Friday 19 July 2013

Shale-tastic scares

And lo they came to pass. Today it is quango Water UK railing against potential shale gas fracking. Now of course the highly regulated utilities are not going to benefit from other companies making money, so they have no incentive not to complain about fracking.

Indeed, they do have valid concerns about potential damage to the water table. It is true to say that much frackin in the US is done far away from population centres, major water pipes and infrastrcuture which is not the case in the South East of England.

So of course, Caudrilla and their ilk will have to plan on different and more expensive ways of fracking to make sure their enviromental impact is limited to acceptable levels.

Together with news for the Government giving tax breaks to Shale Gas companies, err, in line with what everyone in the industry gets (and lets face it it, in upstream industry the net tax rates is 63% last time I checked, so the breaks are always off-set in successful cases of extraction). It means that Shale exlporation and development is proceeding nicely.

All good then, as we desperately need this supply of gas to help boost the economy and keep the lights on when we have months like now of NO WIND, which is not doing great things for the useless London array and other such greenwash projects.

7 comments:

yahoo.com said...

But have you seen the quango opportunities!

Bubbles in Water Inspectorate BWI

Flaming Taps Inspectorate FTI

Earthquake Emergency Guidance Authority EEGA

Legalistic Wriggle Room Committee LWRC

Highly Complicated Market Regulator HCMR

Jobs for the boys (and girls). No knowledge preferred, alphabet soup ad lib.

andrew said...


interesting article on solar power in Spain in the economist

In other news, I think I could write a better spambot - in fact how do you know I am not one already?

ivan said...

I see the spammers are out in force today.

Maybe the water quango should read this from AP http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=203504050 reporting a study that says fracking hasn't done any damage to water tables and all those 'nasty' chemicals stay where they are put.

Oh, and if you have a look at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ you will see that all the windmills managed to produce just under 1 GW this week. So much for Daves London array which appears to have added nothing to the supply.

Bill Quango MP said...

Nothing wrong with Quangos.
I wish I was on the swimming pool safety and ecology quango.

Visiting spas all day long..that's the life.

Mark Wadsworth said...

well hooray for fracking and all that, but I hope you realise that FoE and Greenpeace are playing the Home-Owner-ist trump card - they say that vast swathes of the countryside will become industrial wasteland and it will have a very negative impact on house prices.

James Higham said...

quango water uk - y-e-e-e-e-s-s-s.

visc said...

Your belief in this being environmentally managable in such a small island as the UK vis a vis the US experience is touchingly naive, strange given your background.

Shale is vey much Pascal's wager and the pay off however is not exploiting it.