“Dear Aunty, will fracking for shale gas deplete our drinking water supplies?”

“Dear Aunty, will fracking for shale gas deplete our drinking water supplies?”

Well, sweeties, it’s true that hydraulic fracturing uses a lot of water – a topic I’ve posted on before here – but, seen in the context of other industrial uses of water and pipeline losses, it really isn’t all that great and is very unlikely to limit the availability of drinking water in a place with as much annual rainfall as Britain.

So, exactly how much water does fracking use?

Lancashire shale gas opponent and Occupy activist, Tina Louise Rothery, is fond of making us think that a staggering amount of water will be needed. Here’s what she told a Parliamentary select committee in the House of Lords in December 2013:

“Essentially, you are using four Olympic-size swimming pools per frack, per well. On the Fylde, they would like 800 wells. Each one of those wells will be fracked no less than 30 times, so it is an awful lot of water.”

Let’s examine that claim, shall we dears? An Olympic-sized pool holds 2,500 m3 of water. Tina says that each frack consumes four times that amount, so 10,000 m3, and that each well will be fracked no less than 30 times so that would be 300,000 m3 of water per well. Multiplied up for the 800 wells Tina talks about and that really would add up to a very substantial 240,000,000 m3 of water.

But it’s a wildly inaccurate prediction, predicated either upon a genuine misunderstanding of the facts or a deliberate twisting of those facts to suit Tina’s anti-fracking narrative, cherubs.

You see, dears, when she talks about a well being fracked no less than 30 times, she’s really referring to frac stages. She may be right about the 10,000 m3 of water or four Olympic pools worth, but that’s in total for the entire well and definitely NOT per frac stage, which will actually use between 300 and 800 m3 each instead.

As you can see, the reality is very different and much, much less water intensive. Those 800 wells would then need only 8 million cubic metres of water instead of the grossly exaggerated 240 million cubic metres assessment reached using Tina’s ‘facts’.

Those 8 million cubic metres of water wouldn’t all be used straight away either – drilling and fracturing 800 wells could take over a decade, so it might only be 800,000 m3 a year.

To put that into a meaningful context, pumpkins, this WRAP study compares industrial water use in a variety of sectors: Agriculture uses 165 million m3, manufacturing over 400 million and quite shockingly, accommodation and food services consume 134 million cubic metres of water EVERY YEAR.

That’s right, sweeties: hotels and restaurants use significantly more water per year than the total amount we might see required to extract shale gas on the Fylde coast using Tina’s 800 wells.

Putting aside the fact that fracking for shale gas will use a comparatively small quantity of water relative to other industries, we needn’t worry about our access to reliable supplies of drinking water anyway sweetpeas, because it’s legislated for.

The Water Act 2003 commits water suppliers to ensure that they maintain a supply of drinking water to members of the public as part of drought plans, with supplies to non-domestic users restricted or even halted to ensure homeowners are not impacted.

Now then, seeing as United Utilities are the supplier of water in Lancashire, the heart of shale gas exploration, what do they think? Well, pumpkins, according to their draft Water Resources Management Plan, regional water demand is expected to fall by 14% between 2012 and 2040 even with expected economic growth in the region. In 2012, United Utilities supplied 1,740 million litres of water per day. That’s 1.7 million m3, every single day.

If drilling and fracturing 800 wells takes a decade and uses 800,000 m3 of water per year, that would be the equivalent of 2,191 m3 a day. Or, another way, a tiny 0.13% of current United Utilities’ supply.

So, no dears, fracking for shale gas will not deplete our drinking water supplies, at least not here in the North West of England (it may admittedly be different in areas of the UK that have less rainfall).

As for whether or not Tina’s estimates are based on a misunderstanding or are deliberately exaggerated, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

To help, here’s what she said in her closing remarks to Parliament in December last year:

“We also wanted to point out that our group have spent two years writing to politicians, lobbying our MPs and councillors, not doing the bad stuff; not doing the standing on the roadside or blocking trucks,”

And here she is in Balcombe last summer – so before making this statement in the House of Lords – appearing to be doing the bad stuff.

Until next time xxx

“Dear Aunty, is the Elswick experience really all that different from shale fracking plans?”

Well, dears, yes and no.

Yes, because Elswick targeted a shallow sandstone formation and was a single vertical well; and no because they both involve drilling wells and fracture stimulation.

I often see Cuadrilla and other shale gas proponents being criticised for using the Elswick analogy, as if they’re attempting to suggest that fracking for gas in shale rock will be exactly the same.

But that’s not what they’re saying at all, poppets: when they point to Elswick, they’re really just trying to give an impression of what a shale gas well might one day look like, after the relatively short period of construction and fracking has finished and all that’s left to see is the ‘Christmas Tree’ at the surface.

Now, sweeties, when people try to claim that the Elswick experience is vastly different from what’s planned in the extraction of Lancashire’s shale gas because of differences in scale – especially concerning the volumes of fluid used to fracture the rock – they mostly fail to point out just how similar the volumes really are.

John Hobson and his friend Mike Hill of the anti-fracking campaign group, Defend Lytham, are fond of telling us how Elswick was fractured using just 163 m3 of fluid compared to the many thousands of m3 of fluid needed to frack a shale well. They also refer to modern-day fracking as ‘High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing’ or HVHF – a definition that isn’t used by the onshore oil and gas industry.

I believe they do so in order deliberately to create the rather false impression that all those thousands of m3 of fluid are injected all in one go, pumpkins, when that’s not true at all. And here’s why:

In the extraction of shale gas, E&P companies will first drill a vertical well and then, in the target shale layer, a horizontal well. This will be hydraulically fractured in several stages, 30 being common in the US. Dependent on the identified fracture mechanics of the rock, each of these stages will be stimulated using between 300 and maybe 600 m3 of fluid, so between 9,000 and 18,000 m3 in total my loves.

But it’s not all injected at once. In many ways, you can think of those individual fracture stages a little like individual wells, dears – just accessed without the need for 30 separate surface penetrations.

Why do opponents of shale gas like to give the impression that the fluid is injected underground at once? Well, poppets, because that suits their narrative when it comes to claiming that the high volumes used will trigger tremors and that the volumes of fluid themselves could cause a loss of well integrity.

The reality, of course, is that operators will introduce fluid in small lots, giving them chance to adequately monitor for any seismic activity and prevent any damage to the well casing.

30 vertical wells drilled and fractured at Elswick, using the figure given by John and Mike, would use 4,890 m3 of fluid – putting it much more on a par with a single shale gas well using the lower end of my range. Yes, that’s still less than shale fracking, but that’s only because the sandstone rock is more permeable.

As you can see, cherubs, when viewed like this, it’s apparent that all this talk of HVHF and concerns over scale is really just over stating the facts. Elswick and modern day shale operations really aren’t all that different at all.

Until next time xxx

“Dear Aunty, have you really had a change of heart about the F-word?”

Well, yes, I have to admit that I have dears. It seems that I have completely overlooked the many dangers.

Let me tell you what I have discovered about this industry, that makes it such a great threat to our way of life.

Land grab

This industry will continue to consume vast tracts of our countryside, with ramshackle roads built to accommodate it’s heavy machinery cross-crossing fields. On average, around 33% of available land is sacrificed to it worldwide.

Heavy goods vehicles on our rural roads

Getting materials to and from the various sites that support this industry requires vast numbers of road tanker and other HGV journeys on our little rural roads, flowerpots. On top of this, there is the machinery and equipment that’s needed to make the industry function.

Methane emissions [1]

A potent greenhouse gas, albeit with a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than CO2, this industry has a recognised problem with fugitive methane emissions but does very little to try and control them. My estimates suggest, my loves, that it could be responsible for over 200 million kg of methane annually in the UK alone. Worldwide, including the US, it could account for as much as 4% of GHG emissions.

Surface water pollution [2]

According to Environment Agency and Defra guidance that I’ve been able to obtain, it seems our regulators already know that this industry is prone to releasing highly polluting materials into rivers and streams – some of which is simply allowed to wash off land and through soil, dears.

Chemical use [3]

As suspected by many, this industry uses some very nasty chemicals that are transported neat through our villages and that have been linked to all sorts of harms, including cancer. Worse still, pumpkins, many of these chemicals are almost certain to get into the human food chain.

Water consumption [4]

According to a report by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, sweeties, the water demand of this industry is colossal – worldwide, accounting for 70% of all the water used by humans

Dangerous wastes [2]

I’ve discovered, poppets, that this industry produces very large quantities of liquid wastes that, if spilled into watercourses, can have a very profound impact – causing significant fish kills and affecting downstream abstraction. In fact, anybody drinking affected water will be made seriously ill.

Worker safety [5]

The industry has a terrible track record for worker safety, cherubs, with numerous serious accidents and even fatalities every year. If they can’t take care of their own people, how can they be trusted with the safety of the public?

Jobs [6]

From what I now gather, dears, this industry relies on low-skilled workers, with lots of them being performed by a migrant workforce from outside the UK – with more than 80% expected to be migrants at peak.

Yes, sweeties, the F-word most definitely does need to be given serious pause for thought.

Because, as you can see, FARMING (not FRACKING) is not without risk and the jobs benefits you might expect it to create are not necessarily felt by UK residents.

And guess what, my loves?

That’s right. There’s a lot of farming going on in Lancashire right now, and in Sussex.

Rise up. Educate, agitate and resist.

Or not.

Until next time xxx

[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.METH.AG.ZS

[2] http://adlib.everysite.co.uk/resources/000/252/413/water_air_soil_code_2009.pdf

[3] http://www.livestrong.com/article/199337-how-herbicides-affect-people/

[4] http://www.imeche.org/docs/default-source/reports/Global_Food_Report.pdf

[5] http://www.hse.gov.uk/agriculture/hsagriculture.htm

[6] http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1083134/bitter_harvest_how_exploitation_and_abuse_stalks_migrant_workers_on_uk_farms.html

“Dear Aunty, is it true that fracking uses a lot of water?”

Yes, dears, it is. Fracking requires a lot of water to make up the fluid used to force open and extend the hairline fissures that are naturally present in the source rock.

But it’s not as water intensive as many other industries that we take for granted, and common products we all consume, food in particular.

This Institute of Mechanical Engineers report on global food production, and food waste, estimates the quantity of water used to produce many of our staple foods. You might be surprised by the results cherubs.

For instance, producing 1kg of beef uses 15,196 litres of water, 1kg of chicken meat 4,325 litres, 1kg of cheese 3,178 litres.

You could argue, sweeties, that these are things we can’t do without and so we must accept their high demands for water (vegans, on the other hand, may disagree with this!)

But what about, say, chocolate? According to the IME report, making just 1kg of chocolate uses a staggering 17,196 litres of water. In Britain, we eat an estimated 660,900,000 kg of chocolate a year. So that’s a mind-boggling 11,364,836,400,000 litres of water.

Is it justifiable to use this amount of water to make what is a luxury, none essential food my dears, especially considering that the crucial ingredient (cocoa) is grown in hot climates where the population’s access to drinking water can be quite limited?

What about milk? According to the IME report, 1 litre of milk takes 1,020 litres of water to make. In the UK, milk production in 2013-2014 is estimated to be 13 billion litres…that’s another 1,326,000,000,000 litres of water, my darlings (although some of this will be accounted for in the chocolate production numbers).

Is it justifiable to use this amount of water making milk, a product that we apparently don’t need?

Then there’s brewing beer, sweeties – approximately 148 litres of water to make just 1 pint according to the IME report. According to this European brewers report, we produced 8,041,019 pints of beer in the UK in 2011. That’s 1,190,070,812 litres of water.

Can we really justify using this amount of water to make a product that we don’t actually need?

Energy, on the other hand, we couldn’t function without pumpkins.

I’ve heard it said that a shale gas well might use 15,000,000 litres of water when fracked. That’s the same as 1.26% of the water used to make one year’s worth of beer, or 0.001% of the water used to make a year’s worth of milk.

The Institute of Directors published this report in May 2013 looking at shale gas development. In its central scenario for what shale gas might look like at peak, they suggested the UK might see 4,000 wells drilled and fracked. If each were to use the 15,000,000 litres of water, cherubs, those 4,000 wells would consume 60,000,000,000 litres over the course of about 12 years which sounds like an awful lot doesn’t it?

But that’s just 0.02% of the amount of water used to make the 7,930,800,000 kg of chocolate we’d eat in the UK in that same 12 years.

When you think of it in these terms, my dears, and you consider how much energy benefit we could obtain from all those shale gas wells (40 years worth of gas, some say) then the amount of water used doesn’t seem quite so much, does it?

Of course, my lovelies, when they’re not arguing about golf course irrigation, some people will argue that the water used in fracking is lost to us, but that’s not true as I’ve pointed out in a previous post – industry commentators suggest around 40% returns to the surface soon after fracking as flowback wastewater, is treated and returned back to the water environment, with the rest flowing back over the producing life of the wells to again be treated and put back into the water cycle.

Until next time xxx