YP Letters: Polling shows little support for fracking from the public

Plans to frack for shale gas have proved controversial in communities around the UK.

Lorraine Allanson’s claim (The Yorkshire Post, July 21) that only a “tiny minority” are against fracking is not borne out by the Government’s own survey, which showed only 18 per cent of those polled support it. People travel from across the country to support the many residents who dedicate their time and efforts to opposing this damaging and polluting industry.

Our current situation of living with the few sites devoted to conventional gas extraction bears little relation to the effect that fracking would have on our countryside, when it is conservatively estimated that more than 6,000 fracking wells across the UK would be needed to halve our gas imports. Lack of agency resources and manpower means that fracking companies would be expected to largely regulate themselves, hardly the famous “gold standard” we hear about. The Government’s own report has concluded that fracking is not essential to meet our energy requirements.

I wonder how many local jobs would be created by fracking in our area? The on-site operations would be carried out by a small number of skilled employees.

Haulage companies from across the UK would carry out deliveries. On the other hand, industrialisation of our area could severely impact tourism, causing untold losses of local jobs and incomes.

From: Sam Grant, Huntington Road, York.

THE anti-fracking strategy of lobbying people online to write to every newspaper claiming that they, alone, are the arbiters of truth should have been put to bed when the Advertising Standards Agency exposed their arguments as false in a ruling against Friends of the Earth last year.

If you read anyone saying ‘fracking caused’ or ‘there is good evidence against fracking’, then you should know to be very cautious. Justin Rubinstein, a scientist with the US Geological Survey, stated in a paper in 2015 that of 35,000 active wastewater disposal wells, 80,000 active enhanced oil-recovery wells, and tens of thousands of wells hydraulically fractured every year in the US, only a few dozen are known to have induced felt earthquakes.

The anti-fracking activists twist that into “fracking causes earthquakes and everyone should be frightened”. They should start being more honest and if you read any of their literature or websites, you should question what data is behind it. It is almost certainly being misused just to convert you to their cause.