OT: Global temperatures plummeting

[TimW]

With pleasure, but ask me another day. TW

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Good grief. Any form of industry whatever damages the local environment. Some obviously more than others.

But it's obvious you won't have the heavy traffic generated by fracking in your street. Or the hardware at the end of your garden.

[Handsome Jack]

Tim Streater posted

And, of course, people who do not want the petrochemicals industry to despoil their own local environment, perhaps even reduce their house prices (and fracking *will* damage the local environment, as all industry does).

I don't say this as a criticism of them, it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and I'd do it myself in their place ... but it's not done for altruistic Saving-The-Planetism reasons.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The incredible stupidity is actually how LITTLE a fracking station would 'despoil their countryside'

Horizontal drilling means you can put the well head in a place that is the least intrusive, and its not that intrusive anyway.

And unlike wind, the place you want to drill is low down in valleys, not on hill tops.

compare this

with this

Or this...

[Chris Hogg]

Quite. Fracking has been taking place in the UK for decades, whether for gas I don't know, but certainly for oil, viz. Wytch Farm in Dorset.

What is certain is that there will be disruption during the initial drilling and set-up phase, as heavy equipment is brought in, pipelines laid etc. But as your picture shows, when the initial phase is over all that will be left is a small unobtrusive well-head.

In situations where there are more extensive surface works, such as at Wytch Farm, where they have 'nodding donkeys' (all the oil needs to be pumped up to surface) and storage tanks to hold the oil before it is tankered away, the site can be well screened and not be apparent.

Of course, gas needs none of that, as it all disappears by pipeline.

[Chris Green]

... but nodding donkeys have nothing to do with fracking do they?

[Tim Streater]

Correct. Wytch Farm apparently produces oil, not gas.

[bert]

In article , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Damaged temporarily.

The heavy traffic is temporary, the final "hardware" is minimal.

[Chris Hogg]

Fracking is extensively used to increase the output both of oil wells and gas wells, and has been used at Wytch Farm and elsewhere in the UK, for decades. The nodding donkeys there just bring the oil to the surface. As I said in my earlier post, gas doesn't need pumping to the surface, so you won't have them at the well-head.

[Handsome Jack]

Chris Hogg posted

That industrial monstrosity is your idea of a "small unobtrusive well-head"?

[The Natural Philosopher]

well yes, from ground level. Its way smaller than the smallest Windfarm and a lot less ugly

[damduck-egg]

From ground level it is well unobtrusive ( Ok I'll get my coat)

G.Harman

[Chris Hogg]

Sigh! You don't read, do you! Wytch Farm is an example of where fracking has been done for decades and there has been no environmental damage caused by that fracking. TNP posted the image of small unobtrusive well-head. Wytch farm is not small, because it's a pumped oil well and needs a lot more by way of additional equipment, but it's well screened, in an AONB, barely visible and the locals are quite happy with it. If desired, gas well-heads could also be screened.

[Chris Hogg]

Worth pointing out that the Wytch Farm oil well site is on Furzey Island, in the centre of the view, but as you say, it's...er... well unobtrusive!

[Handsome Jack]

Chris Hogg posted

Yes. But apparently you don't; see below.

The point of my post ("... people who do not want the petrochemicals industry to despoil their own local environment, perhaps even reduce their house prices, and fracking *will* damage the local environment, as all industry does") was that it is not necessarily fracking per se that people object to, but the industrial development that it entails.

IOW, it is a monstrous carbuncle on the bottom of one of England's most beautiful counties.

Oh how nice.

You speak for them?

[Tim Streater]

This is the mistake you make - assuming that all development is bad and will "despoil the local environment". Could you explain in which ways fracking will "damage the local environment"?

Note: mentioning earthquakes will cause me to larf in your face. mentioning that nasty carcinogen silicon dioxide, as the greenpissers did, will cause me to larf harder. So I wouldn't start there.

Funny, I looked at the picture and all I could see were trees - across the water. Not much of a carbuncle.

Yes, how nice. An example of how to do it properly. But you, of course, are not interested in that. You like development of all sorts to look shitty and ugly so you can whinge about it.

Do you?

[TimW]

'fracking' is a shorthand term for a bundle of newish technologies used for a particular type of extraction. They dropped explosives down oil wells in the 19th century to break up the rocks a bit and people will tell you that that was fracking - 'it's been going on for years' but only if they want to deceive you.

Wytch Farm is a conventional oil/gas well and I don't think that the methods used are anything like those used in shale gas wells.

Re the disruption and the pad. I have seen many pictures of peaceful unmanned and unobtrusive operational well-heads. We don't know how uk operations will be managed but it is very unlikely to be as you describe. Cuadrilla talk of 5Ha pads within which they can drill many vertical bore holes and from each bore hole a series of subsequent horizontal wells. Disruption, noise, traffic could be ongoing for years and you will never see those nice quiet well-heads.

TW

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , TimW escribió:

He's got a 40-year old theoretical degree, you know. So naturally he doesn't have to do anything as prosaic as back up his claims with actual evidence.

You're meant to accept his word as gospel, you know.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Handsome Jack escribió:

And they'll be the first ones bitching when the lights go out.

[damduck-egg]

Even if they did the Wytch Farm operation in the Telegraph photo looks no worse than many industrial estates where many people earn a living and a lot less intrusive than those awful retail parks containing many branded stores who in their aims to attract customers have a collection of gaudy signs in their corporate style that look a right mess at lit up at night while they exhort people to eat a particular type of Burger or visit a DIY shed of one name or another.

G.Harman