Should We Embrace Fracking?
As an engineer, I have come to some conclusions about fracking.
There is certainly a lot of gas and possibly oil, buried in the ground, that can be accessed using advanced techniques like fracking in the UK.
Countries like the United States have certainly benefited from fracking with low gas prices and increased manufacturing activity.
There have been problems, as there were in Blackpool in the UK with fracking.
But are we throwing the resources of our great engineering universities, like Newcastle, Surrey, Southampton, Aberdeen, Manchester and Liverpool at the problem? I’ve left out universities that aren’t close to oil and gas reserves.
I doubt it!
Knowing engineering and engineers as I do, I suspect they could come up with better methods, that would benefit the UK and perhaps other countries, who have large difficult gas reserves and are nervous of using fracking and other methods.
So should the major oil and gas companies, be spending a few hundred millions investing in the future?
The Anonymous Widower 
It makes sense that technologies are developed to counter the extensive pollution and potential of earthquakes that fracking entails.
Comment by Alex Jones | August 12, 2013 |
We always underestimate how much technology gets better and how fast it improves. My company was involved in the planning of the Channel Tunnel and if you look at the tunneling machines used then, they are tiny compared to the ones used now for Crossrail.
I will make no predictions as to how we release the shale gas, but when we do, it won’t cause any problems, as technology will have improved. So we should invest in the research to find that technology, as there are real jobs to be made in producing the equipment to get the gas out.
Remember no-one thought that the largest on-shore oil field in Western Europe could be developed successfully, when it was found at Wytch Farm in Dorset. But unless you look for it, you won’t find it and it has never made the news, except perhaps when it was sold.
Comment by AnonW | August 12, 2013 |