Wednesday
Dec052012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Fracking get a move on
Dec 5, 2012 Energy: gas Matt Ridley issues a clarion call for the UK to start fracking:
As part of today’s Autumn Statement, George Osborne is expected to approve the building of 30 gas-fired power stations, simplify the regulatory process for fracking and provide tax breaks for shale gas production in Lancashire as early as next year. This is good news for Lancashire, for the British economy, for manufacturing firms and for the global environment. To do anything else would risk economic self-harm.
Amen to that.
Reader Comments (82)
Dung
Re your first paragraph. I endorse every word.
I've lost count of the number of times I have said that our grandchildren will curse us rather than thank us if we try to apply today's knowledge and technology — and fears! —to their problems.
And then along comes geo-fracking to add weight to the argument.
But then I suppose mankind will never believe that the next generation can be cleverer, richer, and more knowledgeable than the present one, for all we do in reality "know" that to be the case.
I'm interested to know how the appearance of a new industrial process like fracking is handled by the companies in such a way as to not poison the environment.
Presumably there are generic laws against allowing your chemicals to leech into the water supply already, so when the drillers develop their technology they are careful to build in safeguards? Or is there some authority that defines minimum standards that must be adhered to?
I'm interested to understand how this sort of safety gets built into the process.
Barking Greg Barker used to work for Sibneft and, before that, Anglo-Siberian Oil.
I want to know if he still is.
MrPotarto: "I'm interested to know how the appearance of a new industrial process like fracking is handled by the companies in such a way as to not poison the environment."
Novelty does not appear to be accurate here. In Matt Ridley's article, he writes, "Fracking of one kind or another has been used here for decades." Read the article for more information on its demonstrated safety.
Mike/James, are you not also making assumptions? In claiming that money spent on CCS or wind turbines or pensions or health involve an opportunity cost, you are assuming that the money would be better spent elsewhere. It might well be, but then again it might not. All you have are assertions, no more.
According to Reuters, there is going to be "a government office for shale gas to simplify regulation of the unconventional gas sector". So it depends on who makes the appointments to the office and how many greens get in there. http://www.thegwpf.org/george-osborne-green-light-shale-revolution/
Fraccing 'chemicals' are water, sand, detergent and the same biocide you use in food. The fact that it is a benzo has made the ill-informed jump up and down. However, last year, the US Congress issued a report saying there was no problem.
MrPortato
I'm not sure if that's a genuine question or not. I'll treat it as serious.
Hydraulic fracturing is not a new process. It has been industry standard procedure for at least 40 years. Horizontal drilling has been used for 30 years or more. When drilling, the hole is cased, the drill fluid is pumped down the centre of the drill string, and the return flow (between the outside of the drill sting and the casing) is captured, filtered and re-cycled.
When drilling/fracturing is completed, the drill fluid is collected and disposed of, off site. Disposal means appropriate treatment, not simply dumping.
The entire process is highly regulated. This is not the 19th Century. There are serious financial penalties for infringement, and failures can be career limiting for staff of the companies involved.
HP, how many wells are there per independent inspector?
If you want to know about environmental protection, I suggest you do your own homework and ring up the relevant ministry.
TBY,
I had no interests in these matters. Initially, I read Freeman Dyson's The Origin of Life, a work whose implications on modern biology have not yet sunk in. I wanted to read more Dyson and accidentally stumbled upon Thomas Gold's The Deep Hot Biosphere with Dyson listed as co-author. I bought the book rolling my eyes - "petrol abiogenesis - bah". My previous exposure to petrol biogenesis only was a charlatan who had claimed a simple method for getting diesel from plants, grabbed media attention, and eventually got himself arrested. But I knew next to nothing about the topic, so I was a good 'target' for its content.
A short paper by Gold, with the same title, is here: The deep hot biosphere
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 89, pp. 6045-6049, July 1992
HP:
You are happy to detail chapter and verse of how well regulated fracking is, but clam up when asked about the real situation on the ground. If you are in the industry, it's not as if you wouldn't know. So why so bashful all of a sudden? It couldn't be that practice is not quite as clean as theory, could it?
BB: What is the relevance of the number of Inspectors? They don't have to go round at regular intervals to check up. Properly lodged paperwork and random unannounced inspections are all that is needed - with large penalties for breaking the regs.
BB, when people support fracking on here, they mean properly regulated fracking. If you are going to raise some spectre of poor regulation it is quite beside the point and makes it look as if you are desperate to find some objection, merely argufying for the sake of it, an impression I am sure you would not want to give.
To reinforce the message....
SASOL have just announced the front-end design phase of an integrated Gas-To-Liquids and Ethane cracker project to be built in Louisiana. It will cost around $20 bn and produce close to 100,000 barrels per day of fuel products plus 1.5 mtpa of ethylene and deriviatives from shale gas. Direct employment will be around 2000, once completed, with up to 7000 during construction. Many more jobs will be created for suppliers and the down-stream users of the products.
Shell have a similar US scheme in the works.
There is no reason why something similar could not be built here - the pre-existing industrial bases in the NW and NE would be ideal.
To pick just one major benefit: both the fuel output and the ethylene will replace oil-sourced products with obvious and massive cost savings for the balance of payments plus a huge boost for government taxes.
Re.:
"You are happy to detail chapter and verse of how well regulated fracking is, but clam up when asked about the real situation on the ground. If you are in the industry, it's not as if you wouldn't know. So why so bashful all of a sudden? It couldn't be that practice is not quite as clean as theory, could it?"
I posted these links on another fracing/fraccing thread, but please, BB, take your pick:
http://www.nohotair.co.uk/
http://exploreshale.org/
http://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Policy/Exploration/HYDRAULIC_FRACTURING_PRIMER.pdf
The last one goes into detail (page eight) about the various chemicals used – don’t be bashful, read it. If you have a problem with any of these terrible toxins, you'd better clean-out your kitchen cupboard.
Now making of fuel is another matter. They are no longer 'fossil' fuels.
BB..yes, the guys in Whitehall do know best. I am sure you have never heard of AGR reactors because you constantly assure us that you know nothing apart from what your alarmist pressure group tells you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_gas-cooled_reactor
quote:
"The lead station, Dungeness B was ordered in 1965 with a target completion date of 1970. After problems with nearly every aspect of the reactor design it finally began generating electricity in 1983, 13 years late. The follow on stations all experienced similar problems and delays. The financing cost of the capital expended, and the cost of providing replacement electricity during the delays, were enormous, totally invalidating the pre-construction economic case."
And we should believe that CCS is a well-thought out plan? That your views on opportunity costs are meaningful? You are, as ever, laughable. Do please tell us also whether you would even have noticed the tremors alleged to have been caused by Cuadrilla near Blackpool. Please check the alarmist checklist for the approved way of referring to those insignificant events.
Hector,
Thanks for the response, I was being serious.
I have no knowledge of the practicalities of this sort of process, so when a friend says, "but is it safe?" I don't have a view to offer.
OK, fracking is not *new*, but I don't think it has been used on mainland UK before? Or if it has, presumably in a more restricted area than is being proposed.
I'm just trying to understand how regulation develops in such a circumstance.
Mr Portarto
Believe it or not the company in the headlines (Cuadrilla) in terms of fracking, actually drilled and fracked a well near Blackpool 20 years ago and it has been producing gas ever since.
You can see what a shale well head normally looks like once it has been fracked here:
http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/our-sites/elswick/
Interesting. Thanks, Dung. And thanks to El Sabio for his links.
For those here asking questions on the fracking process, I thoroughly recommend popping over to the “Crunch time for UK fracking” thread and reading the excellent posts by Les Johnson.
Oh you are right Philip. If they have paperwork that says they have no leaks then what is there to worry about? What was I thinking...
Diogenes, your cut and paste shows that AGR was a financial disaster. It does not show that it harmed the economy because of "opportunity costs". It might have and then again it might not. All you have is assertion, not proof.
Rhoda, "merely argufying for the sake of it": heaven forbid!
There is an old saying,that i just made up.
Politicians will say anything to get elected and do anything to stay in power.
Nick Clegg and Tuition Fees.
George Osborne and Petrol Pump Rises.
Neal and Glenys Kinnock used to march to Aldermaston in the 1950s.
But reluctantly had to keep Polaris Nuclear Submarines.
David and Ed Milliband both their parents were Rabid Communists Activists.
They praised the Economic progress of the old Soviet Union
Which involved exploiting Russia's vast Mineral Oil and Gas wealth.
And enslaving political prisoners from Gulags into the inhospitable regions to help them do it
So what is the Labour Party's position on Shale.Gas, anyone actually asked Lispy Ed yet.
BitBucket
I wasn't the one that raised the subject of opportunity costs. I am simply pointing out that you are making a series of assumptions and I note that you chose not to address the first question I asked, namely what is the basis for your (implied) hypothesis that creating jobs is a form of investment.
MJ, I didn't know what you were referring to. On reflection, perhaps you object to 'invests' in my, "...and invests those billions developing CCS", in which case substitute 'spends'. It is irrelevant. Or maybe you meant something else...?
It's all very well to suggest investing (aka taxing the population) to investegate and one day developed CCS as a viable technology. This is a variant of good old Bastiat, would the country be better off if the people could do what they like with the money? Invest in more efficient heating and insulation, buy a more efficient car? I would have thought probably, The thing is any wealthy nation produces stuff that other nations want to buy, the Chinese understand this whereas we've forgotten it and that's why they are getting richer as a nation and we're getting poorer.
Then it begs the question when we get good at CCS we'll be able to control the climate to a fine degree, model says next ten years too cold just release a load of GHG; model says next ten years too warm capture a load of GHG. It's the logical conclusion of AGW and CCS theories surely? Who is going to say what is too hot the sub-saharan nations and too cold the Russians? More likely an unelected UN IPCC.
Actual science, the RS, and the environment are a tricky balance!
But if the environment is the one that exists within the establishment? Then;-
Knight to Lord?
Checkmate!
Whether the UK Fracks or not won't have much effect on UK energy prices, which are largely set by international supply/demand. This because enough other countries will frack (Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Algeria etc) to bring down the international/European price of gas.
What the UK not fracking will do is reduce the capacity of the UK to buy gas, and all the other good stuff people want, like schools, hospitals, windmills for African if you like, because of the national wealth forgone by not fracking. And if the higher shale gas estimates prove correct, we are talking about well north of a hundred billion pounds. Buy a lot of windmills in Africa for that kind of money.
Of course we should frack, and we are going to. The government is not daft, even though it feels obliged to say the same old crapola about the green economy, climate change, etc. We are winning in a really marked way these days, the rhetoric will match the actions in time. I can live with the BS as long as stuff is happening in the real world.
Bitbucket:
"HP:
If you want to know about environmental protection, I suggest you do your own homework and ring up the relevant ministry.
You are happy to detail chapter and verse of how well regulated fracking is, but clam up when asked about the real situation on the ground. If you are in the industry, it's not as if you wouldn't know. So why so bashful all of a sudden? It couldn't be that practice is not quite as clean as theory, could it?"
I'm not "in the industry". I am a geologist, and have worked for the industry as a consultant. Geologists typically sit on the rig, collecting and analysing samples as they come out of the hole. It is not a geologists job to know the minutiae of environmental regulation for drillers. I have not given "chapter and verse". What I know is what I have seen.
The system works like this. A company exploration team will identify a target. This can takes years and cost millions. When the target is decided, a contract will be let to a driller, and the drilling stategy decided. Drilling a normal hole (straight down for 3000 metres) may take a month and cost a million dollars (very rough, I've been out of the game for 20 years). Any accident or incident costs serious money in downtime and will lead to an interview with the boss, no tea, no biscuits.
Follow up my reference to Wytch Farm. BP used a contactor to send an 8 inch diameter drill string down, turn through 90 degrees to the horizontal, then out into channel for 10 miles and find the target. Find the target is important. The hole would have then been logged, cased, perforated, fractured and completed. This is not a trivial task. It needs a level of professionalism beyond the comprehension of RealClimateScientist (TM) and GreenInc.
Cuadrilla will be contracting out for their drilling. At this level, the drillers will be global and professional, and perfectly capable of managing horizontal drilling and the trivial task of fracturing and managing drill fluids. The Health and Safety and Environmental Protection regulations which will apply will be the same as any others in the UK. This will include hazardous materials. If you have concerns about the professionalism of the various parties, I suggest you take them to the appropriate authorities.
If to reduce or eliminate a tax on some product constitutes a subsidy then if the government and civil service fell into a deep sleep, and taxed nothing and nobody, then they would be responsilble for producing all output and every income.
Some would call that a reductio ad absurdum.