Just goes to show

Phew! August is usually a quiet month for us but this year things have gone a tad manic!

Driving much of the activity is the fact that there are two important shows looming on the horizon. EMO Hannover is Europe’s biggest machine tool show and is a key event on the calendar every two years. SPE Offshore Europe which takes place in Aberdeen, is a premier oil and gas/offshore exhibition and with many of PES’ readers and advertisers actively involved in the sector, it’s not surprising that interest is high. There are show previews for both shows in the August issue.

The oil and gas theme is pretty topical at the moment with energy company Cuadrilla announcing that it is about to start drilling in Balcombe, West Sussex. The ‘treasure’ at stake here is shale gas, and the extraction method of choice is usually hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’. This in its most basic of terms is the fracturing of rock via a pressurised liquid pumped deep underground to split shale rock and release gas supplies. Not surprisingly, local resistance is high.

Cuadrilla’s CEO Francis Egan believes that majority of people in the UK are "open-minded" about the importance of sourcing oil and gas resources for the future. He said: “They do realise that we are in need of oil and gas, and that's nothing against renewables, but we will need oil and gas for decades to come. And it's a big question of do we carry on importing it at great cost, or develop our own resources at great benefit?"

There’s truth in what he says. As conventional sources of oil and gas become depleted, nations have turned increasingly to ‘unconventional’ forms of energy and shale gas is one of the most significant of these. One newly discovered gas field in North West England for example promises to supply enough gas to meet UK demand for 64 years.

But there’s two sides to every story and it seems the shale gas debate has created as much divide as nuclear energy. On the plus side, countries once dependent on foreign sources of oil and gas can now fulfil domestic demand and potentially add to their GDP by becoming energy exporters. Proponents of fracking also point out that gas is better for the environment than oil or coal, generating lower emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

But process involved in accessing shale gas could have terrible ecological consequences. It uses huge amounts of water and fracking fluid contains toxins and known carcinogens. The worry is that these chemicals will find their way from fracking water into the ground water used for drinking, bathing and growing crops.

There’s no simple answer to the energy problem – but we’ll need to find one soon!

Dave Tudor
Editor