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Geologists Say UK Shale Deposits Hold Vast Energy Reserves
fishmike writes with this news snipped from a Reuters story: "Britain may have enough offshore shale gas to catapult it into the top ranks of global producers, energy experts now believe, and while production costs are still very high, new U.S. technology should eventually make reserves commercially viable. UK offshore reserves of shale gas could exceed one thousand trillion cubic feet (tcf), compared to current rates of UK gas consumption of 3.5 tcf a year, or five times the latest estimate of onshore shale gas of 200 trillion cubic feet."
Get used to it. This is one of those technologies we can't afford not to exploit.
The people most enthusiastic about it are the eastern Europeans... it means freedom from Russian energy supplies. And I suspect the Israelis are looking into it rather deeply now that the Egyptians are interfering with their natural gas supply.
This technology is going to mean liberation and stability for nations... against those pros you're going to need some substantive cons.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it?
Given that it is pumped into oil/gas-carrying rock, it will not seep into the water table. If it could, the oil or gas would be long gone. The problem is that you must pump some of it out to get acces to the oil or gas, and even if it was pure water you pumped down, the water coming up has been in contact with oil and is not clean. With horizontal drilling, you end up with quite a lot of dirty water, and no good way to get rid of it. Another problem is the casing of the pipes going down. It seems to be hard to make sure it is done properly, and if it isn't, you risk the pipe breaking and the fracking fluid running out. As the pipes are necessarily drilled through the aquifer, this is clearly problematic.
It's well known that it contaminates water supply
We have established it in one case with quite a special geologic profile (the fracking happened much closer to the surface than normal). That is a far cry from it being an established, general problem. It is cause for concern, especially for shallow fracking, but I think the two problems I mentioned first are more acute.
I'm English and most of my fellow countrymen are quite happy for Scotland to be independent. Think it would do both countries a lot of good to be honest.
I worked in Glasgow for a while and found everyone perfectly pleasant, whenever a Scot works in England though they seem to get all chippy and resentful for some reason.
Think maybe you're confusing the English with the much smaller bunch of Londoners who dominate our media and other elites. Speaking as a Northerner who's worked in London I can guarantee that they are just as patronising to us as they probably are to you Scots.
I'd be far more worried about the water laced with sand and chemicals that is shot down into the Earth to release this gas from the shale. They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it?
First, let me put out there that I Am A Frac Engineer (IAAFE), so take what I am about to say for what that's worth...
Sand (or other suitable grain material, known as "proppant") is pumped into a hydrocarbon-bearing formation to keep induced fractures propped open after frac operations have finished, so that such fractures do not close up (negating the effects of creating the fractures in the first place). Sand keeps that "highway" open from the fracture network in the formation to the wellbore, so that oil and gas can freely flow to the production tubulars and up to the surface. I assure you that the intention, by design, is to *keep* the sand in the formation, not "suck it back up".
The best frac fluid by far (for optimum oil and gas production) is plain freshwater with no additives whatsoever. However, in the real world various additives are necessary to make fracturing possible: anti-clay swelling agents (NaCl, KCl) are needed to keep clays in the formation rock from swelling up and closing up pore throats, acrylamide polymers are needed to reduce the pipe friction of water at fracturing rates so that surface pressures are minimized, surfactants are used to reduce the surface tension of the water so that the water does not block up the pores and fissures by capillary effects, guar gum is used to gel up the water so that sands don't settle out of the water too soon (causing the sand to bridge off and block flow), etc. The total concentration of chemical additives used in the frac fluid usually does not exceed 0.5% by volume, and at those concentrations are relatively benign.
Frac fluids are flowed back naturally to surface, not "sucked up". The reason they are flowed back is that, well, you can't immediately tie the well to a sales line and start selling it until the produced fluids meet a certain quality. The first fluids that flow back out are the last you put in (LIFO), so by extension the frac fluid would be the first fluids back to surface (and they aren't worth anything to any gas pipeline companies or oil refiners), so they must be stored in a tank and hauled off to wherever it goes (either disposed of in a permitted waste disposal well, or recycled for other frac jobs).
It's well known that it contaminates water supply but greed can overpower any environmental problems.
No, it is not a well-known fact. It is presumed in some cases, but not proven. The link you cited has many other factors that have contributed to water contamination, including the shallowness of the hydrocarbon-bearing formation, and the fact that surface retention pits were largely unregulated for a certain period of time. Surface pollution *is* well known to cause water contamination. Engineers and geologists also know that if your hydrocarbon-bearing formation is within a few hundred feet of a water table, that hydraulically-induced fractures *can* propagate into them. There are a few scientific methods for measuring hydraulically-induced fracture growth, which have been utilized in every active shale play in the United States.