Frequently Asked Questions

How To Spot A Drilling Rig?

A major part of fracking is the drilling of the wells, which requires a specialised drilling rig. Keeping track of the fracking industry, and effectively resisting it, may require communities across the country to be able to spot the presence and movements of these drilling rigs. Continue reading

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Is Hydraulic Fracturing Allowed In The Weald?

Short answer: Yes hydraulic fracturing of the size companies would actually want to do is allowed. Long answer: In general what people are fighting against, unconventional oil & gas extraction (fracking), hasn’t been prohibited anywhere. In various parts of the world some potential aspects of these complex processes, such as massive slickwater hydraulic fracturing, have […]

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Why does frack sand mining threaten Cheshire & East Anglia?

Sand for fracking has already been mined in Cheshire so this is not a hypothetical threat. The sand for Cuadrilla Resources hydraulic fracturing tests at Preese Hall in 2011 was mined at Bent Farm Quarry near Congleton and Dingle Bank Quarry near Chelford. Both quarries are operated by Sibelco, the largest frac sand supplier in […]

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Seismic Testing is Happening in my Area – What Should I Do?

With shale and coal formations under large areas of the UK, fracking companies need to undertake Seismic Surveys to get some idea of where best to drill. If your area has been Licensed for fracking a Seismic Survey and approaches to landowners for site acquisition are likely to follow. The basic principle of the seismic […]

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My area is licensed for Fracking – What should I do?

The single most significant factor in what happens next is the community response in your area. With 60% of the UK available to fracking companies and around 10 million acres already licensed, this industry is a threat to us all. 1) Find concerned / like minded people and start getting organised as soon as possible […]

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What are the new 14th round PEDL licences targeting?

While companies applying for these new licences have a primary target, most will also have secondary targets which they will be looking to gather data on. There have already been a number of examples of companies who have conventional oil and gas as a primary targets, but are also drilling for unconventional resources (fracking). See […]

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How could the Weald be affected by fracking?

While risk is talked about a lot with regard to fracking it should be born in mind that a lot of impacts, like the massive amounts of extra road traffic (particularly heavy good vehicles), are guaranteed to happen and are not “risks”. Also while a particular issue may be a risk for an individual well, […]

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Where could fracking in the Weald be leading if not stopped?

Companies like UK Oil & Gas Investments (UKOG) at Horse Hill, or Cuadrilla Resources, IGas Energy, Third Energy, are trying to pioneer an entirely new industry; unconventional fossil fuel extraction in the UK. To see where this is leading, it is necessary to look to other countries where these industries are more advanced (US, Canada […]

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What does tight oil extraction involve?

For threatened communities, tight oil extraction is pretty much identical to shale gas extraction. As with all unconventional fossil fuels, it involves much larger amounts of extraction effort, with the associated increased environmental and social impacts this entails. Unlike conventional oil which is trapped in permeable rock by impermeable rocks above, tight oil is trapped […]

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What are fracking companies after in the Weald?

It is important to understand in the case of the Weald basin, and many similar areas where some small scale conventional oil production has been happening for decades, that the companies involved (with the possible exception of Cuadrilla) usually have two simultaneous, but very different agendas. One is exploring for conventional oil and gas which […]

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How much water does fracking use?

In addition to the need to drill large numbers of density packed wells (usually 8 per square mile or more), unconventional oil and gas extraction (fracking) also involves much larger and more intense extraction processes to be carried out on each well. Regardless of the exact type of unconventional extraction being used, these processes almost […]

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What is tight/shale oil?

Tight oil, also known as shale oil or light tight oil (LTO), is petroleum which is trapped in low permeability rocks; often shale or tight sandstone/ carbonates (even when not with the shale source rock it is usually very closely associated with). The fundamental difference between this unconventional oil and conventional oil, is that it […]

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What stages are there for fracking?

As with conventional oil and gas extraction fracking companies need to go through a series of physical stages to reach the point of producing oil or gas. While definitions of these stages can be quite complex, for drilling at least, these stages can be simplified to exploration, appraisal and production. Exploration Requires the drilling of […]

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What is hydraulic fracturing?

Hydraulic fracturing is a technique used to crack rock underground, usually for the purpose of extracting oil or gas. It involves injecting a fluid down a well under massive pressure, in order to force open cracks in the targeted rock. Conventional hydraulic fracturing has been used since the 1950s to create small cracks, just around […]

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What is Deepwater and Arctic Drilling?

Deepwater and Arctic drilling for oil and gas have evolved as resources in easier to reach environments have been exhausted. Offshore drilling has been happening in places like the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico for the best part of half a century. In the last decade or so drilling has pushed out into deeper […]

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What is Oil Shale?

Oil Shale (not to be confused with Shale/Tight Oil) is shale rock containing an immature precursor to oil called kerogen. It is in may ways similar to tar sands in that it isn’t oil but can be turned into oil with sufficient effort. In the case of Oil Shale it needs to heated to between […]

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What is Bio-Energy?

Bio-Energy is a broad category which includes all energy generated from burning materials produced (recently) by the biosphere. While humans have obtained energy from such sources throughout their history, the amounts of energy that industrial society now demands cannot possibly be sourced in a sustainable way. Every year we burn a quantity of fossl fuels […]

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What are methane hydrates?

Methane hydrates (also know as gas hydrates or clathrate hydrates) are a crystalline solid where the methane molecules are each trapped in a cage of frozen water molecules. Methane hydrates are stable in ocean floor sediments at water depths greater than 300 meters, and where they occur, are known to cement loose sediments in a […]

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What is Carbon Capture and Storage?

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology aimed at reducing the climate-destabilising impact of burning fossil fuels by capturing the carbon dioxide (a ‘greenhouse gas‘) and storing it somewhere, usually underground. Despite CCS being an unproven technology, it is used worldwide by energy companies and governments to justify new fossil fuel projects. There’s no […]

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What are Tar Sands?

Tar sands is a heavy mixture of sand, clay, water and oil that requires mining and complex upgrading and processing in order to produce synthetic crude oil. Although found in a number of countries globally, including Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Nigeria, Madagascar and China, the exploitation of tar sands is most advanced in Alberta, Canada. […]

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What is Shale Gas?

Shale Gas is methane (natural gas) which is trapped in impermeable shale rock deep underground, unlike conventional natural gas which is in permeable rocks, such as sandstone. The gas cannot flow through the shale, so simply drilling a well, as you would for conventional natural gas, is not enough. The shale rock must be cracked […]

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What is fracking?

Fracking is a new, more extreme form of fossil fuel exploitation, targeting much less permeable rock formations than previous conventional oil and gas extraction. It is characterised by the drilling of dense patterns of, usually horizontal, wells (up to 8 per square mile or more) as well as other more intense extraction processes such are […]

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What is Underground Coal Gasification?

Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) is a process for exploiting coal that cannot be mined because the seams are too deep, thin or fractured. The process involves using the same sort of drilling technology usually used for fracking to get air/oxygen into the coal seam and then set the seam on fire. By controlling the amount […]

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What is Coal Bed Methane?

Coal Bed Methane is methane (natural gas) trapped in coal seams underground. To extract the gas, after drilling into the seam, it is necessary to pump large amounts of water out of the coal seam to lower the pressure. It is often also necessary to frack the seam to extract the gas. There are a […]

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What is Extreme Energy?

Extreme Energy (sometimes written Xtreme Energy) is a term used to describe a group of energy extraction methods that have emerged in recent years as the availability of fossil fuel resources has become more constrained. As more usual methods of extracting fossil fuels fail to provide the amounts of energy that civilisation demands governments and […]

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