Leaving aside all of the ecological, environmental, geological and pollution concerns. The blasting of water, sand and corrosive chemicals deep into the ground to crack the bed-rock. The risk of poisoning tapwater, causing earthquakes and releasing more greenhouse gases than coal.
Leaving aside all of that there are three main problems with Hydraulic Fracturing.
It’s a Waste of Resources!
The Government is in denial over energy and jobs. Pursuing short term political gain means that they are willing to accept Corporate Investment at any cost, especially if it even partly addresses either of these massive long term issues.
A company called Cuadrilla is drilling for shale gas in the Blackpool area. They spend £10.5m drilling and fracturing each well. They sink over 3km of steel and concrete into the ground that can never be removed or reused. All of the effort and resources invested in the drilling result in a gas well that has a life of around 20 years. They propose to drill 400 of these wells on 40 sites across Lancashire employing 1,700 local people. They claim that another 3,900 jobs will be created indirectly.
Even if you believe their figures, you would expect an investment of £4.2b to generate more than 5,600 jobs. That’s £750,000 per job and the jobs only last for 9 years (once the wells are drilled and producing gas there is little employment generated). When there are over 1m under 25’s unemployed, investments like this are clearly not in the national interest. Where is the long term employment? Where is the sustainable energy production? Why is it happening?
International Investors Set to Make a Fortune
This is the kicker. Each of Cuadrillas £10.5m wells could produce as much as £100m worth of gas…
So they spend £4.2b to get £40b. That’s a potential profit of £30b once they have bunged £6b to the Government in tax (if they pay it). Where will this £30b go? The answer is likely to be to Australia, America, Hong Kong, Kuwait or China… Cuadrilla are backed by two financiers A.J. Lucas and Riverstone Holdings. A.J. Lucas were recently recapitalised to the tune of $110m by Kerogen and the story continues…
So while Cuadrilla burn their way through £20m a year in the Blackpool area to prove that they can Frack the UK safely. The rest of the Oil & Gas Industry are waiting to pile in.
There is shale under one third of the UK and as the industry is largely unregulated and intrinsically hard to regulate. The profit margin will rise if standards fall as they have in the USA. But enough about the environmental concerns…
It’s Our Fracking Gas Anyway!
Ownership of oil and gas within the land area of Great Britain was vested in the Crown by the Petroleum (Production) Act 1934. This means that the gas belongs to the Queen! and once she! has sold the licence we – the british public – have to buy the gas at market rates. The £30b profit is generated by you paying your gas bill…
They tell us that we will have energy security, that we will no longer have to buy gas from Russia and that it will be cheaper. The first two stories only hold together for 7-10 years if we Frack fast and dirty like they video. As for the gas price dropping we have definitely been told that story before and it’s a lie for so many reasons.
Not as Steve Bell originally intended…
