I've muttered in this blog on previous occasions about the need to approach the fracking "debate" in an informed and rational manner. Unfortunately that is still not happening, the debate remains a battle of the megaphones.
On the one hand we have the likes of David Cameron who argues that fracked gas will drive down energy bills and make Britain more competitive. This has happened in the States but there are plenty of differences between the situation here and the scene over there. Translating market experience from the latter to the former is certainly not a one-to-one process.
On the other side are the environmental movements who say that fracking poisons water supplies, pollutes the atmosphere and triggers earthquakes. Much of this is vastly overstated.
Let's try to place a little bit if rationality into the arena.
First of all, how about a little piece of history? Fracking as a technique has been around since the 1940s. Essentially it consists of pumping a fluid into a shale formation (shale in the most abundant form of sedimentary rock and serves as the source rock for oil and gas) to crack the rock. These fractures are propped open with a proppant, often sand, to allow trapped oil and gas to flow out. Water is the major component of fracking fluid but there are chemical additives to ease the process (e.g. polymers to reduce friction thereby allowing lower pressures to be utilised).
The big change that led us to the current situation was the application of fracking combined with horizontal drilling to tap into gas-rich shales that had hitherto been impossible to extract economically. In 2000 shale gas represented just 2% of US natural gas production. Now it is approaching 40%.
So what of the competing claims of the megaphone wielders?
Let's start with the economics. Latest estimates suggest that there are about 1300tn cubic feet of shale gas in NW England. That's a hell of a lot and even extracting just a low percentage would cover potential demand for many years. However, England is much more densly populated than the US; land ownership and mineral rights differ markedly; despite the current fuss over enegy prices the population here appears to have a greater tolerance for high costs particularly where they are incurred for environmental reasons; the regulatory regime here is likely to be and remain more stringent that on the other side of the Atlantic (see the latest EU moves on requiring extensive environmental audits before fracking for instance). So an economic bonanza seems unlikely. Sorry, David.
However, fracking would play to energy security which readers of this blog will recognise as a recurrent theme. And with the US now exporting cheap coal that has been displaced by gas there is a delicate balance to be managed by the UK and other European countries between climate change commitments and international competitiveness.
Now to the environmentalist's side.
Can groundwater be contaminated? Well, yes, in certain circumstances it can. But in general shales for fracking and groundwater aquifers are separated by thousands of metres of rock. The issue would appear to be one that is manageable through judicious well construction. So there is a place for regulation and inspection here - adding to my "no economic bonanza" statements above.
Does fracking trigger earthquakes? Very rarely and of low energy. Coal mining is a bigger threat in this area. However, storage of wastewater in depleted wells has been shown to cause more noticeable tremors. In fact waste water is perhaps one of the bigger problems. We may well see much more recycling and less disposal in the future.
Finally there's climate change. Gas is a carbon-based fuel, of course, so there is a CO2 issue. If attention is deflected from low/zero carbon energy sources by fracked gas then this is not a good thing - especially if the gas is used in electricity generation because a CCGT built now could still be operating in 2040. But if gas is displacing coal then at least it is a move in the right direction.
What do I think is going to happen? Well - there will be shale gas, the politics of the situation simply dictate that. Possibly, though, it will be in support of renewables, not replacing them. And, who knows, maybe carbon capture and storage will have a role to play.
Watch this space.
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