Economic case for fracking that ignores the human cost

I WRITE regarding the issue of the Government’s reliance on dangerous onshore oil and gas extraction practices like fracking.

While there are some positives to simply getting more energy, I fear that the Government is dogmatically responding only to overly optimistic economic lobbying from the oil and gas industry yet ignoring public health concerns.

The arguments so frequently put forward by the Government are purely economic and make no mention of the human health risks. These risks come in the phases of exploratory drilling and testing phases (emissions such as Benzene, Toluene, Xylene and other VOCs), but also from the fracking phase itself.

People living close to the drilling and fracking sites are at greater risk of respiratory health deterioration (as evidenced in Australia) and also could be at a risk of cancer, birth defects and infertility because of the chemicals used.

I doubt much local revenue would compensate people for that kind of suffering and I doubt the economic pressure those increased health problems will put on an already strained NHS has been calculated. If not it has certainly not been made public.

I applaud the Yorkshire Post’s stance in opening this up as a debate.

From: Martyn L Scargill, Chantry Meadows, Kilham, East Yorkshire.

FRANKLY, I am just about at a loss for words over this latest attempt to destroy the nature 
and habitat of our land under 
the name of “fracking”. Just what are these people trying to do to rural England?

Whichever party is in power, they are all the same thing when it comes to the degradation of the countryside in one way or another.

More digging and delving, creating hideous infrastructures all over the place and yet more meddling with dangerous chemicals.

Have we not enough of these obnoxious poisons in our environment already, owing to destructive agricultural practices, chemicals industry etc.

How many more poisons do we have to let contaminate our water supplies and atmosphere before we are all turned into some brainless sub-species?

From: Michael Fallon MP, Energy Minister.

YOUR article “Selling shale” (Yorkshire Post, February 3), does not reflect government’s energy policy. Rather than threatening Yorkshire’s ambitions to be an energy hub, shale could bring significant benefits as part of a mix of energy sources including renewables.

As well creating jobs and supporting UK energy security, shale gas sites will provide £100,000 to local communities where a test well is fracked – and one per cent of revenues if shale gas is discovered. This could be worth £5m-£10m, for a typical site over its lifetime. In addition, local councils will keep 100 per cent of business rates they collect from shale gas sites, which could be worth up to £1.7m a year .

It is nonsense to claim that the Government is dithering on projects, when last month we awarded a multi-million pound contract to the White Rose Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Project in Selby, North Yorkshire.

The White Rose proposal is to build a new state-of-the-art clean coal power plant with full CCS, bringing clean electricity to over 630,000 homes and capturing approximately two million tonnes of CO2 per year. This will attract £2bn of investment into the area, creating 2,000 jobs and supporting other CCS projects in the area.

Unlike the last government that left a legacy of underinvestment, this one is attracting record investment in home-grown energy sources.

From: Ian W. Murdoch, Spring Hill, Welbury, Northallerton.

YOUR Editorial (Yorkshire Post, February 3) confirms that Ms Caroline Flint has as much understanding of the realities of electricity generation as had her party leader during his disastrous period as Energy Secretary.

She should focus her efforts on ensuring the country has reliable and secure sources of energy. One way to do this is to safely exploit every possible energy source and avoid our growing dependence on imported fuel, particularly gas.

I wonder whether she understands how the focus on so-called “renewable” energy sources actually pushes us to further depend on gas generators to cover the frequent occasions when wind output uncontrollably falls by more than the total output of the Drax power station in a 12 hour period.

Has she ever studied the readily available half hourly data showing how wind output varies?

From: Terry Morrell, Prunus Avenue, Willerby, East Yorkshire.

IS it not time that these climate change scaremongers stopped trying to frighten us with their absurd statistics?

A 34 per cent increase in CO2 over the past 200 years, a third of the air’s normal four per cent content, is very negligible,

The UK’s contribution to any increase in world pollution, if there is any increase at all, is much less than three per cent of the global total.