don't put words in my mouth Streibs - most punters do NOT make the effort to thoroughly understand what they are investing in they don't have the time. You might well be in the group who are the exception to that - there is no way you are in the majority (i.e. most).
neither do I hope it will be a disaster - show me where I said that. I'll say it again so even you can understand it. Britain has a very small land area. It is fairly densely populated. If there are significant environmental issues with any venture it's not so easy to accommodate it when you don't have that much land in the first place.
so, you watched the video did you? want to tell posters that this shale gas technology, so called unconventional gas technology, is only a recent technology and that the risks associated with it are as yet poorly understood and have not yet been quantified? Oh, yes, your engineer 'THINKS' it will be ok? How about he drills the first well to last for 20, 30, 50 years in your backyard? Gee, your face just changed colour....
what the Ingraffea video taught me was the reach of the underground drilling. Many people (excepting no doubt your enlightened self and a few others) would think the drilling was confined to an area something in the order of magnitude of the drill pad itself. No. From that pad of which the biggest in the US appears to be about 1km square, a grid of parallel horizontal underground holes maybe only 20m apart directed in two opposite directions out from the pad are drilled, each of which can be more than 3km long. The shale beds are riddled with closely spaced holes extending many kilometres from both sides of the pad. So it's big.
I'm not going into the many millions of litres of water and additives which are necessary for fracking to take place, just to say that a significant percentage of all that dirty fluid inevitably finds its way back to the surface via many channels - as you would know if you watched the video. And for those whose lives such an enterprise could disrupt, it is as Ingraffea said. "I can't say those waste products will endanger your health, but I can guarantee they will not improve it".
to cut a very long story short, the onus IMO is on the gas companies to show within an acceptable limit of probability that their industry is safe. Such a circumstance exists in other industries as Ingraffia pointed out. Why should gas companies be an exception?
Jeeze, I forgot, never stand between a politician (and/or oil executive) and a bag full of money.....
DTE Price at posting:
9.7¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
