Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Fracking Nonsense

The UK would have to build 6,100 wells to replace just 50 per cent of gas imports between 2021 and 2035, a new study has found, casting doubt on Conservative calls a US-style fracking “revolution” in the UK at the last general election. And if the quantities of gas produced per well was at the lower end of the amount forecast, the report suggests the number of wells required could rise to as many as 16,500 in total. 

 A new study by Cardiff Business School has found that one well would have to be drilled and fracked every day for 15 years for half of gas imports to be replaced.

Rose Dickinson, from Friends of the Earth said: “This would mean an industrialisation of our countryside at a rate that nobody has yet fully appreciated and would put many more communities in the firing line of this dirty and unwanted industry.”

Daniel Carey-Dawes, senior infrastructure campaigner at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: "The fracking industry has always been clear that fracked gas would replace what's currently imported, but what wasn't clear was the scale of land take that would involve. The many thousands of wells that would be needed, peppered across our precious landscapes, would cause harm to the English countryside on an industrial scale.

The report concludes that “there is no evidence that fracked gas can be brought to market at sufficiently low cost, and sufficiently great volume to make any significant profit, or to make any difference to the UK energy security position.”

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