The House of Lords questioned Baroness Verma on shale gas developments yesterday. The formal question came from Baron Renton and was on safety and regulation of shale gas, but there were a series of follow-ups from other peers, mostly from the pro-shale side. The only voices against were a rather vacuous contribution from Baroness Worthington and a bizarre one from the Liberal Democrat Lord Teverson, who seemed to suggest that a successful shale gas industry would use 10% of the UK water supply.
Given my earlier researches into water use in fracking operations, this figure seems quite unbelievable. My guess as that he arrives at it by defining UK water supply as being domestic (i.e. treated) water only and then assuming that all the wells would be fracking simultaneously rather than over a period of years. This is only supposition though.
I wonder if anyone can throw any light on it.
The video is here, with the section on fracking right at the start.