THE Preese Hall Review released this week into the earthquakes [seismic activity] triggered by gas exploration fracking at Blackpool gives scant reassurance once it is looked at in detail.
Its findings include the following: that the earthquakes were caused by fracking; that these earthquakes could happen again; that it is unlikely that ground surface structural damage will occur due to these earthquakes; and that the company did not carry out proper assessment either before or after the fracking to try to stop these earthquakes from occurring. Nor did it gather essential data on the damage caused to the well casing by the earthquakes.
Earthquakes, by definition, cause structural damage underground and this is the crux of the earthquake issue; not whether or not the quake shakes tables and chairs on Blackpool promenade.
The seismic activity, though weak on the surface, is potentially much more harmful underground if fracking pipes are nearby. Seismic activity can weaken the well bore integrity underground and increase the failure rate of its cement casing.
The report states that earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 have occurred in several UK coal mines during the last 100 years and have had little surface effect. But these mines did not have thousands of kilometres of pipes running through them carrying contaminated and toxic water up and down, past and through the water table.
The report recommends that a “traffic light system” of regulation should apply. This assumes that fracking is essentially safe, so the starting point is a green light. If fracking triggers an earthquake of less than 0.5 [magnitude on the Richter scale] they get a warning card, i.e. an amber light. If the fracking causes an earthquake above 0.5, this triggers a red light and the fracking stops temporarily until the company figure out what went wrong.
This system is not exactly the precautionary principle of science that would normally apply to an evolving industry, an industry that is basically a huge engineering experiment in progress.
Our regulators are currently struggling to monitor fracking as the industry is changing faster than we can properly assess. The type of fracking done in 2012 [High Volume Horizontal Hydraulic Fracturing] bears little resemblance to the simple process used from the 1950s until the beginning of the 2000s.
It’s rather like saying that an AK47 and a blunderbuss are both the same as they are both guns. The companies themselves are still learning by trial and error. The fracking industry is a constantly moving target that is slow to admit its errors and then asks us to trust it.
We were told that we would not get the cowboy operators that have caused such problems in the USA but we are still not regulating this industry properly.
This is why we need a moratorium for the foreseeable future until the reports currently being carried out become available.
Moreover, the danger of earthquakes is just one of many risks leading to environmental contamination. If we consider the sideways migration of gas and frack fluid as was shown in Wyoming, surface water contamination caused by flowback fluid leakage and by human error and serious air pollution [a growing worry in the USA] then we must heed common sense. We must say: let’s stop and take stock of what is being planned for many areas in Fermanagh. The few promised jobs will never balance what we lose.
Our health, our real sustainable jobs in agriculture and tourism, our environment, our vibrant communities; all will risk permanent damage if fracking goes ahead.
Our most valuable assets, and both renewable, are healthy people and clean water and neither should be risked for money.
Dr Carroll O’Dolan, is chairperson of Fermanagh Fracking Awareness Network (FFAN)