Geography KS3/GCSE: Use of natural resources - the advantages and disadvantages of fracking

Kristen: Hi. My name’s Kristen and a fracking company has recently started drilling where I live in Preston in the North West of England.

We’re running out of energy in the UK and some people believe that fracking can help solve this long term problem. To find out more about fracking I want to hear the arguments for and against.

Fracking. Is fracking a safe way to drill for gas?

Kristen: First, I want to find out what fracking actually is.

Male voice explaining on a website: The first part of the operation involves drilling straight down about three kilometres deep and then turning the drill sideways to run for about a kilometre and a half. To get the gas out of the ground we can push down water, sand and chemicals at very high pressure to frack or break the rock and release the gas.

Kristen: This is what makes the process of fracking controversial as shown by protests at fracking sites worldwide.

Male voice: The gas is released and flushed all the way back up here to the surface.

Kristen: Great, I’ve been invited to visit the fracking site.

We’re just going to go and see the fracking site now. I’m not sure how much we’re going to be able to see.

It’s a lot bigger than I thought it was and it’s very quiet though so there’s probably not a lot of drilling going on right now. It’s also cold, but that’s just normal Lancashire weather.

Kristen: Hi. My name’s Kristen.

Laura: Hi, Kristen, I’m Laura.

Kristen: So what are you doing on the site?

Laura: This is just an exploration operation. Then what we’re hoping for is to be able to say there’s a really big potential for gas production from Lancashire.

Kristen: So why not focus more on renewable energy rather than non-renewable energy?

Laura: For a start, renewables can’t happen all the time. The wind doesn’t blow all of the time, the sun doesn’t shine all the time. But more importantly 80% of homes in the UK use gas for heating and for cooking.

Kristen: So are the chemicals, and are they safe, are they well regulated?

Laura: So we use a number of chemicals in our operations, but day-to-day chemicals like salt, we would use salt in our drilling fluids. It’s exactly the same as the salt that we use on our dinner. The control that we have on the site means that there’s no possibility of the interaction of the fluids and the chemicals that we’ve got on the site with the immediate farmland.

Kristen: So I’ve just been to speak with Laura at Cuadrilla. I found that it was really quiet which was really surprising. And there were a lot of strict safety procedures which is really interesting. So I’m now going to speak with some of the protestors and see what they think on what the other side of the argument is.

Julie: Although we are told we have 50 years of oil and gas experience we don’t really have that much experience on land. We’re generally offshore in the North Sea.

Tina: Each frack they send down about the equivalent of four Olympic pools of liquid. But it picks up naturally occurring radioactive material when it’s at shale level. So it becomes quite toxic and requires specialist waste management.

Kristen: It’s clear these protestors are anti-fracking. But what do the residents near the site think? I’m going to meet Andrew and find out why he’s worried about the impact of the drilling on his farm.

Andrew: Hi, Kristen.

Kristen: Hi, Andrew.

Kristen: Andrew’s worried about the risk of fracking operations contaminating his water supply.

Andrew: One thing we have on this farm is a lot of livestock, a lot of livestock. Now if there was a pollutant on the grass you can’t tell them not to eat it. I’m not saying there’s going to be, but no one is 100% certain that this is going to be safe.Please, if you follow me it’s fine.

Kristen: Well I’ve just been over at the fracking site earlier this morning and they said that it was perfectly safe, there is no waste. What do you think of that?

Andrew: They can’t guarantee that that well’ll be safe. So I don’t really believe they understand the whole complexity of the long term of it.

Kristen: It’s difficult as everyone has really strong but convincing arguments. I need an independent scientific viewpoint before I can finally decide whether fracking is a safe way to drill for gas.

Kristen: Perfect. Richard Davies from Newcastle University has been researching fracking for the last ten years. Time to arrange a call.

Kristen: Hi.

Richard: Hello.

Kristen: So, do we need something like fracking to fill the gap of the energy sources?

Richard: At the moment we import around 1.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and I don’t think fracking is going to make a big dent in that in the next ten or 20 years. So we don’t need it. No. We could use conventional oil and gas, particularly globally you could do that.

Kristen: Cuadrilla says that they have a strict clean up operations when they’ve finished drilling. Has this been the case before?

Richard: No. What happened in America is that companies, small companies don’t illegally flow back water in rivers. So there was some really poor practices. What we need in the UK is enough regulators to check and make sure that sort of thing didn’t happen.

Kristen: Thank you for speaking to me. It’s given me a lot to think about.

Kristen: Right then, time to make up my mind. So having spoken to all these people, both sides were really compelling and they were really convincing. I think that if it’s damaging the environment and there’s proof that it’s damaging the environment then we shouldn’t do it.

But if it isn’t damaging the environment then we should continue to frack so then we have more energy to supply our homes and offices and just everywhere in general.

So I think more research definitely needs to be done before we can say for sure if fracking is a safe way to drill for gas.