June 29, 2015

expert reaction to Lancashire council decision to reject fracking applications

Lancashire County Council has rejected an application for fracking for shale gas at a coastal site in Fylde.

Prof. Stuart Haszeldine, Professor of Geology and Carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, said:

“Fracking in the UK is still a suckling infant in need of constant care and attention, the child may or may not learn to walk; but commercial propositions such as Lancashire are still trying to run prematurely before walking.

“The possibility of producing domestic hydrocarbons is an attractive magnet. Public objections are often focused around what we can see easily on the surface – trucks and noise. But many fundamental geological problems are very poorly understood. UK fracking applications routinely have several possible interpretations of the deep underground, whereas greater certainty on one interpretation on groundwater and gas movement would be more reassuring.

“There is a 15 year history of this type of fracking from the USA and Canada – the results of which are only now starting to emerge. It is very clear that groundwater contamination can occur – with fracking fluids and with potentially toxic hydrocarbons. The available evidence shows that contamination can affect single boreholes, and much larger regions; this contamination is not temporary, it is forever. And the USA regulators have often been poorly equipped to handle these risk assessments. There are also less-established suggestions of health impacts on some surface residents.

“Set against that, there are also many fracking sites with no known geological problems. It is not yet understood what makes a good site and what makes a bad site. Rather than rushing to commercial fracking, the UK should now be investing in the science to understand how this resource can be securely exploited, and the greenhouse gas adverse emissions can be captured – just as the UK has invested in many new energy types in the past. Only after the consequences of exploration and exploitation can be reliably predicted, should commercial activity proceed.”

Dr Rob Westaway, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, said:

“This decision, contrary to legal advice, seems very strange.

“All other issues having previously been decided in favour of the Preston New Road / Little Plumpton project going ahead, the only point to consider at this stage was compliance with noise regulations. Cuadrilla consulted with Lancashire Council in advance, were told the allowable noise level for night-time work, and designed the project accordingly. Six months ago they were told that compliance with a slightly more stringent noise limit was essential, even though Lancashire Council had not mentioned this before. At considerable cost (amounting, I understand, to many hundreds of thousands of pounds per local resident directly affected) they re-designed the noise barriers around the drilling rig to comply with this more stringent limit.

“Many people experience far louder noise nuisance at night (e.g., from neighbours slamming car doors), but local authorities do nothing – although this form of nuisance is permanent, whereas the drilling activities at Preston New Road / Little Plumpton would have been completed within a couple of months.”

Prof. Richard Davies, Lead of the ReFINE (Researching Fracking in Europe) project at Newcastle University, said:

“ReFINE’s independent research has specifically targeted the questions raised by members of the public and is particularly relevant to today’s decision. Our latest research to be published next month looks at the public perceptions of fracking in the UK which is very timely given today’s outcome.

“The science is clear, fracking causes earthquakes, but they tend to be small ones, magnitudes of 3 or less and the UK has a long history of man-made earthquakes as a result of coal mining.’

“On water contamination it’s important to make the distinction that the fracking process itself is a very unlikely cause of water contamination, instead leaking wells have caused a small number of incidents of water contamination in the USA.  We suggested recently that up to 53% of the 2152 wells drilled thus far in the US have an unclear ownership. This needs to be sorted out so that we do not create a legacy of orphaned wells for future generations.”

Prof. Paul Younger FREng, Professor of Energy Engineering at the University of Glasgow, said:

“As an engineering scientist it is heartening to see that the Council’s rejection of planning is on reasonable grounds, rather than pandering to pseudo-scientific scare stories.

“Indeed, having worked for some years as a hydrogeologist routinely assessing planning applications for the then National Rivers Authority (predecessor of the Environment Agency), I am aware that there are relatively limited and well-defined grounds on which it is legal to reject a planning application – and these grounds certainly do not include specious theories on hydrogeology promoted by people with no knowledge of the discipline.

“So perhaps the grounds for refusal – boring old land zonation designations and traffic movements on rural roads – shouldn’t be a surprise. Given how controversial fracking has become, I suspect that all planning applications for fracking will end up going the same way as opencast coal did – local councillors too afraid of the backlash at the polls that they find any grounds to reject it, knowing this will trigger an appeal and, eventually, a decision being made via the national process by a planning inspector not based locally. That way, they can always claim to their voters that they opposed it, and that it is just the wicked central government that approves such things.

“It is ultimately a stance that undermines the claims of local authorities to want greater power, but that’s how it goes. It also makes the planning process unnecessarily lengthy and costly for all concerned (including us, the public), which in turn is one of the principal reasons the UK is not really a favoured destination for investors any more, whether this be for wind, solar or – as in this case – an indigenous source of the natural gas needed to provide dispatchable power to allow the other two to be deployed at large scale. And that’s beside the fact that 82% of UK households – including most of Lancashire – totally rely on gas for domestic heating and hot water.

“Obviously we consider it is better to have countries with more humane polities than ours (Qatar?) supply our gas than produce our own…”

Prof. Jim Watson, Research Director at the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), said:

“Today’s decision illustrates yet again that shale gas is highly controversial, and that has implications for how quickly the shale gas can be developed. Whilst this shows that local decision making about our energy choices will continue to matter, this particular decision is likely to be challenged.

“Big questions remain about the economics of UK shale gas – and about the extent to which it will be able to help meet energy policy objectives such as reducing emissions and energy security. This decision does little to answer such questions. In particular, the economics of shale will remain very uncertain until some exploration has been carried out.”

Prof. Andy Aplin, Director of the Centre for Research in Earth Energy Systems at Durham University, said:

“Lancashire County Council’s decision to reject test fracking at Little Plumpton is rather surprising since it was recommended for approval after a long period of consultation. Given the national and even international focus of this decision, I can sympathise with the Councillors, who must have felt under intense pressure. We can expect a legal challenge and it is possible that a final decision might have to be made by the Secretary of State.

“A key report by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering stated that fracking was safe as long as wells were drilled according to strict practices and that monitoring took place to detect changes in both seismic activity and groundwater quality. This is what was being proposed in Lancashire. Baseline surveys for groundwater quality and background seismic activity would have been made, so that any changes resulting from the drilling and fracking process could be quantified. These are key data for future decisions about the development of a shale gas industry.

“The context is that 70 per cent of the UK’s primary energy comes from oil and gas and we are likely to import 75 per cent by 2020. Without wells, we can only speculate about whether this shortfall might be met by UK shale gas.

“However, for shale to make a significant change in the trend in import dependence would require thousands of wells to be drilled from hundreds of sites across northern England. Even then, we are probably only talking about 10 years of UK gas consumption.

“Longer term, it may be possible to use abandoned shale gas wells for carbon-free geothermal energy, extending the useful life of wells for decades.”

Prof. Quentin Fisher, Professor of Petroleum Geoengineering at the University of Leeds, said:

“I’m very disappointed by this decision and will be very interested to hear the detailed explanation behind the decision from the council. I hope that there are legitimate reasons and the council haven’t just caved in to the scaremongering being put out by environmental groups.

“Hydraulically fracturing for shale is one of the safest ways to get energy. Rejecting the decision simply means that we will have to buy more energy from other sources, most of which will be less safe and have far worse effects on the environment than shale gas production.”

Declared interests

Prof. Younger: “I am an unpaid non-executive, founding director of a small start-up company (Five-Quarter Energy Holdings Ltd), spun out of Newcastle University where I used to work. The company is trying to make the case for a new zero-carbon process for obtaining gas from coals far beneath the seabed and re-injecting the CO₂ into the same zones.”

Prof. Watson: “I’m on the International Advisory Panel of the Sustainable Gas Institute, which is funded by BG Group and based at Imperial. This is an unpaid role.”

Prof Aplin receives funding from the petroleum industry and NERC for his group’s research.

Prof. Fisher: “My research gets funding from the oil industry but I don’t receive sponsorship from any company associated with this application.”

Prof. Davies: ReFINE is funded by industry and NERC.

Prof. Haszeldine is funded on unconventional hydrocarbons by NERC, and the European Union.  He is funded on carbon capture and storage by EPSRC, Scottish Funding Council, DECC, and a consortium of hydrocarbon and power companies.