Farming and Gas Fracking

Oldtree

Cllr Gilmartin has just been on newstalk radio after attending a public meeting with Mr Richard Moorman last night. Cllr Gilmartin said that Mr Moorman stated that (despite very recent previous undertakings as noted above), it will only be the exploratory phase that will not use fracking chemicals, commercial ventures will!

Ahh the intrigue........... who do you trust?

garth-marenghi

PEACEFUL PROTEST TODAY SATURDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER. SLIGO PARK HOTEL CAR PARK, 8PM.


Pat Rabbitte Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, will be attending a function at the Sligo Park Hotel on saturday evening 17th September. We hope to make the Minister aware of the degree of local opposition to the awarding of licenses to gas companies and our opinions about hydraulic fracturing in Ireland.

Please try and attend this peaceful protest. Numbers will speak.

Good loser

Some people in this country are afraid of every fr****ng thing.

I say let the fracking rip!

johnk1960

Good loser wrote: »

Some people in this country are afraid of every fr****ng thing.

I say let the fracking rip!

You will be the loser if fracking goes ahead. Are you aware of the damage done in N America by this? Why should we trust a small foreign gas company founded only a year ago on the Australian stock exchange to give one **** about Leitrim? They're after the money, stupid! if the environment is damaged then bye bye agrifood business, pharmaceuticals, tourism and our quality of life. Worth it? Cop on!

colrow

But if they can harvest the gas, the economy will benefit, and learning from mistakes made in America, and putting safe practises in place, we will all benefit.

Birdnuts

colrow wrote: »

But if they can harvest the gas, the economy will benefit, and learning from mistakes made in America, and putting safe practises in place, we will all benefit.

Alot of ifs there and given the Corrib gas fiasco, I wouldn't be overly confident on any of those scores:(

colrow

Birdnuts wrote: »

Alot of ifs there and given the Corrib gas fiasco, I wouldn't be overly confident on any of those scores:(

I can see only 1 if ;-)

johnk1960

colrow wrote: »

But if they can harvest the gas, the economy will benefit, and learning from mistakes made in America, and putting safe practises in place, we will all benefit.

Oh yes? Do you trust the oil and gas companies? You don't have to look far to see the damage they have done in the past. Amoco Cadiz, Piper Alpha, Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, etc, etc. It is reckoned there will be one accident per 200 wells and with thousands planned for north Leitrim that is say 5 to 10 accidents - leaks, spills, tanker crashes, a range of incidents but if a 40 tonne tanker dumps its chemical load into one of our rivers - bye bye river for a long time to come.

This increasingly desparate search for more hydrocarbon energy only postpones the day when we have to rely on new and renewable energy sources and exacerbates climate change. I don't understand how intelligent people just don't seem to get it!!!!!!!!!!

colrow

I do not think the people running or working for these companies, want accidents/disasters any more than you do.

I'm all for viable alternatives,especially micro-generation, I wish i had a river/stream running past me and I'd soon have a hydro generator installed.

And don't forget oil/gas was created by Solar Energy to begin with, so in my mind its a Natural Fuel.

johnk1960

colrow wrote: »

I do not think the people running or working for these companies, want accidents/disasters any more than you do.

I'm all for viable alternatives,especially micro-generation, I wish i had a river/stream running past me and I'd soon have a hydro generator installed.

And don't forget oil/gas was created by Solar Energy to begin with, so in my mind its a Natural Fuel.

True, of course, no one wants accidents. Unfortunately very few of us are lucky enough to have a suitable stream and solutions are needed for society as a whole. Iceland has the answer - geothermal power - pump water into hot rocks, steam comes back, generate electricity. But for us it would mean drilled very, very deep wells. Perhaps one day it will be done.

tuppence

If 'ifs' and 'ands' were pots and pans.....Sorry Colrow, I counted 4 "ifs' then I got dizzy with all the speculation

In the meantime

Lough Allen Conservation group alongside Cllr Gerry Dolan is holding an information evening specifically for farmers and landowners this Friday 23rd Sep, at 9pm, at the Mayflower Drumshanbo. They realise that hydraulic fracturing will disproportionately effect the farming sector and want farmers to feel comfortable to come forward and ask questions and get to know a bit more about this procedure for themselves.

Good loser

Birdnuts wrote: »

Alot of ifs there and given the Corrib gas fiasco, I wouldn't be overly confident on any of those scores:(

I believe the clowns in Mayo have added €1 bn to the cost of the Corrib development.

That means they have cost the taxpayer €300m to €400m in tax revenue.

Although that depends somewhat on where these costs were incurred.

corazon

Shale Drilling Must Protect Environment, GDF Says

kake

There is a neutral Fracking group under development at the moment. The majority of the members are from Cavan, however there are a few members from Leitrim, Sligo and Roscommon who have expressed their desire to be involved also.

The group will take a different stance to those that already exist. It will explore the economic benefits of discovering shale gas in the Lough Allen Basin. It will look at positive Fracking stories and examine non chemical fracturing methods that may be available to be used in Ireland Especially regulations for offshore drilling which require the use of non-toxic fluids to protect marine life. It is hoped to examine the regulations which dictate that our fresh waters are absorbing toxic fracking fluid from this land-based technology, simply because the industry is not being required to use non-toxic fluids.

Many of the group members are business owners from the area, a huge proportion are landowners from the area. The group is being established in response to the demand from people for further information. While everyone has heard what the anti-fracking people have to say, the ordinary person on the street has not had the opportunity to hear all sides of the fracking story. Some people that did attend the information meetings felt pressurised by the anti-fracking group and felt that they were unable to seek further information to satisfy their own minds because they felt threatened by the anti-fracking people and feared that by asking further questions, they and their businesses may be identified as "fracking supporters" and therefore have protests mounted against them.

The group intends having a number of information meetings for those that are genuinely interested in getting more information. Lecturers from the University of Chicago, University College Dublin and University College Cork have already been confirmed.

Further information will be available in local press over the coming weeks.

corazon

Excellent news Kake. While there may be a good case against fracking, most of what I have seen from the anti- side is very unbalanced. The Gaslands film is pure propaganda and it is very hard to get an impartial view. Looking forward to hearing the pro- side. Some of the flyers going around Leitrim are pure scaremongering.

polod

johnk1960 wrote: »

You will be the loser if fracking goes ahead. Are you aware of the damage done in N America by this? Why should we trust a small foreign gas company founded only a year ago on the Australian stock exchange to give one **** about Leitrim? They're after the money, stupid! if the environment is damaged then bye bye agrifood business, pharmaceuticals, tourism and our quality of life. Worth it? Cop on!

you are mad leitrim is one of the poorest parts of ireland this is an oppertunity to bring jobs to your area and ye wouldn't hear tell of it ..............i really hopes it does go a head and brings jobs to your area and wouldn't be stopped because a few hill billy's and tree huggers have noting else better to do and are delighed to have some thing like this to complain about and it gives them a feeling they are doing some thing good :rolleyes: .

LostCovey

polod wrote: »

you are mad leitrim is one of the poorest parts of ireland this is an oppertunity to bring jobs to your area and ye wouldn't hear tell of it ..............i really hopes it does go a head and brings jobs to your area and wouldn't be stopped because a few hill billy's and tree huggers have noting else better to do and are delighed to have some thing like this to complain about and it gives them a feeling they are doing some thing good :rolleyes: .

Name-calling suggests that you haven't great confidence in your arguments polod.

I remember in west Mayo in the 1980s when a mining company found gold in the bedrock under Doolough Valley and Croagh Patrick.

After a fair bit of soul-searching the community came to a strong view that it should be left where it was. It was a very similar issue to this one, with high-risk/semi-experimental extraction procedures envisaged (cyanide extraction from crushed rock quarried open-cast in that case) in order to extract something valuable, but barely economical to exploit. And people going on the Late Late Show begging these "anti-everythings" to allow the project go ahead and save some local young people form emigrating.

Mind you there were fine companies involved, one of them part-owned by a member of the Haughey family(!).

They did some experimental drilling, managing to destroy the drinking water supply to Murrisk & with a high-profile diesel spill, and eventually they buggered off when the local population got together and stuck together, and made it clear that this wasn't going to happen.

If you travel around that area today, and look at the outdoor adventure businesses that have grown up around Croagh Patrick and the Doolough Valley, and the high-end tourism product that Westport has developed, you would have to conclude that the Mayo hill-billies and tree-huggers secured a far more sustainable long-term industry with far more employment than the open-cast mines we would have if that had gone ahead. And they would be vast eyesores now.

Mind you that's the problem with the Leitrim gas-fracking proposal - all the damage and the pollution will be deep underground out of sight out of mind.

The same applies in Leitrim - in 20 years time when there's creaking rusty gas rigs, empty barrels and old rusty dozers and your bedrock is pumped full of fracking chemicals, by then seeping into the groundwater, you can always reflect that at least you had a few years of jobs out of it, before it all went sour.

Or ye can stick to your guns, take the long view, and leave the likes of polod to be thinking up new names to call ye.

LostCovey

frackingishell

LostCovey wrote: »

If you travel around that area today, and look at the outdoor adventure businesses that have grown up around Croagh Patrick and the Doolough Valley, and the high-end tourism product that Westport has developed, you would have to conclude that the Mayo hill-billies and tree-huggers secured a far more sustainable long-term industry with far more employment than the open-cast mines we would have if that had gone ahead. And they would be vast eyesores now.

Mind you that's the problem with the Leitrim gas-fracking proposal - all the damage and the pollution will be deep underground out of sight out of mind.

thats where youre wrong Covey (the only part yorue wrong about i might add);

The devastation will be very much evident to the naked eye now. Huge numbers of trucks, massive numbers of large concrete platforms with massive numbers of tall gas exhausting wells burning off excess.

DOnt forget the huge amounts of trucks and stuff.

Also, when the local wildlife's water supply is destroyed there's be few birds singing, no farm animals (unless they're on evian, and trees will be dying.

THis is a very real and present effect of fracking. It will be an eyesore, and an environmental disaster from day one.

bbam

They've picked an excellant time to promote their product..
With 15% of the population out of work and the country coffers empty bar dust..
There are a large portion of the population who will take jobs NOW over ANY possible risk down the road.. in a way I can't blame them.. If you have bills now and kids to feed it's unbelivable that others would object to jobs based on the risk of something possibly going wrong..

This is where a good country would have political leadership, weigh up the pro's and con's and make a balanced informed decision.. I fel however they too will opt for jobs now rather than the long term view of the environment..

An earlier poster asked "how wold you expect a mulitnational company to give a sh1t about Leitrim"
I'd safely say you'd find lots of unemployed folks and politicians who could also care less about "Lovley Leitrim" if this brings a few jobs in the short term..

LostCovey

bbam wrote: »

They've picked an excellant time to promote their product..
With 15% of the population out of work and the country coffers empty bar dust..
There are a large portion of the population who will take jobs NOW over ANY possible risk down the road.. in a way I can't blame them.. If you have bills now and kids to feed it's unbelivable that others would object to jobs based on the risk of something possibly going wrong..

This is where a good country would have political leadership, weigh up the pro's and con's and make a balanced informed decision.. I fel however they too will opt for jobs now rather than the long term view of the environment..

An earlier poster asked "how wold you expect a mulitnational company to give a sh1t about Leitrim"
I'd safely say you'd find lots of unemployed folks and politicians who could also care less about "Lovley Leitrim" if this brings a few jobs in the short term..

Oild & gas exploration companies seem to specialise in exploiting countries that are on their knees. I wonder why.

LC

LostCovey

colrow wrote: »

And don't forget oil/gas was created by Solar Energy to begin with, so in my mind its a Natural Fuel.

It's hard to know where to start.

We are burning carbon that was stored over hundreds of millions of years over a period of a couple of hundred years, but that is a different argument (re carbon dioxide and climate change). The proposal is to pump chemicals into the rock, under our groundwater aquifers to enable uneconomic shale gas to be released in commercial quantities. It raises two issues - the broad fossil fuel one you confusingly refer to, and the more immediate (for Leitrim) issue of how it is to be extracted.

LC

PS Uranium is also dug out of the ground, so it must be a Natural Fuel too.

colrow

Does anyone know exactly what the chemicals are ?

I've been told that just high pressure water is used to frack the rocks, and then stainless steel or ceramic spheres are pumped in to keep the fissures open. These spheres are called Propants, and are recovered on the gas processing equipment. This is offshore in the North Sea, and I'm sure that dangerous chemicals would never be allowed to pump into the marine environment. So why should that be any fifferent on land ?

Oops I spelt Proppant wrong.

Here's information on a Fracking fluid that is made from materials sourced from the food industry,

http://www.halliburton.com/public/pe/contents/Data_Sheets/web/H/H07550.pdf

Birdnuts

colrow wrote: »

Does anyone know exactly what the chemicals are ?

I've been told that just high pressure water is used to frack the rocks, and then stainless steel or ceramic spheres are pumped in to keep the fissures open. These spheres are called Propants, and are recovered on the gas processing equipment. This is offshore in the North Sea, and I'm sure that dangerous chemicals would never be allowed to pump into the marine environment. So why should that be any fifferent on land ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_for_hydraulic_fracturing

A good few nasties in there including carninogenic compounds and endocrine disrupters. This report took many years to come about since much of the industry was none too keen to provide revelant info to investigators.

PS: Another issue is the potential release of large amounts of methane, heavy metals etc. into the water table when the shale rock is split to release the gas. Another issue the industry appears reluctant to confront:(

LostCovey

colrow wrote: »

Does anyone know exactly what the chemicals are ?

I've been told that just high pressure water is used to frack the rocks, and then stainless steel or ceramic spheres are pumped in to keep the fissures open. These spheres are called Propants, and are recovered on the gas processing equipment. This is offshore in the North Sea, and I'm sure that dangerous chemicals would never be allowed to pump into the marine environment. So why should that be any fifferent on land ?

Oops I spelt Proppant wrong.

Here's information on a Fracking fluid that is made from materials sourced from the food industry,

http://www.halliburton.com/public/pe/contents/Data_Sheets/web/H/H07550.pdf

Right, I am beginning to see a pattern, colrow.

So you are saying that oil is actually a solar-generated renewable fuel and Haliburton are pumping food byproducts into the ground to extract gas?

LostCovey

Birdnuts wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_for_hydraulic_fracturing

A good few nasties in there including carninogenic compounds and endocrine disrupters. This report took many years to come about since much of the industry was none too keen to provide revelant info to investigators.

PS: Another issue is the potential release of large amounts of methane, heavy metals etc. into the water table when the shale rock is split to release the gas. Another issue the industry appears reluctant to confront:(

That list looks more believable, still a shocking list to read, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...lic_fracturing

Still if there's a few jobs in it for a few years, and it's only Leitrim after all...............

LC

colrow

Re Methane in well water, I've done a bit of googling and methane has been detected in well water, in the states, in wells that are closer than 1 km to the well. It was in microscopic amounts.

And the conclusion was that humans expel far more methane from the other end (2 litres is the average daily emmission), than is ingested.

"If you smelt it, you dealt it"

So we all are producing and breathing ours and other peoples methane.

The main danger from methane is if there is sufficient volume to cause an explosion. Like the main danger from fracking to my mind is the risk of subsidence.

LostCovey

colrow wrote: »

Re Methane in well water, I've done a bit of googling and methane has been detected in well water, in the states, in wells that are closer than 1 km to the well. It was in microscopic amounts.

And the conclusion was that humans expel far more methane from the other end (2 litres is the average daily emmission), than is ingested.

"If you smelt it, you dealt it"

So we all are producing and breathing ours and other peoples methane.

The main danger from methane is if there is sufficient volume to cause an explosion. Like the main danger from fracking to my mind is the risk of subsidence.

Who mentioned methane? You were telling us a couple of posts back that Dick Cheney's pals in Halliburton were only putting chicken soup and parsley into the groundwater in their fracking fluid, and vacantly wondering what chemicals people were on about. Someone provides a telephone book of the God-awful chemicals that are actually in use, and you move onto the subject of f@rting in well water.

I am sorry if you think I am not taking you seriously, but you are right.

Still, sure what harm , as long as there's a few jobs in it for a few years, and it's only Leitrim after all...............

LC

LostCovey

Suckler

Just a quick point - to those who are saying this will be a regulated industry - Our, and indeed worldwide, banks were regulated - look at the train wreck that has turned out to be. Regulation can work but if/when it does not and the consequences of failure result in natural and ecological disasters, the affects are often irreversible and in most instances financially uneconomical to repair.

At the start of this thread, I initially challenged those opposed to the exploration works to start coming up with solutions rather than shooting down proposals as a profession. I have been reading about fracking and the processes. If it was to be carried out anywhere in Ireland I would not be pleased. To say that it will create jobs is another knee jerk reaction akin to the crisis we already find ourselves in. A quick fix that will, in the vast majority of cases, leave a mess, both natural and social, behind.

nedzer2011

Suckler wrote: »

Just a quick point - to those who are saying this will be a regulated industry - Our, and indeed worldwide, banks were regulated - look at the train wreck that has turned out to be. Regulation can work but if/when it does not and the consequences of failure result in natural and ecological disasters, the affects are often irreversible and in most instances financially uneconomical to repair.

I somewhat understand the concerns about a lack of regulation but I don't think it's fair or appropriate to bad-mouth environmental regulation based on our experiences with the banks.
Firstly, we are talking about two different industries bound by different legislation and run by different people. It's far too easy to paint all types of regulation with the same brush.
Secondly, it could be argued that the problems with banking regulation were bourne from a lack of public scrutiny. During the boom, how many people (especially those applying for finance) were really worried about the standard of regulation? Judging by the overall reaction and concerns of the public to fracking, it is fairly certain that any possible work will be examined intensely by us all.