Time for the truth about fracking risks
ANALYSIS published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, and reported on the BBC, revealed an astonishingly high number of chemical spills related to fracking in the US.
The report highlighted 6,648 spills in just four states alone — Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.
The researchers determined that up to 16 percent of fracked oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, fracking fluids and other potentially harmful substances.
We know that in this country Third Energy want to frack up to 950 wells, something that was stated openly by Third’s operations director John Dewar in the Houses of Parliament and another fracking firm INEOS want to drill just as many wells all across the North of England. The latter has been recently exposed for trying to survey for gas under playgrounds, parks and even a war memorial in the Midlands.
Now just imagine if 16 per cent of Third Energy’s 950 wells spill their toxic cocktail of fracking fluid – the result of this could be disastrous for Yorkshire.
It’s about time Third Energy, INEOS and the army of PR firms they employ start to be truthful about the true risks associated with the fracking instead of trying to persuade us that our hugely underfunded and inexperienced regulators can control this highly risky and dangerous fracking industry.
I WRITE in support of the letters from Christopher Pickles, Wendy Cross and Jarvis Browning that set out some of the many reasons to oppose fracking (The Yorkshire Post, February 23).
The BBC recently featured a new peer-reviewed scientific paper concluding that across the USA, 16 per cent of fracking wells with their associated equipment leaked within their first year of operation.
Here in the UK, the industry itself states that at least 1,500 fracking wells in the North of England would be required to produce enough shale gas to make it economically worthwhile.
Many of those wells would be drilled through the aquifiers that supply our drinking water.
Now my maths is a bit rusty, but my calculator tells me that 16 per cent of 1,500 is 240.
Yes, 240 leaking wells. Perhaps some of those leaks would be minor and containable, but what of the rest?
Should we be risking our precious water supplies to enable the fracking industry to make a profit?
SO Francis Egan of Cuadrilla maintains it would be madness to import gas when gas can be fracked here in the UK (The Yorkshire Post, February 22). Well, as Mandy Rice-Davies once remarked of a gentleman who claimed not to have met her, “He would, wouldn’t he? A useful rule of thumb when evaluating such advice is “Cui bono?” Who stands to gain?
From: Frank Colenso, Hovingham.
TWO hundred fracking wells across Ryedale will destroy, not support, our local economy never mind the predicted 2,000!
Comments that opposition to shale gas is not backed by science is scurrilous to say the least. I would urge everyone, as so many have, to research both sides of the argument.