Conserve Our Countryside from the Oil & Gas Industry
A1 Poster pdf
A photo taken by an artist from a plane, just west of Buffalo, Texas, of energy extraction taken to extreme. By Amy Youngs. You can also see these well sites and how far they stretch on Google Maps here.
Fossil Fuel Extraction is Becoming Increasingly Extreme
From collecting sea coal on a beach, to the worlds biggest machines open cast mining, an increasing amount of energy has to be spent to extract fossil fuels.
Spindletop well in Texas, 1901, was a gusher that would produce about 100 times more energy than was expended extracting it. The Deep Water Horizon was drilling in one and half kilometres of ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, 4,000m below the sea bed, when it exploded in the world’s worst oceanic oil disaster. The energy return has dropped to as low as 4 times the amount required for deep water drilling. As a result, the percentage of GDP spent on energy production has doubled in the past decade.
Summary Articles with references:
Energy, Climate and Cuts: A Fork in the Road – Frack Off
What Energy Return On Investment (EROI) tells us about financial Return On Investment (ROI) – Chris Nelder, ZDNet
Fracking has been around for 70 years… or less than 10?
Top: Fracking, 1947 style
“First experimental fracturing job conducted in 1947 by Stanolind Oil in the Hugoton gas field of southwestern Kansas utilizing “1,000 gallons of naphthenic-acid and palm-oil- (napalm-) thickened gasoline” … “and sand from the Arkansas River” (from Montgomery and Smith, 2010, p. 2).” – Kansas Geological Survey, Public Information Circular (PIC) 32
Bottom: A large modern frac job. Not the same.
A typical Eagle Ford drill site on five to ten acres of land using around 15 to 20 million gallons of fluid. During fracking fourteen 2,500 hp high pressure frac pumps are connected to the well head and pump for more than a week.
Modern, high volume, high pressure, multi-stage, slickwater hydraulic fracturing of multiple horizontal wells clustered on a single pad has only been carried out since 2007.
“Unconventional development of gas using high volume slickwater fracing from long laterals is NOT a 60-year-old well-proven technology; it is still being developed.” – Unconventional Gas Development from Shale: Myths and Realities Related to Human Health Impacts, Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, 2012
Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) Imminent?
Firm to drill for gas in coal seams under the North Sea – The Telegraph
Impacts
Earthquakes
See Get Informed > Earthquakes
See Get Informed > Waste Fluid
Halliburton Loophole
“Among the many dubious provisions in the 2005 energy bill was one dubbed the Halliburton loophole, which was inserted at the behest of — you guessed it — then-Vice President Dick Cheney, a former chief executive of Halliburton.
It stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing”
The Halliburton Loophole – The New York Times
Well Failure is Common
Well casing failure is common (tens of thousands of wells), far more common for unconventional wells, increases with age, and failure rates in Europe are uncertain.
See Get Informed > Well Failure
Leakage Pathways
Noble gases identify the mechanisms of fugitive gas contamination in drinking-water wells overlying the Marcellus and Barnett Shales – Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences of America
List of the Harmed
List item 16717. Rodrigo Romo and family
Location: Kern County, CA
Gas Facility: 45 fracked wells within 2 miles of daughter’s school
Exposure: Air
Symptoms: Unexplainable epileptic attacks“Many students at the school suffer from asthma and serious, debilitating illnesses. What is causing this spike in health problems in normally healthy children? Fracking. It exposes our children to unsafe levels of air toxins that can cause a broad variety of serious health complications, including asthma. Students at my daughter’s schools were often forced to stay inside for weeks at a time because of the noxious fumes from the fracking sites. They think it’s strange when people don’t get nosebleeds every day. For too many of California’s Latino public school students, this is normal.” letter from Rodrigo Romo – The Guardian
Family sick and Suffering Horror Side Effects
also livestock birth deformities, and property value effected
Jury awards Texas family nearly $3 million in fracking case – LA Times
Impacts: Gagging
Lifelong Gag Order Imposed on Two Kids in Fracking Case – SateImpact Pennsylvania, Aug 2013
Impacts: Health
Concerned Health Professionals of New York,
increased hospital admissions,
increase in premature births and high risk pregnancies.
See Get Informed > Bombshell Reports
Impacts: Property Insurance
Newspaper clipping from The Sunday Times, emailed to us 9th June 2014
Impacts: House Prices
See Get Informed > House Prices
Impacts: Rural Economy
Want to know how fracking will affect you? Sorry, that’s a state secret! – Telegraph, 11th August 2014
Shale Gas Rural Economy Impacts [Heavily Redacted] – By Redacted, Rural Community Policy Unit, DEFRA, March 2014
Shale Gas Rural Economy Impacts [Full Report] – DEFRA
“Noxious odours from venting gases can also impact on air quality for local residents.”
“There is a risk that even if contaminated surface water does not directly impact drinking water supplies, it can affect human health indirectly through consumption of contaminated wildlife, livestock, or agricultural products.”
“House prices in close proximity to the drilling operations are likely to fall.”
“Properties located within a 1 – 5 mile radius of the fracking operation may also incur an additional cost of insurance to cover losses in case of explosion on the site. Such an event would clearly have social impacts…”
“Shale gas development may transform a previously pristine and quiet natural region, bringing increased industrialization. As a result rural community businesses that rely on clean air, land, water, and/or a tranquil environment may suffer losses from this change such as agriculture, tourism, organic farming, hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation.”
Scale of Industrialisation
NASA Earth Observatory
A Mysterious Patch Of Light Shows Up In The North Dakota Dark – Krulwich Wonders
U.S. Gas Flaring Visible from Space as Fracking Industry Booms – Ecowatch
Well Progression, Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Quarterly progression of gas well permits July 2008 – Oct 2012
Natural Gas Information, Bradford County website
[This Animated Quarterly Progression .gif was accessed in 2016, but has since been replaced with a static .jpg]
Economic Recovery Requires 300 Wells per 10km Square
Red dots representing approximately 300 wells on 30 well sites in a 10km x 10km licence block in East Yorkshire, give an indication of the massive scale of industrialisation that would be required.
“Economic development of gas and oil from shale formations requires a high well density, at least one well per 80 surface acres, over large continuous areas of a play.” [equivalent to 300 wells per 100km2]
Assessment and risk analysis of casing and cement impairment in oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, 2000–2012 – PNAS (Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences), June 2014
Ineos stated 396 Wells per 10km Square
LICENCE WELL DENSITY EXAMPLE – INEOS SHALE – INVITATION TO TENDER, p2, originally published on the Ineos website May 2016, but since removed.
Despite producing this professional quality graphic of well densities complete with smart Ineos branding, completely consistent with other literature on the subject (see above), and then publishing it on their website, Ineos later tried to deny it. They stated, “The graphic and description is wrong and completely our fault.”
INEOS “fires the starting gun” on fracking – Drill or Drop, May 2016
Impacts: Climate Change
See Get Informed > Climate Change
Opposed by…
See Where > Fracking Is Not Permitted In…
Unregulated Fracking – Dangerous Situation
In an Inside Out energy special, Danni Hewson investigates claims by an industry expert that unregulated fracking could soon be a reality all over Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
“We’re in the situation in the UK where we’re going to have unregulated fracking… so you shouldn’t be doing it at all… It’s a completely weird and absurd situation – the industry is less pro fracking than the government… so it’s dangerous; it’s dangerous for the people of Yorkshire.” – Mike Hill, Oil & Gas Engineer
Inside Out Yorkshire and Lincolnshire – BBC One
See also: Myths > Gold Standard Regulations
What does the Public Want?
Support for shale gas is the lowest of all the main energy technologies, and falling. In this graph from early 2015 only 28% of the public supported fracking. As people have found out more about fracking since then, that figure has dropped to 17%.
Chart: Public consistently backs solar over shale – New Economics Foundation
“more people were opposed (33%) to fracking than supported it (17%). This is the lowest level of support for fracking since the tracker began.” – Oct 2016
“There is more opposition than support amongst those who know a lot about it…
The only group to be more supportive are those that haven’t heard of fracking” – Aug 2015Energy and Climate Change Public Attitudes Tracker – Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Government Going All Out for Shale
Peers back Cameron’s pledge to go ‘all out’ for shale fracking – The Independant
Budget 2013: George Osborne vows to ‘make shale gas happen’ despite fracking concerns – The Telegraph
Will Fracking Reduce Gas Prices
Lord Browne: fracking will not reduce UK gas prices – The Guardian
Fracking won’t lower energy bills, says Davey – The Telegraph
‘Baseless economics’: Lord Stern on David Cameron’s claims that a UK fracking boom can bring down price of gas – Independent
See also Myths > Gas Prices
Fracking Bosses at the Heart of Government
Revealed: Fracking industry bosses at heart of coalition – The Independant
Desolate North East
He’s done it again – Tory peer repeats ‘desolate’ North-East comments in fracking debate – Northern Echo
Lord Howell: British fracking policy – a change of direction needed – Journal of Energy Security
Licence Areas – Yorkshire Sacrifice Zone
See Get Informed > Licence Areas
Rathlin Energy
Rathlin Energy (UK) Ltd have PEDL Licence 183 (Petroleum Export and Development Licence 183).
Planning Permission and EA Permits
Links to the Planning Permission documents and Environment Agency Permits can be found here for Crawberry Hill, and here for West Newton.
Rathlin Energy Incidents / Mini-frack Incident
Frack Free East Yorkshire > Incidents
Cuadrilla: Rig In North Yorkshire
Fracking Yorkshire: Cuadrilla`s Bit On The Side – Frack Off
Cuadrilla: Dismal Track Record
See Get Informed > Cuadrilla Fails
Ineos
“Yet when Ratcliffe tells a major national newspaper that the opposition to fracking is based on hearsay there is probably some dim level at which he is uneasily aware that what he is saying can be challenged. Is he unaware that the US company with which he has a 15 year contract for the supply shale gas, Range Resource, has been accused of causing a number of environmental incidents? It seems implausible that he does not know that Range Resource have paid nearly $15 million in pollution fines in recent years.”
Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos and the empire of trash – Feasta, June 2016
“In September 2014, the Department of Environmental Protection slapped Range Resources with a $4.15 million fine for leaking wastewater impoundments. It was the highest fine ever issued by DEP. … CEO … Ventura’s yearly compensation tops $10 million”
Pennsylvania’s First Shale Driller: Range Resources – SateImpact Pennsylvania
DEP seeks record fine of $8.9 million from Range Resources – SateImpact Pennsylvania, June 2015
Ineos Track Record
“According Jim Ratcliffe, a multi millionaire … “a lot of opposition to fracking is based on hearsay and rumour. In the US they have drilled one million wells and not had an environmental incident for six years.”
The article below includes poor safety ratings, accidents, leaks of gas and dust, and more, at their plants in Grangemouth, Runcorn and Germany. In Addyston, Ohio they were jointly fined $1.3m and a school had to be relocated.
The INEOS Track Record on Safety and Health – Frack Free Nottinghamshire (referencing BBC, Express, EPA etc.), June 2016
Driffield and Wolds
Home to the most northerly chalk streams in Europe – “our rainforest” and our water supply.
Discover Yorkshire’s chalk streams – Yorkshire Wildlife Trust
There are 72 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in Humberside.
List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Humberside – Wikipedia
Bentley Victory
Fears turn to cheers as Bentley gas protest gets joyful news – Sydney Morning Herald
Crawberry Hill Victory
Rathlin Energy originally planned to carry out mini-frack tests at both Crawberry Hill and West Newton well sites. The Crawberry Hill well site is in the Ground Water Protection Zone that supplies most of the region’s drinking water, including to Beverley and Hull.
Unable to move equipment between sites due to ongoing protests, and scrutiny of their operations, Rathlin Energy were unable to start work at Crawberry Hill. The well is being abandoned, and the site restored.
Rathlin pulls out of Crawberry Hill to joy of anti-fracking group – Hull Daily Mail
What You Can Do
Do something