The US was lucky in its shale development on so many counts. It had the infrastructure, the service and supply resources, and relatively simple leasing options since so much of the land is privately held.
It took the protestors a while to catch on.
Compare this to the UK, where all of two wells have been drilled into shale prior to Aug. 2, 2013. That was when Cuadrilla Resources began its drilling campaign in its Balcombe site in West Sussex. The immediate, and really kind of scary, reaction caused Cuadrilla’s CEO, Francis Egan, to place an op ed in The Mail the following day attempting to explain the concept of hydraulic fracturing and to try to stem some of the outrage.
Not only were protestors out in force prior to the onset of drilling, but Egan also received an anonymous email threatening to send pipe bombs by express mail to the company’s premises. According to Egan, the message accompanying the threat said, “Fracking [sic] kills, and so do we.”
Give the man credit for trying, at least. His Mail article explains that drilling in the Balcombe site is for oil, not gas, and that no fracing is expected to take place this year. “Once our oil exploration has finished, we will consider three options,” he wrote. “First, if we don’t find oil, our work at Balcombe will come to an end.
“Alternatively, we may find that sufficient quantities of oil flow readily into the wellbore. In this instance, we would assess if a further exploratory oil well is required at another location to evaluate the extent of the oil discovery. Finally, if the oil flows at a low rate or not at all, we would assess what, if any, technical means might generate increased flow.”
He went on to attack the typical misleading claims, explaining that drinking water will be safe, fracing fluids are nonhazardous, gas flares do not cause cancer, and that fracturing won’t industrialize the countryside.
But readers weren’t convinced. Bloggers (36 in all) alluded to Erin Brockovich, the woman who blew the whistle on nuclear plants in the US; the infamous flaming faucet in Gasland; the apparently obvious fact that “fracking” companies are simply trying to justify their “evil” trade in commentaries like Egan’s; and the fact that the “pro-fracking bots are out in force.” Only one comment showed any kind of scientific analysis; the others that were “pro-fracking” were just as insulting to the green movement as the anti-fracers were to the oil companies. A word to the wise in the UK: Tone down the rhetoric and try to meet the opponent on some sense of common ground. Wherever that might be.
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