Fracking

Lecture 9 discusses the rise of social responsible investments, this links in with a key issue that has recently been reported and that has caused controversy, the new technology used by the energy industry to unlock previously inaccessible supplies of domestic oil and clean-burning natural gas, fracking.

This “shale” oil and gas, up to a few years ago, was thought to be impossible to recover. But over the past few years fracking, along with horizontal drilling has unlocked this abundant resource. (Marks, 2012)

Along with increasing domestic oil production and unlocking what could be a century’s worth of natural gas, this shale oil and gas is changing the face of America and the UK - bringing back manufacturing jobs, creating an abundant source of cheap energy, all while boosting the economy. (www.dailyresourcehunter.com)

Despite the fact that hydraulic fracturing has been employed for half a century at comparable depths of thousands of feet, opponents of natural gas insist that groundwater is now being contaminated. This claim, no matter how many times it is repeated, lacks substantive data to support its conclusions as both the national association of state groundwater agencies and the multistate governmental agency representing states' oil and gas interests have found no evidence of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing fluids. (Simmons, 2011)

Britain’s top environmental regulator said that the controversial technique for extracting the new energy source of shale gas should be allowed. The hydraulic fracturing of shale rock, which has been blamed for causing earthquakes and polluting ground water and has generated fierce opposition from environmentalists, should proceed as long as it is monitored carefully and is accompanied by measures to minimise carbon emissions, said the chairman of the Environment Agency, Lord Smith of Finsbury. (McCarthy, 2012)

Lord Smith's qualified endorsement of fracking will further encourage the Government to permit widespread use of the technology, which involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under very high pressure into underground shale rock deposits, to blow them apart and release the natural gas they contain.

In the US, shale gas has provided an energy bonanza in recent years, and has caused gas prices to tumble. The downside is that fracking is known to be responsible for causing seismic movements – small earthquakes – and in America there are allegations that the chemicals used, and the shale gas itself, pollute groundwater. In the UK, an energy company, Cuadrilla Resources, has discovered a substantial shale gas field near Blackpool. (McCarthy, 2012)

Nathan Roberts, from the anti-fracking group Frack Off, criticised Lord Smith's position. "Lord Smith's endorsement of commercial-scale fracking in the UK suggests the Environment Agency is either ignorant of the facts or ignoring them," he said.

Joss Garman, a Greenpeace campaigner, said: "Evidence from America suggests fracking for shale gas could be as damaging to the climate as coal burning."

During the fracking process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby groundwater. (Bracken, 2010)

However, the concerns about groundwater pollution are actually unproven. Faulkner (2011) argued that the United States has a wealth of oil and gas reserves trapped in layers of shale rock. He also suggests that the country has enough natural gas to power itself for the next 200 years and that those reserves can be accessed through fracking.

In conclusion, when looking at fracking, critics see polluted wells, exploding houses, and earthquakes - an environmental disaster in the making. Anti-frackers have a simple solution: ban it. In contrast, industry supporters see hydraulic fracturing as a safe technology that drillers have been using for decades without controversy and that now promises a new era of energy abundance. The pro-frackers, too, have a simple solution: get the government out of the way and drill. (Dolan, 2012)