On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:57:16 +0100
Nick Odell wrote:

On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:46:41 +0100, Dave N
wrote:

On 17/04/2012 03:38, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

Following on from another thread...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...fracking-gets-
green-light

http://tinyurl.com/cumqamx

(that's a vaguely dirty-sounding shortlink tinyurl came up with!)


Indeed, and to listen to some business commentators there are
sufficient reserves under Lancashire to last the UK for 50 years.
Such comments must obviously be taken with large quantities of salt,
but they illustrate the problem of separating fact from fiction in
the energy world given the hyperbole surrounding the issue on both
sides of the social, political, economic and environmental
arguments, not to mention self-interested misinformation.

Nevertheless it is probably indisputable that very significant
deposits of oil shale are to be found beneath Lancashire. Whether
the recoverable gas resources are commensurate, is an entirely
different and still largely unanswered question. This underlines
the futility of making predictions about when fossil fuels will "run
out", and all that ensues from such pronouncements.

There are very large deposits of shale oil in many other parts of
the world still to be fully assessed, just two examples out of many
are China which has what are believed to be vast deposits far larger
than those found in the USA, and Argentina. The latter are onshore
deposits in addition to the offshore deposits of oil being explored
in the Atlantic near the Falkland Islands. New gas fields have just
been confirmed in the Eastern Mediterranean and the very first test
well explored off Cyprus has been assessed at about 5 trillion cubic
feet. This field will not require "fracking" and the gas is
recoverable through natural pressure. There are other fields yet to
be explored in the area and that doesn't take into account fields
already found off Israel. Both countries are considering how they
might export natural gas in light of their respective geopolitical
situations but it is a given that they have discovered more natural
gas than they consume when exploration has only just begun.

The price of natural gas in the USA has plummeted in the last year,
simply because large quantities of shale gas have come onto the
market and the USA is now contemplating exporting gas. The price of
gas has fallen so low there and so rapidly that companies are now
having to mothball up to half of the wells which they only opened up
very recently.

So...

I have this picture in my head of the gas coming out and the Earth
shrinking down like a deflating balloon.

fx: looks around, nervously
Erme - only me then?

Nick

Would it then be sent frantically zooming away like a balloon let loose?
No need to worry about spacecraft journey times to the stars, we take
the whole planet!
It's worthy of Red Dwarf.
--
Davey.