An important article thanks and an issue that the whole community - here in Australia as well - should be engaged with. Natural gas from fracking shale may ease the coming shocks from imminent oil depletion, but at what price? Can we afford to pollute our groundwater to keep the economy afloat, because the economy sure won't float when oil starts its inexorable decline. Apart from polluting groundwater, you need a lot of water in the whole process. Poland may have a lot of it, but can we in Australia afford to divert so much water to this particular practice? Won't it be a case of robbing Peter (farming) to pay Paul (mining)? It is all evidence that we are reaching the limits to growth and, rather than assume that we can extract ever more fossil fuels to grow our economies, we have to stop growing, use the remaining fossil fuels wisely and keep a lot in the ground for the sake of climate change, and move as quickly as possible to a steady state economy. Even that may not be possible, we may have to face the prospect of considerable economic contraction for some time to come, with accompanying reduction in population.

Daly writes this piece of nonsense..
"scientific concerns have risen along with production, as evidence mounts that fracking is responsible for everything from polluting subterranean aquifers to causing regional earthquakes"

What happened was that after considerable research scientists identified marginal environmental risks. Care must be taken, as it must with every technology, that the risks do not mount to the point where the project is not worth doing. There is no reason to think that the technology is so unsafe that we dare not use it.. as for the bit about regional earthquakes, activists will believe almost anything that supports their beliefs..

Poland is in desperate stakes too. Seismic activity has increased in parts of the US, where fracking is carried out.

It's all predictable - Poland will grow wealthy and Bulgaria will stay poor. Fortune favours the brave.

If there are genuine risks concerning fracking (and that's still hypothesis), new technology will overcome them. Propane gel is already looking good

There's seismic activity and there's seismic activity. Nothing associated with fracking has done any more than rattle a few windows, maybe create a hairline crack or two. Nothing, er, earth-shattering.

Propane gas sounds good as an alternative to water until you realise that it burns, and burns badly as far as humans in the vicinity are concerned.

popnperish and 579

Again we have examples of activists believing any nonsense at all other activists spout, provided that it coincides with their beliefs.. this stuff about propane and additional seismic activity is marginal at best.. barely detectable with sophisticated equipment, and you seriously present these stories as valid reasons for staying away from a useful technology.

Shame on you.

I note that 'Tree-hugging environmentalists' conveniently ignore the fact that their beloved geothermal energy uses exactly the same technology.

There is a big difference between fraccing shallow coal seams that lie within drinking water supply aquifers and do have the potential to contaminate such water, and fracking rocks kilometres below ground that lie in a different geological siutation altogether.

Fraccing has been going on for 40 years or more, at here in Australia, and some regional perspectives are important when making comment on it.

The article gives no indication of whether the deposits to be fracked in Poland are shallow or deep, and what the geological context is. This makes a huge difference in the risks to the environment. It's poor journalism. Is the shale 2-3km deep? Does it have impermeable layers above it to isolate the layers being fracked? Or is the fraccing going to take place at shallow levels?

This article leaves way too many gaps and unanswered questions to make any sensible comment on Poland's fraccing.

Curmudgeon
I'm not opposed to fracking per se if it can be done in a non-harmful way but the reality is that it has contaminated groundwater and caused minor earthquakes. I'm not sure how disturbing the latter are but certainly contaminated groundwater has caused health problems in the US (see the movie Gaslands)where fracking has occurred. If propane can replace the huge amount of water, fine, but when I read a Reuters report on it, this is what it said: Richard Spears, a leading oilfield services adviser to the petroleum industry and a former Halliburton Co engineer, said using liquefied petroleum gas, or propane, makes perfect sense from a technical point of view...(however)...

"As a former frack engineer, I get the willies when I think about getting anywhere near a frack that is flammable," he said. "When it catches fire, it doesn't burn nicely."

By the way, Curmudgeon, play the ball and not the man will you? People who do that (ad hominem argument) are simply indicating they're incapable of rational debate.