On Friday, 22nd November 2013 a delegation of
five members of the committee of East Kent Against Fracking (EKAF) delivered a
letter to the Prime Minister setting out the case against fracking in the UK.
They were joined by Gayzer Frackman, who had already made two 250-mile walks from Lancashire to London
with the same aim. The letter he delivered to 10, Downing Street on the second
occasion was co-signed by Andy Pemberton, the dairy farmer from Lancashire
featuring in Greenpeace’s Wrong Move campaign whose land is threatened by
fracking, by Louise from Frack Free
Somerset, by Kathryn from Balcombe and by Ian Crane, the ex-oilfield executive
of Fracktured Future fame, who presented the anti-fracking case so convincingly
at the EKAF event in Dover on 16th October.
Our Letter
Prime Minister
10, Downing
Street
London
SW1A 2AA
Dear Prime
Minister
We are writing
to you on behalf of East Kent Against Fracking, an organisation which represents
hundreds of residents of East Kent, by no means inveterate protesters or
trouble-makers but ordinary people who have taken the trouble to examine the
issue of hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) and become extremely concerned about
the dangers it presents for the UK. We are standing up alongside our fellow citizens to
protect our environment, public health, local economy and social cohesion against
the deteriorating effects which fracking and related drilling practices have
brought to many parts of the USA over the past decade.
We
would like to put the case against fracking in the UK to you and trust that you
will give it as much attention as you have so far given to the pro-fracking
lobby.
First of all, it is a myth
that the kind of fracking proposed has a long history in this country. In fact,
it has been carried out (with damage to 80 homes from earth tremors) only at
Preese Hall in Lancashire, starting in 2011. The process involved is slick
water fracking, used since 2003. We are fortunate in being able to learn from
the decade-long experience in the USA and the operations in Australia that this
kind of extraction of unconventional gas and oil should be opposed on
principle, not just as a localised or NIMBY issue, for the following reasons:
1.
There is mounting evidence that fracking
inevitably causes water, air and soil pollution, even if a borehole has been
properly drilled and sealed. 7% on average of new boreholes leak immediately[1]:
it is simply impossible for the most experienced geologists and the most highly
skilled engineers to guarantee that drilling can be carried out with complete
safety to the environment. Even when a borehole is successfully drilled and
lined, it is likely to fail eventually[2]
and toxic fluids left underground by the fracking process will seep up the
annulus to overlying aquifers and soil, causing contamination which will be a
threat to human and animal health, as well as making the area uninhabitable.
This may be 20-30 years after the borehole has been drilled – a very long time
after the company responsible for securing the environment has left the area.
The clean-up operation will, of course, devolve onto the local government
authorities and cost considerably more than the £100,000 originally granted to
the community for permitting the drilling. Indeed, the loss in value of one
single property in the East Kent area would amount to far more than this sum.
If you have any doubts about the threat to water supplies, three
applications for exploratory boreholes to assess the viability of extracting
unconventional gas from the former Kent coalfield have recently been withdrawn
by the applicant (Coastal Oil and Gas Ltd) owing to the unassailable arguments
made by the Environment Agency about the risks which operations of this kind would
pose to the vital chalk aquifer. It lies not far above the coal and shale strata
and supports a high density of
public supply boreholes, forming part of the North Downs groundwater
resource, which supplies at least 70% of the county's domestic and commercial
requirements.
2. As for the question of strict controls on the
extraction of unconventional gas or oil from underground, your government has
accepted that the regulations which apply to conventional gas and oil
exploration and extraction (such as in the North Sea) are inadequate. That is
why you have set up the Office of Unconventional Gas and Oil (OUGO). However,
this body has so far failed to produce anything appropriate to the risks
involved, the most serious of which I have already outlined: irreversible water
contamination, air and soil pollution, leading to health problems.
The US government has reduced standards of monitoring
and regulation by excluding the extraction of unconventional gas and oil from
the jurisdiction of federal environmental protection legislation (“the
Halliburton loophole”), thus leaving the states and local authorities to take
up the responsibility for regulating, monitoring and dealing with accidents. The
UK government is giving every indication that it intends to follow the same
agenda:
§
by cutting Environment Agency budgets further and faster than
expected;
§
by proposing the closure of air quality monitoring stations
and the abolition of Air Quality Management Zones;
§
by indicating it will seek to end a landowner’s right to
refuse permission to drill under his/her land;
§
by putting political pressure on local authorities to permit
drilling applications;
§
by pledging deregulation, while at the same time assuring us that
accidents which have happened abroad could never happen in our highly regulated
industrial scenario; and
§
by appointing gas industry moguls to cabinet posts, including
Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP, who while in office has made extensive use
of his power to appoint non-executive members of his choice to government
departments concerned with regulating the oil and gas industry[3].
Conflict
of interest in the highest offices of state, rampant deregulation, exemption
from environmental protection legislation, dismissal of risk, denial of alleged
harm, disparagement of dissent and legal gagging of dissenters – these are all
hallmarks of the political climate which have allowed fracking to spread
unrestricted across rural America over the past decade. This laissez-faire approach enabled fracking
companies to go from a small handful of vertical test bores in Western
Pennsylvania in 2007 to over 3,000 wells, about half of which are now
horizontal fracking wells, spreading like a fungus across the once-rural
landscape of Northwestern Pennsylvania[4].
From
an economic point of view, it may conceivably be acceptable for certain areas
to be made uninhabitable in vast continents such as North America or Australia,
but we clearly do not have this option on our small, densely-populated island. Our
geology is also much more sensitive and riddled with faults, making drilling
hazardous at the best of times.
- Another myth which is going the rounds is that there have been no cases of harm from fracking in the USA. This argument relies on semantics, depending on the usage of 'case' meaning litigation in the courts. Owing to “the Halliburton loophole” cited above, victims of contamination are forced to go directly to the fracking companies and non-disclosure agreements are often signed as a prelude to any compensation. As reported by The Guardian in August, settlements of up to $750,000 have been made by US fracking companies using lifetime gagging orders even on children as young as seven[5].
Serious effects on
human health have also been documented in Australia among people living close
to unconventional gas extraction operations. This has been confirmed by The Australian Medical
Association's incoming president in Queensland[6].
The effects range from nose bleeds and skin rashes to debilitating headaches
and an increased risk of cancer.
To add to these concerns, the exposure of
residents to constant noise and lighting at sites is known to affect their
health. The consequences of loud noise are well understood and serious, but now
the problems of low frequency and subsonic sound exposure, especially in the long
term, are becoming known and studied. It has been shown by the Centre for Human
Performance (Portugal), School of Biomedical Engineering, Sciences and Health
Systems at Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA) and CITIDEP (Portugal)[7]
that such exposure can cause major health effects, including cardiac infarcts,
stroke, cancer, epilepsy, rage reactions and suicide.
4.
It seems, however, that you and your government are in favour
of slick water fracking in the UK because you believe that it will lead to
cheaper energy. You are clearly of the opinion that this benefit outweighs the
risks to our environment, health and quality of life. However,
Lord Stern, a cross-bench peer and professor at the London School of
Economics, has said that the claim of cheaper energy from UK
unconventional gas supplies is "baseless". Since UK gas is traded internationally, any shale gas boom
in the UK would be unlikely to have an impact on the gas price. In the USA,
where fracking artificially lowered gas prices significantly at the outset, gas
is rarely exported because other markets are too far away. Expert commentators from the International Energy Agency to Deutsche Bank have also
said different geological, legal and regulatory conditions make
it unlikely the US shale gas boom would be repeated in the UK[8]. The
CBI, Chatham House and OFGEM have also expressed their doubts about shale gas
bringing prices down.
- As for the supposed prospect of more jobs, unemployment is growing in Pennsylvania in spite of its self-proclaimed “booming” Marcellus shale production. Fracking is not labour-intensive: it requires a small team of skilled and trained operatives, who will not be recruited locally in the UK. While some temporary jobs may be created in the area of a fracking site clearing land or possibly guarding it, many other jobs will be lost when businesses move out of an area which has become unpleasant to work in due to the noise and dust caused by 24/7 operations, let alone the frequent HGV traffic to and from sites, causing congestion on often narrow country roads. Farmers and the food industry will find their reputation and produce blighted by a real or perceived anxiety on the part of their customers about contamination from the gas extraction operations – many will prefer to exercise a precautionary principle and go elsewhere.
In the USA, SMEs have been
impoverished as their businesses have faltered, struggled and failed. They are,
however, the largest provider of net new jobs in the USA, in spite of all the
oil and gas industry’s rhetoric. Independent analyses of shale plays throughout
the country confirm that wells are short-lived and reserves not as great as
industry promises. In addition, communities where drilling has occurred are now
dealing with the expensive aftermath. The drilling companies have offloaded
that significant burden onto the taxpayers and local businesses. This is true
of the oil and gas industry as a whole. In fact, economists estimate that if
all the external costs of oil and gas were included, gasoline would cost in
excess of $12 per gallon (it costs on average $3.30).
What are these costs?
Firstly, water must be provided for communities where it has been contaminated.
Secondly, there are rising health care costs to pay for those suffering from
the effects of fracking, everything from skin rashes to respiratory problems and
cancer. Last but not least, county councils are left with the costs of
repairing roads damaged by the constant stream of heavy goods vehicles to and
from fracking sites. Some roads require annual maintenance at $70,000-$80,000
per mile; others need basic reconstruction at a cost of up to $920,000 per
mile.
In conclusion,
at EKAF we are well aware that solutions must be found to supply UK energy
needs in the years to come. Unconventional gas from fracking can never be a
“stop-gap” measure. Even if the most optimistic projections for its supply are
realised and environmental risks ignored, it will be a decade before we can
have the tens of thousands of wells necessary to make production viable. By
then we could have already taken vital steps to end our country’s reliance on
gas and to make homes more energy efficient, eventually converting them to
using exclusively renewable sources of energy. Government subsidies would be
far better spent aiding and hastening this adaptation than giving tax breaks to
foreign fracking companies, which provide no lasting solution to our energy
needs. This policy is already enshrined in the National Planning Policy
Framework and is a far better strategy for reducing our energy bills in a
long-term, sustainable manner.
Many of the
arguments for fracking are made by those who have vested interests in the
multinational energy giants. We know that, as Prime Minister, you have the best
interests of the country first and foremost at heart. We hope we have been able
to alert you to some of the very real dangers we face if we go down the path to
fracking, not least of which is that of turning our countryside into an
industrialised toxic wasteland. This is not the legacy any of us want to leave
to our children and grandchildren.
Yours
sincerely
Julie Wassmer
(Kasparian), EKAF Vice Chair (Petition Organiser – address supplied at head of
letter)
Rosemary
Rechter, EKAF Chair
Patricia
Marsh, EKAF Secretary
Andrew Ogden,
EKAF Technical Officer
Caroline
Raffan, EKAF Online Media Officer
Stuart Cox,
EKAF Committee Member
Gayzer Tarjanyi (Frackman), Frack Free Fylde
Supplementary Sources:
Osborn
et al. “Methane contamination of
drinking water accompanying gas‐well
drilling and hydraulic fracturing”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America, 2011
Bamberger, M. & Oswald, R. E. “Impacts
of Gas
Drilling on Human and Animal
Health”, New Solut. 2012;22(1):51-77, doi: 10.2190/NS.22.1.e.
Brundage et al. “Pennsylvania Marcellus
Shale Workforce Needs Assessment”, MSETC, August 2011
Barth, Janette M., “Hydrofracking offers
short-term boom, long-term bust”, ENR New York, 7 March 2011
Goldenberg, Suzanne, “A Texan tragedy: ample
oil, no water”, theguardian.com, 11 August 2013
Food & Water
Watch, “Fracking and the food system”, 6 J
[2] Schlumberger, the world’s No.1 fracking company,
cites 60% failure over a 30-year time span http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Fracking-is-hardly-leakproof-3646458.php
[7] Alves-Pereira, M. & Nuno Castelo Branco, “Vibroacoustic
disease: the need for a new attitude
towards noise”, CITIDEP, 2000
[8] Deutsche Bank, “European
Gas: A First Look At EU Shale-Gas Prospects” 2011
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