Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng orders scientific review of fracking impact
The government has ordered a new report on the impact of fracking, days ahead of publishing its energy supply plan.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has given the British Geological Survey (BGS) three months to assess any changes to the science around the controversial practice.
Fracking was halted in the UK in 2019 amid opposition from green groups and local concerns over earth tremors.
An engineering review would be better - we already know how reliable scientists are. However it is done, a review should take a couple of hours at most, not three months. Kwarteng need not waste much time on it because
fracking has been done successfully for decades.
What he needs to avoid is a meeting where doom-mongers bring
along their personalised copy of The Book of Doom and insist on quoting from
it at great length. Bound to happen though.
7 comments:
I may be biased, but I agree with you AK - the Government needs an engineering review. If they listen to green activist scientists, of which there now seems to be an alarming number, it will be like Churchill taking advice from Lindermann - a bloody disaster!
The Telegraph reports that Prof. Richard Davies, geologist and Pro VC of Newcastle Uni, says that tiny little earthquakes were very common when coal-mining took place. Fracking will do the same, to nobody's detriment. Yet that was a major concern of the anti-fracking crew.
We had a series of minor quakes around here in the late 70s, attributed to mining activity. A couple of night time ones were enough to wake you up and make you jump out of bed and they did topple a few chimneys.
The problem with UK fracking is that the private company doing the fracking can sell the gas at international price, so it has litte influence on users' power costs or shortages. Despite my being a right of centre voter surely the obvious answer, at least for now, is for the gas to be fracked in the public's favour and added to the UK grid at extraction cost to help people and the economy, that being a licence condition for maybe the first 2 years of operation. That would remove some objections and the extraction company can make their profits later.
Woodsy42 that's far to pragmatic and practical for our useless 'elites' to institute. I had a similarly practical solution to the educational debate but nah, they always prefer the doctrinal path to cause the maximum suffering.
Oops too pragmatic.
Tammly - that's a good example, for decades, some high-ranking scientists have given poor or even disastrously advice to those in power.
Sam - yes I noticed the Prof's comment. For some years we lived near an opencast coal mine which we could see from the kitchen window. There was regular blasting which was partly felt in the house as a rumble but it didn't bother us. Probably more of a rumble than people will generally experience from fracking.
Woodsy - the company might go for that if there were sufficient guarantees.
Tammly - they don't like pragmatic, not enough virtue in it.
Woodsy, your concerns about gas prices remaining the same despite an increase in supply and difficulties / costs in transportation abroad have already been comprehensively debunked by Worstall at
https://journal.rajeshtaylor.com/the-case-for-fracking-uk-for-shale-oil-rather-than-importing-natural-gas-across-europe/
Post a Comment