[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23069499Government finds a new way for the north of England to be useful.[/url

excellent news

On the one hand, fracking sounds as though it will make the UK self-sufficient in energy for some decades which is not to be sniffed at, and any chance to stick up a middle digit at Putin is very tempting indeed.
It will bring jobs to the North, proper full time jobs that might even pay a decent wage.
It might even bring energy costs down but on that point I await being convinced as energy, like anything else, is priced at what you can sell it for, not for how much it costs to extract.

On the other hand, it's another fossil fuel, supply is huge but nonetheless finite and burning it will contribute to global warming, so it is not a panacea.

Local communities are being primed with suggestions that they might get some cash if a well is in their locale ... TBH I'd need more than a small amount of cash to buy a playing field to offset my concerns if I thought that my house was going to lose value or there were going to be earth tremors, pollution etc etc

It's going to be interesting.

My concern is that it will reduce the urgency with which the government attempts to find an alternative source of fuel that is both renewable [iand[/i unlikely destroy the planet. We know that fossil fuels are harmful to the environment, we know that fracking has the possibility of causing environmental damage and that the sites are liable to become blots on the landscape. Being able to give Putin the finger seems like a bit of a hollow victory to me.

My issue with it is that in a tiny country like here, with big population centres close by, the environmental and health consequences of contamination of the water table could be catastrophic. Could make Fukushima look like a fart in the playground.

The North should be planning independence and put it to a vote just as the gas comes on stream. Then sell it to Boris and George at huge prices (after Boris and George have already invested billions in a pipeline).

Possibly the most sensible post ever done by Dally

Apparently one of the major finds has been directly under Tatton. Let's see how quickly that is brought on-stream

I haven't read deeply on the subject, but on the basis of what I have read, this sums up my concerns too.

Exceptions and rules?

Just to clarify, I'm meaning more about the security of supply than just the gesture.

I saw some official on the TV last night who was offering the simplistic opinion that fracked gas would be cheaper, so prices would go down.
That would only occur if UK fracked gas was produced fast enough and in large enough quantities to affect the world price .... bearing in mind he didn't mention banning exports of it, which would be the only way of insulating it from world prices.

Yeah, I got that. I was meaning that the security of supply would be a hollow victory if it destroyed huge swathes of the countryside, polluted the water supply, continued to contribute to climate change, and would still run out eventually anyway.

Depends what you see as preferable - sitting in the dark, or some environmental disruption.

The Government certainly seems to be taking the view that security of supply is the most important factor, over and above affordability and sustainability - which given the current reliance on supplies from the Middle East and Russia is probably the sensible course of action.

... and that, in turn, depends on "how much" environmental disruption.
We can learn by experience.
Huge swathes of Northern England have been amazingly re-greened in my lifetime, taking-down slagheaps and landscaping etc, often at local public expense.
Whilst I don't imagine we'll see the wanton dumping of slag that coal mining produced, we may well have serious water table pollution problems and I would want to see remediation properly costed-in and limited to its extent because, as I understand it, the process produces vast amounts of polluted water that has to be disposed of somehow.
Putting it over-simplistically to make the point, I do not want to see the North despoiled once again to keep Piccadilly Circus all lit up.

[urlhttp://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/uk-shale-gas-could-last-as-long-as-a-spaniel-2013061171583[/url

Presumably because it fits in with your way of thinking on the issue? Whereas some of my most sensible posts do not seem to.

If you get the chance, have a read of this book: www.allisonandbusby.com/book/bushwhacked and in particular the chapter that deals with methane gas extraction in Minnesota and the damage that has been done to the area's farming and countryside by it. If you start polluting the UK water table (an inevitability - no method of gas extraction is ever going to be 100% "safe"icon_wink.gif then it's bye-bye to large swathes of farmland around fracking sites. By the time you realise that the benefit in terms of energy generated is outweighed by the long term damage, it's going to be too late. That's before we get started on the widespread corruption and mutual back scratching that will be involved in the contracting process.

If you get the chance, have a read of this book: www.allisonandbusby.com/book/bushwhacked and in particular the chapter that deals with methane gas extraction in Minnesota and the damage that has been done to the area's farming and countryside by it. If you start polluting the UK water table (an inevitability - no method of gas extraction is ever going to be 100% "safe"icon_wink.gif then it's bye-bye to large swathes of farmland around fracking sites. By the time you realise that the benefit in terms of energy generated is outweighed by the long term damage, it's going to be too late. That's before we get started on the widespread corruption and mutual back scratching that will be involved in the contracting process.

As I see it at the moment, the greatest water pollution threat is a) To natural water courses such as rivers and springs etc and everything that lives in them ... and b) To farms etc that use water from below ground to irrigate crops or provide drinking water for herds and flocks.
That's in addition to the problems caused by taking water from whatever source to facilitate the fracking.
Considering the erratic droughting and flooding we see nowadays, it would seem that we need the water we have, do we really have that much to spare?
Again, happy to be corrected.

No biggy. We can import all the food we need. That's what 'food security' means.

Isn't it?

Never heard of candles?

Heard they were a woman's best friend in the days before batteries.

Right now Britain is teetering on the edge of water stress, with many areas forced to introduce hosepipe bans during the summer months. And this problem is predicted to get worse.

Now, the above is BEFORE the arrival of fracking - an industry which consumes colossal quantities of water - 50% of which it pollutes to some lesser or greater degree.

My question is - who pays fracking's water bill? If the industry pays just like us I just don't see how it's economically feasible. If they pay subsidised or no water costs then surely (given the self-defeating equation you derive from the first two paragraphs) any fuel savings we might receive will only be chewed up by higher water costs.

Joe Public will pay. Capitalism has broken down. All risk will be picked up by the masses. All rewards will go to the "developers" (ie the destroyers). The easiest way to deal with the energy crisis is for people to use less and get tid of the plethora of electronic goods / devices that clutter our homes.

I think they will either use seawater if the process allows it, which is more or less free, or abstract their own groundwater. Need a licence from the Environment Agency to do that but its considerably cheaper than buying it from a water company. Water stress is more to do with supply infrastructure than the product itself - for the moment at least.