U.K. Writer Visits Shale Drilling Sites in U.S. and Wonders Where All of the Negative Buzz Comes From

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From nohotair.co.uk:

Lots to catch up on but a good place to start is first impressions. The first impression we're given here in Europe often includes allegedly informed opinion like this from Frack Off, a web site recommended as source of expert opinion by the Guardian.  From an FO piece on the Igas story:
If, for the sake of argument, IGas could produce 4.6 tcf of gas (or a number of companies could produce the 4.7 tcf that the BGS has estimated as an upper bound for the Pennine Basin) that would require drilling and fracking something like 1500 wells, a similar number to all the petroleum wells that have been drilled onshore in the UK in the last 100 years (only one of which has been has had a large slickwater frack performed on it, which resulted in 3 earthquakes that damaged the well).
1500 wells sounds economically pointless as well as impractical, but to those who rely on a major UK newspaper holding them up as source of expertise, it also sounds incredibly scary. Who on earth would want to see all that activity in a landscape so small?  This makes people think of a sea of gas rigs as far as the eye can see.
Two points: I've often noted that the current US best practice is to drill several dozen long lateral wells from one site, not only to cut down on impact but because you produce more gas at lower cost. The landscape impact on Europe is going to be far less than in the US where the current generation of drilling started in the Barnett near Fort Worth ten years ago and in Pennsylvania from 2007 onwards.
But after seeing both the Barnett and Susquehanna County Pennsylvania last week, I'm even more reassured how landscape impact in Europe, and the old "Europe is too crowded" argument against shale simply doesn't hold up to examination.
Read the rest of the article by clicking here. 


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