Don't Pay

[clv101]

Juice Media have just done a UK 'Honest Government Ad', features Don't Pay UK.
https://youtu.be/qyt3Op2dTc0

[johnny]

The US has a huge problem with methane leakage from fracked shale fields which the government are now looking to enforce some action on.

All oil and gas operations have a methane leakage problem. Unfortunate, but solvable, and it would seem reasonable that Brits would require best practices, and then bring natural gas and gas fired power at much lower prices to their citizens.

The UK shale beds are a lot more fractured than the US ones so if we mobilise the gas it it going to leak a lot more than in the US.

Operational related natural gas leaks have nothing to do with the brittle, or non-brittle, composition of the geologic formation involved.

We rely on underground water supplies a lot in this country and again because of the more dense population any contamination of water supplies is going to affect a lot more people. The fracking companies would not be taking on individual farmers in this country they would be taken to court for damages by very large companies with the wherewithal to push for an expensive settlement.

Good thing that pollution of water in relation to hydraulic fracturing tend to be surface spills. No one has yet figured out, except in one circumstance, how to pollute fresh water aquifers within well water depth from the surface other than, again, an operational failure. The one instance in Wyoming I believe, where landowner water wells reached directly into an oil and gas producing horizon.

Why invest in the last century's technology, more gas which we won't be able to use soon, when we could invest in renewables which produce electricity at about a quarter the cost of gas.

If renewables are a quarter the cost, then why haven't they been built to alleviate what appears to be a self inflicted wound on your own people? And natural gas sure looks to have a decent lifespan even in todays "I wanna be green but don't know how without it costing me $$" world.

I'm a nuke fan myself, renewables having a near 100% dispatchable backup need because of the intermittency issues. Double or triple redundency might be fine for NASA spacecraft, but creates crazy high costs in energy production.

[johnny]

But then, BDU, there is the problem of liberated gas finding fissures that lead to the surface, a problem which is a lot less prevalent in the US but is still very measurable and worth the government legislating about in the recent climate change act.

The reason that Marcellus natural gas now 1500m+ deep hasn't leaked to the surface in 300 million years is because...it doesn't find fissures that allow it to leak to the surface. If it had, there wouldn't be any left. This isn't a problem in the US, natural gas able to leak is already gone through geologic time. Lifting of continents, squashing, mountain building....natural gas still there. Not a in biogenic gas in Canada, 200m deep, happily sitting right where it was formed without a fissure in sight to let it free.

Surface methane leaks really are a thing, with methane near the surface. Methane hydrates are a good example. That stuff is sitting just meters down sometimes....and just...sits there with a clean path to the surface. Until something changes anyway, at which point really exciting climate things might happen quicker than the current more slow motion warm up.

[clv101]

Juice Media have just done a UK 'Honest Government Ad', features Don't Pay UK.
https://youtu.be/qyt3Op2dTc0

2.1 million views in 24hrs on Twitter.

[kenneal - lagger]

But then, BDU, there is the problem of liberated gas finding fissures that lead to the surface, a problem which is a lot less prevalent in the US but is still very measurable and worth the government legislating about in the recent climate change act.

The reason that Marcellus natural gas now 1500m+ deep hasn't leaked to the surface in 300 million years is because...it doesn't find fissures that allow it to leak to the surface. If it had, there wouldn't be any left. This isn't a problem in the US, natural gas able to leak is already gone through geologic time. Lifting of continents, squashing, mountain building....natural gas still there. Not a in biogenic gas in Canada, 200m deep, happily sitting right where it was formed without a fissure in sight to let it free.

Surface methane leaks really are a thing, with methane near the surface. Methane hydrates are a good example. That stuff is sitting just meters down sometimes....and just...sits there with a clean path to the surface. Until something changes anyway, at which point really exciting climate things might happen quicker than the current more slow motion warm up.

It's the fracking that liberates the gas which then finds fissures when under pressure from the fracking.

[johnny]

It's the fracking that liberates the gas which then finds fissures when under pressure from the fracking.

Hydraulically induced fractures do not make it to the surface. If they did, the entire purpose of concentrating the completion in the target formation would be defeated as the water and proppant and everything else would simply u-tube from the wellhead, down the hole, flow along the lateral length, and then just come back up to the surface. This type of completion would then be worthless, as opposed to quite common during its 74 year history. I am excluding hydraulic shock completions utilizing explosives to create shot holes, that type of "hydraulic" fracturing was patented at the end of the American Civil War.

No need to take my word for it of course. The micro-seismic work making sure that completions stay in zone is just run of the mill science.

Microseismic imaging...SEG Wiki

[Mark]

johnny = RGR

We do not need fracking in the UK.

[adam2]

The merits or otherwise of fracking may be discussed elsewhere on these forums. Please keep this thread on the subject of the "don't pay" movement.

Here is an existing thread to which pro/anti fracking remarks may be added.viewtopic.php?f=14&t=24400

[johnny]

We do not need fracking in the UK.

I've noticed the commentary in the forums on the natural gas prices some folks in the UK are paying or are preparing to pay for this winter. Would folks rather than an affordable solution, or sit there cold in the winter ignoring obvious domestic solutions? Sure...you haven't needed domestic supply security in the past, but now that the Old World is facing yet another bully on the continent, suddenly domestic supply security and lower prices might be more attractive to both citizens and politicians.

[Mark]

As has been explained many times before on this board, UK fracking wouldn't bring down domestic bills.

[BritDownUnder]

No more fracking discussion from me but I often wonder how many hard core Don’t Payers were also anti coal and anti nuclear as well back in the day.

Perhaps people should be offered a discount on their electricity bill if they agree on getting insulation installed in their house or flat as a kind of incentive.

[kenneal - lagger]

Insulation, although it is a major requirement for most houses, wouldn't really help this year as we have 27 million homes to be treated. That is going to take decades to address.

This year I think that the price cap should be kept as it is now and the energy companies should be bailed out as this is, administratively, an easier way to go about paying out. Those in real trouble should then be helped and those others should just have to lump it, buy a smaller house or insulate what they have. Where you put the limit on help probably lies with your political leanings. The money to pay for this should come from the oil and gas producers who are profiting massively from the price rises. If they can afford a share buy back they can afford to pay more taxes.

As for fracking, RGR/Johnny, I don't feel inclined to compromise the environment in this country for decades into the future by large scale fracking for the sake of a couple of years of inconvenient gas prices.

[BritDownUnder]

I think putting secondary film on windows and draught excluders would help and could be installed in a short time.

Bailing out energy ‘middlemen’ doesn’t make sense to me. It’s a subsidy on a product that is fairly price inelastic unless you address demand side (I.e. reduce it with insulation, load shedding, other efficiencies or substitute with another fuel) and will just increase the price by the amount of the subsidy. By all means attempt to tax Saudi Aramco or the Qatar oil company but it will achieve little. Going after the North Sea producers in the UK continental shelf might work. Maybe a bit of foresight like the Norwegians had would have helped.

Back to the original point I think there is a belief, particularly on the left that you can ‘Activist’ your way out of this problem and that mass protest will alter what is essentially a matter of physics, resource depletion and scientific fact and not some kind of moral viewpoint of where you want your energy to come from. Protests will change nothing. Having a long term view and energy strategy will start to change things.

[clv101]

Back to the original point I think there is a belief, particularly on the left that you can ‘Activist’ your way out of this problem and that mass protest will alter what is essentially a matter of physics, resource depletion and scientific fact and not some kind of moral viewpoint of where you want your energy to come from. Protests will change nothing. Having a long term view and energy strategy will start to change things.

Hang on, what the activists see is dramatic rises in everyone's bills while the *cost* of generating electricity from wind, nuclear, solar hasn't changed. Nor as the cost of extracting oil and gas - at least not significantly in the last year or so. What the activists see as a wealth transfer, hundreds, even thousands of pounds from each and every household turning up in record profits, multi-million pound bonuses, shareholder dividends and share buy backs. All that is a political choice, specifically not "essentially a matter of physics, resource depletion". That's what folk are unhappy about.

If it were as simple as just a matter of physics and resources I expect folk would be a lot more understanding.

[adam2]

The increased GAS price is in my view largely a physics and resource depletion problem, with a bit of war thrown in. I very much doubt that activism will reduce gas prices. The physics and depletion issues will not go away. The war will eventually end, but there will be another war.

The increased ELECTRICITY price is only partly due to the gas price. As has been said above, electricity from renewable or nuclear sources has not increased much in price, yet retail electricity prices are linked to gas prices. Enough activism and violence COULD reduce electricity prices.
For many years yet I expect that SOME natural gas burning power plants will be needed so as to ensure a reliable and continual electricity supply.

We should however be urgently reducing gas burnt for power generation. To burn hugely expensive gas even in sunny or windy weather is daft for both financial and environmental reasons.

We need a lot more wind power, a lot more PV, and some more storage. Wind power should now be economic without subsidy and PV probably also viable without subsidy. In my view we need a change to the planning system under which renewable energy installations should be considered as generally permitted, unless the council can demonstrate some exceptional reason to refuse permission.