John, it would seem that you have a viewpoint on this issue. However, these things are never black and white. There are situations where fracking for shale gas can be very safe, and/or have minimal impact on natural acquifers or human populations.

For example, many of the potential areas in Australia are very remote. Second, shale gas (in contrast with coal seam gas) is usually located at substantial depths. Third, some formations allow the use of fracking using only water and sand - no chemicals. Fourth, the drill holes through the acquifers (which are generally shallow) are usually cased, sometimes triple cased, with concrete, which ensures no breach. Fifthly, gas losses are an economic loss for a gas producer, and they have reasons to minimise those.

The real issue is to ensure that there are proper requirements for detailed Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) for the proposed projects, and that the regulators do a good job in ensuring that the problematic issues that you raise are addressed both in the feasibility stage and during production.

I simply don't understand why we are even having this discussion, when we can make all the gas we could possibly ever need; utilising human and other biological waste. i.e., if all the biological waste generated in a high rise apartment building/village etc; is processed onsite, in a 2 tank system designed in Australian, with the resulting gas fed into a bladder, then on demand into an Australian designed ceramic fuel cell; enough power could be generated to supply the entire high rise.village/suburb/etc.
Add in food scraps/waste and a saleable surplus can be created, for less than one third of reticulated coal fired demands; and, the bonus of endless free domestic hot water! Rhrosty.

The fracking boom is all about the big resources corporations extracting as much profit as they can can from cheap (albeit polluting) fossil energy before these practices are curtailed for environmental reasons and greenhouse gas pollution.

It is madness that they should be allowed to do this - entrench unsustainable energy - while at the same time causing irreversible global warming.

The sooner high carbon prices are added to all fossil energy and we get used to paying more, the better. We have squandered these cheap polluting fossil fuels for 10 decades. It cannot go on - the renewable energy era is nigh.

The comment about producing renewable gas is not as crazy as it may at first sound - this will be a sustainable part of the future energy mix. The main source will be from wood (from plantations and wood waste) pyrolysed to form syngas from whch NG and liquid fuels can be produced. Sweden already derives 32% of its energy from biomass.

Efficiency can be doubled when it is used in tri- generation - combined heat,power and cooling - which is up to 80% efficient compared to 30-40% for conventional gas fired electricity. Twenty kW sized fuel cells to produce heat and energy from gas in homes are available now for about $45,000; the price will drop rapidly as for solar PV as it catches on.

Pull the other one mate.

We don't fall for this garbage any more!

Why do we even bother with centralised power provision? Even with less carbon producing fuels like natural/coal seam gas; pushing power down transmission lines; virtually doubles the amount of fuel, we need to burn; in comparison to what we would need to burn, if we piped the gas directly into the home!
I simply don't agree, we need to make everything dearer to modify behaviour! It's counter intuitive, and given declining or depressed incomes; for at least 40% of us; the only logical outcome, has to be further economic contraction?
We should pipe our own copious and relatively inexpensive gas, the peoples property, directly into our homes. Where a ceramic fuel cell can be used to turn it or our own biogas; into on demand peak energy? A cell large enough for household use costs around $5,000; and recoverable over time, with the inherent savings; and at least halved emissions!
Who would chose dearer coal-fired dirty power, which costs around 3 cents per kilowatt hour to make, when we could make it much more reliably at home for around a third of that; or utilising biogas produced on site, even less!
If we would truly modify behaviour, we need to look at approaches and or plans to make clean green endlessly sustainable energy the least expensive option of all! Rhrosty.

When you say 'we' Hasbeen, you mean you.

And for someone whom expresses "pull the other one' as a point in a debate and claims to have listened before but doesn't any more, my response to you Hasbeen is that you have never listened.

No one has tell you to "pull the other leg" because you do enough pulling of you own leg, if you believe hydraulic fracking is environmentally sound .

There's no doubt that you and the gate post would be in favour of fracking in this country.

The remoteness is not an excuse either in fact even more reason to protect pristine environments not spoiled by human habitation or productive agricultural land.

How many Halliburton like shares do you have Herbert Stencil