Google analytics

Monday 31 October 2011

Fracking

I’ve written about this before. (And no, it’s not a sex tale).

It’s about extracting natural gas from deep shale rock formations. Yesterday there was a long article in the Daily Mail’s colour supplement.

From the article:

Here are two visions of the future. 

The first one lies at the end of a muddy track in the village of Banks, a 20-minute drive from Preston, Lancashire. It consists of a derrick about 60ft high, a few temporary buildings, a generator and some specialist machinery in a fenced square compound.

Powering the derrick and the drill at its centre is an eerily quiet electric motor. Today, on the first Friday of October, the bit it turns at the end of the drill pipe lies about a mile beneath our feet, boring steadily downwards at a rate of up to 500ft a day, depending on the hardness of the strata. It’s heading for a thick deposit of carboniferous shale, a rock made from the compressed mud which lay on a prehistoric seabed more than 300 million years ago, its upper edge some 7,500ft below the dark green fields of ripening cauliflower that surround the compound.

Locked within the fissures inside that rock is an immense quantity of natural gas – virtually pure, unadulterated methane, of a quality so high it could be pumped direct to domestic and industrial users, and to electricity generating stations……………………….

And 

The second vision is taking shape at the end of the Thames Estuary, where the foundations are being laid for the 217 turbines of the London Array, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm.

Covering 90 square miles, this too will have the capacity to generate 1GW (one billion watts). The turbines’ construction has been priced at £2 billion, four times as much as the Kentish gas plant, although this does not include the cost – perhaps a further £500 million – of connecting them to the National Grid, via 300 miles of undersea high-voltage cables.

Without the labyrinthine system of ‘green’ taxes and Government subsidies known as the Renewables Obligation, which is already adding an estimated £100 to the cost of every British household’s electricity bill, and an average 20 per cent to the charges paid by businesses, the wind farm could never be built, because it would be hopelessly uneconomic…………….

Which one do you think makes sense?

How it’s done animation Click on the Link our active Animation

And the scenario in the sidebar

Frakking mail on sunday

Do go a read the whole article in the link above.

Will we ever see someone in Government seeing sense and wholeheartedly pushing for shale gas extraction in a big way? Probably not whilst we have that idiot Huhne in charge of energy. Expect more of version two until the lights start to go out.

5 comments:

  1. I have written about the fracking idiot Huhne on maby occasions (see http://dioclese.blogspot.com/search?q=huhne) so therefore find it difficult to disagree with you.

    We desperately needs to get rid of bird mincers and start extracting gas. This has the potential to turn us into an economic superpower for the next 50 years and we are letting this idiot piss all over it!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a great prospect!
    "Buff" Huhne must go, preferably faster than the speed limit, ASAP!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sigh..governments are soooo stupid, and greedy. The US has the largest reserves on the planet of the big 3 fossil fuels. Does our government make it easy for our companies to go after it and therefore provide OBSCENELY cheap fuel and energy? No. Everyone talks about the US dependence on foreign oil. Who created that FALSE dependence? The US goddamn government...that's who.
    Sorry FE you picked one of my hair trigger pet peeves that's on a constant..just shy of full pulled state.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There is one good thing about Chris Huhne....

    Uh, As I said there is really is one good thing about Chris Huhne....

    OK. I admit it. There isn't anything good to say about the bloke.

    He is a complete tosser.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Unconventional gas reserves, known as tight gas sands, coalbed methane and gas shales are worldwide and vast as this report from 2009 shows:

    http://www.rpsea.org/attachments/articles/239/KuuskraaHandoutPaperExpandedPresentWorldwideGasShalesPresentation.pdf

    The entire carbon fraud has been predicated upon keeping knowledge of this resource from consumers.

    I wonder where Gore's Generation Investment Management put its money when the Chicago Climate Exchange was sold to the gullible Intercontinental Exchange for $600 million in 2010.

    Gore certainly can't invest in the booming unconventional gas industry without being a monumental hypocrite; or could he?

    ReplyDelete

Say what you like. I try to reply. Comments are not moderated. The author of this blog is not liable for any defamatory or illegal comments.