A video exposing a flawed claim often abused in the sales pitch for promoting shale gas development across the world:
“With a history of 60 years, after nearly a million wells drilled, there are no documented cases that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has lead to the contamination of groundwater.”
Brought to you by the team behind the upcoming South African feature documentary, Unearthed, that is investigating natural gas development and the controversial method of extraction known as fracking from a global perspective. Should South Africa and other countries drill down?
The Producers of this doco forgot to do a final audio mix-down.
The start of this is so annoying! Why so many voices at once?
Some of your most basic civil projects use fracking, not just natural gas development. We’re talking about basic mining to induce rock collapse for safety or expansion, water control projects, coal, oil, geothermal energy production, to dispose of waste, aqueducts, groundwater well expansion etc..Projects that keep people safe and provide goods, services, and clean drinking water to a majority of people. Yes, it’s a fact that there is a very good track record of hydrolic fracking. And yes, it’s a fact companies have screwed up by cutting corners, not dealing with fracking waste properly, and not designing well casings properly. Let’s hold those who are responsible for sloppy work and poor casing around the wells. And make the penalties severe! come on protection agencies, that’s what they are for. That is the core issue, not the process of fracking.
Look at the nuclear industry. Chernobyl and fukashima daiichi had shit designs. It’s a fact. Ask any nuclear engineer. What happened? They melted down, did the global nuclear industry decide to shut down all power plants? No. and should it have? No, because thankfully we have smart designers and engineers, that are willing to put more into our safety and longevity of our nuclear plants.. We said hey, look at these folks who designed an awful power plant and let’s over-design ones that were way better and impervious to a multitude of natural and man-made disasters. And we did. And so did the French and so on…
But let’s punish those who develop gas in inappropriate ways, develop appropriate standards and checks and balances. Impact statements, groundwater implications if any, etc.. Not try to demonize a very useful technique used in technical work all over the world. Wake up people. Design your fracking casing systems better and deal with surface waste appropriately. That is the issue. If the industry doesn’t do this, make them pay. But go forward South Africa, take advantage of your resources you have, and learn from our mistakes. Frack on! Responsibly!
I am ashamed of the BBC here in UK, the only “thread with fracking that they ever mention is that it may cause a very tiny earth quake
Who could imagine a corporation or industry lying to the public, or a congress-critter asking puffball questions and even answering for the leaders of those corporations?
Not in America! (Don’t start thinking of tobacco CEO’s in front of Congress or a myriad of examples of the same thing – because this is different! Somehow…)
the only thing worse than fucking up innocent peoples lives through pollution is stopping the industrial machine… 😛