The UK ConDem government is bribing local councils with offers of £100,000 for every frack test well drilled. Environmental rules are being clean-shaved to make the process from bribe to drill take as little as two weeks. They keep secret what comes next, as exampled by the American experience: Each well requires 2 million to 10 million gallons of water to extract the gas, this water is mixed with sand to prise the fissures open, and friction-reducing chemicals are added to enable the mixture to be forced down the pipes.
This ‘sludge’is forced at very high pressure down the well by 1,000-horsepower pumps mounted on up to a dozen trucks. If there is no locally available water in vast quantities, 120 tanker trucks might typically make 800 to 1,200 trips transporting water. The long-term implications of fracking are shown by the example of Fort Worth, Texas, which saw fracking begin in 2002, and now has 14,000 gas wells.
Residents here complain of contaminated water, polluted air, and unexplained health problems such as headaches, dizziness, blackouts, and muscle contractions. Once prosperous towns have been turned into industrial waste disposal areas of falling house values. Where drilling occurrs within a mile of schools, children complain of nosebleeds, dizziness, and nausea.
Susan E. Trumbore, of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, edited an article appearing in American National Academy of sciences, 2012: ‘We analyzed 141 drinking water wells across … northeastern Pennsylvania … Methane was detected in 82% of drinking water samples, with average concentrations six times higher for homes 1 km from natural gas wells … Ethane was 23 times higher in homes 1 km from gas wells … Overall, our data suggest that some homeowners living 1 km from gas wells have drinking water contaminated with stray gases’.
Although methane is not usually harmful to drink in concentrations below 10 milligrams per litre, it can evaporate from the water. If it collects in enclosed spaces, like basements, it can become flammable and explode or suffocate those who inhale it. Research by the geochemist Tracy Bank shows that high-pressure fluids striking shale could dislodge naturally occurring radioactive compounds such as uranium and strontium, putting groundwater at risk of contamination. Shale is a garbage-bucket rock,” she says. “The more organically rich the shale is, the more natural gas is present, but the more other stuff is in there too”.
Of course, the frackers will hold out the opportunity of cleaner processes, using liquid propane as an extractant. “The disposal situation is basically eliminated”, said Zeke Zeringue, chief executive officer of GasFrac. Usually, it’s a lot of water in and a lot of water out. The gelled propane turns into a gas and exits the well with the natural gas or oil stream produced, eliminating the use of millions of gallons of water pumped into a well”.
This is a Trojan Horse, designed to make fracking seem more acceptable. Richard Spears, a leading adviser to the oil industry, said: “As a former frack engineer, I get the willies when I think about getting anywhere near a frack that is flammable. When it catches fire, it doesn’t burn nicely”.
Two fires have broken out at sites in Canada where a propane fracture was under way or about to take place, causing burns to some workers. Propane fracking is a Trojan Horse not likely to be used in the profit-before-people UK. Water is used to extract gas because it is cheaper. Typically, the water fracking process represents 56% of the total cost of extracting gas, using propane the cost would be much higher, because treated propane is a more expensive than water. The lie is spun that fracking will reduce gas bills, and the American experience is cited, where the price of gas has dropped by 60% in recent years.
However, the European gas market is rigged, with gas prices linked to petrol prices. Frackers will bribe local landowners and residents. They will be represented in the UK parliament by politicians who are associated with them directly, or with ‘supply’ companies, the same snouts-in-the-trough associations that are conspicuous in the hiving off of NHS services to private companies. (225 parliamentarians have recent or present financial private healthcare connections).
It is you who are about to be ‘fracked’ – like a prostitute selling themself cheaply, then ending up with a dose of ‘clap’.
TPR (c. 2014-2018).
LENIN NIGHTINGALE 