Three more E&T reports to add to the pile:

First up we have: Call for 600m Fracking Limit
The headline portrays it as a call for a limit - but when you read the actual report it makes clear there is 0% chance of a frack penetrating 600m upwards. So UK shale resources which are located 3000m below the aquifers can be fracked completely safely. So surely the headline should be "Report Shows Fracking fears Unfounded" or "Fracking Completely Safe Below 600m" ??

Next up we have US Shale Causes Rise In Waste Gas Pollution
The story here is the abundance of US shale gas has caused the price to drop so low that it's cheaper to flare it off than bottle it. With UK energy bills rocketing ever skywards would that we had this 'problem' in the UK. But again - Sofia focuses on the negative.

And finally, here's a real gem - the headline sounds innocuous enough:Shell & Chevron Win Ukraine Shale Gas Contract. But looky here towards the end of the article:


"laced" ? As in "laced with poison"? Why the loaded language Sofia? If any engineers are interested in exactly what these carefully regulated chemicals are, they can find a list at fracfocus.org. 99.5% is water and sand. The other 0.5% is a range of common cleaning chemicals you might find in the cupboard under your sink. And in any event - this fracking fluid is all pumped back to the surface and carefully recycled.

And I notice Sofia doesn't attempt to balance the baseless "water contamination" claim with any of the numerous studies which have found no such danger of contamination.

Why the anti-shale bias Sofia? Instead of continual negative reporting on shale why not report some of the good news: Like this report about how US shale gas has halved their energy prices, creating a manufacturing boom - with companies moving their factories back to the US from China - to take advantage of the cheap energy. Think that might be useful in the UK Sofia?

Or - if you're still worried about CO2 emissions, how about this report that the use of low-carbon shale gas has resulted in a 0.5 GT drop in US CO2 emissions.

Or the report by the British Geological Survey saying we have 6 Trillion Cubic metres of shale gas in the UK. Enough to supply us with cheap clean-burning gas for 90 years.

How about some fair and balanced reporting please? I fear that if Sofia was reporting the discovery of electricity her headline would be "Dangerous new technology causes deadly shocks!!"

1. This report states that fracking is not recommended within 600m of the surface or aquifers. So in what way is "Calls for 600m shale gas fracking limit " innacurate or emotive? Surely this is just a statement of fact?

2. We all know from your previous postings that you don't (or choose not to) understand the atmospheric consequencies of burning fossil fuels, but that aside it should be obvious to any engineer that wasting a resource in a time of shortage does not make sense, in fact is bad engineering.

3. Two points here. The quote given is perfectly accurate. Sofia is not making this claim, she is reporting that this claim exists. It's called balanced reporting, there are opposing views on this matter: the IET does not exist to promote your views only and to suppress anyone else's - even though from your user id you clearly believe that it does. Second point, to claim that all fracking water is collected and recycled is clearly absurd, there must be loss into the ground.

Arguing against biased and emotive articles by using biased and emotive forum postings seems to me to be very strange behaviour.

I live in the heart of the oil industry in Alberta Canada, here there are over 60,000 pump jacks(nodding donkey oil pumps) and many thousands of gas wells. I have friends who own oil companies, my son is a roughneck. I believe I may have more experience with this than most UK members, who only experience this through the media.

There are currently 2 types of fracking for tight plays as its called.
Hydraulic, and Gaseous.

The first you have seen in the media, the second actually uses Propane, and sand(the proppant), with a proportion of the propane recaptured for re-use.

Normally there is not an issue with either method- except for the amount of water required for a frac. Tens of millions of litres.

From what i have seen here, it is mainly down to the indivual geology coupled with the hydrology of the play, that will determine if there are going to be problems. Fracking was developed of this difficult to get to gas, and oil(hence tight play). Considering the huge amount of it that goes on here- we actually have very little incidence of ground water disturbance.

Unfortunately I dont think that problems with the frac can be fully predicted, how ever I have spoken at length with proponents of fracking, and they have found that the deeper the drill and frack, the less problems there are; so the nothing higher than 600m from surface is a good starter. Unfortunately the biggest issue is that we need it, and no matter what the nimbys think of fracking, I dont think that they have erected wind turbines in their gardens yet.

I find my self since emigrating here, to have increased my environmental awareness, coupled with an awareness of the local big industry(oil and gas). I myself am in the water industry, alot more important.

Aha - So you agree it's biased and emotive to publish 14 negative articles about shale - and to completely omit to report any of the many positive aspects to which I referred. Good - glad we agree on that.

Stableford - good to hear from someone with a positive experience of living with the oil and gas industry. And top marks to Canada for binning all that irrational man-made climate change nonsense that the UK gov are so obsessed with. I'd emigrate too if I could!!

Well please enlighten us as to how that user id suggests that Ipayyoursalary clearly believes that the IET exists to promote his views and suppress others? Surely an IET discussion forum is for a variety of people to give their views and the clue is in there somewhere, did you miss it?

Breathing in the fumes from the burning of fossil fuels is maybe making us a little crazy.

Regards.

This is someone who thinks that because they contribute 0.000234% of the IETs income (£129/£55.2million x 100%) they somehow "pay the salary" of the IET editorial board and so that board should do what they say. Although I have only just decided to start posting on these forums I have been reading this person's postings with increasing irritation for some time, and I think it is very clear what their views are on this subject.

Yes, they can express their views, and I will express mine. And the reply to my last posting shows that this is someone who would rather play with words than tackle real problems. Unfortunately it is this level of armchair pedantry that (in my opinion if it makes you feel better) is stopping climate change being addressed seriously.

Unfortunately I am now retired and find there is little I can do to help solve this challenge, although I hope I do everything I can. And looking back over my career I realise that there were too many times when I put my career and my company ahead of the world's needs - sometimes you need that hindsight and humility. So I am delighted when the IET sends a message to young engineers that there are more important things than lining shareholder's pockets a bit more, particularly on this most serious of subjects.

Well, Basically I would prefer to extract fracked gas a kilometer underground, rather than try and maintain unsightly windmills.
We need to have more information on the economics.
Whats the expected cost per unit???
Wealreadypaytoomuch
CliveS

It's rather similar to when the people suggest their relevant taxes pay the salaries of local or national government and most people get the general idea of what they mean and sort of somehow know they do not mean they are paying 100% of them.

As I recall Galileo had views which somewhat irritated the 'well informed' authorities of the time and yet in time he turned out to be correct and they turned out to be wrong. The IET uses its magazines and webpages to send its biased messages out to many people, do you not have an issue with that? Let's remember how all the financial institutions, governments, financial authorities, media and most of the public were biased in favour of borrow borrow borrow and boom and bust has been abolished etc., and yet we now find ourselves in a complete mess. So let's not delude ourselves that the majority are somehow always correct. It's good to have some dissenting voices because they tend to make others think a little bit more. The 'climate change' 'group' have been quietly changing their message over the last few years because their initial doom and gloom and global disaster in the next 20 years or so was not quite appearing as they were implying. What was it that PM Brown said '50 days to save the planet'.

No one is suggesting to burn fossil fuels without any regards to the environment or to waste water willy nilly.



Well there just happens to be a whole lot of problems which are tackled by words and them words are strung together to make laws. Do not them laws come from debates in Parliament, using yet more words in the discussion?



I agree with your sentiment and I do agree that we need to take care of our environment but I think the IET is rather biased in its views and does not print a balanced argument.

Regards.

When agencies say things which do not go in the environmentalist's favour they are 'infuriated'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18236535

Regards.

It's "newspeak" in the same way that anything radioactive cannot leak it has to 'spew out' and Plutonium can only be used together with 'deadly' or 'highly toxic' ;-)

Best regards

Roger

IPayyoursalary, please dont interprete me as a Climate Change denier, my personal opinion is that the Earth has natural cycles, however the combined actions of MAN(species), exacerbate the effects, sort of into an open loop control curve, with no feedback, this basically means we are in up to our neck, in sweet violets.

The more I see of the planet, the more I see that all life is interdependant, and losses of 1 species causes ripple effects across the entire plant, that may not be obvious. e.g the current fad for calamari, has lead to an increase in jelly fish.

Please let us return the conversation back to the fracking, and balance, not personal attacks.

Media, all media will be influenced by minority reporting of the issue, whether, through environmental group pressure, or from business.

Look at the source, too many press releases are being reported as news.

Whilst we continue to use energy, we have to get it from somewhere.

As I currently understand it, you have bigger fish to fry in the UK, with the reduction in North Sea oil, imports of Gas from Russia, and the Gulf, through LNG, at Milford Haven, Britain is in the hole from an energy security perspective, hence I think this is where the UK goverment is coming from, if you control the flow of a thing, you control the end user, and Russian is a pig of a language to learn.
Every few weeks you hear of another wind farm, or another tidal energy scheme. Britain needs them all. Now.
Most of the Canadian oil and gas companies are divesting them selves of their uk operations, now why would do that?

I live in uk and we provide the independent energy consultant and electricity securing and provide energy resources ,solutions in uk
organization with cheap and best prices.
Thanks.

I live in uk and we provide the independent energy consultant and electricity securing and provide energy resources ,solutions in uk
organization with cheap and best prices.
Thanks.

Glad to hear you don't deny that climate always has and always will change naturally - as evidenced by human history of the Roman and Medieval warm periods when it was so warm you could wade across the Rhine and grow grapes in Scotland. Or the little ice age around 1600 when frost fairs were held on the Thames every year. Or the ice core records which show the mild warming that occurred last century in the context of past natural warming and cooling cycles.


Here's a graph of temperatures since 2000 which shows no warming despite a 7% increase in the trace level of CO2 over the same period.Temperature Graph 2000-2012. I see no cause for alarm here. So how are we "up to our necks" exactly? Even if it were warming there'd be no cause for alarm. Crop yields are at an all time high. Hurricanes and deaths due to bad weather at an all-time low. Even the alarmists at the IPCC grudgingly admit that further warming of up to 2oC would be a net benefit to mankind. Warmth is good. Cold kills.


Of 191 bird and mammal species recorded as having gone extinct since 1500, 95% were on islands, where humans and human-introduced predators and diseases wrought the destruction. On continents, only six birds and three mammals were driven to extinction, and no bird or mammal species in recorded history is known to have gone extinct due to climate change. Source


Yes - in the case of the IET - it's almost exclusively press releases or comments from Greenpeace, FOE and WWF that seem to get reported. Why does a professional engineering institution always seek the opinions of these self-interest groups in matters of engineering and UK energy policy? Who put these scaremongering luddites in charge?


Huh? We have enough coal to last 300 years and enough shale for at least 90 years supply. Why do we need to waste money on hugely expensive, environmentally destructive, diffuse, unreliable, intermittent sources like solar, wind and tidal?


Taking a guess - it could be due to the recent tax-grab by the UK treasury which overnight halved the expected profits from existing North Sea oil plays. Companies don't like being robbed any more than consumers. Especially when they can go look for oil & gas in more tax friendly countries.

Regards

Edited: 26 June 2012 at 04:11 PM by Ipayyoursalary

Hi,
Nice discussions, I like it.

Since this was written, I've come across a very relevant book to this conversation.

Www.withouthotair.com

This may assist some with the costs, and capacity of energy resources.

Regards

Derrick,

I have had that book for some time now. Once you get past the hockey stick it is one of the few books on the subject giving real numbers.

I've used it in previous threads on here and recomended it to Ipayyoursalary. I don't know if he has read it yet.

Best regards

Roger

Hockey Stick? certainly theres some stick in there for poor reporting.

Besides although I'm a now a Flames, and Hitmen fan, my first love is the Leicester Tigers, who I used to as a schoolboy player back when every schoolboy player in the city had a free season ticket.

Sorry I digress.

Regards

Derrick
Please feel free to Private message me.