Frack Free Somerset and the ASA

Earlier this year I was contacted by a local Somerset resident. He'd attended a meeting hosted by Frack Free Somerset, and had concerns about the accuracy of the promotional materials they'd used.

The resident was intending to submit a complaint to the ASA regarding these materials, and got in touch with me for some advice about some technical details, which I was happy to provide.

The ASA began their investigation, but the issue has now been resolved as FFS have agreed to withdraw the offending literature without rebuttal (Informally Resolved Cases, Date 7th May 2014). By doing so, there is no requirement for formal investigation.

As far as I see it, this represents tacit acceptance that all of the original complaints are valid. However, by withdrawing rather than making a challenge, FFS have managed to avoid the media fanfare associated with a full ASA investigation.      

There is an obvious comparison here with Cuadrilla's ASA investigation. Of the 18 complaints made by anti-fracking groups, only 6 were upheld by the ASA. In contrast, it would appear that FFS are not even prepared to try and defend the contents of their own promotional materials.

I have re-posted the original FFS brochure here, and the complaint from the local Somerset resident here.




The complaint cites a number of supplementary materials. These are as follows. Attachments 1a-e were data sheets taken at random from Barnett shale wells on the FracFocus website, summarised in attachment 1f. Attachment 2 was DECC's document about fracking and water. Attachment 3 summarised cancer incident rates in Barnett Shale counties (Denton, Johnson, Parker, Tarrant, Wise) taken from http://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov. Attachment 4 detailed key health indicators for Denton County taken from Mickley and Blake. Attachment 5 was the DECC document on shale gas regulations and safety. Attachment 6 shows US natural gas prices and shale gas extraction rates (easily available just about anywhere), and Attachment 7 compares coal and CCGT power station efficiencies, Figure 6 in this EIA report.

Population density in Total's new PEDLS

In the news this week I am sure you won't have missed the entry of Total into the UK shale gas market. They follow Centrica and GDF Suez as major players in the European gas to invest in UK shale gas by buying into licence areas. 

Rather than bore you with details of their business arrangements, I thought I'd take this opportunity to examine another commonly held myth about shale gas development - that the UK simply does not have enough space.

Total have bought into PEDL (Petroleum Exploration and Development Licence) blocks 139 and 140, which are in Lincolnshire. You can download a large map of all PEDLS from DECC here. I have added the approximate locations of the two adjacent licence blocks to the Google Earth image below.

The first thing you'll notice is the abundance of yellow and pink pins, these represent existing oil and/or gas wells, as per this post. Gainsborough sits atop the Beckingham Marsh oil field, which has been in operation since 1963. The field has numerous wells, and doesn't seem to cause the locals much bother. It will be interesting to see whether a similar level of opposition to shale gas develops here as we have seen at Balcombe and Barton Moss. As they have more experience than most of how the onshore industry is able to operate without causing undue disturbance, this will be an interesting one to watch.

The second thing to notice from the satellite image above is the relative sparsity of population outside of Gainsborough. We are often told that shale gas development in the UK will be too challenging due to the high population density. I think this image tells a different story.

I won't rely on a picture to prove this point, however. Instead, I will compare Lincolnshire with counties in Texas where shale gas is being extracted. I've looked to shale developments in Texas before when addressing shale development footprints, of course.

Extraction of gas from the Barnett shale in Texas is focussed on 5 counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, Tarrant, and Wise. The following tables show population densities (people per square mile) and the number of wells in each county (pop densities from wiki, well counts from the RRC).

	Density (ppl/sq mile)	No of wells
Denton	754	2,935
Johnson	205	3,386
Parker	129	1,856
Tarrant	2,000	3,844
Wise	21	4,437
Lincolnshire	390	342

I have added Lincolnshire, which has a population density of 390 ppl/sq mile (and 342 existing oil and gas wells). Note the comparable densities between these Barnett shale counties and Lincolnshire, which sits somewhere in the middle. Only Wise County has a density that is substantially lower, while Tarrant County's population density is substantially higher. All five counties have thousands of Barnett shale wells, an indication of how the industry is capable of operating in all settings, preferring unpopulated areas where possible, but perfectly capable of operating in areas of dense population where it is required to.

I'm sure this post won't stop the endless stream of articles in the media telling us that Britain is too crowded for shale gas development to be possible. At least you, dear reader, will now be a little better informed. 

   

Fracking controversy and communication: Latest public perception survey

We all tend to like to read things that conform to our own opinions. It's therefore not unreasonable for me to assume that the majority of people reading this support shale development. Based on a recent paper from a group at Yale published in the journal Energy Policy, I can therefore assume that you are old, male, of right-leaning political ideology, with better than average formal education and qualifications, and preferring to get your news from television rather than newspapers.

Meanwhile, household income, race and 'individualistic world-view' do not have any correlation with support or opposition to drilling.

I should just make clear: these results apply to surveys conducted in the USA only.

Perhaps the most significant finding is the persistent lack of familiarity among the general public with fracking and shale gas development, despite continued media discussion of the subject. 39% or survey respondents had heard "nothing at all" about hydraulic fracturing, 16% had only heard "a little", and a further 13% answered don't know. This means that over 50% of the population are still very unfamiliar with the issue.

When "top of mind" associations with fracking were explored, 58% either didn't have any associations, or had associations that were irrelevant, such as references to BattleStar Galactica (a sci-fi series where "fracking" is used as a swear-word).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, 58% of respondents were undecided about whether they support or oppose shale gas development, with the remainder split fairly evenly between support and opposition, according to the social and demographic divisions outlined above.

So it seems that the public is still woefully uninformed about what shale development entails (and what it does not entail). Clearly, we have a long way to go.

Associated Press report on shale gas and pollution - what do the numbers really show?

The twittersphere has been alight in recent days with an Associated Press story examining records held by state regulatory agencies regarding complaints of water contamination related to drilling. This story has been widely reported across the media, generally with negative headlines, and extensively re-tweeted amongst anti-drilling campaign groups.

However, it pays to look beyond the headlines, to the actual numbers listed in the report, which is what this post will do. What does the AP report actually tell us about shale gas drilling and water contamination in 4 key US states?


The Question(s):

Firstly, however, it is important to state what we know, and do not know, and what we would like to find out. In scientifc terms, we must state our hypothesis. We already know that contamination can and has been caused at the surface by leakage of fluids from open waste storage pits (not allowed in the UK) and by illegal dumping of waste fluids into streams and rivers without treatment. We also know that contamination of groundwater by fugitive methane can and has been caused by faulty well cement and casing that allows deep sources of methane to move towards the surface.

The question we want to know is - are these types of incidents common or rare; and secondly, are they inevitable, or could they be prevented by better operating practice? If incidents are common and/or inevitable, shale development might be considered an inherently dangerous and therefore unacceptable process. If they are rare and can be mitigated by improved practices, shale gas development should be considered an acceptable technology.


The Data:

The AP report covers 4 states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas. It does not specify in detail the nature of the complaints it discusses, which clouds the issue somewhat. However, from the report they appear to range from short term diminished water flow rates (not particularly serious), to contamination by stray methane migration (the most common complaint, apparently), to contamination by fracking fluid itself (the most serious allegation, I'd contend). Regardless, any incident or complaint is one too many, so for the purposes of this post they will all get lumped together.

If we are to determine whether these events are common or rare, we need to have data on the number of wells in the states considered by the report. The NRDC provides some figures for the number of oil and/or gas wells in each state, though these figures are from 2009, and don't say when the various wells would have been drilled, nor whether they are active or abandoned. However, the AP report doesn't specify whether complaints have originated from abandoned wells, old but still active conventional wells, or newly drilled shale wells, so perhaps the NRDC figures are the best to use. Regardless, I did a little more searching on various state regulator websites, finding the following:

• The NRDC list 47,000 wells in West Virgina in 2009. The West Virginia DEP website search function indicates a total of 2095 active gas wells, 96 oil wells and 33 CBM wells active from 2009 onwards (the 47,000 figure does seem high to me).
• The NRDC list 70,000 wells in Pennsylvania in 2009. From the Pennsylvania DEP website, a total of 32,625 new gas, oil and CMB wells were drilled (to "spud" in drilling parlance is to begin drilling) since 2005 (note the AP report incorrectly states there are only 5,000).
• The NRDC list 64,000 wells in Ohio in 2009. The Ohio DNR website lists over 50,000 active producing wells in 2011, although it appears that only 1,000 of these are target the Utica shale.
• The NRDC list 250,000 wells in Texas in 2009. The Texas Railroad Commission (who regulate oil and gas, obviously) count 17,000 wells in the Barnett shale in 2013, approximately 4,000 wells in the Eagle Ford shale (going by permits issued), and 800 in the Haynesville shale.

Before comparing numbers of pollution incidents with the number of wells, I first want to mention one striking feature of the numbers in the AP report - the difference between the numbers of complaints received, and the number of incidents actually substantiated though tests carried out by the various agencies. For Pennsylvania, in 2012 the DEP received 499 complaints, but substantiated only 5, meaning only 1% were considered valid. In West Virginia, the DEP received 112 complaints, of which 4 were substantiated (just under 4%). For Ohio, 113 complaints in 2011-2012, with 4 substantiated (just under 4% again), while in Texas none of the 62 complaints relating to water quality have been substantiated (so 0%). 

Why is the the percentage of substantiated claims so low? I'm sure some readers might be tempted to drag out the litigious American stereotype, ready to complain and sue anything and anyone at the drop of a hat. However, perhaps the most relevant data comes from Pennsylvania, where a Penn State study revealed that 40% of private drinking water wells are failing at least one environmental standard anyway. Furthermore, there are over 1 million drinking water wells in Pennsylvania, and approximately 20,000 new ones are drilled every year. 

The scale of these numbers shows why it is not surprising that many people might have complaints about their water quality. If there happens to be a hydrocarbon well near by, then with all the media coverage of fracking, it is inevitable that drillers get the blame. However, the 40% figure shows that there are in fact there are many other potential sources of contamination, and rigorous testing is required to determine where the blame should properly be apportioned. The AP figures suggest that in over 95% of cases, gas drilling is not to blame.  

Are contamination incidents common?

Lets move on now and consider the numbers of substantiated complaints with the number of wells drilled. For Pennsylvania, 106 cases out of 70,000 existing (NRDC) and 32,000 new (PA DEP) wells = 0.1%. For West Virgina, 4 cases, out of (using the low end DEP figures) 2224 wells = 0.1%. For Ohio, 6 cases out of 50,000 wells = 0.01%. For Texas, 0 cases out of 22,000 shale wells = 0%. For what it's worth, these figures are in line with other reports that have looked into this, such are this report by the Groundwater Protection Council, which reported incident rates per well of 0.01 to 0.03%. Our initial question was: are incidents common or rare? The AP numbers show that incidents of drilling-induced contamination are rare. 

Can better regulations reduce the impacts?

The second question was: is contamination due to drilling inevitable or can it be mitigated by better practice? The rarity of these events alone suggest that they represent aberrations rather than an inherent problem with the drilling and hydraulic fracturing processes. We can go further than this, however. During the Marcellus drilling boom in Pennsylvania, a number of new regulations regarding drilling safety and safe disposal of waste fluids have been enforced from 2010 onwards. Fortunately, for Pennsylvania the AP report breaks down the number of complaints by year, allowing us to judge the effects of these regulations.

The numbers of wells spudded in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively, was 3,340, 3,238, 2,374, and 2,175. In addition to the new wells, remember that opponents of drilling like to remind us that "all wells fail through time", so with all these wells coming in you'd expect to see the number of issues increasing through time, as problems emerge from both new wells and old. 

In fact, the numbers of substantiated issues (and the % of new wells this represents) are, from 2010 to 2013: 29 (0.86%), 18 (0.55%), 5 (0.2%) and 2 (0.1%). This represents a clear decrease in the number of contamination incidents as new regulations have come in to force. The AP numbers show that better regulation can reduce the impacts of shale gas drilling.

In Conclusion

To conclude, just as you should never judge a book by its cover, so you should be careful about judging a newspaper story by its headline. The numbers themselves in the AP report tell a very different story from the headlines it generated.

My first media hack job: "The Truth Behind the Dash for Gas"

The Truth Behind "The Truth Behind the Dash for Gas"

Talk to media people enough, and something like this was inevitable, but it seems that I am the star in a new anti-fracking documentary entitled "The truth behind the dash for gas" (my part starts from about 20 minutes in).

Back in November last year I received an email from a young guy who said he was looking to make his way as a film-maker just out from film-school. His email to me is quoted below:

I am putting together a short film about fracking in Somerset. The aim is to present a fair and informative assessment of the potential for fracking in Somerset, the risks and dangers associated with it, and the views of local people. The film and those working on it are independent of both the anti-fracking campaign groups and those who stand to gain from the fracking industry.

I think just by watching the first few minutes of the film you can see that their  claimed intent "to present a fair and informative assessment of the potential for fracking in Somerset" is barefaced lie. Even more barefaced is their claim that "the film and those working on it are independent of [...] the anti-fracking campaign groups". However, the film has a facebook page, in which it clearly states that the film is facilitated by Frack Free Somerset. The FrackFreeSomerset and FrackOff websites appear prominently in the credits at the end of the film.

Given that the very first contact between myself and the film makers was a lie, one can hardly expect the remainder of the film to do any better. I find it especially ironic that the 2nd word in the film title is "truth", while their very first contact with me was an obvious, barefaced and outright lie. It's not worth my time to address the content of the film as a whole, but I do want to comment on the parts in which my comments have been used.

Comment #1: that debate over hydraulic fracturing has descended into a media slanging match, and I don't think anyone could disagree with that. However, the film moves straight to the same science denialism more usually seen in the anti-climate-change world - if you can't trust the Royal Society for advice on scientific matters, the British Geological Survey, or the Geological Society, for matters geological, or Public Health England for public health matters, then I'm not sure where is left for you to turn, and the term conspiracy theorist begins to apply (see my final comment for more in this vein).  

As for my own 'close ties', I spent 3 months in the BP Institute in Cambridge as a 20-year-old M.Sci student. While BP provided the funds to set up the lab, the students who do projects there are  university students, and have no connection to BP (I certainly spoke to noone from BP while I was there, and in fact the majority of research being done when I was there was on developing energy efficient buildings). I also spent a few months in Rijswijk in Shell's research facility during my Ph.D. During my Ph.D I developed geophysical techniques to ensure safe storage of CO2 in geological reservoirs - so-called CCS, a potential method to mitigate climate change. During this time Shell asked my to come over and help apply some of these methods to their test site at Ketzin, Germany. All of this is made abundantly clear on my website.

Comment #2: I say that in many cases the impacts have been exaggerated. The Scranton Times-Tribune investigated claims made by residents about shale developments in Pennsylvania, finding that 77% of accusations were without substantiation. Surely an example of impacts exaggerated? Equally, even in cases where regulatory breaches by companies have lead to issues - the example of Dimock springs to mind - the impacts of this have been regularly exaggerated. At Dimock, while methane was found to have contaminated groundwater, there was no evidence of fracking fluids in the water. It's not good to have methane in groundwater, and this should be prevented from occurring at all times. However, methane is not toxic or harmful to human health, barring the risk of explosion if it allowed to accumulate in significant amounts. After the company had been cited and forced to repair its wells, levels of methane dropped, returning below the minimum safety levels set by the EPA (a fact never mentioned by activists, who will tell you that once contaminated, an aquifer can never be restored).

Comment #3: The most famous flaming tap in Gasland, the Markham well, had nothing to do with oil and gas drilling. This has been made abundantly clear by the Colorado State regulator (COGCC), which felt the need to release a comment to "correct several errors" in the film. The flaming tap is the headline image of Gasland, it appears in all the trailers and promotional material. That the gas is of biogenic origin, from shallow layers well above those targeted for drilling, implying that gas drilling is not the cause. This film attempts to argue that poor well casing still allowed shallow biogenic methane to migrate. However, the COGCC report makes clear that "there is little or no temporal relationship" between gas drilling in the area and the complaints made about the Markham and McClure wells. This is a fairly massive oversight to be made, one that I think that is worthy of comment. Clearly the film-makers find it easy to relate to other films that are economical with the truth in order to tell a story.

The regulators did rule that a drilling company was at fault in the case of the Ellsworth well. This company reached a settlement with the claimant (again, a fact that the film neglects to mention). The COGCC conducted sampling over a 170 sq mile area, and the Ellsworth well was the only one where any impact was detected. Strangely, we don't get to see Josh Fox setting the Ellsworth taps on fire - one can only guess at why?

The next sleight of hand is either quite clever, or monumentally dumb, I'm really not sure which. They move on to discuss the Duke methane studies, which I have discussed in previous posts here and here. Of course, there are a number of studies performed along along these lines, all of which come to very different conclusions to the Duke study. For some reason the film makers don't mention these (one wonders why). However, these film-makers can't even get the Duke PNAS study facts right! A screen-grab of the PNAS abstract is shown, highlighting an apparent claim that methane was found in 82% of drinking water within 1km of a gas well.

 How about we look at that section of the abstract in full:

In fact, you can clearly see that the 82% figure refers to all the water sampled, not just the ones near gas drilling sites. Methane was found in 82% of water samples, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY ARE NEAR GAS WELLS OR NOT! Incidentally, this is a similar percentage to that found by Molofsky et al., who sampled a much larger dataset (1,700 samples vs 140 samples), finding that 78% of samples contained methane, regardless of proximity of gas wells. In fact this is why establishing whether shale development has caused problems is so difficult in Pennsylvania - there is already a lot of methane in the groundwater. Where studies have been conducted in areas where natural methane is not present in shallow water, they have not seen an impact from drilling.

I honestly find it hard to believe that this accidental highlighting of parts of two sentences, conveniently removing the context to make a scarier quote, is accidental. Either way it is particularly dumb to hope that people familiar with the source material won't spot the attempted trick.

Comment #4 is about well integrity. The astute among you will notice a cut in the editing between the start and end of my answer. Clearly, other things I've said have been edited out. Sadly, this interview was conducted a year ago, so I can't remember exactly what I said, and back then I was too naive to make my own recordings (not a mistake I'll make again), but presumably it was something that didn't fit with the narrative being portrayed.

The films then cuts to the SLB Oilfield Review from 2003. Always a good litmus test of a shale gas commentator is how they treat this report. Firstly this report covers data from deep offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a very challenging drilling environment, so it's not surprising to have more problems offshore than onshore. The only statistics relevant to onshore UK shale drilling are stats from other onshore wells.

More importantly, the film describes the stats as showing either "leakage" or "failure". In fact, they depict incidents of Sustained Casing Pressure. SCP isn't a good thing, and again it should be avoided, but it doesn't equate to the mass leakage of hydrocarbons into shallow layers. Categorically, these stats have no bearing on the rate at which well integrity issues are causing contamination, which is what, misleadingly, the film tries to claim.

The most obvious place to look for wellbore integrity-related contamination issues from onshore wells drilled under a UK regulatory system, is of course to look onshore in the UK, where we have drilled 2,000 wells already, many of them in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (making most of them 30 years old at least). One of the few things this film gets right is that whether a well is fracked or not has no bearing on wellbore integrity issues. Therefore, if the statistical claims made in this film were true, there would be 1,000 onshore contamination incidents already. If the bold claim that follows ("all wells leak eventually") were true, we'd surely have 2,000 incidents by now. Clearly the claims made in the film do not add up, because I'm not aware of any problems associated with onshore wells in the UK.

Similarly, after the Piper Alpha disaster, regulations were significantly tightened to prevent such an event ever happening again. Again, the North Sea has not been turned into an environmental wasteland - we're still so keen to eat North Sea cod that there's almost none left!

We can also look to the US, which has hundreds of thousands of onshore wells, and actually examine statistics relating to actual incidents of groundwater contamination, as opposed to SCP. Luckily, the US Groundwater Protection Council has done exactly this, in a study released in 2011. They find that of 187,000 wells drilled in Texas, and 33,000 wells drilled in Ohio, only 21 and 12 wells respectively had seen casing issues leading to contamination, rates of 0.01% and 0.04%.

Comment #5 regards regulatory differences between US and UK, and resulting differences in operating practices. The above statistics show that contamination is not endemic to shale drilling. However, even the handful of cases that have occurred is a handful too many. These few incidences are inevitably the result of poor practice, and/or the contravention of regulations.

While I'm speaking, they cut to some shots of flowback waste pits. What they fail to point out is that these are not allowed in the UK - any waste flowing back from the wells must be stored in double-lined steel tanks. This is with good reason: in the GWPC report I mention above, the majority of drilling-related contamination incidents (172 in Ohio, 190 in Texas) have come from surface activities, not from processes happening under the ground. In the US it is common to store the waste fluid in open, plastic-lined pits. These have been known to overflow during heavy rain, or for the liners to tear, allowing the contents to leak. I think the endless shots of waste-fluid pits that activists like to show indicates either that they are not aware that these are banned in the UK, or that they do know this but don't like to let facts get in the way of the story.

For example, in one well-publicised case XTO opened the valve on one of their tanks, allowing the fluid to flow out into the ground, while in another case a trucker dumped his load into a nearby storm drain, rather than taking it to the treatment plant. This sort of illegal activity should absolutely be prevented, and it is important that regulators keep a sharp eye on operators to ensure that this doesn't happen. But it doesn't show that shale gas development is inherently problematic. Again, we can look the the UK example for dealing with produced water. The existing UK onshore industry handles 70 millions barrels of produced water a year, with no apparent contamination problems.

The next interviewee, Laurence Rankin, is presented a "Former Environment Agency manager", with the obvious intention of making us think that he is an impartial commentator. Since my 3 months as a 20-year-old M.Sci student at the BP Institute is worthy of mention, maybe the film should have also pointed out that he is also a coordinator of the Sefton Green Party and member of Friends of the Earth, so perhaps slightly less impartial than first appearances might suggest. While the Green Party man seems to have a problem with Cuadrilla's activities, the Environment Agency itself doesn't, and hasn't claimed that Cuadrilla have broken any of their regulations. The fact that the Green Party man isn't familiar with fracking, doesn't mean it hasn't happened. For example, horizontal wells have been fracked at Wytch Farm in Dorset. Update - this comment reflected media reports regarding Wytch Farm. Water is injected into the Wytch Farm reservoir, but this is to increase the reservoir pressure and drive oil towards production wells (a common practice in conventional fields), not to fracture the rock.

The use of the term 'slick-water' is another slight of hand, somehow implying that slick-water is somehow worse that what has gone before. In fact, in the good old days it was common to use a mix of gelled gasoline and napalm as the frack fluid. Given the choice of water with 1% chemical additives, or gasoline and napalm as the frack fluid, the use of slick-water represents an improvement. And the fact that there were no specific references to fracking in exploration licenses is that it was considered such a normal part of oilfield and drilling activities (with 10% of existing onshore wells being hydraulically stimulated). The main difference between now and what has gone before is one of scale, with modern treatments using higher volumes, rather than any major differences in the technique itself.

The film moves on to the Cuadrilla-induced earthquake near Blackpool. The next mistake made comes with the claim that the increase in earthquakes seen in US is directly attributable to hydraulic stimulation. In fact, the increase in seismicity is caused by an increase in the volumes of waste fluids, from both conventional and unconventional operations, being disposed of by deep injection into saline aquifers. I know this because I have worked in depth on these events, including writing a report for parliament, because they have implications for CCS. There are no proposals in the UK to dispose of fracking fluids through injection into deep aquifers. As far as I am aware, we do not have suitable deep saline aquifers onshore (although we are targeting such aquifers offshore in the North Sea for CCS). Again, one is left wondering whether the film makers know this and are lying, or simply do not understand the science that is being done in this area?

There is only one case in the US where fracking has triggered seismicity - in the Eola field, Oklahoma, which occurred in January 2011, 3 months before Preese Hall event, but was not reported as such until August 2011, after Preese Hall, and one case in Canada (British Columbia), where events occurred between 2009 and 2012, although they were not reported until August 2012, a long time after Preese Hall. So Preese Hall was the first reported incident of induced seismicity triggered by hydraulic stimulation for shale gas.

With respect to reporting of the earthquake and resulting casing deformation to the Energy Minister, there was no regulatory requirement to report casing deformation to him - this is the role of the HSE. Moreover, I think the actions taken were entirely appropriate - they ceased operations to allow a 6-month scientific study to be conducted, after which the results were reported for DECC, HSE and the rest of the world to read. While we're on the point, all of the casing deformation was within the production casing string, within the target zone of production - it was actually below the depths of the frack stages that triggered the seismicity. It poses no risk whatsoever to the integrity of the well. The figure below shows the well design - the deformation is the little yellow bar right at the bottom.

I think that's it in terms of my contribution to this piece of work. I'll comment briefly on the accusation of "mission-creep" in terms of chemical use - every chemical used in the UK must be permitted by the Environment Agency, and fully disclosed to the public.

One final point in closing: the go-to 'expert' for this film appears to be Ian R. Crane, an ex-oilfield-executive, who gets the final word as far as this film is concerned. I don't usually like to stoop to ad-hom arguments, but as Mr Crane seems to appear on an increasing number of anti-fracking pieces, it'll be worth your time having a look at his profile on RationalWiki, a website dedicated to uncovering cranks, conspiracy theorists, and pseudoscience. If this is the best figure-head that the anti-fracking movement can come up with, I would suggest they need to try a little harder.

UPDATE: I checked out the FrackFreeSomerset website to look for more information. According them, the film is not just "facilitated" by FFS, but in fact "produced" by them.

UPDATE (21/11/2013): The film maker himself has left a comment for me. He is correct to point out that I failed to address my comments of water use. In the film, I describe how much water is used for a single stimulation. Of course, the issue is cumulative effects over time if many wells need to be stimulated. The water use for an individual well (~10,000 - 50,000 cubic metres) sounds like a lot, but it must be placed in context. Between the 3 largest water utilities (Severn Trent, United and Thames), 1.7 billion liters of water are lost to leaks PER DAY. If water companies were able to improve on this by just 1%, we would have available an extra 17,000 cubic metres of water, that's enough water to frack a well every day. If water consumption is your concern, don't blame frackers, get the water utilities to fix their leaks (or at least 1% of their leaks).

Talking about Balcombe on 5Live, and is the UK oil industry a victim of its own success?

With the protest ongoing outside Cuadrilla's drill site near Balcombe, it's somewhat inevitable that I'd end up on the radio again - 5Live Drive once again. I've included the whole segment, including Bianca Jagger, a man from Blackpool who finds the whole shale gas thing a little boring, Vanessa Vine from Frack-Free-Sussex who finds the whole thing very exciting, and finally I get squeezed in at the end.

Beyond giving you the chance to enjoy my honey-ed tones once more, there are a couple of points that arose from this interview that I'd like to expand on.

The first thing that came to mind while listening to the anti-fracking interviewee was the issue of geological dread in public perception of risk. The concept of 'dread' in public risk perception is well established. From Wikipedia, a dread risk elicits visceral feeling of terror, uncontrollable, and catastrophe. It was coined in an attempt to understand why public perception of risk is often very different to expert assessment of risk. It is often that sense of an unknown danger that provokes feelings of dread. It was initially used to describe feelings towards nuclear power, but I think it applies equally to things like flying (for some people), but especially GM food, and now fracking.

Quoting the interviewee, fracking is 'messing with subterranean geology', and 'we cannot legislate for the vagaries of subterranean geology, it's such a human arrogance'. It seems that the public has this idea that the subsurface is unknowable and uncontrollable, leading to feelings of dread. I would argue that while the subsurface can no doubt be a challenging environment, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, geologists/geophysicists/hydrologists/geochemists etc., for whom understanding and making use of the subsurface is the bread and butter of their day to day life.

Geologists (Iain Stewart aside, perhaps) don't talk enough to the general public. We saw this in the furore over Iain Duncan Smith's comments about shelf-stackers being more important than geologists, where geologists finally had the gumption to point out to the rest of the world how important they actually are. And we are incredibly important.

Take a look at all the objects around you and in your life. If it's not made of animal (wool, leather) or plant (wood, cotton) then chances are it's made of something extracted from this apparently unknowable subterranean geology, that apparently we shouldn't be messing with.

It might be stone, which has to be quarried, cement and concrete products made from quarried aggregates and limestone. If it's plastic or synthetic then it's made from oil. If it's metal then that metal had to be mined somewhere. Moreover, all of the energy we use involves the subsurface as well. Hydrocarbons are the most obvious example. But where does the uranium come from that we put in our nuclear power plants? What about renewable sources, surely these will take us away from that dreadful subterranean geology with which thou shalt not mess? Well, a typical wind turbine needs something close to 100kg of neodymium, which can only be found in a few places, and mining it is not exactly a pleasant process. And hydroelectric? Well, it's well established that reservoir impoundment for hydroelectric can produce large earthquakes - for example the 2008 magnitude 7.9 Sichuan earthquake, which killed 80,000 people, has been linked with the impoundment of the Zipingpu Dam. Slightly more dramatic than the Blackpool tremor I feel.

Much of human endeavor has been based on 'messing with subterranean geology'. During fracking, we can use geophysical methods to monitor exactly where the induced fractures have gone, and to ensure that they are wholly contained within the targeted shale beds. As geologists, we have to accept that the public are unlikely to fully understand what we do. However, shale gas extraction is not an uncontrolled, poorly understood process. To claim that it is is to do insult to the thousands, or millions, of geologists around the world who do this kind of thing, successfully, every day.

Speaking of success, the events in Balcombe raise a second point. I am wondering whether the current UK onshore oil and gas activities have been a victim of their own success in hiding their operations from the public for the last 50 years.

Protestors talk about thousands of well sites despoiling our beautiful countryside. Which is strange, because we already have thousands of onshore wells across our countryside. Literally, 2000 wells - you can download a spreadsheet listing them all here. 10% of these, so about 200, have been hydraulically stimulated. Yet no-one seems to even know that they are there, and certainly no-one seems to be claiming that 50% of them are leaking hydrocarbons and/or carcinogens to contaminate groundwater.

Our onshore industry has been very effective at (a) making sure that they don't cause environmental problems and (b) doing everything that they can to stay out of the public view. I grew up a few miles down the road from the Humbly Grove Field, which is here (as per my Fort Worth post, go to StreetView and see if you can even see it), yet until I went to university I didn't even know it was there.

Now, when a new well is proposed, because people don't know anything about the onshore industry, the thought of drilling in the rural UK countryside seems crazy, (indeed it even induces dread), even though there are 2000 wells already there.

It's understandable that when we seek to understand shale gas impacts we look to the US, and we try to understand the issues they have faced, and what the development has ended up looking like. However, we should also look to our own industry. If we want to know whether it is possible to conceal well pads without despoiling the countryside, we should look at our own ability to do so, not what American regulators and planning rules allow. If we want to know whether wells are likely to leak, we should look at whether our own 2,000 wells are leaking, not whether wells drilled under American regulatory and inspection regimes are leaking.

There's one major aspect of the media attention at Balcombe that has surprised me. There is ALREADY an oil well on the Balcombe site, drilled in the 1980s by Conoco. They abandoned it because the price of oil dropped to $10 per barrel, while now it is over $100. I've not seen this well mentioned in many reports from Balcombe. Has the old well has been causing problems for Balcombe for the last 25 years? I doubt it. I would love to know what it is about the new well that people see problems? Why will it be different, or more likely to cause problems, than the one that is already there? 

Oppostion to shale gas - based on science?

Is opposition to shale gas development based on science, or is it simply about scaring local residents? Here's the latest video from Frack-Off. You decide:



Credit to www.shalegas-europe.eu for finding this little beauty. You can go to their link to see some actual scientists (mainly from the BGS) talking about shale gas.

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?

Shale gas and Cash-for-Locals?

This week the Parliamentary Select Committee for Energy and Climate Change released its assessment of 'The Impact of Shale Gas on Energy Markets'.

I particularly enjoyed conclusion 5:

One key to community acceptance will be a robust factual response by government to scare stories

I wonder who/what they could be referring to there....

More interesting, in my view at least, is conclusion 6:

Communities who are affected by shale gas development should expect to receive, and share in, some of the benefits of the development

or, as the Guardian would put it: Fracking firms should offer sweeteners to locals. It's an interesting idea, but I'm still torn between whether it is a good one or not.

In the US, mineral rights are generally owned by the person that owns the land. This means that if your farm sits on top of some shale gas, you stand to benefit directly from royalties from the gas development (try sticking the default numbers into this calculation engine). As a result, shale gas is generally wildly popular among rural American communities.

However, in the UK, in most cases the mineral rights being to the Crown Estate (i.e. 'er maj, gawd bless 'er), meaning that royalties from gas production goes straight to central government, rather than via local people.

Of course, that's not to say that shale gas development will not benefit a local community. While many of the jobs involved are high tech, and as such cannot be easily accessed by local people, there are plenty of roles for relatively unskilled workers, particularly in construction and haulage. Moreover, however the influx of skilled workers need places to stay, to eat and to drink, to do their laundry. They need to buy petrol, buy stuff from convenience stores, the list goes on. In Pennsylvania you hear of companies block-booking whole hotels for 6 month stretches to house the workers, restaurants full to bursting every lunchtime and bars full in the evenings.

However, UK public opinion continues to waver in regards to shale gas development. So, is it right to consider setting up community benefit schemes, whereby some of the profits from gas development are injected directly back into the local community? Or is this all a bribe to get people to accept something that they'd otherwise not be comfortable with?

In all honesty, I'm not sure I know the answer to this. On the one hand, shale gas development will involve some local disruption. Not the scare stories of exploding taps, blighted aquifers and general geological disruption - the so-called 'geological dread factor' - but increases in traffic, construction sites, laying new pipeline etc. Therefore it does seem reasonable that a community should receive some recompense for that. On the other hand, offering what could easily look like little more than a bung could make it look like shale gas has something to hide, when so long as the government ensures that there is 'a robust factual response by government to scare stories' it shouldn't have to.

It is worth noting at this juncture that such schemes seem to be common for wind farms (see here and here for two randomly selected examples) and nuclear power stations. I have enjoyed seeing how the language changes depending on your preferred form of energy, particularly wind farm proponents who have touted these community wind farm benefits as a great example of how wind can benefit a community, while if shale gas companies suggest the same thing then it is little more than a bribe.

So I'm still not sure whether this is a good idea or not. Regardless, in the meantime, IGas have drilled two exploration wells in Lancashire.







  

My visit to Glastonbury: Part II - The reaction

I discussed in my previous post my visit to the councillors of Glastonbury to talk to them about unconventional gas extraction, and the potential impact it could have on the area. In that post I gave a summary of what I said in my talk. In this post, I'd like to talk about the reaction.

It should be noted that I didn't go there with the intention of changing anyone's mind. Given that the council had already voted to ban fracking, I hardly thought a 45 minute presentation by a gravitas-lacking 29 year old (even if he does have a good number of letters after his name) would be enough to change their minds (I was more worried about getting out of there without being tarred-and-feathered to be honest).

However, the councilman who had asked me to come give the talk sent me a very kind email afterwards, saying he saw the evening as a total success, at that some members 'had come to confessions and said the presentation had changed their minds'. I wasn't aware that councillors had 'confessions', but I'm very glad that I appear to have had some small effect at least.

Furthermore, there was a reporter from the local paper in attendance, who placed a story on my talk in the Somerset Gazette, which has granted me my first experience of being completely misrepresented by the media (I guess we all get to experience this eventually.

It ran under the headline: 'Expert warns fracking leaks are the result of cutting corners'. Which is true. What is completely missing is the context - the fact that leaks from fracking are not inevitable side effects of the process, but that they can be prevented by a stronger regulatory regime. Also, missing is the context that the majority of companies are not cutting corners, which is why the percentage rate of leakage instances remains very very low.

In my view (perhaps unfairly, I'd love to hear your comments), you could be mistaken for thinking that I am opposed to fracking, based on that article. For instance, the line:

I am here to tell you how the process works and the effects that science has shown that it has on the people nearby and the surrounding areas,

placed without context, suggests that I am saying that science has shown lots of impacts. In fact, in my talk I went on to point out, for example with the Texas and Pennsylvania air quality surveys, that scientific evidence for negative impacts of fracking on water and/or air quality have been remarkably hard to come by, bar a small number of documented surface spill and well integrity cases.  

The final and most important item left out in the story is that I summarised my talk by stating that, while it is not my decision to take, I believe that unconventional gas extraction can be done safely in the South West, and that it will have a beneficial impact on the area. It would have been nice if that could have been reported as well.

 

My visit to Glastonbury

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Glastonbury, a small town in Somerset best known for its tor and its music festival. Glastonbury Town Council has preemptively declared itself to be 'frack-free'. Much like Frome's similar decision last year, this is more a symbolic gesture, because (a) it's not clear that there is any unconventional gas to be had from around Glastonbury, and (b) if there were, it is unlikely to be developed for many years.

The decision was not a unanimous one. Some councillors felt that the decision had been rushed, having heard only of the negative sides from Frack Free Somerset. Jim Barron, one of the dissenting councilmen, pleaded in the local paper for a more evidence based discussion before any decisions be taken.

As a result, I was asked to come down to Glastonbury one evening after work to give a presentation to the council. You can download the presentation that I ended up giving from here. You might as well read it in full, but here's a potted summary.

I began by explaining what shale gas is, why it is different to conventional gas, and why hydraulic fracturing is necessary. I followed this by explaining the process, including a time-lapse video of a well being drilled and fracked, and an animation showing how microseismic events are used to image where the stimulated fracture is going. I gave a short overview of existing UK onshore oil/gas operations, including the fact that fracking has been done over 200 times in the UK since the 1970s.

I then outlined what I see as the potential issues relating to unconventional gas extraction: water usage, earthquakes, water contamination, air pollution, and surface impacts. The first, water usage, can be quickly shown to be a red herring: the water lost by SouthWest Water through leakage every day would be enough to frack more than 30 wells. I talked about the Blackpool earthquake, discussing how event magnitudes work (and that the event in Blackpool is so small that most of my real-earthquake-studying colleagues wouldn't get out of bed for something 10 times the size), and looking at evidence for fracking-induced earthquakes elsewhere (of which there are a handful in Canada, but none in the US).

Water contamination is perhaps the major issue for fracking. It is clear that there have been some cases of methane contamination through wells, and of chemical spills at the surface. I listed some of the key incidents taken from this report. However, it is important to point out that where methane leakage has occurred, it is inevitably due to shoddy practice from the drillers: poor or incomplete casing and/or missing cement. Equally, it should be fairly easy not to spill chemicals on pads at the surface, while open tailings ponds (often the most common source of surface contamination) are not allowed in the UK. It is most important to consider the context of these incidents: for example, the Groundwater Protection Council estimate that less than 0.1% of wells have seen a problem.   

With respect to air pollution, I showed a number of studies from both Pennsylvania and Texas, which do not show increases in benzene, ozone or volatile organic compounds (VOCs) before and after drilling. I then looked at a study of employee health statistics for the oil and gas industry in comparison to other sectors. If drill pads are unhealthy places to be, with dangerous chemicals being pumped into the air, then surely the employees should be getting the sickest, given that they might be on site 6 days a week for months on end. In fact, sickness rate in the gas industry is pretty consistent with national average rates, and a lot lower than many other industries.

To demonstrate the surface impacts of shale gas extraction, I showed some photos of what the rigs look like during drilling (on site for a month or two), and what the pads look like once the well is completed, and talked about pad spacing (minimum 2 - 6km as an approximation), as well as pointing out other impacts like new pipelines, and the truck journeys to and from the pads.

I then talked about the public debate around fracking in the US, pointing out that it has become highly polarised, with protest groups, but then anti-protest groups who protest the protest groups. I also showed the data from a Pittsburgh public opinion survey that showed that generally fracking does have more support than opposition (although perhaps the opposition is more vociferous).

Finally, as I like to do, I compared the risks from fracking to the risks from conventional gas extraction. To me at least, if you are opposed to fracking, you should be opposed to all hydrocarbon extraction, so I posed the question to Glastonbury's councilmen: take the scary boogey-word 'fracking' out of the question, and ask what would you do if there was a large conventional gas field discovered under Glastonbury. What would you do?

FrackNation

Sorry, been a bit lax in terms of regular posting this month. I've been a busy boy. Just quick one for now to keep you interested, which is to mention 'FrackNation', a new film that has come out recently in the US.

The aim of the film is to show the other side of the argument to Josh Fox's Gasland, which was the real start for the anti-fracking movement. Even now, when anti-fracking groups are set up, Gasland is often the first port-of-call for resources about why fracking is bad.

The film has been funded by Kickstarter, which is a crowd-sourced funding project, so it's not paid for directly by oil companies (although it wouldn't surprise me if many of the funders were people who have benefited from shale gas through leases, royalties etc).

The film has been released on US cable, but unfortunately I suspect that, short of buying the DVD, it might be a while before it is available in the UK. So in the meantime, here are a few trailers:





You can see that the film follows a similar 'intentionally-low-budget-looking' format, candid camera style popularised by the likes of Michael Moore.

Subject matter apart (and I look forward to seeing the full version, by all accounts Josh Fox and Gasland appear to have been blown out of the water), I find this style of documentary-making interesting: rushing up to people and asking them awkward questions, and no doubt employing some selective editing. I'm sure that a good journalist, combined with selective editing, could make anyone look pretty bad about pretty much anything. Usually, it's the Josh Fox's and Michael Moore's, who are from the left of the political spectrum, doing this. Now it seems those of the right (and the producer, Phelim McAleer, does appear to be fairly Conservative) are picking up on this tactic.

Anyway, enjoy the trailers, I will try to watch the full version and let you know my thoughts as soon as I can.

Cuadrilla, Elswick and some spectacular hypocrisy from Frack-Off

Let me begin by wishing you all a happy Christmas - I hope you ate lots of turkey, those little sausages with the bacon wrapped round (my favourite) and Xmas pudding!

But now, to business. It has slipped under my radar until now, but as well as the drilling sites on the Fylde Peninsular, Cuadrilla are the proud owners of a small gas well at Elswick, a small town on the Fylde. The question is, why?

The may be many reasons - for example the sale from Independent, the previous owners, may have included geological or geophysical data that could have been beneficial to Cuadrilla. However, it wouldn't be surprising if, as surmised by Frack-Off, a major element in the sale was the use of Elswick for PR purposes.

You can see on the Cuadrilla site a couple of images of the site. The well-head is capped by a 'Christmas tree', about the size of a person. The site can be easily concealed with a medium-sized hedgerow. This is what a shale-gas drilling site will look like once the drilling and fracturing stages are completed (so about 6 months to a year after drilling begins). So owning this site, and having photos to plaster all over the web will provide a useful PR opportunity for Cuadrilla.

Also, note that the well has been hydraulically fractured. Not to the same extent as what is needed to produce shale gas, but it provides an idea of a typical UK onshore gas example, a well has been drilled, fracked, and has produced gas for 20 years without any environmental incidents of any kind. Certainly a useful example to have, even if shale gas extraction will be on a larger scale than this. If 50% of wells fail after 20 years, as claimed by Josh Fox in The Sky is Pink, I guess this must just be one of the lucky ones.....

I did rather enjoy Frack-Off's spectacularly hypocritical article on the Elswick well. It begins with a reasonable enough description of the Elswick site, and Cuadrilla's motives for buying it. However, for Frack-Off, the fact that it is a single well makes the example meaningless, and they end the article with the usually predictable Cuadrilla-bashing.

Of course more wells will be needed to produce a shale gas reservoir. Probably one well-head every few miles. What the Elswick example is good for though, is to show what one of these well-heads will look like. Could we handle an Elswick every few miles?

Well, Frack-Off's response is this photo-shopped monstrosity:

 

It's photo-shopped from this photo from the Jonah Gas field, Wyoming, overlaying some British countryside onto this image:

The Jonah Field is a tight gas (i.e. sandstone) field developed in the early 1990s. That is before the technology to drill horizontal wells had been developed, so of course there are a lot of wells. Shale gas in the UK would look nothing like the Jonah field.

If Frack-Off don't like Cuadrilla's use of Elswick for PR on the basis that it is a single well site, while shale gas would use many, it's surely pretty duplicitous for them, in the same article, to use an image from a field developed using obsolete 1990s technology for their own PR. It all seems spectacularly hypocritical to me......

Update 28.12.2012: In case you can't be bothered to click the link, here's the image of the Elswick Christmas Tree:

Update 2, 28.12.2012: Rather than using old, 1990 gas wells (either Elswick or Jonah Field), perhaps we'd all be better off using some up to date pictures. Perhaps, for example, from the Pennsylvania shale gas fields currently being developed. Here are a couple of links to aerial photo tours of affected areas:

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/PeoplePlaces/Faculty/cathles/Gas%20Blog%20PDFs/10-%20Will%20gas%20development%20be%20ugly.pdf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skytruth/sets/72157632055783199/with/8203603186/

Shale gas in the news this week

A fairly low-effort post this week, as I have just arrived back from the annual AGU conference in San Francisco. While it was interesting to compare the differences between AGU, which is a very academic conference, and the more industry-centered conferences which I more typically attend, it seems I went at a bad time, because shale gas has been all over the news in the last couple of weeks.

Firstly, we saw about 300 people erect a mock drill rig outside parliament in protest about shale gas extraction. Does 300 sound like a lot? Not sure. Hundreds of thousands once protested about the Iraq war, to little effect....

Meanwhile, the Independent reported that 60% of the UK countryside could be exploited for shale gas. However, DECC were quick to rubbish that statement.

Andrew Rawnsley wrote about how poor the UK's shale prospects are, unilaterally declaring that UK shales are the thinnest in Europe, despite the fact that the Bowland shale is in fact remarkably thick. The fact that this hasn't been corrected on the website version of the article is fairly shocking to me. Especially given that the piece comes up with a new term: 'frack-heads'.

Believers in shale gas have a tendency to rave about it as if they are using a mind-bending substance. So I suggest we call them frack-heads.

Fairly offensive from a main-stream journalist, especially from one who has gotten his facts completely wrong with respect to the main premise of the article.

I've never used mind-bending substances, but we've found a new chief frack-head who certainly looks as though he might have: Boris Johnson has waded straight into the middle of the fracking debate. Turning a phrase as only BoJo, love him or hate him, can:

Beware this new technology, they wail. Do not tamper with the corsets of Gaia! Don’t probe her loamy undergarments with so much as a finger — or else the goddess of the earth will erupt with seismic revenge

Of course, as I've mentioned before, James Lovelock, the inventor of Gaia theory, is actually hugely in favour of shale gas.

Meanwhile the EU parliament has taken it upon itself to regulate our moves towards shale gas exploitation. I'll admit to not being particularly pro-EU at the best of times, but sometimes they really don't help themselves do they?

So why all the palaver? Well, George Osborne has revealed a new gas strategy, promoting domestic gas extraction and the construction of new gas fired power plants. My only issue with this: we shouldn't be giving tax breaks to shale gas companies - we should take our full slice of the money they make and use it to benefit the economy!

Shale gas and opinion polls. Pt II: The UK

Having looked at recent USA opinion polls in my last post, now lets look at the most recent UK data. A recent opinion survey of residents of Fylde, Blackpool and Lancashire has been commissioned. Report is here, Cuadrilla's take is here, and a BBC report on the survey is here. The headline figures: 44% favour continued extraction, 23% oppose further extraction, and 35% don't know. Remarkably similar to the US numbers actually.

Now, I have to stop for a minute to take the BBC to task about their reporting of the issue. You'd think the headline for this story would be something like: 'New survey shows majority of residents support fracking' (or something catchy-er than that, I guess I'll never get a job at the Sun). Instead, we get 'Cuadrilla fracking survey is propaganda: Protest group'. Or as it should read: 'Crazy person with clear and obvious bias makes completely unsubstantiated claims'.

It really is laughably sad. The protagonist in this case is Gayzer Tarjanyi, who has changed his name by deed-poll to Mr Frackman to oppose shale gas. Probably not the kind of person to be relied upon to provide impartial analysis. Does anyone really think the Mr Frackman gives 'balanced presentations' as he claims?

The sole piece of evidence advanced to suggest that the survey is 'propaganda' is that 90% of the people who come to his meetings oppose fracking. Well, I'm fairly sure, much like my own experiences of Bristol's anti-fracking groups, is that the reason they are there is not because they want to find out more, but because they already oppose fracking and are looking for more information to support their view. The 45% of people who support fracking are unlikely to come to Mr Frackman's meetings.

Finally, unless there is another petition hidden away somewhere, his latest petition appears to only have about 300 signatures. Bear in mind that the population of the area in question is several hundred thouand. Of course, there doesn't appear to be a geographical limit to the petition, so maybe some of the signatories have been bussed in from elsewhere, much like the protesters who came all the way from Brighton to chain themselves to Cuadrilla's rig last year (and much like how much of the US shale gas opposition is bussed in from New York city).

Much like the US experience, it would appear that in the local areas affected by shale gas extraction, public support is running at 2-to-1 in favour (with a significant proportion of 'don't knows'), while anti-fracking sentiment is stronger in other areas that are more affected by Josh Fox's movie-making than any direct experience of fracking.

Shale gas and opinion polls. Pt I: The USA

Shale gas extraction in the US has been an environmental disaster of unmitigated proportions, leaving a blighted wasteland of drill rigs, dead animals and exploding water supplies. The locals are distraught about the damage caused to their areas, but are crushed beneath the power of big gas companies. Surely they'd take any chance to speak out against this appalling practice?

This begs the question: what do the people living in above shale gas plays in the US actually think? An opinion poll by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research provides an interesting insight. Newspaper report here, and more details here, including the actual data tables.

The survey divides the results into 4 geographical areas. If Pennsylvanian geography isn't your strong point (don't be ashamed, I had to look this up too), Pittsburgh City is the center of Pittsburgh, Alleghany County is basically the Pittsburgh Metropolitan area, the 6 Counties are the wider suburban commuter belts, while the remaining 25 Counties make up half of rural Pennsylvania (and parts of W Viginia and Ohio).

The first thing to notice is that in all areas, those in favour of shale gas far outweigh those opposed. Overall, 45% somewhat or strongly support shale gas production, 25% somewhat or strongly oppose, and 30% are ambivalent. This is hardly the groundswell of opposition that anti-fracking advocates like to suggest, hardly evidence that the US experience is one of small gains for huge environmental cost, as suggested by Frome Council as justification for their decision to ban fracking. It is recognised that shale gas can have environmental issues, but that regulation can be improved (58% favour increased government oversight) but that the benefits have far outweighed any problems. Clearly, the US experience shows that shale gas extraction can produce significant benefit, but that appropriate regulatory oversight is necessary. I think that is a view that would resonate with most UK geologists.

It's also interesting to compare the responses by geography. Before doing so, note that the vast majority of shale gas extraction is done in rural PA: the 25 Counties. For obvious reasons, there's not a lot of drilling going on in the middle of Pittsburgh. With that in mind, notice that across the board, the most favourable views on shale gas are found from the residents of the 25 Counties, while the least favourable are found from people in Pittsburgh. For example, 29% of Pittsburghians somewhat or strongly oppose shale gas, while only 18% of those from the 25 Counties share these views.

There may well be demographic or political reasons for these differences, but the story this seems to paint to me is that the people in the countryside who are actually at 'ground-zero' for the drilling are in fact finding that the economic benefits to their small rural communities are far outweighing any negative impacts. Meanwhile, people in the city, who perhaps aren't exposed to shale gas extraction on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, but are simply picking up on the sensationalist media stories (who always refer to shale gas as 'controversial'), as well as the scare stories of Josh Fox et al, and this is producing a less favourable view of shale gas than those who are actually on the ground and experiencing the effects first hand.

If opinion polls aren't your bag, you may have been aware of a small election or two in the US a month or so ago. As well as presidential elections, many local positions were up for grabs, many of them contested by candidates on 'anti-fracking' platforms. What happened? Across the board, candidates on anti-fracking platforms were defeated. Much like Pittsburgh, it appears that the majority of those opposed to fracking are those living in cities like New York, whose sole experience of shale gas is the videos shown in the media. Meanwhile, upstate in the Southern Tier counties, the locals are voting in candidates in favour of bringing in drilling, and voting out those in favour of a ban.

David Miliband on the energy crisis

On a recent BBC Question Time panel, David Miliband (ex foreign minister, one time competitor for the leadership of the Labour party) addressed the issue of the energy crisis. He did a wonderful job summarizing the inanity of much of the debate surrounding energy issues. I've linked to the iPlayer video before, but as non-UK readers won't be able to watch, and as the video has probably expired by now, I thought I'd post the transcript, because it really is a great comment that cuts right to the heart of the issue:

Look, we've got an environmental crisis of absolutely overwhelming proportions, we are going to need every conceivable source of low-carbon energy we can find. As it happens, this country is a leader in offshore wind, a world leader in offshore wind. We're going to need some onshore wind as well, but honestly, you've got the Lib Dem Secretary of State arguing with the Conservative Energy Minister about 1% of our energy.

The truth is if you care about the energy mix, and you care about low carbon, 30% of our energy comes from coal at the moment, and it comes from coal that isn't dug in this country, it's imported from Russia. The biggest thing that we can do to actually contribute to a global environmental challenge as well as to ensure our own reliability and decent cost of supply is to switch from having 30% coal to putting that 30% into gas. Gas is actually being discovered all around the world, including in America, shale gas, unconventional gas.

We're going to need the wind, but the truth is to debate 1%, when you've got 30% coal, we're not doing justice to the environmental challenge never mind the energy challenge.

I'm not a natural labour voter, but based on this, it's a shame his brother Ed was made leader instead of him....

The hornet's nest keeps on giving

Ragamala has been good enough to respond once again in our conversation in the comments section of my letter to the Somerset Standard.

He comments:

You have a penchant for facts, Dr Verdon. Can you please say what percentage of the Wytch Field oil reservoirs tapped is onshore? Yes it is called an onshore resource. For the reason that it suits the pro-fracking argument to call it that, and this misrepresentation should be continually challenged as it used, erroneously, to imply support for onshore fracking.
Regarding fugitive methane emissions I stand by my statement that there is no certainty whatsoever about the levels of methane fugitive emissions from shale gas fracking. In the EU report you refer to we have indeed some tables of figures produced, but these are estimate drawn from various widely varying US sources, some now dated, rather than hard fact. And the report makes it clear that the European experience will not necessarily be the same as the US. In other words, there is NO reliable estimate of methane emissions. I am grateful to Dr Vedon for conceding that CO2 emission is a very different thing from greenhouse gas emission or CO2 equivalent emissions, this is a factor which is hidden by much pro-fracking propaganda.
Regarding Cuadrilla's wilful breach of their planning permnission your statement is demonstrably wrong.And the Guardian article you refer to makes no reference to migration at all. What it does say is that Cuadrilla wanted to exceed their planning deadline FOR THEIR OWN REASONS, and decided to go ahead WITHOUT CONSULTING LCC because they had the nod from an employed consultant. This was wilful breach of planning which had no link with migration patterns at all, and I would ask you for a retraction on that.

Frankly I can not see how if Cuadrilla mislead about economic benefit this is any better whatsoever than them being misleading about geological "data". This would only be true from your blinkered perspective. The people of the Fylde are being encouraged to accept fracking turning their land into an industrial area by use of misleading figures on economic benefit. Earlier Cuadrilla issued figures on the likely shale gas available which were wild guesses and even their Australian part parent company is sceptical about these and the resulting viability of Cuadrilla's operation.

Regarding shale gas estimates, can we agree to wait until the new BGS report - expected shortly - is out?

I've never been accused of having a penchant for facts before. My sarcasm detector is off the chart. In science, having a penchant for facts is usually considered a good thing. Anyway, my response as follows:

I guess I should take the backhanded compliment of having "a penchant for facts". Better at least than being accused of "overlooking" or even "blissfully ignoring" facts, as your other comments have alleged. Similarly, this conversation began with me apparently 'totally ignoring' the EU Committee reports, but now you yourself want to argue that the information in the report should be discounted. I can only assume that you've had this change of heart because the data in the report does not support the story you want to tell.

Of course they can only be estimates, but they are made with the best evidence available, so they shouldn't be discounted just because you don't like them. If anything given the more stringent EU regulations, estimated based on the US are likely to be an overestimate. Several different reports and papers have come to similar conclusions, the only one that hasn't, by Howarth and Ingraffea, has been widely criticised even by their colleagues at Cornell as using out of date data and poor assumptions.

Unfortunately, one fact I do not have is the proportion of Wytch Farm that is under Poole Harbour, and what under land. However, this is irrelevant to the issue: For drillers, once the drill is under the ground the process is the same, whether on land or under water. When working at 2km depth, the presence or absence of 10m of water really doesn't matter. What does matter is whether the drill has to be sited on land, or on a rig, and therefore whether it will have to go through the water before drilling into rock. In fact, drilling offshore is far harder than onshore. From all technical perspectives, however, drilling at Wytch Farm, where wells start on land but bend out through rocks that are under the coast at depth, is absolutely no different to drilling on land anywhere else. This isn't some invention for pro-shale-gas opportunism, this is how fields are always defined, and with good reason. I'm not sure why you feel that the fact that part of Wytch Farm is under Poole Harbour means that the safety record there can be discounted - if they'd polluted Poole Harbour that would be a major incident!

Regardless of this, I wasn't aware that Wytch Farm was being used for propaganda purposes. If you really don't like this particular example, which of the other 30 or so onshore UK oil fields (that have produced a combined 66 millions tonnes of oil since 1975) would you prefer to use as an example? I think Wytch Farm is mainly talked about because it is the largest and most well known. I grew up 5 minutes down the road from the Humbly Grove Field (Hampshire), but wasn't even aware of it until I studied to become a geologist. You can see where they all are via this map:

http://tinyurl.com/d4speh8

The planning permission time limit breached by Cuadrilla was there because to protect bird life. Apologies for stating migrating, when I should have said over-wintering, birds aren't a strong point of mine. And I've already stated that from a public relations perspective it was a very silly thing to do, and if I were LCC I'd want to know it wouldn't happen again. But to jump from that to banning all shale gas anywhere forever is quite a leap to make.

I've not seen any data on the economic benefits of the geophys survey - either those claimed by Cuadrilla or actually measured (I'm not an economist, so I wouldn't know how you'd go about measuring that). Typically these things cost several million at least, though obviously much of that would go to the specialist companies involved rather than local people. It will indeed be interesting to see the latest numbers from the BGS. The current number being bandied about is in the region of £1.5 trillion, although until that's made official we shall, of course, have to wait.

I really should stop feeding the trolls and get back to my day job.......