Fracking Realities

Fracking is a Far Greener Choice, than Wind!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

WIND POWER REQUIRES 700 TIMES AS MUCH LAND AS FRACKING

One of the weirder facts of contemporary life is that “environmentalists” generally prefer wind power to fracking. Unless you suffer from an anti-carbon fetish, there is no comparison, as the Telegraph reports:

A wind farm requires 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site, according to analysis by the energy department’s recently-departed chief scientific advisor. …

Prof MacKay said that a shale gas site uses less land and “creates the least visual intrusion”, compared with a wind farm or solar farm capable of producing the equivalent amount of energy over 25 years.

This is not surprising. Wind power is generally feeble, and intermittent at best.

A spokesman for Cuadrilla said: “This comparison by David MacKay clearly demonstrates that, contrary to what some people may assume, exploration for and production of shale gas would actually have less far less impact on the countryside than wind or solar energy.

“To supply an equivalent amount of energy a shale gas site would occupy just a small fraction of the land required for either wind or solar sites, would have less visual intrusion and significantly less transport impact, given that in the UK we do not anticipate having to truck water to our proposed sites.”

In my experience, many environmentalists don’t actually care much about the environment. “Environmentalism” is most often a cover for something else–either a financial interest, or a general yearning for the government (controlled by them, of course) to have more power over the people they don’t like. There are, no doubt, a few honorable exceptions. But the vast disproportion in environmental impact between fracking and wind power illustrates the point.

Fracking is by Far….Better than Wind Turbines!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

Fracking – Fact or Fantasy

by Dougal Quixote

The green movement doesn’t like Fracking but they do like Wind. Why? Fact is wind is intermittent, drives people into fuel poverty and has to be supported by subsidy. Fracking on the other hand has reduced energy prices in the US, created thousands of jobs as energy prices tumble to the benefit of US industry and needs no subsidy. So why has the Green Lobby reacted so viciously to fracking. Their web sites are a liturgy of lies and obfuscations.

fracking objectors

They are the great unwashed, the swampies and the anti capitalist objectors and yet they are also rent a mob. Never has a Wind Farm objection rally needed the police manpower that fracking does. Truth is that it is simply political activism, what Patterson referred to as the Green Blob. How seldom do we see locals in their ranks. Those that are have believed the hype and failed to properly study the fact. Flaming faucets: cold bed methane in groundwater that would be there without any mining. Nothing to do with fracking at 8000ft well below groundwater. There are dangers, but none that cannot be adequately addressed by good management and oversight by an effective regulator. After all it is not in the developers interest to be faced with expensive clear up costs and loss of production.

So what about the real legacy of fracking. In the south we haver been drilling the Whytch oil field for years and few even know it exists. Fracking, as a technique, has been used for the best party of forty years but new equipment and deep wells have brought it into it’s own more recently. Centrica have been fracking wells for gas in Norway for the last few years. Interestingly they are using mostly Scottish engineers. Good well paid jobs for the indigenous population.

So what effect does fracking have. Essentially a fracking site will experience disturbance for about forty weeks after which it will revert to a simple well head.

Fracking well head

 

This is in Marcellus, New York State, and cannot be seen from the road. The alternative is something like this at Ardrossan.

Ardrossan

Ardrossan

Of course the first runs 24/7/365 for some forty years and the second runs as about 21% when the wind blows and has a life of about 16 years before it needs re-powering. We have all been promised a maximum of 25 years but do we believe them? No way. Read the small print. In practice what will happen is either the death of the industry with wholesale bankruptcies and rusting hulks littering our scenery or bigger monstrosities here for forty years or more.

For a safe, sustainable, future the truth is we need deliverable energy at a cost we can afford with a mix of clean coal, gas, nuclear and hydro. It is without doubt that as civilisation moves forward we will have an expanding demand for electricity, not because it is green, but because it is easy. Cars, buses, trains will all demand much higher energy requirements than we could currently(sic) supply. So listen to the Royal Geological Scociety, the Nuclear Industry and the engineers in the power industry. Don’t listen to the Swampys and green ideologues as they peddle dis-information. Get your facts from people who know, not the Green lobby with their eschewed values which even their founders now despair of.

We need to build a future based on fact, not fantasy!

A Bit of Factual Information on the Topic of Fracking!

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Seldon declaims on the issue of earthquakes and fracking

Posted on July 16, 2014 by  

When I read recently so many stupid claims of fracking causing earthquakes, I could not resist asking my favorite FAVORIIIITE PETROLEUM ENGINEER, Seldon Graham, to comment.

 

Seldon was doing frackin when the frackin wasn’t even on the radar.

Back in the 50s.

I can’t tell you how much I respect Sel, WW II soldier, field promoted to officer, West Point, Korea, petrol engineer, attorney.

So might I put up his brief but insightful discussion?

For the leftist Denton newspaper– you might ask leftist? But every newspaper must be assumed to be leftist, with the isolated exceptions like the Washington Times.

Here’s Sel:

Seismographs Cause Earthquakes
Seismographs cause earthquakes. A scientific study has proven it. The
following are observations from a study entitled “Dallas-Fort Worth earthquakes
coincident with activity associated with natural gas production,” by Cliff Frohlich
and Eric Potter of the University of Texas and Chris Hayward and Brian Stump of
Southern Methodist University (SMU). The study is at: . It could just as well have been
entitled “Dallas-Fort Worth earthquakes coincident with Obama Administration.”
SMU scientists set out six seismographs south of the Dallas-Fort Worth
airport terminal from November 9, 2008 to January 2, 2009. Eleven miniearthquakes
were recorded which had a magnitude too small to be picked up by the
U.S. Geological Service (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC).
Thus, these seismographs caused earthquakes which were undetected by the NEIC.
These tiny earthquakes should be called earth quivers instead of quakes.
They were at a mean depth of 4.8 kilometers. (Don’t these scientists know that oil
and gas terminology uses the American measurement of feet?) This mean depth is
at 15,748 feet below the surface of the earth.
The suspected villain was a nearby salt water disposal (SWD) well and was
not the 54 gas wells that had been fractured, as shown on Figure 8. This is
important to remember. There was no indication that fracturing of natural gas
wells had anything to do with earthquakes. The SWD well was injecting salt water
from 10,752 feet to 13,729 feet, more than two thousand feet shallower than the
mean depth of the eleven earthquivers. There is no theory given as to how this
separation of rock was overcome in order to cause an earth quiver.
Strangely, according to Figure 2, the eleven earthquivers were along the
county line rather than along a nearby fault line of unstated depth. Was Dallas
County rubbing against Tarrant County? The authors did not try to explain this
phenomenon.
Even the “sonic booms” of October 31, 2008 and May 16, 2009 which
caused this earthquake study were not over 3.3 magnitude on the Richter scale. An
earthquake up to 3.9 magnitude very rarely causes damage.
1
The authors state at the end of the study, “There are thousands of injection
wells in Texas, the vast majority of which [emphasis added] produce no felt or
instrumentally recorded seismicity.” Absent data that there is a single incident of
an injection well producing felt or recorded seismicity, that statement is deceptive
and misleading. Injection wells do not produce earthquakes, not even earthquivers.
Seldon B. Graham, Jr.
Legion of Honor Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers
(512) 452-4000
4713 Palisade Drive
Austin, Texas 78731-4516