Fracking is nothing new

Hydraulic fracturing — aka “fracking” — was first used in the 1950s so it is nothing new.

In the Nottinghamshire village of Beckingham fields have been fracked for oil and gas for decades.

The occasional passing tanker is one of the few clues that oil is being extracted from under the ground.

Next to the fields is Beckingham Marshes, a wet grassland habitat managed by the RSPB.

The charity has objected to fracking for shale gas in Lancashire and West Sussex but has not objected to fracking at Beckingham Marshes.

Why not? Because shale fracking and fracking are two different things.

This is where the antis get their facts wrong, there is no history of shale fracking in Britain, consequently they protest about something none of us has knowledge or experience of.

A distinction can be made between conventional or low-volume hydraulic fracturing used to stimulate high-permeability reservoirs to frack a single well, and unconventional or high-volume hydraulic fracturing, used in the completion of tight gas and shale gas wells as unconventional wells are deeper and require higher pressures than conventional vertical wells.

In addition to hydraulic fracturing of vertical wells, it is also performed in horizontal wells.

When done in already highly permeable reservoirs such as sandstone-based wells, the technique is known as “well stimulation”.

So are the antis protesting about low volume or high volume fracking?

Rock or shale fracking? Do they have any solid evidence to validate their protests or do they rely on anecdotes and hearsay?

I agree with some of David’s comments — we need to know a lot more about fracking but we do know that Britain is reliant on massive imports of LNG, coal, oil and electricity from other countries and we are at the mercy of exchange rates and political mood swings.

Coal bed methane (CBM) is natural gas, just like gas from the North Sea, but extracted from coal seams rather than from sandstone reservoirs. The world's primary CBM reserves are generally believed to be in Western Canada, USA, Australia, Eastern Europe, China and the UK.

The first Coal Bed Methane well in the UK was drilled in 1992 and there have since been several pilot drilling schemes across the country.

Despite this, there are no large scale operational developments yet.

In a handful of areas commercial operators appear close to achieving commercial-scale drilling with the help of directional drilling techniques, adopted from the oil industry.

Coal Bed Methane exploits natural gases from unworked coal seams.

These coal seams are often found at depths well beyond conventionally mining capabilities.

CBM is extracted by releasing pressure in coal seams, usually by natural gas production or by pumping water from the coal bed.

As the pressure is reduced, gas is released and can be extracted.

If CBM extraction is carefully controlled and monitored then methane gas should not escape into the atmosphere in any great quantity.

The problem is Methane is a greenhouse gas' which according to the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has a global warming potential which is 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year time horizon. Controlling it is a matter of containment, perhaps using the same safeguards we use in Britain to control the production of oil and nuclear power.

There is no such thing as risk free energy

Colin Tawn, Anston