Photo: Gaz Mack
The fracking industry must comply with the rules if it is to regain public confidence, the Environment Agency said yesterday.
As the industry prepares to begin operations, Mark Ellis Jones, the EA’s onshore oil and gas programme executive, told a meeting in London:
“For the industry, compliance with our environmental permits is probably the most single thing they need to do.
“To demonstrate to the local community and to us as the regulator that the operations they are proposing are safe for people and the environment.
“This is going to be key to regaining the trust and their social licence in the communities in which they operate.”
The warning came as Third Energy submitted its hydraulic fracture plan for its well at Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire and the drilling rig is expected imminently at Cuadrilla’s shale gas site at Preston New Road in Lancashire.
The government’s latest public attitudes survey found 19% of people supported fracking and 30% opposed. A recent poll by Friends of the Earth suggested that two-thirds of people in Lancashire opposed fracking within five miles of their home and 54% thought fracking was unsafe.
Mr Ellis-Jones said the oil and gas sector was regarded as high-performing, with no records of the most serious pollution incidents. Fracking companies had been issued with what he described as “robust” permits.
But he said the EA would “redouble” its efforts as sites became operational to show it was working with other regulators, such as the Health and Safety Executive, Oil and Gas Authority and local councils.
He said the EA had visited the Preston New Road site five times during the construction of the well bad.
Mike Stephenson, Director of Science and Technology at the British Geological Survey, told the meeting there should be a “very conspicuous presence” from regulators to assure people that fracking could be done safely. He said:
“Very high levels of environmental assurance will be needed and very conspicuous regulation and monitoring.”
The BGS has been collecting data since 2015 in shale gas areas in Lancashire and North Yorkshire to establish baselines for air and water quality and seismicity.
“Confidence undermined”
Mr Ellis-Jones described the EA as a “confident regulator” and the regulatory system for fracking “as fit for purpose”.
But Kathryn McWhirter, a journalist who lives near Cuadrilla’s site at Balcombe in West Sussex, criticised faith in the regulators as “complacent”. She said:
“We don’t have confidence in the regulators. We have good reason for not trusting the regulators.”
Opponents of Cuadrilla’s operations in Lancashire have been collecting information on what they allege are breaches of the company’s permissions. There was also dismay earlier this year among people living around the site that data was not being collected on radon gas (DrillOrDrop report).
Baroness McIntosh, who represented Kirby Misperton as MP for Thirsk and Malton until 2015, called for a single regulator, as proposed in the Conservative manifesto and recommended by the Shale Gas Task Force.
“There is no single regulator in charge and I believe that is a weakness in the system. I think we do need to have greater openness and transparency to give trust in the process.”
Ken Cronin, chief executive of the industry body, UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said:
“While the industry understands the regulatory process, the general public and local communities find it bewildering. And the lack of a primary contact has undermined confidence”.
Stephen Sanderson, Executive Chairman of UK Oil and Gas Investments Ltd, one of the companies behind the so-called Gatwick Gusher oil discovery, described the current four regulators as uncoordinated and said a single regulator was the global model.
“This has a big impact on trying to get not only exploration wells but test wells [drilled] and get them on to production”.
Government backing
Lord Truscott, a former energy minister, called for clarity from the government on its plans for shale gas.
“If shale gas is to develop successfully in the UK it will require strong political support from the government. I think they need to be clear one way or another on that.”
UKOG’s Stephen Sanderson said:
“I can find the oil and we can produce it but if there isn’t backing that it is of national significance then it’s going to be a very big hill to climb.”
John Blaymires, chief operating officer of IGas, which is preparing to drill two shale gas wells in Nottinghamshire, called for faster decision-making for sites. He said his company’s plans had taken 12 and 18 months to be approved.
“That is not ultimately a sustainable way if the country decides that shale gas can provide benefits in terms of security of supply, jobs, growth etc and be done safely and environmentally-responsibly.”
Production warning
There was also a warning that shale in the UK may not produce gas in the way it does in the US. Professor Stephenson, of the BGS, said:
“British shales are unlikely to be productive all the way through.
“What we’ve found through recent studies in the last two years is [the gas is] quite confined to layers within the shale
“We need to be able to find these productive layers and that involves a lot of science and engineering”.
Reporting from this meeting of the Westminster Energy Environment and Transport Forum was made possible by individual donations by DrillOrDrop readers. You can donate to the site by clicking here
Categories: Regulation
DRILL OR DROP? 
Excellent Friends Of The Earth, say it plain as day, pick up your o$£&g industry game, you are losing it.
Odd title…’Obey the rules’. Is there any evidence that the industry has NOT obeyed the rules?
There was a wrist slap for one operator in implementing new procedures but apart from that??
It would help is Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace stopped spreading incorrect and misleading information designed to help them raise more money.
A reminder of the serious misreadings by Cuadrilla. No respect or concern for local communities.
Off their website
“In accordance with the planning consent well plugging and site restoration work WILL be carried out after the wintering bird’s season, ending 31st March 2016 and BEFORE THE DEADLINE SET BY LANCASHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL OF 31st OCTOBER 2016”
No works even started in 2016 never mind completed.
An industry not to be trusted.
Carrying on drilling at PNR when you hit water-bearing rock ought to be cause for concern – how are they going to seal the concrete casing to the shaft in those conditions?
And allowing your “security guards” to assault protesters on the public highway doesn’t look good…
??? What do you think is in the porosity of the majority of our sedimentary rock sub surface?
Yes Ken – quite a lot of evidence – didn’t you realise?
Plenty, Ken, as you well know. And the EA “rules” are only a fraction of our fragmented approach to regulation. HSE, DEFRA/DoE as was, Planning conditions. Frankly Cuadrilla have abused the “rules” left right and centre, and it is extremely duplicitous for you to suggest otherwise. You are part of the problem. Part of the reason people don’t trust the frackers AND their supporters in mistruth and frankly BS. The sooner you realise this the sooner the industry may, just MAY, be able to regain much of the support it’s lost. The more the fracking supporters are seen to promote deception, the more the frackers will eventually come to see that the friends who are their most ardent and manic supporters, and whom they support, often financially, are their own worst enemies.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/05/inquiry-fracking-blackpool-tremors
It is the industry that is left bewildered.
The challenges communities have made against this industry is remarkable. Our top legal teams, our highly respected specialists, our peer reviewed reports and our understanding of the planning system has battered the industry.
The industry, regulators and lobbyists are playing catch up to our expertise.
We have the resources, we have the numbers, and we will continue to protect the things we hold dearest. Our health, our homes, our countryside, and our children’s future.
We don’t need an onshore oil and gas industry and we don’t want it.
Something that UKOOG needs to understand.
What peer-reviewed reports?
NOT LOOKING GOOD for fracking.
Health Professionals, Scientist release analysis of 400 peer reviewed studies on Fracking along with major along with major compendium update.
http://concernedhealthny.org/health-professionals-scientists-release-analysis-of-400-peer-reviewed-studies-on-fracking-along-with-major-scientific-compendium-update-new-analysis-and-science-answer-governor-cuomos-conce/
Before such industries are considered, we need a lot more answers.. We have a right to be concerned.
It’s a very timely warning Jackthelad (notwithstanding those already suffering from the impacts)…
“In 2009, when New York State first declared a moratorium on fracking, only six peer-reviewed papers on the health and environmental impacts had been published. Now there are more than 400, and the vast majority shows a clear and present danger. What’s more, many problems are unfixable by regulations of any kind. It was a wise governor who said ‘wait’ in 2009. And it is wise to continue to wait.”
JackTheLad, Here is what Resources For the Future had to say after its review of fracking related peer-reviewed literature:
“Overall, we find that the literature does not provide strong evidence regarding specific health impacts and is largely unable to establish mechanisms for any potential health effects.”
“Due to the nature of the data and research methodologies, the studies are unable to assess the mechanisms of any health impacts (i.e., whether a certain impact is caused by air pollution, stress, water pollution, or another burden). Even where good evidence is offered for a link between unconventional oil and gas development and health, the causal factor(s) driving this association are unclear.”
http://www.rff.org/research/publications/health-impacts-unconventional-oil-and-gas-development
Fibonacci here is what Nobel Peace Prize winners Physicians for Social Responsability ( PSR ) have to say about fracking.
NONE of the reports are good.
Just take you pick from this list.
http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/hydraulic-fracturing.html
Jack, PSR is an advocacy anti-fracking group funded by the Park foundation. They have a mission – to have fracking banned. They put together advocacy pieces, not scientific research. There is a reason that the government has ignored their claims and has instead relied upon independent science issued around fracking from the EPA, the National Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey, California Council on Science and Technology, Wyoming Dept of Env Quality, and the US Dept of Energy’s National Technology Laboratory amongst others. These organizations have dismissed your “peer reviewed” research and found that fracking can be accomplished safely.
Stock response from Fibs … to be rolled out for any scientific study that criticizes fracking.
N.B. Good to know about this. PSR is highly respected and has shared a Nobel Peace Prize in the past. It works hard to reduce toxic threats to humanity and the environment, and for the prevention of nuclear war and the reduction of handgun ownership in the USA. So of course it gets a lot of flack from the republicans and fossil-fuel propagandists.
[Edited by moderator]
Regardless of what awards PSR has won in the past, the group’s work on fracking has been embarrassingly poor. It is full of mistakes and misstatements of fact.
PSR has a mission to ban fracking – that’s not the way a scientific outfit is run, it is the way that an advocacy group operates.
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The study you refered to was published in 2014 so the data is accumulated over at least 10 years of fracking and all concluded that there are POTENTIAL RISKS but no evidence of systemically causative association. So just like any industrial activities there are health and environmental risks and all this study confirmed was yes there are associated risks but none of has happened and therefore it demonstrates that regulatory enforcement and company compliance was effective to mitigate these risks with a handful small cases of breaches. That sounds pretty good for an industry that the anti frackers bang on as toxic end of the world practice.
Even one of the leading authors of this study exclaimed that while the evidence is still emerging from their study and inconclusive just give the frackers another five and there evidence will be transparent that the industry is dangerous as the water contamination disease cases will prove their claims of disasters. Well it is 2017 now nearly 3 years on where are the cases of disasters this report claimed would happen even though tens of thousands fracked wells have been carried in this period. Where the court cases and fine of environmental breaches class action for diseases caused by fracking? The anti frackers keep spreading fears and exaggeration but just can’t back with hard proof.
Oh for goodness sake. There goes that much abused ‘systemic’ word again. Even the EPA withdrew it’s usage when it’s own scientists said it was simply wrong and misleading to state that there were no systemic dangers… Pollution, contamination, water table depletion and health impacts are all real dangers and widely recorded impacts arising from fracking. Get over it.
You want the truth? Noone denying fracking has its own inherent risks just like any other industries including your offshore.
All industries have risks. Of course. But they are not all the same and they do not all carry those health and environmental risk factors that are the issue here.
How do you defend your statement that none of the associated risks have happened. I have surveyed anecdotal accounts in their hundreds – and not from people inventing stories. I daresay there are thousands. Some health effects like cancers and birth defects have long lag times (from initial exposure) of say 10 years or more but there are now expert law firms showing willingness to take these cases on.
The report was published Dec14 (2.5 years old) btw.
[Year in last paragraph corrected to 14 at poster’s request]
Totally duplicitous – aka fracking bullshit – when you know full well the government relies on a pre-dated 2012 report on fracking for its bullish position – despite the fact (as you well know) the RS&RAE report recommendations were NOT implemented. You alsoi know full fracking well that health risks take years or decades to be proven.
[Edited by moderator] You are doing the industry no favours. The more you protest the more folk realise there is more substance behind the accusations against the industry.
If you drop a piano on someone, there is a potential risk of an impromptu Beethoven Piano Sonata, the reality will be somewhat less satisfactorily musical, both for the piano and the person beneath?
If you allow unmonitored self regulated Fracking of an entire country, then there is a potential risk of evidentially systemic causality association of real and lasting harm, the reality will be somewhat less grammatically evasive and rather more directly evidentially systemically causatively associative of real and lasting harm?
Or is that too evidentially systemically causatively associatively simplistic?
i think i just burned out my spell checker?
Jackthelad, if you are impressed with peer reviewed propaganda, then you must understand how penises are the root cause of climate change, correct? http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/
You must also understand that not a single one of your 400 peer reviewed studies has demonstrated a causal link between fracking and ill health effects, right?
Predictable nonsense from Fibs. As if he’s even looked into it.
Predictable denialism from Philip. It’s a fact that a hoax was played and that authors were able to publish a peer-reviewed paper attributing climate change to male genitalia. You only look weaker when you respond to facts in this manner, Philip.
And here’s more on the peer-reviewed hoax that is the anti-frack movement:
Here is what Resources For the Future had to say after its review of fracking related peer-reviewed literature:
“Overall, we find that the literature does not provide strong evidence regarding specific health impacts and is largely unable to establish mechanisms for any potential health effects.”
“Due to the nature of the data and research methodologies, the studies are unable to assess the mechanisms of any health impacts (i.e., whether a certain impact is caused by air pollution, stress, water pollution, or another burden). Even where good evidence is offered for a link between unconventional oil and gas development and health, the causal factor(s) driving this association are unclear.”
http://www.rff.org/research/publications/health-impacts-unconventional-oil-and-gas-development
‘Even where good evidence is offered for a link between unconventional oil and gas development and health, the causal factor(s) driving this association are unclear’ … Good enough reason to be cautious then. They may become very clear in the next year or two.
Same copy-book I notice. It’s a standard global warming deniers trick to state that climate scientists are uncertain about climate change because the exact mechanisms and causal connections have yet to be pinned down. The fact is that all scientific papers, when dealing with complex dynamic and non-linear systems have to express results with margins of uncertainty and statistical probabilities. The deniers just cherry pick and amplify those marginal statements and say ‘Gotcha’. The plain fact is that they are clear or certain enough. I expect the same is true for epidemiology.
The only thing that is standard about it is that it demands adherence to facts, logic, and scientific method. Sorry that you have such a problem with these “artifices” Philip.
Sorry that you are so out of touch with the realities of modern science Fibs
Is that evidentially systemically causatively associative of your mindset? Or just some sort of verbal flash in the pan? There are plenty of evidentially systemically causatively associative links to ill health and fracking, perhaps this little demonstration of yours is such evidentially systemically causatively associative of just that?
This seems to be an admission that the EA is not satisfied that the industry has or will obey the rules, notwithstanding that no amount of regulation can make fracking safe or sustainable. The EA`s appeal also indicates a dependence on self regulation and I doubt whether the community would trust the industry to mark its own homework. Just another exercise in PR then?
Is that the attempted Thalidomide and tobacco company defence?
This is merely a PR excercise to appease the antis, there was a onshore o&g meeting held yesterday with government and industry bodies including the EA. We all had a great chat and are paving the way forward. There is plenty of support for this industry don’t worry pros 🙂
You sound so positive such that it sounds too good to be true. The government is weakened after the election and probably not keen on issue like fracking. Cuadrilla is supposed to be drilling by now and they are not even finishing building the site. Meanwhile council keeps rejecting applications and companies going nowhere near drilling or fracking a well in 2017. So another year bites the dust for the pro frackers. No wonder the antis can see and exploit the weakness of the industry’s all talk and no show.
I can only report on the facts TW unlike the antis. Slow but steadily we go as with all policy these days 🙂
No William, this is just the EA doing it’s job of telling any industry that they will gain public approval if they conform to the rules. It’s not rocket science- (rocket scientists also need to conform to certain EA rules. Shame they didn’t in Lincolnshire and left several sites heavily contaminated.) Perhaps William you could explain whether any industry conforms 100% to EA rules, and does not depend largely on self regulation? There are no industries that meet your criteria and the general public are aware of that.
The “single regulator” suggestion should be followed but perhaps too many vested interests to allow easy progress there. Would not be good news for the antis either because greater clarity to the public would not be welcomed. Opaqueness allows scaremongering to flourish.
In (very rare) agreement with Martin and GBH here. This certainly looks like a PR or window dressing exercise to make the regulating bulldog appear to have teeth. Believe me the regulation will get dictated by the industry.
OMG we communites are so bewildered! It’s always funny, at conferences and in Westminster, to hear the new buzz words the industry has settled upon, and to see how government and their agencies then buzz along in unison. ‘Scaremongering’ has almost gone out of fashion.
Yes, it was weird the other day when the EA suddenly made a lot of noise about (was it IGas?) getting their data a wee bit wrong. Smelled of PR rats. So did Mark Ellis-Jones’ speech yesterday at this conference. This is nothing new. Tony Grayling before him, Mark E-J now, their words have often had an industry PR ring to them, in my ears.
‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn!’ I can’t wait. ‘Labour will ban fracking!’ How bewildered the shareholders must be, as we head towards the next election.
The Environment Agency (EA) are box-tickers, so are the planners. In my view. At top level, they are friends of industry in my view, and of course servants of the government, with its weird fracking fetish. The EA exercises no moral compass in my view and experience. (Although amongst their number, especially on the ground, there must be those who are there because they care for the environment, those who are still green and not yet jaundiced by the pressure of policy.
The EA five times on site at Preston New Road! Oooooh! Perhaps they are reformed characters. I wonder if they announced their visits at Preston New Road? They probably whinged, like at Balcombe, that the protesters were too scary. Broken-armed protesters are especially scary. Though plaster, borne in peace, is no weapon.
Wellbore construction is the domain of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). At Balcombe the HSE never had the required meetings with the EA. They never visited the site. It’s a desk job, up in Aberdeen. Too far. The HSE approve the well design, and during drilling and well construction Cuadrilla sends them the occasional message to say all is going to plan. Box ticked. That, at least, has not changed. That the HSE ‘control all’ from their desks was confirmed at yesterday’s conference by EA mandarin Mark Ellis-Jones.
Oh look it’s a Scot, interesting to hear today that it has been the O&G industry that has prevented you going back into recession!
I see you are also busy on the Guardian Kathryn – interesting reply from George Pratt in Alberta:
Will the Guardian ever publish the amount of energy released by the fracking caused tremors?
Will the Guardian ever admit that amount of energy released is less than produced by one stick of dynamite exploding?
KathrynBalcombe George Pratt
6h ago
The earthquakes triggered by fracking at Preese Hall 1 damaged (ovalised) the well casing over several hundred feet. An earthquake felt slightly at surface is much more significant at depth. Well integrity (ie proper construction, good cementing, no damage) is vital. The most common route for fugitive gases or liquids is the wellbore. Yes, it is rare for fracking to cause earthquakes. It HAS happened – big ones in Canada, for instance. Far more have been caused by reinjection of fracking flowback fluids. Oklahoma once had 2 earthquakes a year, now it has more than 2 a day. But earthquakes are way down my worry list. Up top are the huge numbers of wells that will be required, whether on big multi-pads or smaller footprint. Then air pollution, flares a big issue, nasty polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. They may be fleeting, but don’t let your pregnant wife get in their way. Scaremongerer? No. Bewildered? No. Read the evidence, Pratt, use your search engine!
George Pratt KathrynBalcombe
2h ago
I live in Canada and you are quite wrong. Every anti-fracking claim here has been debunked as an insane claim, a fraudulent effort to extort money from frackers or push some nutty lefty agenda.
Here in Alberta there are over 250,000 fracked wells with zero problems. Saskatchewan next door is similar. The USA must certainly have millions of them by now. How many big bad fracked wells you Brits running around crying about to compare with our North American millions.
I’ll leave you to do some basic research at our governmental Alberta Energy Regulator. http://search.aer.ca/aer-en/search/theme/aer?q=fracking
And please, calling a fracking fart an “earthquake” or a “tremor” is not only a falsification, it is an embarrassing and transparent one. Tell me, what is the sensitivity of the instruments required to find these yuuuuge tectonic events? Because humans sure as hell can’t feel them.
I stand by my stick of dynamite energy comparison and assure you that the weakest pipe stem in use would laugh at 10 times that much energy.
Paul… Whoever can say something like ‘Here in Alberta there are over 250,000 fracked wells with zero problems’ is deranged. They need counseling or more serious help. I would urge anyone to sift through the details of the Ernst Encana case to see what has really been going on over there and how the state regulator has merely become an instrument of the industry. Complaints are either shredded or ignored and complainants are marginalised as cranks or terrorists.
Nice try Paul, but no fuse, I am sure you are happy to stand next to a stick of dynamite? But not, i suspect if someone lights the fuse?
Dynamite, is i believe nitro glycerine based, but as your frantic colleague was keen to point out, the case fracturing uses HME or Her Majesties Explosive. There is also an interesting difference between an explosive detonated in air, and in a confined space. A detonation in air allows the superheated gas to expand in all directions, but still dangerous if you stand next to it, somewhat terminal and fragmenting in fact.
A detonation of the same explosive in a confined space, such as a drill casing, is quite a different proposition though isn’t it?
Without sufficient room for expansion, the shock wave will rapidly find the nearest weak point and perforate it, and anything beyond. That is why a shaped charge is used, that directs the shock wave travelling faster than the speed of sound into a single point. The result was designed to penetrate armoured vehicles and ships and turn its superheated contents onto the unfortunate occupants, the result being instant dismemberment and death.
Well fortunately there are no occupants 1.5 – 2 km down. But the surrounding casing, cement plug and whatever formation exists beyond will get the full force of that detonation. We are told the effect lasts anything from centimetres to feet beyond, the actual figure seemed to vary depending upon which post was submitted. The above ground simulation of the perforation is made in the ideal conditions. Below the ground the result is much less controlled and is not monitored, it cant be. Where were the shaped charges directed? Did they all detonate? how far did they penetrate? What formations were fractured and destabilised? What knock on effect will that have on other formations? Water courses? All ready associated weak formations? How much care is made to minimise the risk to other stratas?
So what are we to believe? Truth or dare? Not a good practice with explosives.
But of couse it is quite safe to stand next to a stick of dynamite? Isn’t it?
Phil C – [edited by moderator] you clearly have no understanding how shaped charge perforating works – or for that matter, hydraulic fracturing. Suggest you read up some more? [edited by moderator]
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Just to reply to one of your questions …is not monitored… “did they all detonate?” This is monitored very carefully, because bringing a live unfired perforation gun back to the surface is one of the most dangerous things that you might have to do on a drilling rig.
I know, that is why I asked, has it ever happened?
Yes.
And how many times has that happened, and were they recovered, or detonated?
Several times in 30 years; there are a number of reasons that undetonated (live) guns are recovered. The depth control sonde may fail (GR/CCL). If this fails you cannot get the guns to the exact depth you wish to perforate so they are recovered and the sonde changed out (wireline guns) and re-run.
Detonator fails – usually due to problem with the wireline signal / cable.
I don’t recall ever seeing only a % of charges not detonating – it is all or none.
Tubing conveyed perforating – failures usually due to detonating mechanism not working (debris on top of detonator preventing mechanical detonation with sinker or drop bar). Pressure activation failure due to leak in running string.
Prima cord failure between detonator and first charge (I recall they fire bottom up but not 100% sure).
I have never seen a detonation in the wrong place (off depth, wrong formation, while running, while at surface, in the truck, on the boat, in the 747 we have used to fly them in…).
Is this what you wanted?
TW the sun is shining, please don’t spoil it!
I think you need to look at the positives. Wells are being drilled in terms of on shore oil. and oil is being found. Yes, it is a long process but we have three wells in the Weald looking pretty positive and several more ready to start work. Against that there is a delay at Egdon but I suspect within the larger context that will be no bad thing and may be a watershed in achieving focus upon the planning process.
Fracking is still in the test phase, so it will be slow. It could continue at a slow pace for a little while if drilling fails to achieve initial brilliant results. Conversely, if it does then progress will certainly be at a faster pace.
The government are in a weak position, and will hold back until they see there are real positives to support. If there are, it will be exploited remorselessly to demonstrate poor judgement by the other parties, so hardly surprising where a lot of the antis will come from.
On the Pro’s side, with the DUP now in tow (at a cost of a mere 1 billion), they have a tidy alliance of climate change deniers to help them disregard any leaked methane impacts. Mind you with the super-accurate methane sensing satellites launching in the next couple of years it’s going to be hard to lie about uncontrolled emissions for long.
I would imagine there will be hot spots wherever an old folks home is located!
Or a dairy herd, or sheep, or pigs…….
Indeed, at the accuracy they’re talking about, but they won’t hold a candle to the gas wells (sorry, inappropriate metaphor).
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