Of course to make a profit you do have to able to sell your product for more than it costs to produce don’t you?

With Motley Fool describing iGas as a “ticking time bomb” and reporting that “based on its current forecasts it is projected to breach certain of its bond covenants in the second half of 2016” things are not looking too healthy for our fracking friends are they?

DECC’s public attitude tracker has now reached Wave 17.

Results from polling in March show that more people were opposed (31%) to fracking than supported it (19%).
This continues the trend that we have seen since the question was first asked in Wave 8 (December 201) as you can see in this graph which must make very worrying reading for those who are trying to push fracking onto unwilling local communities

The differential between supporters and opposers has never been greater and the direction of travel does not favour the pro-frackers.We still have some way to go before we see a repeat of the US Gallup poll which showed more than 50% opposition but looking at that graph it can only be a matter of time.

This was made clear as long ago as 2011 in an article in the Guardian

This week it seems they nibbled a bit more off AJ Lucas (and by extension the Bowland Shale)

“Kerogen, the Company’s largest shareholder, has committed to subscribe for its pro rata entitlement ($11.1 million) and to sub-underwrite $2.9 million in total to support the Entitlement Offer. Kerogen has agreed that the Underwriter may allocate to it the first $2.5 million of any shortfall from the Entitlement Offer1.”

Hmm …

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) -> Kerogen -> AJ Lucas -> Cuadrilla

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) -> Nexen -> Igas

Shouldn’t we be sitting up and taking more notice of what is going on here?

How long are we going to sit back and watch our UK assets being gobbled up by Chinese backed corporations, whilst the pro-frackers bleat about fracking being in our national interest?

I guess AJ Lucas would have taken the cash from anywhere, given that their offer was under-subscribed, but do we as a country really have to be so naive and undiscriminating?

If shale really *were*  part of a strategic future for UK PLC would the government be quite so ready to mortgage a national asset to our friends in Beijing? I doubt it, but if you have any doubts about our government’s intentions here have a read of the announcement made on the day I published this post:

They posted a plangent complaint on their Facebook page about being misunderstood – it was very touching!

The constant efforts to smear and discredit @BackingFracking, its members and supporters, is really quite gratifying…it shows how worried ‪#‎fracking‬ opponents are.

Unproven allegations that Backing Fracking is an industry astroturfing group, constant efforts to identify, “out” and then undermine the credibility of supporters – and now an outright lie that we offered cash to people in return for attending a demo – all show that there is nothing that anti-frackers won’t do in order to try and control the media perception of fracking.

It also highlights their growing desperation and concern about the emergence of a series of residents groups all supporting shale gas extraction.

You can keep on trying to defame us, you can keep trying to shut us up, and you can keep trying to intimidate us, but listen up folks: it won’t work, and only makes us stronger and more determined to carry on our campaigning.

Now, it’s quite funny to read these shills complaining that they are being discredited and smeared when that is all they have done to others on their Facebook Page and Twitter accounts for the last 3 months. They have hardly attempted to put forward a positive argument in favour of fracking since Christmas, even trying to distance themselves from their poster boy Stephen Tindale’s claims that fracking might be a bridge fuel in recent days.

But let’s analyse what they said a little shall we?

The allegations that Backing Fracking is an astroturfing group are “unproven” but they are not described as “untrue“, which is quite revealing.

They apparently feel hard done by because people make efforts to identify their supporters and their interests, but fail to see the obvious point that real grassroots supporters are open about who they are. It doesn’t need an effort to work out who I am – you just have to ask if it’s not obvious. Anti-frackers on the Fylde don’t hide behind anonymity or get upset when people find out what WE do for jobs. It seems that they are complaining that by identifying the vested interests of those who speak for their group we are undermining them? But that can surely only be the case if the vested interests described put those people in a negative light can’t it?

I don’t know the truth regarding allegations that people were offered cash to attend a demo, but I do know that the attendance at their events is embarrassingly low, so if they were offering cash it clearly wasn’t enough.

And then we have the accusation that anti-frackers are trying to control the media perception of fracking. Now that coming from an organisation with such strong links to the North West Energy Task Force is pretty hilarious isn’t it. Yes , that the “Task force” that is run by PR company Westbourne Communications. We may not have their budgets but it would appear from the outraged squeals here that we are succeeding in out-gunning them in every way.

I’m not sure where they get the mistaken idea that we are in the slightest bit concerned about “the emergence of a series of residents groups all supporting shale gas extraction” because we are only aware of 3 – Backing Fracking, FORGE and Blackpool Fracking for a Better Future. They have all been around for an age and  same half dozen people post on all three.

Backing Fracking has only 255 Facebook likes, 181 Twitter followers, a mailing list of about 130 and refuses to admit how few people have signed their pro-fracking petition.

FORGE has 285 Facebook likes – we imagine most are the same people who have like Backing Fracking, but we can’t tell because they routinely block anyone who comments disagreeing with fracking.

Blackpool Fracking For a Better Future had over 650 Facebook “members” within a week of starting up but has now declined to 591, presumably as people who were signed up by the organisers got tired of the same old drivel from the same old people – amusingly, the only two people to have started discussions on there since early January are our old friends Michael Roberts and Ken Wilkinson, who coincidentally are just about the only people apart from the anonymous “Backing Fracking” and his pal Lorraine to post on the other two groups. Groups that grow organically (like grass roots supporters tend to) don’t suddenly acquire 650 members and then decline in numbers over the course of a year.

So where are these new groups Backing Fracking speaks of emerging, and where are the emerging from?

The truth is that there is no grassroots support for fracking as has been made very evident by the marked absence of local residents without interests in the industry speaking at the public sessions of the inquiry.

We’re very sure though that Backing Fracking will carry on campaigning though – after all they raised £1,100 in donations back in October for a web site some flyers and expenses, and we’ve never seen a flyer, they don’t have a website and they claim they don’t bribe people to attend demos – they’ll have to spend it on something won’t they?

The list for Tuesday includes the following pro-speakers

James Rudd – NSG Environmental
Michael Roberts – Retired Vicar and general fractivist
Stuart Livesey – Delta Imperial Credit
Jim Harrison – Builder and smallholding owner
Nick Campbell – Inspired Energy
Frank McLaughlin – Retired Commercial Director
Clare Smith – Stay Blackpool

The list for Thursday includes the following pro-speakers

Devon Platt – Geology Student
Paul Linderman – Paul Linderman Lettings
Tony Raynor – Abbey Telecom

Which one of the nine is the odd one out and why?

The answer is international jet-setter Devon Platt as he is the only speaker who does not have (as far as we can tell) a clear and documented connection to the discredited North West Energy Task Force.

Lined up against these industry apologists will be 99 passionate local residents.

Cuadrilla seem as far away from having a social licence to operate as they ever have been.

This is the presentation, and after it you can see the figures used in a table.

The Prospects for Employment from UK Shale Gas

Good evening Madam. I would like to address you on the subject of the prospects for employment associated with shale gas extraction. Whilst I understand that the employment prospects in production rather than just for these development wells are not directly relevant to this enquiry, observations have been made at length by the Chamber of Commerce as a Rule 6 party, which do deserve some comment.

We know from the Environmental Statements (¹) submitted by ARUP for Cuadrilla that the likely total direct jobs per development site is 7 FTEs , and the total direct, indirect and induced employment will equate to just 11 for each site. Another 4 temporary FTE equivalents may be created by the associated monitoring processes.

The North West Chamber of Commerce have submitted a large volume of evidence about Aberdeen, but the creation of 26 new jobs across two sites, a large number of which are, according to the Arup Statement for cleaners and security guards, is hardly going to transform the Fylde into a new Aberdeen. Given reports in the Guardian (²) in January of oil workers showing up at Aberdeen food banks in Porsches bought on credit, maybe we should be glad about that.

We have heard that PR Marriot, Cuadrilla’s drilling contractor, had to lay off their entire 36 man team (³) as a result of LCC refusing permission for these 2 applications, but the applications in question would, according to Arup’s own submissions, have created only 18 direct jobs in total.

There is a lot of confusion here, apparently even amongst Cuadrilla’s own witnesses, and we really need to keep focused on the facts.

Much has been made of various studies, many if not most funded by the industry (although it appears that Ms Murphy was blissfully unaware of this fact as she gave evidence ³). These have attempted to demonstrate the importance to UK-wide employment of a developed shale gas extraction industry.

PR Marriott’s evidence to this inquiry puts direct rig based employment at about 36 FTEs per rig (⁴)

The Cuadrilla sponsored IoD “Getting Shale Gas Working” report (⁵) suggests that the UK shale gas industry would require just 4000 wells on 100 well pads.

The drilling schedule proposed by the IoD (⁵), for the whole of the UK, assumes that the drilling activity for these 100 well pads would last for just 16 years with an average rig count of 31 rigs in action at any one time and a peak rig count of 50 lasting for just 5 years.

From this we can logically deduce that direct rig-based employment on average in any year would be no more than approximately 1,125 FTEs and direct peak rig based employment would be about 1,800. Let’s allow the same number for other functions and central / admin staff –which is undoubtedly generous.

These figures would give us direct FTE equivalent employment of around 2,250 on average over 16 years or 3,600 for the 5 peak years identified in the IoD report.

The working 16+ population of just the West Lancashire area alone is about 425,000 (⁶) – the average direct rig-based employment figure calculated here for shale gas extraction across the entire UK would equate to half a percent of that West Lancashire figure. … 0.5% percent.

It follows therefore that it would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that a 100 well pad UK-wide industry could have a significant impact, in terms of direct employment, on the local economies which we fear may be forced to host it against their wishes.

Now, we must acknowledge the additional indirect and induced jobs that would also be generated. The ratio of indirect and induced to direct employment in Pennsylvania was assessed in the Regeneris report (⁷) as being in the order of 1 to 1.

That would suggest that the total direct, indirect and induced employment across the UK as a whole, created by these 100 well pads, might be 7,200 FTEs at peak for just 5 years and 4,500 FTEs on average over 16 years.

Compare this to the 27,000 jobs (⁸) already lost or under threat nationally because of the government’s cuts in support to the solar industry alone. Compare this to the jobs that might be permanently lost in tourism and agriculture.

UK employment is about 31.3 million, so peak total shale gas-related employment might equate, for just 5 years, to approximately two hundredths of 1 % (0.02%) of total UK employment.

The claim that shale gas is going to have a significant employment impact on either a local or a national scale, at either a development or a production phase can simply not be substantiated, for all of the waffle about Aberdeen and fanciful studies involving optimistic multipliers.

I would respectfully ask you Madam to exercise due caution when presented with any arguments claiming that a shale gas industry will have a nationally or even locally significant positive impact on employment.

I would also ask you to balance the minimal and temporary positive impacts associated with fracking against the possible permanent negative impacts on industries including farming, dairies and, (as has been admitted during this Inquiry by Cuadrilla’s witness, Mark Smith), tourism.

These temporary benefits also need to be balanced against potential significant negative impacts on the health and amenity value of local communities and the environment as a whole, and in particular on the issues on which this hearing has been focused – landscape and traffic

On that basis Madam, I would ask you to recommend rejection of these appeals.

1. http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/PNR_ES_Vol1_Environmental_Statement.pdf

and

http://cuadrillaresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/RW_ES_Vol-1_Environmental-Statement.pdf

2. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/23/aberdeen-once-rich-oil-city-now-relying-on-food-banks

3. http://drillordrop.com/2016/02/18/live-updates-from-cuadrilla-fracking-inquiry-day-7-business/

4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/12130426/UK-shale-gas-explorers-await-green-light-to-frack.html

5. http://www.iod.com/influencing/policy-papers/infrastructure/infrastructure-for-business-getting-shale-gas-working

6. http://www3.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/web/?Employment/47018

7. http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Full_Report_Economic_Impact_of_Shale_Gas_14_Sept.pdf

8. http://www.ukconstructionmedia.co.uk/news/government-policy-puts-solar-industry-27000-jobs-at-risk/

9. http://ecowatch.com/2013/11/21/study-confirms-job-exaggerated-by-fracking-industry/

You can read about it here where it describes

a “golden opportunity” for the NHS to help town planners promote health and keep people living independently.

“As these new neighbourhoods and towns are built, we’ll kick ourselves if in 10 years’ time we look back having missed the opportunity to ‘design out’ the obesogenic environment, and ‘design in’ health and wellbeing,” he said.

“We want children to have places where they want to play with friends and can safely walk or cycle to school – rather than just exercising their fingers on video games.”

No mention of the health impacts that fracking just down the road might bring then?

On her website Ms Allanson is scathing about those who
“promote the view that tourism in Ryedale will be ruined when we at FORGE know that that decades of gas extraction in the area has had no adverse consequences for tourism whatsover (sic). The ignorance and lack of knowledge of critics who are opposed to fracking knows no bounds and yet some people still believe them.”

How funny then to read Ms Allanson’s reaction back in 2010 to Moorland Energy’s plans to build a gas processing facility on a proposed farmland site (2.2 hectares)  to the east of Thornton Dale and south-east of Wilton just 2.5 miles from her own tourism business.

Lorraine Allanson, who runs a bed and breakfast and holiday cottage complex near Pickering, said: “This seems to have come out the blue and we don’t want it to impact on what is an absolutely stunning area.”

She added: “This is also in the Vale of Pickering and full of tourists, which is the biggest industry. There all sorts of issues including safety.”

In another article she is quoted as saying

“So many businesses rely on the beauty of the area and if this gasworks is going to be a blot on the landscape we need to know where it will be.”

Funnily enough, one Neil Milbanke, who is one of Lorraine’s ardent supporters on the FORGE facebook page was so anti gas development 6 years ago that he set up a protest group. His recent Damascene conversion to supporting shale gas is rather amazing isn’t it?

Of course, it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind as Shania Twain reminded us recently, but honestly Lorraine,”that don’t impress me much”

It is also odd that somebody who is so dismissive of what she calls protestors should also have a bit of history in opposing development herself – I wonder what a B&B owner’s reasons for objecting to a development of 46 Holiday lodges and an education/conference centre in Whitby – 20 miles from her own business might be?

Funny old world in the Backing Fracking camp isn’t it?

POST SCRIPT – It seems I got it ALL wrong

Here is Lorraine’s response

Sorry Lorraine – I didn’t say you joined a campaign group or  wrote letters of objection about the Moorland application did I? Where did you get that from? I just quoted what you told the papers and they printed. I don’t need to clutch at any straws to show the bizarre difference between what you said then and what you do now.

The fact that you objected to the Whitby application as part of a group makes not a blind bit of difference.

The lady doth protest too much methinks!

I would have put this response on your FORGERY page but you won’t let me post on there

POST POST SCRIPT

And now Ken Wilkinson has ridden in to defend this damsel in distress:

Clockwork Ken (named thus by his paragliding club as he is apparently so easy to wind up)  really doesn’t like me because I give him a hard time on the many newspaper columns that he infects with his generalisations about how safe fracking is because it’s run by “experts”. He really, really hates it when I ask him to try to back his statements up and he can’t

What is particularly hilarious about his comment is that Kenny didn’t bat an eyelid when his pals Backing Fracking launched ad hom attacks at  me as recently as 13th February (in fact he joined in!) and to Barbara Richardson on 1st February. Again he joined in the thread without whining once about “unacceptable” ad hominem attacks that “even the gutter press would see as unacceptable” LOL.  Funnily enough he really doesn’t seem to be able to ignore me ins spite of his protestations.

In fact Backing Fracking are so obsessed with me that in spite of the fact that I haven’t posted on their petulant Facebook Page since Christmas they have launched at least  7 ad hominem attacks on me and several more against others. It’s quite shillarious

Statement from Cuadrilla regarding the Webcasting

 “At approximately 2.30pm on 10 February 2016 the website (www.cuadrillaplanninginquiry.co.uk) where the webcasting is hosted for the planning inquiry was not available for viewers.  The issue was found to be with the Internet Service Provider for the website, Heart Internet.  Whilst Heart Internet originally believed it could be the victim of a cyber-attack it then established that whilst engineers were carrying out some maintenance work “a safety warning was triggered which resulted in the shut-down of power”.  The website was up and running again for the public inquiry today (11 February 2016) and recording of yesterday afternoon’s session will be made available at the end of today (11 February) for download by the public. There is a back-up hosting system in place should the website become unavailable again and that information will be made available if required on the Programme Officer’s portal, Cuadrilla and Lancashire County Council websites. Recordings of each session will be made available on www.cuadrillaplanninginquiry.co.uk  for download at the end of each day the inquiry sits. ”

It’s good to see further evidence of Cuadrila’s ability to manage complex things like sub-contracting a webcast with such a high level of professionalism.

We are very re-assured that after the event the failsafes that should have been in place from the outset were hastily put in place.

How lucky we are  that this kind of mistake will never happen when they come to frack and that they will be far more careful then about ensuring that all of the potential problems are mitigated from the start.

Yesterday I was attempting to listen to the lacklustre performance of Mark Smith from ARUP at about 2:10 when the live feed went down.

The inspector was informed that this was due to a cyber attack and announced this to the inquiry. Very dramatic – who could have been to blame?

In reality we have now discovered that it wasn’t an attack at all.

This is what the programme manager admitted this morning

I am informed that, unfortunately, the server providing the webcast suffered a major power surge yesterday.  This morning the Inspector was told that the webcast was up and running.  I have also been informed that recordings from the first two days of the inquiry should be uploaded sometime this evening and recordings of each day’s sessions will, in future be uploaded during the evening of the relevant day, including today.  I am further informed that a second IP address is being set up to act as a back up system should there be problems with the webcast in future.  Once that IP address has been set up details will be supplied to this office and arrangements will be made to place the second link onto the Programme Officer’s webpage.

Why was this event over-dramatised in this way – was it the sub-contractors employed by Cuadrilla to provide the link who misled the Inspector in this way? I think we should be told!