It's fracking stupid!

Last week fracking was in the news again.  Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the fracturing of various rock layers by a pressurised liquid.  It is a technique in which a large amount of water is mixed with sand and chemicals and injected at high pressure into faults to release gas.  Royal Dutch Shell's chief executive Peter Voser told the BBC in an interview last week that fracking was important to Europe in order to stay competitive with the US.  His logic being that cheap energy released by fracking had 'revolutionised' the US energy market.  Well that's fine Mr Voser, but aren't there a few environmental issues with fracking?  The horizontal drilling technique used to extract gas involves pumping chemicals into the ground.  Those chemicals could push salt water to the surface and could poison drinking water.  There is also a risk of creating earthquakes.  In addition we mustn't forget that the gas itself is a non-renewable fossil fuel, which when burnt creates carbon dioxide, a generally accepted cause of global warming.

So let's return to Mr Voser's logic.  We in Europe should do it because the US is doing it, despite the environmental risks and the fact that it is not helping to reduce carbon emissions.  Indeed, isn't it possible that this 'abundant' source of fossil fuel could take the eye off the ball of renewable energy development?  So if the US decided that eating human babies was a source of cheap food and could help control the population, would Europe go along with that abhorrent idea to be competetive?  Of course not, it's a stupid question.  But the fracking logic, if you accept the risk of loss of lives, is just as fracking crazy!

What's clear to me is the fact that major energy companies, like Shell, are really only oil and gas companies and are paying lip service to the planet's atmospheric contamination problems, particularly when they can see a short term profit opportunity.  Yes, I do mean 'short term' because even 100 years, say, is a minute timespan compared with the age of the planet and the millions of future generations that we should be planning to support.

Now the proponents of fracking accept there are risks but propose better regulation as a solution.  But how can we regulate the unknown?  We don't understand the subterranean system well enough to predict unintended consequences.  It is one of many examples of commercial profit being put before common sense and frankly an endorsement for this risky practice by the head of an oil company, means nothing.

It's fracking stupid!