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The Forum > Article Comments > Shale gas revolution shaking up the world > Comments

Shale gas revolution shaking up the world : Comments

By Julie Bishop, published 4/10/2012

A United States that is self-sufficient in energy production has the potential to affect the globe’s geo-strategic balance, particularly with regard to the Middle East and Europe.

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Shaking up the natural world, and therefore the future well-being of human beings could be exactly right in the sense that fracking will most probably turn out to be an environmental disaster.

Fracking already has and will be a movement in which powerful corporate interests will ride rough-shod over the legal rights of the ordinary citizen.
Such rough-shodding is of course very much related to the other posting on this forum today whereby the same "conservative" corporate interests are emasculating what little powers the various government Environmental Protection agencies have in the USA.

Why not Google Fracking as an Environmental Disaster and also have a read of Fracking the Future available at the DesMogBlog.
Posted by Daffy Duck, Thursday, 4 October 2012 8:24:33 AM
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Just maybe the new IOS6 Apple Maps is a spooky visual preview to post-fracking topography.

Just because human ingenuity is capable of devising these methods of extraction, it doesn't necessarily follow that a wise species would act on it.

Here's another country that's devised a "clever" way to extract fuel:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/essick-photography

(the largest single industrial polluter on the planet)

Good luck, homo sapiens.....
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 4 October 2012 9:31:27 AM
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Oh dear Julie, more of the Liberal pipedream of mining, cutting down, trashing everything on the planet for more profits for big business?
Fracking is a groundwater polluter.
It has caused earthquakes in the US and UK.
Each well runs out very quickly and new ones have to be constantly drilled at great cost in fuel and CO2.
Sorry but it is not the end of the worlds problems with peak energy and it most certainly is not the end of the US dependence on imported fuel.
Posted by Robert LePage, Thursday, 4 October 2012 9:56:08 AM
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Australia is missing the boat on this. Our Green/NIMBY coalition and their Lock the Gate campaign is a major economic brake.

What Julie Bishop and her conservative colleagues should come up with is a formula for creating incentives to develop CSG. How about a royalty system for landowners, like they have in the USA?
Posted by DavidL, Thursday, 4 October 2012 10:20:55 AM
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Poirot
Okay, go back and look at the picture you link to. Which would you rather have, many times that area covered by unsightly wind turbines and solar power plants (which look something like oil installations), or that small piece of Canadian wasteland ripped up? Propaganda can work both ways. Leave it with you.

Daffy Duck
those big corporate interests you so despise are meeting the energy demands of the little consumers. If you don't want energy go live somewhere else. why not a commune in Nimbin where you can all try to get your laptop to work on the output of the in-house wind turbine and dozen car batteries?

Robert LePage
Earthquakes?? You mean mild tremors which activists have tried desperately to connect to fracking? this advance has destroyed the peak oil story so it must be guilty of something, I suppose, but its always a good idea not to repeat all the wild stories you hear.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:02:29 AM
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Does it not seem strange that what I call the 'Australia Institute of whacko thinking' doesn't want us to use ANY forms of energy? They scream when we mine for ore, they hate windfarms, building dams for hydro, despise desalination plants, positively loathe fracking, etc, etc. They want us to cut the population and shrink the tax base yet increase social welfare payments at a time when, over the next 30 years, 40 per cent of Australia's population will be over 60. These people are Alan Jones in reverse.
Posted by Cheryl, Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:03:34 AM
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Curmudgeon,

"...small piece of Canadian wasteland..."

Wow - what a premise to begin with!

Leave it with you....
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:09:05 AM
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A bunch of unsustainable American Quantitative Deceiveasing nonsense from the deputy of a party that wants to PRIVATISE every government responsibility except tax collection, police, armed forces and government salary review.

LIBERALS are disreputable and LAZY. They lack the imagination to convert this nation to permanent sustainability via INEXHAUSTABLE GEOTHERMAL energy.

Their cargo-cult, Howardesque, New Guinea slave master principles, under the yoke of FreeMarket Imperialism to cling on to diminishing prosperity, grates on the nerves of very Australian with a heart and a mind.

If we are the dumb natives they insist on treating us like, Let us all rise up and boil young liberals and OLD in a giant vat with carrots, greens and spuds and spices and eat them for a picnic.

Goodnight Irene er Julie.
Posted by KAEP, Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:14:12 AM
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Curmudgeon: Good idea for who?
The rapacious right?
The lost left?
Criminal corporations?
If people like me did not draw attention to what is really going on, the world would be destroyed even more quickly.
Posted by Robert LePage, Thursday, 4 October 2012 11:23:08 AM
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Shale not only contains Gas but oil as well, sometimes referred to as naphtha?
Extracting naphtha is as easy as injecting super heated steam in one hole and collecting ready to use diesel from another?
The USA has enough oil and gas reserves in its shale deposits to rival the entire known Middle East reserves?
It has been left with little other choice but to access and use the stuff!
For some years now oil and its continuing supply, has been used as a major economic weapon?
At one stage the USA was importing 40% of its needs and parting with over 70 billions plus per annum; and, for the most environmental harmful stuff, namely the sludge leftovers, from middle East fractional distillation refineries, which produces four times more carbon in total, than i.e, using Australian sweet light crude, which leaves the ground as a virtually ready to use diesel. That only requires a little chill filtering to remove sand particles, and a soluble wax, which if left, can clog the injectors on a frosty morning; and or, produce plumes of black smoke under load!
We have somewhere between 5-15 billion barrels of the stuff in the Townsville trough and loads more just a little further out?
Hard to damage something that is already dead or dying or doomed.
And we continue to import fossil fuels that in total, produce four times as much atmospheric carbon, than the very fuel, Australian, sulphur free, sweet light crude, we insist on locking away!
What is our goal? To save the remaining reef or extend the time we have to come up with viable endlessly sustainable alternatives? Well?
Stupidly importing a incredibly expensive, as around 80% of needs, economy harming, much dirtier alternative, which produces in total, four times more carbon, than what we have locked away; in a dead, dying or doomed reef, courtesy of some very dumb, very emotive people, ain't one of them.
Well? Is it?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 4 October 2012 12:09:03 PM
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"LIBERALS are disreputable and LAZY. They lack the imagination to convert this nation to permanent sustainability via INEXHAUSTABLE GEOTHERMAL energy."

Federally the coalition should take a feather out of Newman's cap and practice zero tolerance with the whining, parasitical left/greens of this nation.

Geothermal is a joke, unless you are living on a volcano with the attendant lifestyle dilemmas; ask flannery how his geothermal project is going; oh look, despite a $90 mill of my tax $ it's gone broke:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/black_power_beats_green/

World wide geothermal was touted by Obama and is going nowhere; it's a dud technology which actually liberates more CO2 from bedrock then a coal plant does through burning coal.

The libs need to look at Thorium, a real power source
Posted by cohenite, Thursday, 4 October 2012 12:45:09 PM
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Surprise, surprise,John Howard's recent address in Adelaide mentioned the booming US shale oil/gas industry in a similar vein to this M/s Bishop's letter. Suggesting that the US reliance upon imported Middle Eastern and Venesuelan oil would be replaced by this abundant cheap shale oil/gas, thus changing its industrial structure, enabling the US to compete more actively and competitively with the Asian/European giants.
As well as great reserves of iron ore Western Australia has greater reserves of shale oil/gas waiting to be developed, however at an environmental price, complete destruction of potable underground water, in WA a precious rare commodity.
It would seem to me that certain Liberal Party influential members are preparing the ground in this country for these same US and multinational companies to eventually come here to exploit this untapped resource to their advantage as as already happened in the Australian iron ore, natural gas,coal,industries.
Posted by Jack from Bicton, Thursday, 4 October 2012 1:18:10 PM
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Ah, a tasty young Liberal! MMmmm. Chikkken Wings!

Yumm!

Losers!

The human race Has its deepest roots in Geology and thus GEOTHERMAL free energy. Thorium like FrackGass is a thermodynamic absurdity based on American imperialist Quantitative Diseasing rather than science. The second Law of Thermodynamics is EXPLICIT about the IMPOSSIBILITY of collecting diffuse energy over vast areas and volumes to create baseload outputs. These are BASIX Fundamentals.

A few young liberals getting shoved off their cosy perches and squawking all the way to the ground won't PRIVATISE THAT.

Goodnight Irene!
Posted by KAEP, Thursday, 4 October 2012 1:31:30 PM
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Robert LePage
People like you drawing attention to what's really happening in the world! Assuming that all development is bad and all wild stories you read from activists about new developments is not the same is knowing what is really going on now is it?
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 4 October 2012 1:44:49 PM
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"The human race Has its deepest roots in Geology and thus GEOTHERMAL free energy. Thorium like FrackGass is a thermodynamic absurdity based on American imperialist Quantitative Diseasing rather than science. The second Law of Thermodynamics is EXPLICIT about the IMPOSSIBILITY of collecting diffuse energy over vast areas and volumes to create baseload outputs. These are BASIX Fundamentals."

As kooks go you seem a natural leader; what does having our "deepest roots in Geology" mean? Were we once rocks? I know some people with rocks in their heads; does that help?

2nd law of TD contradicted by Thorium? Do you mean a Thorium reactor is a perpetual motion machine [PMM]? Such reactors were working in the 60's and 70's but were discontinued because they don't produce fuel for nuclear bombs. Surely if they were PMM wouldn't they still be going?

However, I agree with this:

"the IMPOSSIBILITY of collecting diffuse energy over vast areas and volumes to create baseload outputs.

It sums up why wind and solar will never work
Posted by cohenite, Thursday, 4 October 2012 1:46:53 PM
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Jack from Bicton

There is absolutely no threat to WA’s water supplies from developing its shale gas. The geology of shale gas is quite different to the coal seam gas that has been controversial in the eastern states – shale gas it is far deeper and is found at very different depths to water.

The Department of Mines and Petroleum’s website has a very good primer on WA’s unconventional gas. It includes this:

“Western Australia’s shale and tight gas resources are located at significantly greater depths than in Eastern Australia, and have significant vertical separation from non-saline shallow water aquifers”

http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/12872.aspx

Even if there was a risk of contamination, the bulk of WA's gas is in places like the Canning Basin, which is so remote that its groundwater is never likely to be a usable resource.
Posted by Rhian, Thursday, 4 October 2012 2:26:36 PM
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Just another example of the relentless negativity of the greens. Any new industrial endeavor is met with wild exaggerations and misrepresentations.

Poirot's link to the photographs of the open cast mine looks terrible, but this again is a misrepresentation as no open cast mine looks pretty while mining is underway. A photo once the shale has been extracted, the top soil replaced and the rehabilitation completed would be more appropriate.

"(the largest single industrial polluter on the planet)" For this month anyway. previously it was Chernobyl and then Fukushima etc.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Thursday, 4 October 2012 2:49:32 PM
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The thing that concerns me about the anti-mining, anti-energy, anti-population and anti-capitalism lobby is their over reliance on media publications for their information. I have at times been guilty of this too but have since since learnt my lesson - there is considerable distance between a media story and a fact.

So far on OLO we have had fracking causing earthquakes, the Australian economy dying because immigrants are eating us out of house and home, we're running out of oil and gas (blatantly false), we're running out of minerals therefore won't be able to make steel (bizarre), sea levels are rising and will swamp coastal Australia, the artesian basin is falling, high density living causes suicides, not to mention a plethora of evil fates will befall us when the discussion turns to dams, desalination plants, wind farms, etc. But they're spot on re fish stocks.

Why the predilection for ridiculous hyperbole? Because they can - but one wonders whether or not we need to have a good hard look at how our schools and universities are churning out graduates if this is the shape of debate to come.
Posted by Cheryl, Thursday, 4 October 2012 4:46:06 PM
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Carbon in fossil fuel is essential for a moderately high living standard for ever. Carbon in fossil fuel is the only available inexpensive reducing agent.

Mrs Bishop is gleeful that there is sufficient shale gas for 100 years. What fraction is that of the possible future survival period of sapient beings?

Sufficient Thorium is available for at least 50,000 years of power demand or 500 times the period claimed by the author for what she is promoting.
Posted by Foyle, Thursday, 4 October 2012 5:47:16 PM
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And regard/respect for the environment?
Surely it deserves a few more words. I suspect that the author is not too concerned.
Posted by Atlarak, Thursday, 4 October 2012 6:08:02 PM
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Rhian, don't usually engage in written repartee, however, I will make an exception.
Shale oil/gas is said to be available in the Perth, Carnarvon and Canning Basins of Western Australia at depths at or greater than 2000 meters.
In all three basins shallow ground water and deep aquafir water is found. The Canning Basin has not been geologically explored to the same extent as the other two basins so knowledge of shale oil/gas structure is limited in this particular basin.
It is not the horizontal drilling that causes environmental worry but the injected noxious chemical proppents that may affect the quality of the aquafir water.
At time of writing there are no commercial producing shale oil/gas bores operating so all/any conjecture on whether the industry is or is not, or will or will not, adversely affect the environment is purely that: conjecture.
Posted by Jack from Bicton, Thursday, 4 October 2012 8:21:59 PM
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The “Sustainable Development” movement has and continues to shoot itself in the foot. It’s otherwise known as the “what it is we seek to avoid, we create” syndrome.

Cheryl has nicely articulated the problem, they hate humans and any form of human development and object to everything.

The energy prohibition imposed politically by the Greens has backfired spectacularly. Alternative energy sources have indeed been found; sadly for them these are mostly carbon based as the world realizes that renewables flat line at about 6%.

Germany announced last month, the building of 23 new coal fired power stations, their number one source of fuel is now lignite at 30% and growing at 3.1% p.a.

Well done the Greens. All we need now as evidence of the new growing status of carbon based fuels is the Russian state owned gas supplier slashing their prices to Europe.

Sometimes the eco-zealots only seem to confirm that they don’t even know what it is they don’t know. Anyway, please keep up the great work in dismantling your scam for the rest of us; please close the door on the way out.
Posted by spindoc, Friday, 5 October 2012 8:40:41 AM
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Jack From Bicton

Fraccing has been used in WA for decades, with no adverse effects on water resources I'm aware of. The wide separation of gas and water in our shale reserves suggests there is little threat to water quality if our shale oil is commercial to develop. And the water that might in theory be affected is not water currently used by people or flora and fauna.

The probability of "complete destruction of potable underground water", which your post alleges, is zero.
Posted by Rhian, Friday, 5 October 2012 12:13:41 PM
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Spindkok,

"Cheryl has nicely articulated the problem, they hate humans and any form of human development and object to everything. "

Sustainability visionaries only hate Women who have more then one child.

That is NOT the whole human race.

It is just a selfish subclass who know their extra progeny will kill ecosystems, endangered species and other human cultures but do it anyway because of selfishness and greed. Hell they can always blame men and there are plenty of sexually frustrated men & politicians who will support them & do and cop anything to get SEX. Since women only put out Deceptions and never the real thing unless there is a big house and car attached to it, these men are mostlay dumb suckers and never LEARN till the cops or the lawyers get involved.

That Tony Abbott has to crawl to such women to get to be PM is the last nail in his coffin. He has just been politically screwed and there won't be the pleasure!

Look, the only reason we are all fretting over a thermodynamic absurdity like Frackass is because inhumane women are having too many children. Remove the vote from women who have more than one child per lifetime and the need for Frackass goes away along with a myriad of social & environmental injustices and inhumanities.

And don't forget women who have the intellect and compassion to only have one or no children. They should be rewarded with grants, bonuses, the VOTE and equal power opportunities in business and in government. For they are the true EQUALS of men when it comes to actually BUILDING a nation and not Breeding that nation into a trash heap like a Campbelltown/Raby rental.

Or Else we make Cheryl PM, give $100k bonuses for the 8th child, permanent paid parental leave, immigrate the whole of indonesia, PARTY for 6 years an when it gets too HOT we can invade New Zealand and do the same thing there!
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 5 October 2012 2:25:37 PM
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"Sustainability visionaries only hate Women who have more then one child."

I rest my case.
Posted by Cheryl, Friday, 5 October 2012 5:38:57 PM
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Rest what case?

That you're a try-hard monster in sheep's clothing!

We already KNOW.

Give us a break.
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 5 October 2012 7:28:45 PM
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I am interested in why Julie Bishop, as a member of the Coalition and a front bencher, continues to write articles on OLO?
None of the other MPs in either of the main parties do this and I am puzzled as to her motives.
Re Cheryl. I under stand that he/she is actually a man and wonder why the subterfuge?
Nothing that is said by someone hiding under a gender non de plume, can be taken as serious or worth reading. perhaps you should give up now.
Posted by Robert LePage, Saturday, 6 October 2012 9:23:03 AM
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Gee, being criticised for using a non de plume on OLO is a first. Poor old KAEP might be off medication, but what's your excuse 'Le Page' apart from personal attacks?

Your sole contribution, apart from a brief soliloquy questioning why Julie Bishop wrote this article (why shouldn't she?) is the astounding claim that fracking causes earthquakes.

What we have here is a classic anti-everything stance: no argument, no supported counter claim, no internal validity, just self referential youtube references and the like. This is anti-intellectualism at its best (or worst).
Posted by Cheryl, Saturday, 6 October 2012 9:37:58 AM
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Let me give you one more example of the type of 'infection' bedevilling public discourse in Australia.

Dick Smith's heavily re-edited magazine Aussie Grown Foods fell out of my copy of The Australian today. It's heavily edited because originally it defamed the CEO of News Corp.

Many of the stories are a 1950s fantasy of a boy who wants to turn the country back to when Menzies was in power. It's a psychological scream for help from an ageing babyboomer. I'd be interested to know what others think.

It makes the astonishing claim that Australia's population will reach more than 100 million by 2100 and almost one billion in 2200. This is utter BS. Who makes up this stuff?

I can guarantee you that the Australian Government is now looking at population DROP after 2050.

The Dick Smith insert is a fear campaign pure and simple and its shows that a fool and his money is easily parted.
Posted by Cheryl, Saturday, 6 October 2012 11:10:07 AM
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Ahem, Robert LePage, I agree, fancy someone taking on a (false) gender non de plume and expecting to be taken seriously.

(Excuse me, while I attend to my moustaches)

: )
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 6 October 2012 11:38:25 AM
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My word Cheryl you did react like a snapping turtle. Did I touch a raw spot?
Not to worry it will not stop you from aggressively attacking anything that does not conform to your ideas
I think that you should study confirmation bias.
It refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs.

This tendency to give more attention and weight to data that support our beliefs than we do to contrary data is especially pernicious when our beliefs are little more than prejudices. If our beliefs are firmly established on solid evidence and valid confirmatory experiments, the tendency to give more attention and weight to data that fit with our beliefs should not lead us astray as a rule. Of course, if we become blinded to evidence truly refuting a favoured hypothesis, we have crossed the line from reasonableness to closed-mindedness.
Posted by Robert LePage, Saturday, 6 October 2012 1:37:43 PM
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As much as I admire so many of the comments above, the reality is somewhat different.

Have a read of this: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-10-05/new-%E2%80%9Cgolden-age-oil%E2%80%9D-wasn%E2%80%99t

One does not need to be a geologist, environmentalist, oceanographer, biologist, economist or any other 'ist' to see the reality.

We are on the peaking slope of 'cheap energy', it matters not what you want, but what you have access to...

The day's of cheap energy are over, we are in a permanent state of economic contraction, due primarily to more and more expensive energy costs, you can put all the brightest economists in the world in one room and until they grasp this simple truth, the light will not come on.

Cheap and I repeat "CHEAP" energy is the key to our future, a lack of understaning on this issue is critical.

It matters not on reserves, the amount of a potential field, the cost of extraction, it is all about the "RATE" that one can produce.

Show me something different and I will change my thought pattern.

Over to you all, and not expecting much response to reality

Geoff
Posted by Geoff of Perth, Monday, 8 October 2012 10:23:46 PM
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