Powerful arguments over safety of the fracking process

SOME advice to a would-be fracker like George Osborne (Yorkshire Post, February 5).

1. First of all get your gas production companies hired up and the consultations completed as surreptitiously as possible well in advance. Not a word to the general public mind. Leaks are risky (except when you are fracking).

2. Choose your moment to announce an economic boom time, lots of jobs, cheap gas,cash incentives. A nice juicy carrot for the general public. But keep it vague. Don’t make promises you can’t fulfil.

3. Slip in a tiny hint that fracking will be allowed under the general public’s homes. Just need a little law to be passed. Choose a time when attendance in the Commons is low. Remember to get whips out of course.

4. Stifle worries about the risks of fracking. British safeguards are best, they are nearly adequate. In any case the odd explosion won’t matter, and a bit of groundwater contamination never hurt anybody (fingers crossed).

5. Keep banging on about the economic miracle to come.

From: Barrie Abbott, Huddersfield.

PREVIOUS letters have raised most aspects of the subject of fracking and its safety. Answers are best found in the reports Shale gas extraction in the UK: a review of hydraulic fracturing by The Royal Society and The Royal Academy of Engineering, the Fifth Report on Shale Gas by the Commons. Energy and Climate Change Committee, the DECC Report on questions raised, and British Geological Society survey reports. These can be found by an internet search such as “shale gas extraction in the UK”.

From these reports, a balanced view for exploration with minimal risks can be concluded based on the last 30 years experience of 2,000 UK bore holes already made without water pollution scares or earthquakes. About 200 of those sites have been hydraulically fracked, for various distances underground, currently up to 10km. This good record should be maintained; successful control is the key.

The potential is, many jobs, an economic boost, cheaper energy, security of supply, no energy rationing, cash flowing to local communities, a reduction in gas imports and possibly even exports. All with no taxpayer support.

This can be controlled with best practice, as currently regulated in the UK, adjusted from developing experience in the USA and UK.

Publicity will come from activists on both sides of the argument but proceeding sensibly would be best for our children and grandchildren, and consistent with our engineering ethos of innovation with safety.

From: David F Chambers, Sladeburn Drive, Northallerton.

I NOTICE that Simon Bowens of Friends of the Earth is anti-fracking, which is predictable (Yorkshire Post, January 27).

I suspect that he has discovered a lifestyle which is independent of electricity, as he is also against burning coal, gas, oil, wood and doubtless nuclear power. This leaves wind power of course, but how does he justify the vandalising of our countryside and coastline with thousands of idiotic windmills?

No less shaky is his argument on cost. If the misguided expenditure on wind power were switched to fracking, we could produce electricity which is cheaper, more plentiful, independent of climatic conditions and non-reliant on imports or foreign ownership.

The US has already done much of the research for us. Provision of electricity ranks in importance with defence of the realm, and handing over its production to foreign powers is surely an act of treason, EU notwithstanding.

As a worker in the protest industry, Simon should look elsewhere for additions to his list of targets.

From: D Wood, Thorntree Lane, Goole.

WINDMILLS will never be able to produce enough electricity to supply our needs nor are they able to produce their puny outputs on a regular and reliable basis. It would be far better to buy up all the world’s rain forests and protect them as these are nature’s way of dealing with CO2.

As for power supply, the tide is currently the only viable and reliable source of green energy, below the surface, not wave power. The tides are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

One last point: the global warming brigade fail to mention that without CO2 to keep the warmth in, our planet would be far too cold to support life.

From: CE Hallas, Cubley Rise Road, Penistone, Sheffield.

IT’S been estimated that during last winter the severe cold was responsible for the deaths of 10,000 vulnerable people. How these estimates are gathered baffles me, however, assuming these figures to be correct, there’s little doubt that the affordability of fuel has to be a major influence on the general health of such people with pulmonary diseases, heart conditions and situations leading to hypothermia. A major cost contributor is the green levy.

Apart from the simple expedient of raising revenue, this tax has been introduced in order to further the dreams of those idealists who see wind factories as the nation’s salvation.