Foundations for fracking fears
In “Hail shale,” Ken Cronin from UK Onshore Oil and Gas states that “Fracking has developed an anti-following… It’s a fear of the unknown” (PE April). I agree that there is fear of the unknown, though not every anti-fracker is as ill-informed as Cronin implies.
To date, there has been vague information about what will happen with flowback water; I suppose that is another unknown to be fearful of.
There are, however, fears arising from what we do know:
• Drilling is noisy, and will take place well within earshot of homes.
• The industry is viable only if very many wells are drilled, as the productive life of the well is limited.
• The recent infrastructure bill allows “any substance” to be left underground.
• There have been environmental and health problems associated with fracking in the US.
• Fracked areas have a coincidental rise in earthquakes.
There has been no new regulation for the control of drilling for onshore gas. The industry will be working to regulation drawn up for offshore drilling. All new legislation passed has been to facilitate fracking, not to control it.
The Environment Agency has had staffing levels reduced, and it seems the new head of the EA has an unsettling closeness to the industry, having led a company that has written environmental impact statements for Cuadrilla. Current proposals are that the companies will monitor themselves and provide reports to the agencies involved.
There will be no independent monitoring.
In two years at fracking site Preese Hall in Lancashire, the Health and Safety Executive made one visit; this was concerned with site safety, and not health or safety in the wider environment.
Indeed, a debate is needed, but it needs to be an honest debate.
We do a disservice if we gloss over the dangers and consequences of fracking.
Tony Dewhurst, Goosnargh, Preston
Supply chain worries
As a resident of the Fylde in Lancashire, I was interested to see the article on natural gas production using fracking. I agree that we need a more technically literate discussion.
We are becoming clearer about the main points covered in the article. However, the article touches the key issue of supply chain structure only in its final paragraph: “We need to have more concentration on onshore activities. Given the fact that a lot of the shale is located in the industrial heartlands in the UK, an opportunity does exist.”
We are not so clear about the scale of the proposed supply chain structure, which must depend on the volume of gas produced and the number of wells. The 600 wells scheduled to be drilled in the 166km2 of the Fylde, over a short period, is a large number compared with the 2,000 total previously drilled in the whole of the UK.
Although one of BAE Systems’ largest sites is in the Fylde, it is not accurate to describe the borough as “the industrial heartland of the UK”, despite the ignorance displayed by a senior politician who described the area as “the desolate North West”. Between 90 and 95% of the Fylde is designated as agricultural land of very good or good-to-moderate quality. This land quality, together with the mild climate, make the region’s farms among the most productive in the UK. About 56,000 people live in its three towns, and the remaining 20,000 are spread between small villages including Wrea Green, which has the largest village green in Lancashire and is often awarded the title of the Best Kept Village in the county.
Great care must be taken to ensure that this rural idyll is not destroyed by the weight of the supply chain structure required to support fracking.
Further to John Jones’ letter (PE April), we must all be concerned about the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas, and we need to understand the effect that the provision of 20 years supply of cheap gas will have on the development of alternative energy solutions. Whether or not we agree on the effect that greenhouse gases have on global warming, it must be sensible to develop alternatives to fossil fuels with utmost urgency.
Mike Parker, Lancashire
Hardened opinions
While a “technically literate discussion” about fracking would be welcome, I wonder if it can ever take place.
I recently took a course called Shale Gas and Fracking, run by Nottingham University. The course, being a MOOC, had almost 8,000 participants.
While it’s comforting to believe that impartial technical information will prevail in any discussion, that was not my experience in the MOOC’s discussion forum. Many of the participants held firm views, for and against fracking, and I doubt that many changed their opinion during the course.
The level of debate was frequently vitriolic and often partisan. Almost every ‘fact’ was vigorously disputed by both sides, and little common ground was found.
Ian Jenkinson, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire
Privatisation problems
I wish to comment on, and amplify, the letter by E M Beaney (PE April).
The CEGB’s assets were sold at about £85 per kilowatt, with the electricity grid, research establishments, workshops and test facilities included. The plant, on average, was less than half worn out, so new plant was valued as, at most, £170 per kilowatt, at a time when coal-fired plant (40% thermodynamic efficiency) cost about £900 per kilowatt and combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant about £350 per kilowatt.
CCGT plant was about 50% efficient, since gas turbine (GT) generation was about 32% efficient and two GTs provided enough heat for one similar-sized steam-powered alternator. Now GT generation is 40% efficient, so CCGT plant is 60% efficient. Carbon dioxide emissions for gas are half that of coal for the same heat output, so CCGT emits one-third the CO2 emissions of coal-fired plant.
So it is important to frack. Also, methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than is CO2.
As Beaney states, the CEGB was not allowed to burn gas. If it had been allowed to, the cost of electricity to the consumer would have been 25% less than the privatised cost. Incidentally, the government of the time rejected a gas-gathering pipeline in the North Sea, and the gas was flared off to reach the oil more quickly.
Now there are six large electricity companies, all with extremely well-paid executives. The CEGB had one executive board with reasonably paid members. Following privatisation, many engineers and scientists were made redundant, to be replaced with more lawyers and accountants. It shows.
The electricity grid should call on the plant based on the CEGB’s merit order – with the nuclear power stations run on baseload – not by spot price fixing.
The industry is now partly renationalised, but the beneficiaries are the German and French taxpayers, not those of the UK.
Francis Brian Cowell, Hucclecote, Gloucestershire
Why self-financing works
How I agree with E M Beaney, who criticises the privatisation of the electricity supply industry (Letters, PE April). I would like to add further points that show the shambles to which the country has been consigned.
A letter in The Times, from a group of heads of industries from companies such as Sheffield Forgemasters, stated that they were paying as much as 50% more for their electricity than their competitors in Europe. This situation contrasts with pre-privatisation, when the CEGB operated on the basis of efficiency and we enjoyed prices lower than any in the world other than the likes of Canada, which had extensive hydro-electric schemes.
All types of generation were employed. Even wind turbines were included – there were two in the Orkneys, presumably because they enjoyed sufficient continuance of wind to enable them to meet CEGB efficiency standards. Forward planning enabled new stations to be specified and procured in a professional manner and I don’t recall anything akin to the chaos in the attempts to place an order for Hinkley Point C.
Maybe this is because as a nationalised industry the electricity industry was, and should be, self-financing. The funds to build new stations were created from a contribution from every electricity user payment.
The present approach is to run every power station to death and so leave ourselves open to being blackmailed, in the way that EDF is prepared to build the new station only if the payment for electricity generated is at no less than twice the going rate. Even then, it is not prepared to finance the whole deal – hence the involvement of Chinese sourcing for half of the finance.
Beaney has raised an important issue which, in my view, requires to be dealt with.
The lowest electricity costs in Europe are those of France, which has a nationalised industry and no less than 58 nuclear stations.
Don Nicholas, Rugby
Small cab solution
In reply to Chris Longrigg’s letter (PE April), Cabtrack, the system of small cabs that run on a network of segregated tracks, exists – but it is now known as Ultra and is in use at Heathrow Airport.
In 1970-71, I worked for Demag Foerdertechnik in Germany on the development of an equivalent, but smaller and tidier system known as CabinTaxi (CAT). This system permitted two-way traffic on the same steel box-section track only about 500mm wide – so much less visually prominent than Cabtrack – by using smaller, Mini-sized, cars made by MBB running both above and below the track.
This system was implemented at the Cern research centre in Switzlerland and in some locations in the US.
Tony Marshallsay,
Seville, Spain
Salary stagnation
It is with regret that I have had to let my IMechE membership lapse. I do not have the finances to maintain the annual membership, as I have been out of work since Christmas.
In looking for a job, I have been depressed to note how low the salaries are for engineers in permanent job positions. Colleagues of mine who have been permanent at Airbus for 30 years are on salaries of £45,000. Many jobs I see on offer in the open market are for £35,000, with £40,000 being the absolute maximum. I compare this with my salary of £21,535 when I was on staff at Airbus, before I left in 1996. In 20 years, the salary has barely doubled. Yet my cost of living has increased by a factor of 5.
With interest rates at an all-time low, is it any wonder that engineers are struggling to have a reasonable standard of living? The hoped-for equivalence of engineers with doctors and lawyers is a long-lost dream. We work in a cut-throat industry, which rarely benefits the engineers.
I have now secured a job. But the salary is not what I am used to .
Alan James, Bristol
Stem strategy needed
I am fed up of politicians and others banging on about the need to promote Stem subjects, to sound as though they have a clue what is going on in industry. Our main party leaders all came from wealthy backgrounds, went to private school, then studied PPE at university, followed by a safe seat in Westminster without ever having done a ‘real job’.
We are told we need many more Stem professionals, but the incentive to pursue a career in a Stem subject is lower than ever. Wages for engineers are low compared with the effort needed to obtain the qualifications. Despite all the hype, the status of engineering in the UK is still much lower than that found in Germany and the US.
Only the larger engineering firms in the UK seem able to accommodate flexible working arrangements. Apprenticeships are up, and that is a good thing. A national Stem strategy is required between government (and opposition), industry, and the professional institutions with accountability to a named person(s), who will stay in place until the job is completed even if governments change.
Before I moved back to Australia in 2014, I had been a UK Stem Ambassador but, despite enjoying the role, I had to avoid telling students that the path to the top in engineering was hard, slow and expensive, and that if you reached the top you would earn less and have less status than an accountant, lawyer or doctor – as in the UK these are considered ‘real’ professions, unlike engineering.
Denis Sexton, Melbourne, Australia
Car-crash technology
Driverless cars might let vehicles travel closer together (“Bumper to bumper,” PE February). The idea of getting even more cars on the road seems to contradict what most environmentally minded people actually want to see: more public transport.
For sure, the technology for bumper-to-bumper convoy driving is soon going to be available, but at what cost to our quality of life? Experience shows that every time roads are expanded to accommodate greater volumes of traffic, those greater volumes appear rapidly, and once again the roads become overcrowded.
No, the only way to improve people’s ability to get from A to B safely and without worry is to provide public transport on a far larger scale, and that is scheduled in a way that provides the best possible service for all users. Readers should come to where I live and see the horrors of life in a car-oriented society.
Taran Hewitt, Long Beach, California