Putin’s Green Puppets
August 10, 2018
By Paul Homewood
Guido has the low down on Russia’s latest attempt to undermine fracking in the west:
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“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The Ruskies are probably grateful to Fiends of the Earth for teaching them the finer points about misinformation dissemination.
The body count is arguably lower at the moment but give them time.
Actually, the Russians created the Friends of the Earth as a front for their attempts to force the west to unilaterally disarm.
?
Wasn’t that CND?
I often watch RT for a change of perspective but I do recognise propaganda, as I do on BBC and ITV. I don’t think the greens are “Putins Puppets” they do quite nicely on their own. There is massive funding of the greens by EU institutions, who get their money of course, from EU taxpayers.
Life would be much improved if we could reduce our dependence on Saudis et al. too.
The world must be sitting on vast reserves of yet untapped shale, which will make many if not energy independent a least far less reliant on imports in the future, thus keeping prices low, a prospect that will be of concern to current main suppliers. Saudi will be looking to diversify their future revenue to adapt to this prospect, no-one will want to end up like Venezuela.
BLACK PEARL
The Saudis have been diversifying for decades. Lot’s of fine London properties owned by Sheik’s, Lots of Saudi money invested in businesses across the world as well. They aren’t sitting on their hands.
The astroturfers always maintained they’d never allow fracking in the UK and they said it with total confidence.
Their plan is to squeeze the profit line by bumping operational security costs through the roof. They’ll fight it from planning stage to operation, then they’ll sabotage the installations. That will be the ultimate challenge for frackers in the UK.
Paul just out of interest is there any info on world wide shale reserve estimates you can enlighten us all on, by use of ‘your usual investigative skills’ ?
Did see a report on Australia a while back and they seemed quite extensive.
The only people who really know are the drillers/exploration people. There is a shale field in Wyoming (Twin Rivers I believe it is called) which is estimated to hold more oil than all other known global oil reserves combined. Our government has never released (and probably does not even know) accurate figures for the UK. An Australian company (AJ Lucas Group) is the ultimate shareholder for Cuadrilla and I followed the exploration of the Bowland shale in Lancashire through the A J Lucas annual reports; I have never seen those figures in UK Media (they are mind blowing hehe)
Dung
There was a time when the Geological Survey for the UK interested itself, to the extent of commissioning exploration, in our economic mineral reserves.
I have a 1954 report on the “Pennines and Adjacent areas” which mentions the prewar investigation of mineral oil around Formby in West Lancashire.
Apparently they found the underlying Keuper sandstone impregnated with oil ( the same sandstone deposit in much of Cheshire) and , at time of writing (1950s) were producing 2000 gallons of oil/week. So oil exploration and exploitation in that part of the world, so bitterly and often illegally resisted by protesters , with the apparent sympathy of the BBC , is nothing new and clearly did not cause a massive local disaster, indeed no one then appears to have realised that it was happening.
I googled Twin Rivers and got Green River, shale oil, so not likely to be extracted even at $100 per barrel according to the article I read.
J Martin
I have just tried to find whatever report I previously read and I can not find it 😦 So as of now you are correct and I am wrong however that was what I read.
Click to access overview.pdf
“Tight” oil and gas – now to be regarded as recoverable – seems merely a useful addition for a decade or two, and not a “game-changer.” The prospect is still for much less oil and gas to be available later in this century.
(As the report makes clear, we are not talking about “oil-shale” or *tar-sand,” which are expensive raw materials for MAKING oil.)
Dave
1st that USA report was produced during the Obama period.
2nd The figures are wrong and the total recoverable ‘tight’ gas figure for the whole UK is not even as big as AJ Lucas figures for Lancashire.
Dung
The rest of the world has only recently woken up to the fact that they too may be sitting on shale reserves, lots of which is now accessible via recently developed deep and extensive horizontal drilling techniques.
I certainly have my fingers crossed that the UK will have some sort of a windfall.
I just do not believe that any government in the UK will ever do anything but pull a very sour face at a “capitalist solution” and sabotage it.
Still, something may be happening, despite the best efforts of the Maybot regime:
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2018/7/24/cuadrilla-granted-final-hydraulic-fracturing-consent-for-first-horizontal-shale-gas-well
The British Geological Survey estimated the gas in place in the Bowland shale in Lancashire as containing 1300Tcf. If 10% of that is recoverable, then at present rates of consumption in the UK (about 3 Tcf/year), it would last some decades.
Of course, under madcap green ministers such as Huhne, these figures were a state secret, with the official view being that there was no more than about 5.7Tcf of shale gas in the entire country, which indeed would only be a marginal contribution. That was used to frame the debate in favour of greenergy, and set up Huhne’s retirement scheme as a wood pellet salesman. Charlatan.
Black Pearl. I believe you are asking what the potential resources of shale oil or gas are, not reserves. Until tested with wells, all resources are unproven. Pedantic perhaps, but distinction between resources and reserves is important. For example, Poland was expected to have large shale oil resources, but testing with wells proved none.
Taking neither side, but looking at what happened in the U.S.: Fracking did indeed dramatically increase annual multi-hundred small earthquakes and a few (not seen before 2009 start of fracking) heftier earthquakes. But between fracking and the Saudis releasing more oil, it drove down the price of petrol in the US significantly (from $3.50+ down to $2.20. On the earthquake issue, part of the problem is that the geology of the fracking areas lent themselves to instability with the fracking fluid providing fluidic reduced friction. It may be reasonable to see that this is perhaps beneficial as hundreds of small earthquakes relieve pressure in the adjoining plate layers thus avoiding saving up all the energy for a major earthquake.
Define EARTHQUAKE drama queen.
A minor earthquake is one you sleep through until the media frenzy next morning tells you about it.
Adelaide is in a (very) old rift valley so gets small earthquakes ever so often. I slept through the ‘big’ one (5.6 Richter) in 1954. I was elsewhere for the next one. The one in 2010 (3.6 with epicentre less than 20 kilometres away) I think that I may have head it but rolled over and went back to sleep. Another 3 days ago I heard but dismissed as a heavy truck on the main road.
Fortunately we in South Australia are safe from a big one, mostly from our geology but also because our politicians (on both sides) won’t allow for frakking or even drilling for oil. The State is bankrupt but there is proof than lack of brains reduces earthquakes.
Seismic activity has been mainly in response to high volume waste water injection, and all the larger incidents relate to that.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6142/1225942
Such injection is not permitted in the UK – water must be treated and disposed of without injection.
Putin says “You don’t want dirty fracky-gas …
Fracky-gas is bad for the nerves!
You need good clean Russian gas, not nerve gas… but wait you want some nerve gas?”
“If Caesar can hide the sun with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light.” (Cymbeline)
https://twitter.com/chaamjamal/status/1028908879881465856
I wonder if there is my evidence about Russian involvement in the pipeline protests. They had been particularly active in stopping the pipeline east project which would have let Canada export to Europe. The obvious beneficiary is Russia and other ed exporters to Europe.