FRACKING: No One Could Possibly Have Guessed This Would Happen...

Lancashire's future? Fracking has caused significant earthquake damage in the USA

 So tonight Cuadrilla have had to halt fracking operations at their Preston New Road site for the third time in two weeks after a third tremor abpve the 0.5 Richter scale trigger. The increase seems exponential - from 0.5 to 0.8 to 1.1 and while still relatively minor, their increasing power in such a short time has to be bad news for the shale-peddling carbonistas.

The area surrounding the site near Blackpool in Lancashire has seen 27 seismic events captured by the British Geological Survey in just 11 days. This compares to just two others in the entire rest of the UK over the same period - one in North Wales and one in the Norwegian Sea off the Shetlands. There were no seismic events in Lancashire in the 89 days prior to Cuadrilla commencing drilling.

While most of these are small, the incremental impact on the area if operations continue as planned for many years becomes sadly all too predicatble.

The only crumb of comfort in this could be that this litany of problems for Cuadrilla knocks future plans across the UK on the head and, quite aside from the appalling environmental impact of fracking, makes the whole project financially unviable for the profiteers who are prepared to sacrifice our country and planet for the sake of their bank balances.

Of course, the Greens and environmentalists who warned of this years ago, before fracking permits were opened up by the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Ed Davey during the Coalition government, were denounced as hysterical fantasists and Luddites.

After all, who could possibly have guessed this would happen...?!

Source: British Geological Survey  https://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html

Fracking Greed and Money

Don't drink the water! - from "Gasland" - view trailer here.

"It's two factors - greed and money."

The words of a resident of a Texan town that ran out of water, partly from drought but also because of the huge quantities of water drawn from the local aquifer by an oil company undertaking fracking in the area.

Pollution of water supplies by fracking - highlighted most dramatically by flaring kitchen sink taps in the film "Gasland" - is often cited as a major fear of those opposed to fracking for gas. But the process of hydraulic fracturing itself uses massive quantities of water, pumped into the shale to force gas out. In any scenario where there is pressure on water supply, fracking can only compound it. And with global warming leading to warmer and warmer summers, even countries with traditionally moderate climates like the UK will likely face fracking-induced droughts - with the additional threat that the water that is still available might be poisoned in any case.

This video, from The Guardian Newspaper, tells the story of the Texan town that ran dry...





Originally published in The Guardian 11 August 2013:   Texan drought sets residents against fracking 
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