Fracking Nora! Years worth of shale gas found right 'ere in Lancashire

Caudrilla Resources who have been using a site in a small Lancashire village for testing purposes announced on the 21^st September that it had discovered 200 trillion (yes trillion!!) cubic feet of gas beneath the ground in Lancashire’s Bowland basin. This amount of shale gas could provide enough gas to meet the entire UK demand for 66 years (although it is debatable how much of this can actually be recovered, with the final amount recoverable likely to be around 10-20%).

So what is Fracking, how does it work and why does it have such an awesome name?

Fracking is short hand for hydraulic fracturing and refers to how the rock is fractured apart by a high pressure mixture of water sand and chemicals. Experts also like to refer to a ‘frac job' (oo er!) and a ‘frac unit’.

It is a process in which giant drills are used to dig deep into the earth whilst creating tiny explosions to shatter shale rocks, releasing the gas inside. The ‘mixture’ is injected into the rock at very high pressure which causes the gas to flow out to the head of a man made well.

Fracking does have a few enemies and as with most things to do with any ‘non green’ energy is thought of as controversial. Much of the water used in the process is collected and then filtered and cleaned. There are concerns that potentially carcinogenic chemicals can sometimes escape and end up in drinking water. However the industry itself vigorously denies these claims. The other hot topic you will see people protesting about is climate change and global warming, although shale gas emissions from natural gas are much lower than those from coal and oil. 

There are major advantage to this Shale gas discovery, it will boost overall worldwide gas supplies and could help to reduce the overall market cost (yey!) as well as a present a potential £6 billion boost to the UK economy.