Uncomfortably Number

As we reported in our last post the Backing Fracking astroturf group’s new website isn’t exactly a reliable source of information.

Today we read their latest blog post in which they state:

You have to commend the PR boys for that “per fracking stage” don’t you. How about when you add up the 45 stages?

And “apparently” boys? Er no – it really has. It’s in Cuadrilla’s own Hydraulic Fracture Plan which they submitted to the Oil & Gas Authority and Environment Agency for review in July 2017. Didn’t you know?

The comparison shown with Elswick confirms what we have said all along – it used just 163m3 of water compared to the 34,000 m3 that this test well will use.

But in their FAQ it clearly stated “Even the longest horizontal wells are unlikely to use more than 27,000 cubic metres each”

See it’s here:

Now for your mental gymnastics this morning I want you to multiply 45 x 763 and express the result as a percentage of 27,000.

That’ll be 34,000 and 127% then.

Yes indeed, boys and girls, just a week after launching the site, and by their own admission their FAQ information underestimates the reality by 27%. (And of course underestimates their water per person comparison by a factor of 1000 as we saw before.)

I’d say that was either totally incompetent or intentionally misleading, but they have been very careful to state “Backing Fracking is a residents collective, and operates as an unincorporated association to campaign in support of shale gas extraction in the UK” in the footer of each page.

By operating at arms length like this the industry PR team clearly believes it can say what it likes and avoid any censure from the Advertising Standards Authority. Clever isn’t it, but about as underhand as we have come to expect from this industry?

If you want a good laugh take a look at their FAQs and in particular this one

When you’ve stopped laughing have a read of our various exposés of their fakery – starting here.