A fresh moratorium on fracking for shale gas has been enforced by the government, and a sizeable number of voters in last week’s poll believe the move has been politically motivated.
The government based its latest suspension of fracking activities on a report by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), which found that it is not currently possible to accurately predict the probability or magnitude of earthquakes linked to fracking activities.
But with a general election due in December, 41 per cent of respondents to last week’s poll viewed the move as being politically oriented to win votes.
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Further reading
- Protests in Lancashire as Cuadrilla fracking set to resume
- Fracking all over the world
- Tectonic activity may have scuppered UK fracking potential
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Just over a quarter of respondents (27 per cent) agree that the UK shouldn’t be extracting fossil fuels and favour the move, followed by 17 per cent who see fracking as a seismic risk.
Of the remaining 15 per cent of the vote, 10 per cent viewed the moratorium as being brought about by environmental pressure, and five per cent opted for ‘none of the above’.
A refrain of ‘keep it in the ground’ currently echoes around the comments section, which remains open to your comments on this subject. We do, however, ask that your comments remain on topic and that responses are concise and comply with our guidelines for the content of comments.
Keep the stuff in the ground for now, its value will increase until we’re desperate
Keep the stuff in the ground full stop.
I don’t want it in my lungs thank you very much.
The political pressure = environmental pressure in the questonaire.
A simple factoid to consider is : the UK imports almost 600 TWh gas /year at say £15/MWh (very variable) this means that the UK needs to sell goods and services overseas worth over £ 9b / year some of which could be offset by fracking. The potential savings are not clear (as fracking has been so limited), but now are unlikely to be realised until the economy hits the bottom.
The environmental / green lobby represent a small part of UK society that are comfortably off and who can afford the luxury of moral superiority; sadly the press over-represents this group.
I really wanted to answer a, b & c but in this instance it’s clear it’ s just a move to try and appease Northern voters and those of us with a desire to see the planet protected.
However, given the timing of it, I had to go ‘a’ – the Tories have defended fracking since day 1. Johnson is on record saying “no stone should remain unfracked”.
ASHRAE have been reporting problems with fracking in parts of the US, with contamination of surface with fracking chemicals and leakage from the well lining, as well as sub surface water, but the interested parties have more sway with congress, leaving it to local state enforcement to take action on a piecemeal footing.
So far the fracking experiment in the UK does not convince me that it will be of any benefit in our fuel economy, and the problems to date seem to far outweigh the possible returns.
What about onshore wind? The government put a halt on supporting wind and put their weight behind fracking – why would they do that?
Let’s be realistic a reading of between 2.0 – 2.9 cannot be termed an earthquake. It is the equivalent of a bus driving by your house; a person may feel a slight quiver, if at all; there would be no damage to buildings. Globally, within this category, there are over 1 million occurrences per annum.
The risks versus the gains are minimal but in the UK we do have form for being susceptible to scaremongering and exaggerated lies.
The timing is very suspicious, and it’s only a moratorium not an outright ban. BoJo and the conservatives have a long history of fine words and no action and there are a number of big issues for the country whose decisions have been pushed into the future which is suspicious in itself: Eg. HS2, Heathrow expansion, …
Re. Fracking. We apparently have a climate emergency so logically fracking should be banned along with any further fossil fuel exploration – let’s concentrate on making what we have more environmentally efficient.
For me earthquakes are not the primary issue with fracking, it is the pollution of the water table which is obscenely stupid.
Disappointing, not surprising. Whilst the “best thing” would be to totally decarbonise the UK economy by Wednesday week (or whatever date the politicians are promising these days); natural gas is the answer IMHO to the question Andy Capp posed (in a different context):
https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/GetMultimedia.ashx?db=Catalog&fname=AC0282.jpg
The last module of my degree was on geology. I had to research fracking for my final exam. The BGS has a lot of research publicly available. It is a shame that both the pro & anti fracking groups never seem to bother with the science.
I looked at the Weald basin that covers much of the South East. There is a lot of theoretical oil & gas, but owing to the immaturity of the rock layers, only a tiny amount could be extracted for a profit. Over the whole South East, we are only talking another six or so wells, 4 conventional, 2 fracked. Forget the hype about being the next Saudi Arabia. The geology does not allow it. Six new oil/gas wells are not worth getting worked up about. Every little helps for energy security, but if those six wells were screened, like the ones in Poole harbour, would anyone mind, or even know they were there?
Its not important why its been suspended. It should be stopped for good. Instead, technological efforts must be put into finding, developing and rolling out viable alternatives to natural gas. We are already heading for a climate change train wreck – soon. The longer we leave it, the bigger the wreck.
Unfortunately an earthquake of 2.9 is nearly half the value of a serious 6.0 earthquake so it must be serious in the eyes of Joe and Jane public. The concept of logarithmic scales is somewhat lost lost on many people, even some professionals mess it up! Perhaps we need more ‘public friendly’ scales when communicating things to the public?
Hardly going to effect your lungs!
Shale gas is primarily natural gas, but does depends on well type.
The main concern of the finished product (natural gas) is not air quality but the release of global warming gases from its combustion. If the CO2 can be recovered then environmentally it would be harmless – but that is the if!
Difficult poll to answer unless you are a geologist/expert in the field. But for all the world it looks like a convenient political move, won’t lose any votes but might gain a few.
Oh how cynical we have become of our political classes, do wish it was a requirement to have a STEM qualification to enter politics!
“PaulL 5th November 2019 at 2:31 pm
Let’s be realistic a reading of between 2.0 – 2.9 cannot be termed an earthquake. It is the equivalent of a bus driving by your house;”
So we should ban those silly painted-up Battle Buses that politicians use round the country during campaigns…..
Let the people who oppose fracking carry on paying premium rates for imported gas and let the rest of us have realistic energy pricing.
Stupid people do not understand that the earthquake measurement is not a proportional scale but a log scale.
We are much more at risk from micro plastic beads and the incineration of plastic waste than we are from the unfounded scare stories of gas and chemicals in our drinking water.
This energy source could parachute us into a leading industrial nation where cheap power could revolutionise electric vehicles, data centres and boost our manufacturing industries to become World beaters.
Bring on the fracking I say!
However, banning fracking is just the headline. The sub text says “until compelling new evidence shows that fracking does not put populations at risk” it’s still open.
Leave it in the ground until we can deal with ALL of the side effects safely.
I must admit I would prefer it if we were not looking at using fossil fuels; however it does seem that gas is required to support wind power (or vice-versa as some oil companies might well see it) – so it depends which “environmentalist” are promoting it and which opposing.
There is an interesting discussion going on in https://www.theengineer.co.uk/uk-government-halts-shale-gas-fracking/ – in which the viability of fracking in the UK is questioned (as significant differences to the geology in the USA – with more folded layers in the UK and horizontal ones in the USA).
And I am not sure how important the seismic tremors are – as scale is logarithmic)
Amazing what people can read between the lines / invent to suit their own bias. It’s a moratorium. Logically therefore it must be open to review at a later date. Is that when the process is better understood, when the election is over, when we run out of gas, or what? We don’t know and therefore we make it up. Not very scientific. Does the timing make a difference? Again it depends on your bias. Inevitably decisions will be made that coincide with something else. Should the government defer any decisions on anything until the election is over? The reality is that life has to go on regardless of elections, of minority protests, of football matches, of anything short of a real (as opposed to a politically concocted) emergency. No doubt we will revisit fracking in a few years when the science is clearer.
Because on-shore wind is too cheap and doesn’t require public subsidies, unlike fossil fuels?
In response to Tom Foreman. Wind is massively subsidised with guaranteed payments even if the power cannot be used; it costs consumers £ 140 / MWh at least, compared with a gas generated price of below £ 50 /MWh. That is the main reason why its subsidy was stopped, (apart from non-reliability of course).
Fossil fuels are a massive source of government revenues, and are certainly not subsidised. Without these revenues, either direct taxation must rise or other taxable ruses found to pay for the life style that we currently enjoy.
According to the European Commission report linked here, the UK pays out around £10.5billion in subsidies to fossil fuels per year, compared with £8.5billion support for renewables.
Right about now, UK electricity generation is:
5% Coal, 16% Nuclear, 56% Gas, 2% Wind
according to http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
… just saying
Fracking, that emotionally loaded word suggests violence to nature and may well unnecessarily spoil the chance for the UK to become more energy self sufficient during the intervening period when clean and safe nuclear fission and even fusion will come on line. Furthermore, there is no law of physics to get at the low CO2 natural gas deposits without fracking i.e. drilling without damaging the geological formation. So if the geological formations in the UK can be proven to hold “media un-hyped” exploitable amounts of natural gas, let’s develop non-frack methods to get at the stuff to work towards greater independence from foreign governments in an increasingly politically turbulent world.
I can assure readers that the August Bank Holiday Monday 2.9 Richter Scale Intensity Level 6 Hydrofrac earthquake caused more damage to my family home, situated 4.4 miles away from PNR, than a passing bus ever could. Although it was just one of several hundred Hydrofrac earthquakes caused by Cuadrilla!
Stuart, the source of the claim about subsidies is a largely discredited ODI report. The data used to claim subsidies are frankly ludicrous: they claim that transport VAT at zero is a subsidy and that VAT should be applied to domestic gas usage etc. These are politico-social issues and are certainly not subsidies in the normal sense of the word.
Even the climate-change crazed UK government has decried the report and stated that fossil fuel taxes and duties have provided £b 29 – 39 per year to the exchequer over the last 30 years. The government stated that the only actual subsidies given to the fossil fuel industry are exploration and decommissioning cost allowances.
Hi Jack.
Much of this depends upon how people view subsidies.
There was an article in the Guardian) suggesting that someone in the EU viewed the lower rate of VAT (for electricity, for example) was a form of subsidy. And the graphic did seem to suggest that with the the”subsidy” being proportionate to the amount of contribution to electricity generated – certainly between fossil and nuclear).
I am not convinced by the tendentious arguments in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/23/uk-has-biggest-fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-the-eu-finds-commission) – and believe that bringing VAT down from 20% to 5% is not really a subsidy….
As far as I can tell from this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax_in_the_United_Kingdom#History – and it IS a mess – the highest rate of VAT ever charged on domestic fuel and power was 8%, so to class the difference between standard rate VAT (20%) and the current rate for domestic fuel and power (5%) as a subsidy seems spurious; I agree with the last two comments. Motor fuels are taxed heavily and certainly not subsidised (58p fuel duty + ~30p VAT per litre)
Thanks for the interesting comments Stuart, peter and Trevor. My opinion is that taxation is for a government to decide and we all benefit from it even if we all complain. A subsidy is surely spending money to do something that would not happen otherwise. These are necessary to protect businesses from world-wide events, but unfortunately, the UK has not used them for that and has allowed heavy industry, and the jobs related to it, to be off-shored. Many engineers are interested in the economic and moral / ethical aspects of subsidy, as shown by the response to articles about decision making in the UK.
We have a huge amount of food waste, farm waste and organic matter that regrows every year, which could produce the gas we’ll need (in future) AND do it sustainably, simply by building enough AD plant. Empty wells are no use to Man nor beast. Just add green hydrogen.
“GasTerra, a venture between Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp. and the Dutch state that 5 years ago still handled more than a fifth of all the gas produced in Europe, had already been forced to adapt to output constraints at the Groningen field after tremors damaged nearby buildings. But shutting down is a step further. . . .
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/europe/206001/dutch-gas-shutdown-puts-at-risk-future-of-europes-biggest-hub/
The only tremor I’ve experienced was rated 4.4 on the Richter scale, in Wales. It’s quite a shock getting a kick in the back from the chair you’re sitting on.
Fossil fuel subsidies are for “exploration and decommissioning”. So, end all FF subsidies.
“The Dutch government last year launched fiscal benefits for investments in gas exploration in the North Sea in order to try to preserve the offshore gas sector.” – Leave it to die. . . go green.
The next Ice Age is thousands of years away, so it’s very bad timing and remarkably stupid to be warming the Earth now! We should keep fossil fuel in the ground for when it can be put to much better use! I’ve cherry-picked this piece from MIT:-
“In about 2,000 years, when the types of planetary motions that can induce polar cooling start to coincide again, the current warming trend will be a distant memory.” (a PAINful memory!?)
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/416786/global-warming-vs-the-next-ice-age/