Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; Britain has 200 trillion cubic feet of frackable gas in Lancashire. But the climate obsessed British Government would rather pay sky high prices to Russia, than develop available domestic resources.
How Britain’s fracking industry was regulated into irrelevance
13 February 2022, 5:00pm
Andrew MontfordThis week the fracking company Cuadrilla announced that it was permanently closing its two shale mines in Lancashire, after the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) declared that shale gas companies must seal up the wells they had drilled and return the land to nature.
It is, on the face of it, a very strange step to take at this time. The wells have not been producing any gas for some years, of course, ever since environmentalists launched their scare campaign against the industry. It was a campaign that was astonishing in its brazenness. Tiny earth tremors recorded near the wells, of a scale that is entirely normal in, say, the mining industry or in geothermal energy developments were rebranded by activists ‘earthquakes’. The chemicals used – all licensed as entirely safe by the Environment Agency – were declared to be dangerous poisons. In one particularly egregious case, householders were given leaflets which claimed that the gas companies were going to use industrial quantities of a known carcinogen called ‘silicon dioxide’. That’s sand, in common parlance.
…
This being the case, how can we explain the decision to seal the wells up? In fact, it makes sense if you take a look at the OGA’s remit. In this extraordinary document, you will find no mention of any duty to ensure that operators aren’t cutting corners. There is nothing about making sure that they deliver for consumers, nor even anything about national energy security (another issue of pressing urgency, given Mr Putin’s machinations). Instead, the role that government has given it revolves entirely around delivering Net Zero. Put bluntly, the OGA is more about closing the industry down than regulating it.
When the price cap on domestic energy bills is lifted in a few weeks’ time, there is likely to be a great deal of anger. If people learn that the government’s political cowardice has been making things worse, a major political backlash is on the cards.
…
Read more: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-britain-s-fracking-industry-was-regulated-into-irrelevance
Fracking likely does cause small 1.5 Richter Earth tremors – too small to notice. I defy anyone genuinely notice an Earthquake below 2-3 on the Richter scale without sensitive instruments. The only Earthquake I ever personally noticed was a 5.4. At the time I didn’t even realise it was an Earthquake – for a few seconds it was like the wind suddenly picked up, all the trees started rustling. Then it stopped. I’ve been in other Earthquakes, but that was my only experience of noticing something unusual when the event occurred.
The Richter scale is logarithmic. Each whole number on the scale is 31.7x stronger than the previous whole number. The 5.4 I barely noticed was 700,000 times stronger than the 1.5 Earthquakes environmentalists claim are a problem.
A lot of Britons think embracing Net Zero is the right course. But even if you think gas is a short term stopgap, surely it makes more sense to allow British domestic resources to be exploited until they are no longer needed, rather than feeding money into President Putin’s Ukrainian peacekeeping budget.
I wonder if Gazprom was funding the protesters?
You bet it is
Ukrainian Peacekeeping is more like
Ukrainian Piece-keeping
??? What is the lead in photo comparison supposed to convey regarding the story???
It certainly can’t represent “Sea Level Rise” but looks more like Low Tide vs High Tide or King Tide. In the image with the expansive beach (Low Tide) the Pier in the background has little if any water under it. Usually piers are built out over the water.
Header on the photo: Blackpool, Lancashire. 16 August 2010. Low water 11.20am, high water 4pm
Thanks, I scrolled right passed it looking for the footer
NW England have some of the highest tidal ranges there are. 8-10 metres.
Gazprom has been financing the anti-nuclear anti-frackimg greens in Europe since forerever
Financing the useless idiots in canada too
Including the Conservative Party.
NATO certainly believes Russian intelligence agencies and leadership are both financing and fuelling the anti-fracking movements in various countries.
NATO has been talking monumental amounts of crap recently, I don’t know who is still taking them seriously.
If Germany could grow a pair and decide to determine its own energy policy, it would have issued the permit for NS2 last Sept and gas prices in Europe would about a quarter of insanely high levels currently paid on the spot market. This is also having knock on effects on the price of electricity because of the need for gas to fulfill peak production.
Even France’s dominantly nuclear EDF is currently losing BILLIONS of euros due the insane EU reg which forces it to sell its production at cost price to “fake” competitors , who produce zero power but just resell EDF production. This forces EDF to buy gas at insane rates to fulfill demand.
And George Soros is laughing his nazi collaborating ass off, him and his close personal friends Vlad and sHrillary.
It is interesting to research now deceased Canadian billionaire Maurice Strong, a former UN executive and said to have been the architect of climate hoax and warming. Associate of George Soros and fellow travellers.
Strong was given asylum in China by the CCP when the Canadian Environmental Protection Agency was after him for breaking the law and pumping fresh water from an aquifer in Canada for commercial purposes. His cousin was a girlfriend of Communist China’s Chairman Mao Zedong.
Oh what a tangled web of deceit.
I don’t need to research Strong, I have always known what a fascistic enemy of the human race that scumbag was. As for Georgie boy, his pride is all based in his collaboration with nazis.
It’ll be interesting to hear what sHrillary has to say if she gets indicted by the Durham probe. It’s getting close to her.
She has sat in front of several Congressional Committees and admitted to crimes she has committed, and nothing was done to her, I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
When the last remaining net tax payer quits Britain for friendlier financial climates, I wonder if Extinction Rebellion will host a street party to celebrate their “win”?
(or maybe the assembled disciples will all suddenly look at each with a look of realization and go – “oh sh!t . . . ” )
(or maybe the assembled disciples will all suddenly look at each with a look of realization and go – “oh sh!t . . . ” )
That’s because they predicted this would happen, & all because of fossil fuels, simples!!!
AND what is this obsessive compulsive disorder that so many millionaires & billionaires have with Socialism, their bedfellows!!! Could it possibly be a case of “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer!!!” Quote (more or less) Niccolo Machiavelli!!!
Anything that will release minor earthquakes is fantastic. It means that such tension does not build up and build up, to the point where it becomes a major earthquake that does real damage. I find it strange that mindless idiots tend to focus on exactly the wrong thing.
An earthquake is a release of tectonic energy .these fracking tremors are just rock around the borehole fracturing. Much more energy goes into quarry blasts with little damage or complaint
I was saying the same thing.
‘Cept I add that the gov’t should be reimbursing the fracking companies for a portion of the expense of lessening damage from the next big one. Gov’t pays out for goofier stuff than that.
remember Smoky the Bear?
Production from Shale gas wells rapidly declines – so this may be a rational move, given the short lengths of the horizontals. But the overall Gas-in-Place numbers don’t get automatically translated to production without a lot surface / cost considerations.
But the scare tactics were enough to stop the industry – and politicians made the calculation that they preferred LNG and P/L gas instead of a secure domestic supply and jobs that come with. So be it.
The majority of UK gas is produced in the North Sea and is either UK or Norwegian. Of the imports the majority comes from Kuwait, and recently the USA.
Its a sad day when WUWT starts making up ‘facts’.
Maybe you should click on and read the links………..
so much for Russian Gas.
Pretty sure that is LNG, not pipeline gas.
Yes, it is. And Qatar is not Kuwait. Other than that, it’s all good.
The UK has no pipeline to Russia .
Since it all gets mixed together what is the difference?
BBC’s January 24, 2022 published map reproduced below breaks down where UK got it’s natural gas from in 2020. By the way: UK’s 4th largest foreign supplier (in other words aside from national sources) was Russia; although the Russian gas amounts were slightly less than half what natural gas the USA supplied. [I don’t know whether the supply ratios changed significantly in 2021 to present day – presumably little since less than a month ago the BBC was issuing this map.]
And you believe the BBC?
It’s a sad day when someone can’t take the time to do very basic, simple research.
“Imports of natural gas by both pipeline and as LNG provided more than 80% of the supply of natural gas to the countries of the EU and the UK in 2020, up from 65% a decade earlier. During 2020, natural gas imported into the region by pipeline made up 74% of all natural gas imports, and LNG accounted for the remaining 26% of total imports.
Pipeline imports of natural gas into the region come from Russia, Norway, North Africa and Azerbaijan. Pipeline imports originating in Russia – the largest supplier in the region – grew from approximately 11 billion ft3/d in 2010 to more than 13 billion ft3/d in 2020 (a low consumption year due to COVID-19 related impacts). Despite construction of new pipelines, imports from Norway averaged around 9 billion ft3/d between 2010 and 2020, as development of new fields in the Barents Sea section of the Norwegian offshore Continental Shelf was insufficient to offset declines from mature fields in the North Sea.”
https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/11022022/europe-relies-on-imports-to-meet-natural-gas-needs/
Azerbaijan gas pipelines to some parts of Europe are not connected for delivering that gas to UK.
Britain is not a ‘country of the EU’
That is an average over many countries. Each one is different.
Reading someones propaganda is no substitute for finding out the real facts.
UK imports a lot of gas – around 60% of its needs, but it is overwhelmingly by pipeline from Norway or by tanker from Qatar, the USA and so on.
It imports a little gas from mainland Europe via a north sea pipeline and some of this is Russian, but that’s it.
It#s far more ‘dependent’ on the USA and Qatar than on Russia.
In the same way that it is not ‘dependent;’ of France for electricity.
These are both myths invented by interests that resent the UKs EU independence and seek to undermine its ability to exists outside te bloc as well as its competence.
The nation that is most dependent on Russian gas is of course Germany, which has destroyed its nuclear power program, is phasing out its lignite coal plants , has planted windmills and solar panels everywhere and is utterly dependent on its neighbours on cold still winter nights.
This all isn’t just an error from using an online auto translator to convert English to English is it?
Gas, as in Solid, liquid, gas?
Or Gas, as in petrol is too hard to spell?
Or Gas, as in the unrefined oil that is used to make gas, cause what is a refining process between friends when trying to discuss energy production?
No, It’s a deliberate error confusing pipeline gas with LNG.
Russia owns the greens. It is geopolitically convenient to make people scared of upsetting Russia.
WUWT has joined the ranks of the “useful idiots”.
Gas as in natural gas, mostly methane. A small fraction comes from the production of crude oil. Most comes from drilling into natural gas reservoirs (conventional or tight).
Yes it comes from the North Sea & is largely fracked!!! We have been fracking in the UK waters since the late 1960s & still going strong!!! Fracking was first undertaken in Texas in 1945, it is simply a drilling technique nothing more, horizontal drilling being the innovation here, but of course it has been propagandised by the renewable energy protagonists for commercial reasons only!!!
I think that we have had enough Russian bashing – lets stick with bashing the Alarmists….
Who backs the Alarmists?
Who do you think funds the alarmists?
Ever since Al Gore, alarmism has been about increasing dependence on ( imported ) gas.
Fracking itself is very unlikely to cause even minor problem earthquakes. The fracture diameter is too small (less than 100 meters), and the tiny fractures themselves are propped open with proppant sand so they stay open (and cannot move).
The UK hyped frack earthquake scare originated with a minor related issue in the US, and was grossly misrepresented in the UK.
The minor fracking related earthquakes in Oklahoma (up to Richter 4) and to a very small extent (one R3 event over 10 years) in WestVirginia, were all caused by salt water reinjection wells run at too high volumes too close to known faults in adjacent formations. (Saltwater is typically coproduced with fracked oil and gas because the shales are of marine origin, and is reinjected into a shale adjacent deep porous rock formation for safe and economical disposal.) Even this has been a zero problem everywhere else in the US. Covered this in some depth in the coincidences chapter of my ebook The Arts of Truth concerning the Fayetteville gas shale ‘earthquake swarms’. Hint: the biggest earthquakes ever to hit the US interior were right under the Fayetteville shale, on the New Madrid fault, in 1811-12.
After centuries of earth shakes and landslides caused by tin and coal mining through out Britain, and millenia of environmental changes wrought by canal building, polders, breakwaters, dredging, rail and road construction, and while thousands of hectares of British farmland are being covered by over priced, tax and surcharge subsidized, foreign-sourced solar panels that will be useless in 15-20 years, just perhaps GB has lost a little bit of perspective?
As everywhere, the ability of small well organized well funded undemicratic groups of protesters to affect government policy is in evidence.
Uk has more earthquakes than you would credit. 24 this year so far. Despite a fracking ban.
Most of them above the threshold to halt fracking if it had been taking place. The policy is illogical. No one is prepared to stand up to the greens.
Britain may be tectonically quiet but there have been periods and places with minor earthquakes or even swarms.
https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/comrie/earthquakehouse/index.html
Being built on a fault line might be a good idea if you want to experience tremors. Although I grew up only a few miles from Comrie I don’t remember any tremors, in fact I only encountered them when living in the East Midlands of England surrounded by coal mines, the probable source
“Fracking likely does cause small 1.5 Richter Earth tremors – too small to notice. I defy anyone genuinely notice an Earthquake below 2-3 on the Richter scale without sensitive instruments.”
In fact the earthquake that stopped drilling in 2011 was 2.3, and was felt near Blackpool.
And it did bugger all damage. So what’s your point?
Getting facts right.
Well then you should have use the word “probably” that is after all the reports said … your claim implies certainty if we are talking getting facts right.
So there is some chance you may notice a 1.5 to 2.2 quake but there is no reports of any damage.
Give us another fact: how much damage did it do?
I have been in a proper earthquake. (In Alsace).
20.41 18yrs ago feb22 2003.
BIG DEAL.
Richter 5.0
so what?
There are hundreds of quakes the size of 2-3 in Switzerland and the German border every decade.
We don’t even notice them.
2.0-2.9. Globally over one million per year.
When Al Gore sits down at his breakfast bar in Memphis it’s felt in Blackpool too.
In 2011, Cuadrilla were test drilling when a 2.3 and a 1.4 tremor were picked up by sensors near Blackpool. In actual fact well after Cuadrilla stopped drilling, a 2.9 tremor was picked up by the sensors near Blackpool – nothing to do with the drilling at all, just a natural occurrence. Several independent studies were conducted into those events and the geology of the area which basically said that any small tremors in that geological area would be under magnitude 3 and pose no risk. Y’know, in the interests of getting facts right, as it were.
In the CONUS, the fracs themselves are not of special earthquake concern. Rather, the earthquake swarms from overworked haz waste injection wells is raising eyebrows, even in Oklahoma and Texas. These wells are often over 50 years old, were reconstructed from producers even older, and were designed for injection rates an order of magnitude lower than they now endure. Lubricated strata shifts, and displaces that all around it.
I suspect that a similar exponential increase in the production of repeatedly reused, often unflltered (even for solids) frac flowback water, laden with both additives and reservoir liquids, would overrun the haz waste injection capacity of almost any land on the globe.
Seems to me, the leaders should know exactly what they are dictating their constituents experience.
The leaders involved in these shenanigans should experience the full effect immediately.
As well, all employees in leadership positions at “Oil and Gas Authority (OGA)” must also eliminate all fossil fuel derived equipment, heating, cooling, cooking, etc. from their lives.
The offices of responsible leaders, including OGA, involved in NetZero will similarly divest themselves of all fossil fuel sourced equipment, offices, transport, etc.
I suspect the whole NetZero effort will be quickly quelled.
Much easier to disappear a few protesters
So what will be the function of the OGA when no one produces O & G? The “A” I guess.
Oh you would definitely notice a 1.5 earthquake caused by drilling. If they were drilling your teeth. Otherwise nada. Not until 2 or so are they felt and only by a few people.
I contend that the microquakes caused by fracking may actually reduce the chance of a larger and more destructive “natural” quake by gently reducing stresses building up over time, until someone proves otherwise. So far the alarmists have all flatulated themselves about microquakes associated with fracking being damaging without a shred of evidence.
Oz is pretty stable as far as earthquakes go compared to those on the Pacific Rim but WA has hit the news lately as the centre of regular micro quakes-
Today’s Earthquakes in Western Australia, Australia (earthquaketrack.com)
That’s because what happens is as they become aware of any quakes they start sticking more seismic sensors there and picking up even more of them. So be prepared for quake dooming from the usual suspects and more grants axiomatically.
It just keeps on getting worse for the climate changers and their crazy Greenonomics-
U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds (msn.com)
Not sure this is accurate. True, corn requires fertilizer. Not true, corn requires tillage. We seed drill no-till on my Wisconsin dairy farm (that is what GMO ‘Roundup Ready’ seed and glycophate enable). True, ethanol fermentation releases CO2. Not true ethanol is a pure green additive. The original objective had nothing to do with global warming. It was to replace groundwater polluting MBTE as an octane enhancer, increasing the gasoline yield from a barrel of crude. Plus, it is an oxygenate so reduces summer smog. The original blendwall of 10% was set by high octane summer gasoline needs in LA; that is why US gas pumps say ‘contains up to 10% ethanol’. Depends on region and season. As little as possible is blended, since raises cost/gallon.
Not sure this is accurate.
Is anything to do with measuring CO2 emissions accurate but if the crazies that started it are hoisted on their petard then reap as they sow. LOL.
That price of $0.80/gallon for ethanol a couple of years ago sure was a steal.
Anyway, to add to your comment, with today’s catalytic converters and fugitive emission controls, oxygenates provide very little emissions benefit. That said, if drivers didn’t punch holes in the bottom of underground fuel tanks with their dipsticks, groundwater contamination would also be less of an issue.
Engineering solutions beat political solutions every time.
Some really big CCS plans in the USA Midwest to capture CO2 from these ethanol plants and pump to reservoirs underground
To take something that is a money loser to government level flustercluck money loser
Wood burning produces more CO2/energy than coal. Just like weather data vs climate models, all that actually matters is the ideology.
It looks like the more outlandish and asinine the claim the more truth is seen in the eyes of the casual observer wanting to be saved.
I’ve said for a long time that net-zero isn’t going to happen in the UK. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that renewables can’t possibly meet the country’s energy requirements while the infrastructure simply isn’t in place to support the move to an all-electric future until well beyond 2050.
The UK has a great deal of old housing stock, which will be a nightmare to convert to heat pumps to say nothing of the costs involved. As for hydrogen replacing natural gas, that, again, isn’t going to happen given the legacy infrastructure we have to deal with, much of which goes back to the early 20th century.
The ONLY way net-zero can ever be achieved in the UK is through nuclear and that’s a long way away, not least because the most extreme environmentalists won’t accept it. They will, however, lose the battle because anyone with an ounce of brain now accepts there’s no other option.
As for a lot of people in the UK supporting net-zero, that’s BS. The BBC’s climate propaganda is now being seen for what it is, while the costs of energy — due mainly to the country’s natural gas production and reserves being run down by politicians who don’t have a clue what they’re doing — are now opening people’s eyes to the lies they’ve been fed.
In the next 12 months people’s energy costs in the UK are going to go through the roof — literally in many cases — and you’ll see plenty of U-turns by politicians realising that Joe Public won’t stand for it.
As for a lot of people in the UK supporting net-zero, that’s BS.
Same in Australia as changing the climate is like fluffy kittens and world peace. Everyone’s for it and it’s the Gummint’s and Biz’s job to get on with it and make it all happen and we’ll all enjoy clean free energy from Gaia. Now that’s not happening for the bleeding obvious the spruikers and carpetbaggers are in serious trouble depending on how far down the track they are with implementing the vision splendid. The lefty media have been polishing a stinking turd for some time but how long can they hold out?
“It doesn’t take a genius to work out that renewables can’t possibly meet the country’s energy requirements while the infrastructure simply isn’t in place to support the move to an all-electric future until well beyond 2050. ”
This is perfectly true. But the conclusion you draw does not follow from it.
“….net-zero isn’t going to happen in the UK….”
It probably is going to happen, and since all the things you say about what it will mean are correct, what will happen is that the UK will move into a future where it doesn’t have the present level of heating, transport, shopping etc. In fact, I think a serious effort to implement Net Zero will reduce car ownership and use by 80-90%, and that is only the start.
It is entirely possible, and even likely given the consensus among all four political parties, that the UK will actually ban ICE cars in 2030, ban replacement of oil fired boilers with anything but heat pumps starting in 2025, put everyone on smart meters, and finally ban gas boilers in 2035 or so.
Don’t spend lots of energy arguing that they cannot do this because of the consequences. The way to think about it is, they are going to do this, and the consequences will happen. So how are you going to plan your life in the light of this?
We are living through an episode of mass hysteria in which the political and academic classes are taking and promoting totally irrational decisions. Not just on energy. Don’t say they cannot do it because it will lead to disaster. They can and will do it, so get ready for the disaster.
Where in the HECK is all this going? One day the peasants will revolt.
Well, the peasants are trying a revolt now in Canada and Fidel junior has just declared a state of emergency.
But he is very sorry he has to do it….
He will soon be donning blackface to divert attention.
According to the elite, all the peasants are revolting
The ‘Red Wall’ voters have had more than enough of the Green nonsense but where is the alternative? Labour would go full on green nutjob if they ever got into power and Lib Dems aren’t any better. We need a party willing to stand up to the green blob and do what’s best for the whole country not just a small, urban minority.
Very uninformed decision…a pad of gas wells takes up far less real estate than a wind farm
and produces a lot more energy…with almost half the CO2 emissions of coal, and would be an excellent interim choice for the 25 years or so it would take to ramp up nuclear power.
Bur but but…Gtiffter wants the Great Green UK Experiment…to show the world how it’s done…Solar/Wind is all you need to live happily ever after.
Not quite but some are beginning to get it with an election in the offing-
Cost of living is the number one concern for Australians as we head to the election, and power bills make up a huge proportion of people’s costs. Using an existing government scheme to cover household batteries will allow people to further reduce the cost of their power bills
Right now, neither major party has any real policies to help households lower their power bills with renewable-powered batteries. I’d like to see both parties step up and deliver stronger policies that help everyday people see the benefits from renewable energy
Independents want rooftop solar scheme to support two million home batteries | RenewEconomy
Easy for you to say luvvy but with all the lockdowns and largesse with covid the helicopter money is now chasing lost production and welcome to inflation to try and balance the books.(who among you will advocate raising taxes as the alternative?) Now you want to add more fuel to the fire albeit recognizing the failure of promoting rooftop solar on its own from the very beginning. Cheap words luvvy but you don’t have to walk the talk unless it’s a hung Parliament and then you might have to.
The shift to net zero is necessary – and involves a lot of effort and cost.
Correction: The shift to net zero is unnecessary – and involves a lot of effort and cost.
Why is it necessary Griff? Griff? Oh, he’s gone.
And deaths!
The Griffter has spoken…let it be written…let it be done….and put him in charge…he will fix the UK up with solar/wind.
as I understand it there would be drilling pads every 5 miles over a considerable area, each involving a very large number of truck movements.
In the UK suburbs and countryside this would have a serious impact on quality of life, traffic congestion etc – the UK road system is not set up for this level of industrial activity.
UK environmental regulation is far stricter than in the US (adding to costs). you couldn’t have open fracking ponds for example -you’d have to pipe out the used fluid for disposal (at a location currently unclear).
The gas would be sold at world market rates and I’ve seen estimates that it might be no more than 2 to 5 years of total UK demand.
Residents of UK potential fracking areas understandably don’t see this as a big win…
Dear Griffy, you fell at the first hurdle,”understand”. Not the best choice of verb for you.
The Truck movements are only during the drilling stage, once that is complete a small drill head installation is left in place. I will take local fracking over either windmills or the current opencast mine.
They bought a fleet of big water tankers to truck the waste water from the rural roads near Blackpool, hence onto the motorways, to a treatment plant at Salford. I think this is because the waste water has to be treated and disposed of properly here in Britain. The motorway route went through one of the most congested road junctions in Europe. It was not popular.
Several lies to unpick there, Griffy. Lincolnshire has large numbers of the ‘nodding donkey’ oil wells and we haven’t seen this huge congestion or reduction in quality of life problem you speak of – neither would the inhabitants of a fracking area. The volume of gas under the UK would last an expanding economy for over 50 years, more than enough time to build a nuclear infrastructure, not the ludicrous 5 years you claim. Residents of the UK fracking areas often see the benefits of increased UK gas and the local benefits of jobs and spending in the area during construction but have been swamped by a fairly well coordinated misinformation and activist campaign. The local residents are not able to have their say – this is coming from a small very vocal minority with misplaced ideas and roubles in their pocket.
I live in the gas region of Pennsylvania. The only time there is visible truck truck traffic and noticeable tall rigs is during the initial drilling. During fracking, the rigs get much lower, and once the fracking is done the pump rigs are invisible if there’s anything taller than a shrub nearby. Process rakes a couple of months,, then back to
normal. Dozens of wells within a ten mile radius of me and I never noticed any ground tremors at all. One in a while a loud bang if someone dropped a drill pipe. BTW, the local deer and coyotes wandered around as ever, not bothered at all.
It wouldn’t be green if it wasn’t a pack of lies
It was a comment I saw from a Lord Lah-de-Dah in the House of Lords that really took the biscuit.
His thinking was that The British People would not see any benefit because the fracking companies are ‘privately owned’ What he was alluding to and indeed mentioned, was royalties and tax revenue (or so he said)
Do we suspect that if he was a shareholder of Cuadrilla things might have been different?
No matter – His idea of ‘benefit’ is money money and more money – seemingly oblivious to any notion that The British People would benefit from being warm inside their own homes
Dr Andy Samuel CE of the UK Oil & Gas Authority that has shut Caudrilla down once led a joint venture developing the Marcellus shale in the US. He was also Chief Operating Officer,Trinidad, and Board Member of Atlantic LNG.
Chair of the OGA is ex MP Tim Eggar who is on the Strategic Advisory Board of Braemar Energy Ventures whose stated investment goal is “to find and build companies that are poised to accelerate the global clean energy and sustainability revolution”
So Caudrilla is being shut down by a hypocrite and person with a large conflict of interest.Typical for the way things are done in the UK these days.
Net zero is a complete fiction. There is no way to get to zero CO2 emissions, everybody knows that. We would never want to. In order for the eco maniacs to push there movement forward they needed a clever slight of hand to fool people. I give them credit, it is brilliant. The alternative is to make everyone pay for not reaching zero in the form of taxes, or fines or proof of money given to others to plant trees or what ever. The point is the so called good people benefit, the so called bad people pay for it and we all suffer due to higher prices for energy and all other goods, lost jobs, lost productivity and on and on. The sorry part is nothing will be gained. All of this for something that still remains undefined and no path to reach a specific goal. What a sham. So long as we allow these retrogrades to throw around undefined useless words like net zero we will be fighting an uphill battle.
please recheck on Richter scale. think it’s base 10 logarithmic. so each whole number is 10 times larger. need a geologist to clarify. thanks
I, too, was under the impression it was a log 10 linear scale. RS 2 = 10*RS1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale#Richter_magnitudes
“ In one particularly egregious case, householders were given leaflets which claimed that the gas companies were going to use industrial quantities of a known carcinogen called ‘silicon dioxide’. That’s sand, in common parlance.”
I’m surprised they didn’t add in the common killer of humans and component of acid rain, dihydrogen monoxide.
They’re saving that one for later
That’s one of the very dangerous chemicals they use in fracking.
Apparently, it leeches into drinking water aquifers and dilutes them.
Nick,
Of all the egregious lies associated with fracking (and there are many) the idea of groundwater contamination is the most absurd. The hydrocarbon source rocks that generate the methane gas are marine shales and as such their pore water is just as old as the shale itself. For Carboniferous age rocks in the UK this water consists of fossil ocean water hundreds of millions of years old. For the gas to still be in situ within the shale there is also the requirement for an overlying Permian and/or Triassic evaporate seal below the modern pluvial ground water. The idea that this deeply buried ancient marine salt water could ever be a source of potable groundwater in Lancashire is bizarre.
You might want to check if the sarc tag was implied? I certainly found the idea of pumped water diluting the groundwater faintly amusing.
Radio 4* the other day had a bunch of talking heads discussing the issues of the day.
One idiot said fracking was a new technology blah, blah, blah
Not a single person picked her up on it
These are the types of people we are dealing with.
Something I didn’t know is that the Richter scale keeps going ALL the way down.
I forget the actual numbers to examples but you get things like Richter zero is a coffee much falling off a table and Richter -2 is ants walking. Stuff like that. Probably have my examples wrong but the scale system can measure them.
Needless to say, British ‘journalists’ covering the net zero story have never said what Britain’s CO2 contribution is. One would have thought that was a starting point – “We need to move to net zero because we currently emit X amount of CO2”.
But, even today, there is no mention to be found of this salient fact in the media. And this why: Britain’s CO2 contribution to the global atmosphere is…..0.000012%.
You can imagine the hard sell net zero would be for Boris Johnson if this ever got out. But the press are keeping shtum – even the science correspondents won’t go near this story.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/huge-solar-farm-planned-fields-6616074
The right way to look at is, Britain is doing about 450 million tons a year out of a global total of about 37 billion tons. So a bit over 1%.
Sometimes people point out that Britain also imports, and the CO2 burden of imports is about another 200 million tons. However, to be consistent, you’d also have to deduct the CO2 of its exports to get to the net.
To make this clear, consider Britain and the world with rounded figures
500 million – British emissions in Britain
200 million – British emissions on imports, emitted in ROW
37 billion – Total Global Emissions in-country
If you don’t take account of imports, ROW emissions will be 36.5 bilion.
If you raise UK emissions to allow for imports, ROW emissions must fall to 36.3 billion.
Suppose now that British exports carry a CO2 burden of 300 million. Then to avoid double counting ROW emissions must rise by this amount. They will be not 36.3 billion but 36.6 billion.
To make this all balance, net UK emissions must fall to 500-300+200=400.
People often argue, eg in the Guardian, that Britain is doing more than its local emissions because imports. But they never go on and allow for exports. And they also never draw the logical conclusion of proposing banning imports, particularly from China. I guess they like their iPhones too much…
Some people simply do no homework, like Greta, or went to a UK Skool.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/02/uk-pm-boris-johnson-duped-by-uk-activists-climate-slides-climate-depots-point-by-point-rebuttal-to-help-deprogram-the-propaganda-johnson-absorbed/#comment-3447189
Follow the UK money trail to see why….
Just in case someone hasn’t said it yet – or to emphasize it even more if they have said this:
“Gooder and harder.” Twits.
Fracking Britain was rejected by local opposition because they did not want their ground water polluted and all their fresh water being diverted to fracking. It was NOT because govt “net zero” policies, which only came about a lot more recently when Bojo got a new leg-over who converted him from getting rid of Green Crap to promoting insane “net zero” crap.
Clearly Jo Nova knows sod all about Britain, british politics, or british gas.
Leaving this gas in place is a great gift to the great-grandkids. They can sell it to the Russians.
Just plonk all these fond Green machinations under the heading of ‘Curtailment’-
What is renewable energy curtailment and how does it affect rooftop solar? – ABC News
Curtailment is nobody’s fault according to perfessor Adams-
I think people in general were quite dismayed to find that they were doing [curtailment],
They couldn’t have been warned that this was happening, because it’s such an emerging issue. Ten years ago, no-one could have imagined we’d be seeing this.
They’d chosen to put a solar system on the roof and most seemed to feel like they’d done that for a few reasons, including financial, but also thinking they were doing the right thing environmentally.
It was a bit of disappointment they didn’t know this was an issue. No-one had told them. It felt a bit like punishment.
Seems the good perfessor needs a lesson in the fallacy of composition and its predictability not to mention a fundamental axiom of engineering that you can’t make a reliable system from unreliable componentry.
So the Beatles may soon get their “Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire“?