Given the current interest in the issue after the Brent Council statement on fracking I reproduce below a posting from the Brent Green Party blog:
Fracking: neither cheap nor
safe
Frontline article by Ken Montague
(reproduced with permission from http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=12389)
The growing resistance to fracking -
the "hydraulic fracturing" of deep level shale rocks to extract
natural gas - promises to reignite the climate movement after years of
demoralisation following the failure of the UN climate talks in 2009.
A feature of the recent march and
blockades at Cuadrilla Resources' drilling site near Balcombe in West Sussex
was the diversity of the people involved, as well as the numbers. Local
residents were central to the protests, as they have been at Fylde, near
Blackpool, where two Cuadrilla fracking operations led to minor earthquakes.
Today there are 45 anti-fracking
groups around the country preparing to take action when further licences are
issued. Given that 64 percent of England sits above shale gas and oil deposits,
and their commercial exploitation could mean thousands of fracking sites, the
protests are likely to increase and erupt into a full-scale war of attrition
against the Cameron government and its dash for gas.
What has made fracking such an
explosive issue is the evidence after 20 years of drilling in the US that the
process is inherently unsafe. This is due to the uncontrolled leakage of
methane into the air and groundwater, and the possible risks to health of the
chemical additives in the fracking fluid used to prize the rocks open. Methane
is a neurotoxin, which can cause early-onset dementia. The mix of additives,
which in America has found its way into drinking water, includes chemicals that
are known to be toxic or carcinogenic.
The British government says that
fracking will only be permitted under strict regulation. But this ignores the
fact that we do not have the technology to ensure that the cement barriers
encasing the drilling shafts can withstand the pressures involved or that gas
can be prevented from escaping from the pipelines and processing units.
Studies in the US showed that in 45
percent of cases the barriers failed at some point in the process and 5 percent
of rigs leaked from the start.
The other, broader, issue is the
government's intention to make gas a "core part" of Britain's energy
mix "well into and beyond" 2030. This flies in the face of the
warnings by many authorities that, with the unabated burning of fossil fuels,
the world is on course for an unthinkable temperature increase of 4 to 6
degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
A recent report by Lord Stern and the
Carbon Tracker think-tank made it clear that, if we are to have any chance of
avoiding catastrophic climate change, we have to switch to renewables now, and
leave 80 percent of coal, gas and oil reserves "in the ground".
Last year the government's decision
to cut investment in renewables and make Britain "even more
attractive" for the oil and gas companies provoked an angry letter from
its independent Committee on Climate Change stating categorically that
gas-fired power generation "could not form the basis for government
policy" if it was to meet its carbon reduction targets.
Of course there are apologists for
fracking who argue that gas can be a "transitional" fuel because it
emits only 50 percent of the CO2 emitted by coal. In a recent speech on climate
change, US president Barack Obama even referred to it as "clean"
energy. This overlooks the effect of the leakage of methane, which is a far
more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
For natural gas to be cleaner than
coal, methane emissions would need to be kept below 2 percent of annual
production, but recent studies by the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration at gas fields in California, Colorado and Utah found that
leakages ranged between 2.3 percent and 17 percent of production.
As well as giving tax breaks to the
fracking companies and cash sweeteners to local communities, the government
tries to sell us fracking by saying it will offer unlimited cheap energy and
create thousands of jobs.
The Committee on Climate Change,
however, has shown that extracting gas is actually more costly than installing
renewables and even Cuadrilla admits that the impact on fuel bills would be
negligible.
Leaving aside Green MP Caroline
Lucas's comment that "there are no jobs on a dead planet", there is
clear evidence that renewables generate more jobs than fossil fuel industries.
A study by the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute
suggests that a million dollars invested in gas would create five jobs while
the same amount invested in wind and solar power would create around 13 jobs.
This is the kind of argument behind the growing campaign in Britain for a
million climate jobs.
Fracking for gas is not safe, not
clean, not cheap, and nor the best way to create jobs or to tackle climate
change. Nonetheless, Lord John Browne, the government's chief adviser on the
subject, says it's the way forward. He should know; he is chairman and 30
percent owner of Cuadrilla.
