British Geologists Dismiss Shale Gas Pollution Fears

It is "extremely unlikely" that ground water supplies would be polluted by methane as a result of controversial "fracking" for shale gas, UK geologists have said. Professor Mike Stephenson, of the British Geological Survey, said most geologists thought it was a "pretty safe activity" and the risks associated with it were low. There was no evidence in peer-reviewed literature of pollution of water by methane as a result of fracking, he said, adding that the presence of the gas in US water supplies was likely to be natural. --The Press Association, 10 January 2012

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Drilling for shale gas in the U.K. won’t cause dangerous earthquakes and poses little risk to the environment given appropriate safeguards, scientists said. “Most geologists think this is a pretty safe activity,” Mike Stephenson, head of energy science at the British Geological Survey, said at a briefing in London today. “We think the risk is pretty low and we have the scientific tools to tell if there is a problem.” --Kari Lundgren, Bloomberg, 10 January 2012 Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. says it’s found more natural gas trapped in the shale rock around Blackpool in northwest England than Iraq has in its entire reserves. “There is much more shale than we thought under Blackpool,” the British Geological Survey’s Stephenson said at the briefing. The British Geological Survey is reviewing its estimates for U.K. onshore shale gas resources. The survey originally estimated that there is about 150 billion cubic meters of shale gas onshore, compared with about 300 billion cubic meters of conventional gas resources. --Kari Lundgren, Bloomberg, 10 January 2012

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Science at last. But if it doesn't get printed or gets distorted it shows how much further we still need to travel. We can expect the majority of the press to continue printing stories about the "controversial" fracking technique illustrated by flaming taps, earthquakes and Blackpool Tower. Why let a narrative be interrupted by those pesky little fact things? –Nick Grealy, No Hot Air, 11 January 2012 Amidst the doom and gloom headlines presaging dire prognostications for the Western economies in 2012 there is the very real promise of a global economy re-directing miracle in the making. The impact and promise of shale gas and shale oil is probably the good news story as we step into 2012. Not that you would know it, given the media’s predilection for bad news. --Peter Glover, Energy Tribune, 5 January 2012 From Australia and China to South Africa and Eastern Europe, the global economy is being transformed by the extraction of huge amounts of natural gas from shale rock. The United States has played a major part in this revolution. In the last three years, more than 3,000 gas wells have been drilled in western Pennsylvania’s share of the huge Marcellus shale formation. A new age of clean, cheap shale-gas energy is about to begin—except, perhaps, in New York State, where influential environmental groups seem to be winning their struggle against shale. --Clark Whelton, City Journal, 8 January 2012

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