The Scotsman: Leaders: We ignore shale gas at our peril
Nobody takes a more hostile view of fracking than residents in areas where exploratory wells are being sunk in search of “unconventional gas” deposits, a controversy that is now raging in central Scotland where Dart Energy has begun exploration, against the objections of 2,500 people. In fact Dart has given a guarantee that, for technical reasons, it has no intention of using the fracking technique at the Falkirk site. But it seems likely fracking will come to Scotland eventually.
The objections to the technique are alarming: it is accused of causing earthquakes and potentially poisoning the water supply. If unconventional gas were to be exploited in central Scotland, there are fears that pumping underground deposits of salt water into the Firth of Forth could create pollution.
The technology is formally known as hydraulic fracturing and entails mixing water with sand and chemicals and injecting it at high pressure into a wellbore to fracture underground rock and release shale gas or other exploitable deposits. Although it has only recently gained a high profile, it has been in use since the 1940s. The risk of minor earthquakes appears to be real: fracking was the “highly probable” cause of an earthquake in Lancashire that measured 2.3 on the Richter scale. There have, too, been documented cases of groundwater contamination and some of the chemicals used are carcinogenic, with unknown long-term effects on public health.