Heard it on the radio

Update (9.6.13) I think first my attempt to attached audio via blogger failed. Hopefully they should be working ok now (so long as your browser supports html5).

Things often occur in twos. This week I've done two radio interviews out of the blue, both on 5Live.

The first interview (below) on 5Live Drive was in response to the new IGas announcement of their resource estimate of 100tcf of gas in their licence area. I'm not particularly happy with my own interview, because I wanted to get across, and was unable to, was the sheer uncertainty in this estimate. The media have focussed on the upper bound figure of 170tcf of resource (for reference, UK gas use is something like 2-3 tcf per year), but in fact the estimate range was from 15 to 170 tcf, with 100tcf being the most likely number. Add in uncertain recovery rates (anywhere between 5 - 50%) and you can see how uncertain the numbers really are. At the low end, 15tcf at a 5% recovery rate gives 0.75tcf, less than half a year of the UK's annual use, at the upper end, 170tcf at 50% recovery gives 85tcf, enough to completely cover the UK's gas use for the next 40 years.

Keep in mind of course that this estimate is for the IGas license block, with has an area of 300 square miles, or an area 17 miles by 17 miles, so although the estimate is very uncertain, it only accounts for a very small part of the country.

Also on the show was Phelim McAleer, director of FrackNation, which could be described as a response to Gasland - well worth watching if you can get hold of a copy - who is strongly in favour of shale gas development based on what he has seen in the US.

Having been on 5Live Drive, my name and number have clearly been put on the 5Live database of frackers, because I got a late night call to take part in a post-BBC-Question-Time phone-in debate, a part of which was given over to fracking, after a question on the topic during the main show. The question during the debate was very incoherent, and sadly the lady in question came of looking a little mad, but the 3 interviewees during the phone in were all broadly pro-shale gas. Again, though, I personally think I might need a little more media training to learn how to put myself across more effectively, without so much umm-ing and err-ing. But maybe that's just me, we all hate the way we sound when played back, right?