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'Gasland changed everything' frackingfirm battles to woo English
villagersCuadrilla Resources has arrived in northern England to
exploit the
gas reserves, but it must win over the worried locals who
have
seen controversial US shale gas documentary, Gasland
Fiona Harveyin Singleton
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 April 2011 17.41 BST
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The drilling rig of Cuadrilla Resources near Blackpool,
Lancashire. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
From the outside, the UK's second shale gas drilling site looks
surprisingly small a 30
metre-high white tower that houses the drilling equipment, and
about 20 huts each
about the size of a shipping container.
It is also unnervingly quiet. On a bright spring morning, in the
lane just a few yards
from the gate, the silence is unbroken except by birdsong.
The entire site is lined with tough plastic several feet
underground so that the surface
rainwater cannot permeate. "Nothing can escape," says Mark
Miller, chief executive of
Cuadrilla Resources, the UK-based shale gas company that is
hoping to exploit gas
reserves in the north of England. Within a few months, not even
this will be visible. If
gas is found, and the fracking process begins, then the drilling
equipment will be moved
to another site, the wellhead will be capped with extraction
equipment about 6ft (1.8m)
in height, and a tall hedge will hide it from view. No one
should know it is there.
Miller is here to speak to a group of local people invited to
discuss their concerns about
the site. He wants to show off the many safety features of the
site, the lack of dust and
noise, and most of all distance himself from the many recent
horror stories from the US
on shale gas "fracking" short for hydraulic fracturing.
"Gasland [the US feature documentary about shale gas] really
changed everything," says
Paul Kelly, communications adviser to Cuadrilla. "Before that,
shale gas was not seen as
routinely controversial." The film showed terrifying examples of
what can go wrong
when shale gas drilling and fracking takes place leaks of
methane from under the
ground, contamination of the water supply and the soil, the
danger of explosions.
Hundreds of people in the US are reported to have been affected
by pollution, have had
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their health ruined, and lost their houses or jobs as a result
of the problems there.
Scenes that show residents able to set fire to their water
supply because of methane
contamination are the new face of shale gas exploration.
A couple of the locals mention that they have seen Gasland and
are concerned that the
problems it demonstrates will be replicated here in Singleton,
an English village so
picturesque it has been made a conservation area. A quaint
half-timbered old building,
bearing the legend "fire engine'', greets the visitor at the
entrance, with quiet lanes and
leafy gardens surrounding a mixture of cottages and converted
barns, with a sprinklingof more modern housing. The drilling site
is well within view of the houses, just a few
hundred yards from the village church and primary school.
But Miller is quick to play down the experiences reported from
the US. He goes into
detail on the sorts of safety measures to be included, including
three layers of pipe
casing between the 914 metre (3,000ft) drill shaft and the
aquifer it passes through
(which is saline, so not used for drinking water in any case),
and a gas-sensing and
shut-off system to prevent leaks.
Only three chemicals a polyacrylamide lubricant that is commonly
found in cosmetics
hydrochloric acid and a biocide used to purify drinking water
will be used here, he
pledges, unlike the hundreds that can be used in the US. In the
course of its life, this site
is likely to require about five Olympic swimming pools of water,
about a quarter ofwhich will be returned to the surface quickly,
cleaned and recycled. The rest will seep up
gradually and safely over about five or six decades, he says.The
equipment here is
also superior to that used by what he calls the "bad apple
companies" in the US whom
Miller blames for poisoning the public image of shale gas. "It
has added about 20% to
our costs, but we wanted to be able to show people that we are
doing this properly and
responsibly," he says.
Something that did shake local people's faith in the plant was
an earthquake on 1 April.
The tremors were centred remarkably close to the village, and
woke many people in the
night with a bang. Miller is unfazed, reassuring people that the
minor degree of drilling
at the site - where fracking has not started yet - could not
have caused the quake. Most
people seem satisfied with his explanation.Cuadrilla has two
operational drilling sites
with permission for another four. If gas is found, it may expand
to six to eight per
square mile over the area it has licensed for exploration. The
company is being closely
watched by the government, green campaigners and other companies
that want to
exploit the UK's potential shale reserves, which are
concentrated in the Lancashire
region.It is certainly the case that the company, which is
UK-owned and headquartered
(although Miller is American), is coming under much tighter
regulation than prevails in
many US states. The UK's Environment Agency is monitoring the
chemicals used and
the processes at every step, as is the local council. In the UK
the underlying rocks belong
to the queen, meaning the crown estate must get involved,
too.For the cash-strapped
local council, Cuadrilla's development offers the chance of new
jobs and a new source of
income. The company employs about 70 people directly at present,
but its activities also
have a knock-on stimulus effect on the depressed local
economy.
The villagers seem broadly impressed with Miller's explanations.
"They offered us a lot
of reassurance I do feel happier about the safety side now,"
says Geoffrey Pilkington, a
local property owner. "To some degree, they have allayed my
fears," adds John Ashcroft,
who is retired. "And we have to be careful not to be
hypocritical we all have gas central
heating."In fact, the main concern among villagers appears to be
not the safety but the
development on what they thought was greenbelt land. "The first
we knew was when it
started going up," says Caroline Murphy, an artist and designer.
"We live here because
it's a beautiful village with beautiful countryside, and now it
looks like an industrial
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