and Kirby Misperton is in one of the least densely populated areas in England.

It certainly is not going to happen under Chequers, Buck House or in the stockbroker belt.

[Aggers]

Instead of going on extracting more and more fuel from Mother Earth, it would make
more sense to institute positive ways of reducing the consumption of fuel.
The long-term consequences of using more and more natural fuels are well known now.

[Suff]

The problem is the proven fact that the shale gas penetrates upwards when released and, in many cases, penetrates the water tables above it.

It's hard for people to truly understand the sheer size of the US and how few people live there in comparison. The US has 5 times the population of the UK. Size? If I were allowed to drive at European speeds it would take me 3 days to drive coast to coast and I can drive for 19 hours per day. North to south would be at least 2 days maybe 3. At US speeds it would take me a week to go coast to coast and 4 days to go north to south.

To put that in perspective, it's like driving from Ashford in Kent to Stockholm and back and back again, jus to go across the country.

That means that the vast majority of the US is pretty much uninhabited and used for farmland, parks, woods, grazing and deserts...

Now contrast the UK... The chances of poisoning ground water someone is going to use in the US is remote. In the UK it's pretty likely.

As for resources Aggers... Whilst I agree that we need to switch to renewables for energy, we need MORE, not less, renewables than we consume today. It's the only way it's going to be cheap enough and available enough for people to switch to.

In terms of finite resources??? Whilst I am dead set against pumping all the oil out of the ground and burning it, if in part because 90%of this netbook I'm typing on is made out of oil products, making it too precious to burn, let alone the atmospheric impact; I'm also aware of the fact that our oceans and, especially, the continental shelves, contain more methane clathrates than the entire sum of Oil currently extracted and several times more than the available extractable reserves. Our reserves of carbon based fuels for burning in our vehicles are nowhere near exhausted. There is enough down there to kill the whole population of the planet several times over.

What I want is to keep that resource so expensive that nobody will go after it, thus making the case for renewables and conserving the Oil we have.

It's always useful to keep that in mind. Because if we go the route of restriction and price, the impact will be something we don't expect.

[Workingman]

And so it came to pass, as expected, operational production of shale gas, not test drilling, will commence before the end of the year. Everyone will be keeping a close eye on things.

At least in this case benchmark figures for water quality and seismic conditions have been taken by the British Geological Survey over the years since the application was made so there will be no escape for Third Energy (the producer) or the government if things change.

[TheOstrich]

That's very interesting .... I didn't think they'd pass it, to be honest ....

[Suff]

The US went form a massive net importer of natural gas to a modest exporter of the same product. With the state of the North Sea fields, it's hardly surprising that the Government are willing to jump on something which has this potential to generate wealth that they can hose the wall down with....

Also the fact that the vast majority of the Shale reserves are in England, not Scotland, cannot have been missed... An opportunity like that? I would have been incredibly surprised if they had not.

[Workingman]

Also the fact that the vast majority of the Shale reserves are in England, not Scotland, cannot have been missed... An opportunity like that? I would have been incredibly surprised if they had not.

Noo, they are obviously UK reserves, it's obvious, definitely: UK.