Shale gas

[????]

My supspicion is that the good bergers of these here parts have made up their mind on this....I'm still open, but certainly suspicious of the 'tone' of the debate thus far...good/challenging article on this in the Spectator a few weeks back which isn't avaialble in full on-line but could get this follow up.

Energy Debate

You nmade up your mind yet? I don't think I have.

Edited with link this time

[StraferJack]

Dunno if I've made up my mind about shale but I have about Fraser Nelson a while back ;-)

presumably you would also have read this

which talks about teh investment problems

involved

So I dunno. if I was to accept Nelson's view of things I'd be a fool to say no to such a find. But he sounds a bit simplistic to me - like cigarette manafacturers in the '50s

[katie1997]

???? - fraccing hell. I don't know whether to love you or hate you for bringing this topic to the edf, I could never resist posting.

Haven't read your link yet but I will do later*. There's always been a need to find alternative 'unconventional' energy resources, shale gases were what helped the US all those years ago when it was claimed that 'conventional' methods of extraction were runnng out.

Shale gas, coal-bed methane, deep-sea and onshore drilling, I'm all in favour of.

Needless to say the 'Friends of the Stone-Age' will complain but they'll be at the start of the queue when the lights go out. I don't think much of Chris Huhn'rs 'vision' for the energy ndusrty in this country but then again what do I have in common with a multi-millionaire and his 9 'homes' and fast cars.

(Oops sorry didn't mean to rant avout dear old Chris there).

* takes aaaages to open on my inferior blackberry.

[????]

Yup - interesting SJ, didn't think you'd be postin g investment bank reports :)) I liked this cooment below,

don't think anyone ever thought shale gas would have such a big effect in the UK as it's had in the US, and that bank report is hardly news.

Nevertheless, shale gas will have a big impact here. Opposition from environmentalists won't be much of a problem the way opinion and energy bills are going.

This article is like a mirror image of the ones the Guardian's environment section does about such things as electric cars and wind power.

Just as in those cases any speculative and hopeful opinions/facts and figures are used to talk up the topic, in this case we see a rather pathetic and desperate attempt to talk one down. Ideologically driven people do seem to see things in terms of black and white, good and evil.

Could have been me if it had mentioned 'liberals' ;-)

[HAL9000]

I've done the calculation just to gauge the size of the gas reserves: 5.6 trillion (5.6 x 10^12) cubic metres of gas at one atmosphere would occupy a cube approx. 1,775.8 metres per side (i.e. 1.77 cubic kilometres).

That is a lot of gas - it's a bit like squeezing sh!t from a rocking horse!

ETA: I meant to say '(i.e. 1.77 kilometres cubed)'. The figures should be 17,758 m and 17.75 Km - see later posts below.

[katie1997]

Interesting article. Yes agree with SJ that Nelson's argument is too simplistic, there are drawbacks with every energy source that often don't get mentioned dependng on where one's interests lie.

HAL am I being thick I don't understand how you got your calculation (sssh don't tell Mick Mac) do you work for Cuadrilla by any chance? ;)

Quids sorry for predictable ranting about Chris Huhne and going off-topic.

[HAL9000]

The raw data (5.6 trillion cubic metres) is cited by Cuadrilla in the OP's link. Its cubed root was obtained the lazy way via an online cube root calculator. Nothing more to it.

[Loz]

Not so much nervous about the process, but the nasty stuff they pump down to do the fracking seems a dead-set way to poison ground water suppliers. If they could clean that up...

[katie1997]

Cuadrilla's figure and methodology are I think under investigation tho not sure if this is the same fig from the article (which I didn't spot before).

[Huguenot]

It's a bit odd that one of the author's key reasons for exploiting shale is 'because it annoys... the greens'.

Not the kind of comment that creates much faith in his priorities.

The biggest challenge with fossil fuels is that it passes the price of energy onto the next generation. If this chap makes decisions on policy based on the fleeting thrill of annoying other people I don't have much faith in his ability to consider the future.

Having said that I can see that renewables are unlikely to deliver enough of our needs in the short term, and that the anti-nuclear freaks will do whatever they can to scupper that approach - so exploitation of national shale gas reserves is probably critical to medium term energy security.

What I'd realy prefer would be legislation that took household expenditure away from the 'empty' value of property and financial markets, and increased the percentage going into energy. More cash in the market will drive greater investment and quicker alternatives.

[Senor Chevalier]

HAL - if we're going to bandy numbers around let's get them right for frac's sake...

5.6 TRN cubic metres (trusting your source) would be a cube with a side of dimension 17.758Km, i.e. 17,758m. So that's 5600 cubic Km.

And even if you hadn't dropped the order of magnitude, your far less impressive cube of side 1758m would be a more impressive 5.6 cubic km not 1.75 cubic km.

That's if I've done my sums right.

Still fecking big though which I think was your point, presumably equivalent to squeezing shit from 3200 rocking horses.

[HAL9000]

I must have clicked on one of the links in one or other of the original articles cited above. I cannot recall which one now. This article confirms the 5.6 trillion cubic metre figure: Cuadrilla claims game change in UK shale gas reserves

It looks like the simple task of typing eleven zeros defeated me. I thought my figure was too good to be true - yours suggests it probably is a colossal pile of horseshit. Google reveals quite a few concerns about the credibility of Cuadrilla's reserve estimates.

ETA: Just discovered that the cube root calculator I used only accepts 10 digit inputs, hence the dropped order of magnitude :(

[Senor Chevalier]

That's the problem with computers, they just process data. They're no good at sense checking. Oops wrong thread.

[katie1997]

I was sent this useful factsheet on shale gas yesterday [pre]http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/whatsnew.html

[/pre]

Edit - can't get link to work doh. But a reliable source of information about it and no dodgy figures from suspect articles either.

[Consequential]

I'm not exactly up to speed on this, but doesn't the extraction method pose a serious risk to the stability of the bedrock beneath the point of extraction and outlying areas?

[katie1997]

Don't worry about not being up to speed on shale gas extraction methods and risks. There are so many knowledgable people in East Dulwich who will be only too happy to go through it with you.

I'd love to help but I'm meeting friends for lunch shortly.

[Undisputedtruth]

Interesting article, Quids. Not sure what camp I'm in. To make renewable energy a feasible option they do need economy of scale. On the other hand, fuel poverty and Russian gas cartels makes a clear case for shale gas.

[LadyDeliah]

Not sure why you say it has to all be on a large scale. The government were looking at micro-generation a couple of years ago and there is evidence that it's efficiency is increased a lot when you don't have to transmit electricity down cables from a huge central power-plant.

Problem with micro-generation is that big corporations would have difficulty controlling it and creaming off a profit, as there would be more self-sufficiency of energy supplies, so it got shelved as a government backed option by Labour.

Not sure if the ConDems would have the balls to try to pick it up again.

[Laddy Muck]

OK, investment, employment, energy, and safety arguments aside, what about the UK's undertaking to reduce its CO2 emissions? I.e. how do we reconcile utilising - what I understand to be - yet another high carbon fossil fuel with the UK Government's own commitments on climate change?

[karter]

If they finally manage to look for and find oil in the Antarctica then the world will be saved and richer.B)

[BrandNewGuy]

A less rosy analysis of the shale gas business

"In order to access Wall Street capital, [shale gas] producers have needed to demonstrate that they are being successful in exercising a strategy for aggressive wealth creation. That means aggressively buying acreage and drilling wells. Exercising a successful strategy often creates a vicious cycle ? more acreage and wells equals increased production and depressed prices. This cycle will continue as long as the music (Wall Street's money) continues to flow. Once that stops, we will see how many producers can find a chair in the room. In the meantime, the fun continues!"

[????]

BNG - that's to do with finance and speculative oversupply, nothing to do with Shale Gas's potential or not as a significant future source of energy

[BrandNewGuy]

Perhaps it's not quite as simple as that, though. The world is gradually exhausting supplies of easy-to-extract fossil fuels, so greater financial investment and higher energy inputs - usually oil - are needed to extract and process newer and more-difficult-to-extract sources of fuels.

If you could make an honest calculation as to shale gas's EROEI - energy returned on energy invested - the picture might not look as rosy as the industry PRs suggest. More expensive fuel needed for extraction and processing, combined with a chronic squeeze on finance, could mean you'll have to wait forever to get at all that gas.

The article I flagged up highlights the current financial side of the problem - it looks suspiciously like a bubble, which utterly obscures shale gas's long-term potential as a significant source of energy.

[Huguenot]

The other worry about the 'honesty' of EROEI calculations is that they only tend to cover the expenditure from the ground to the end user.

They never include the costs of clearing up the world in 20 year's time.

Until this is clear and included on your electricity bill, the population will fail to grasp the importance of the situation.

[BrandNewGuy]

Indeed - and it's the reason why nuclear power was never going to be "too cheap to meter".