by Gareth Hughes
More good news. Ireland has announced that no hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for gas would take place in Ireland pending further “detailed scientific analysis and advice”.
It’s clear that momentum is growing around the world against this controversial drilling technique with Germany and the state of Vermont also set to ban it in the last week.
Of the countries that are known to have used fracking, the US, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Bulgaria, South Africa, France all have full country, state or regional bans in place and only China and New Zealand do not.
The fact is, there are legitimate concerns, many unanswered questions, the oil and gas isn’t going anywhere so we shouldn’t rush into it. I’m calling for a moratorium until the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment can assure us it’s safe and I think this is the responsible position.
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Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Mon, May 14th, 2012
Tags: fracking
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A moratorium would be sensible, but even if the process of fracking was found to be ‘safe’ by the PCE, the end products (natural gas & shale oil) are not safe to use because of the damage caused to the atmosphere by the release of the extra CO2.
There are clearly enough concerns about the pollution of aquifers to call for a halt to any expansion of the use of the technique unless it can be shown to be safe , but fracking is merely a method for extracting fossil fuels and IMHO it is directing the discussion away from the urgent problem of how we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.
The cheerleaders for the fossil fuel industry seem happy to get into arguments about the finer details of this particular process, probably knowing full well that they are channelling green energies away from this bigger issue.
The mine-it, drill-it lobby are very likely to ignore the PCE’s report in the same way they ignored the one which said we should not mine Southland lignite, they are just using it as a convenient way to bat away any questions for a few months.
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Gareth – interesting how you praise countries that have
- massively more fracking than NZ (28 holes fracked in NZ over 20 years, vs 6000 new holes to be fracked at just one gas field in Australia),
- are increasing fracking in some places (i..e Queensland),
- you say “countries have a complete or partial ban on fracking”, when in Australia there is a moratorium, but only in NSW, and not for existing fracking – only new permits. And not for exploration. And not for core holes. And not for samples.
Then you slag off your own country whose fracking is insignificant in comparison.(were not even 1% of a single gas site in Qld)
The other issue is that fracking can be more environmentally friendly as gas and oil can be extracted from a site without having to drill multiple holes through the aquafer.
And is Aus where they are fracking for gas, it is replacing coal which has twice the greenhouse gas emmisions.
Slaggin of NZ while praising Australia over fracking is like slagging off a Prius owner because they are not cutting their carbon emmisions further, while praising a fleet of Hummers drivers because their consumption is increasing, but only on six of seven days a week.
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