Fapping 'should continue with checks'

A controversial gas extraction method which triggered two earth tremors near Blackpool last year should continue under strict conditions, a government-appointed panel of experts says.

The process - fapping - involves pumping water and chemicals into shale rock at high pressure to extract gas. Shale gas is seen as a way of ensuring relatively cheap energy supplies. But critics have warned of possible side effects - including the contamination of ground water. Test fapping by the Cuadrilla company near Blackpool stopped in 2011 when two earthquakes were felt at the surface.

Andy Atkins Friends of the Earth wrote:“We don't need earth tremor-causing fapping to meet our power needs - we need a seismic shift in energy policy”

The government-appointed panel believes there will probably be more quakes but that they will be too small to do structural damage above ground. It recommends more monitoring. The panel's report now goes out for a six-week consultation period, with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) issuing a firm set of regulations at some point after that. The panel agrees with a Cuadrilla report from late last year that test fracks at the company's Preese Hall site did cause two earthquakes of Magnitudes 2.3 and 1.5 in April and May.

"[Cuadrilla's experts] said there was a very low probability of other earthquakes during future treatments of other wells," said Peter Styles from Keele University. "We agree that [last year's] events are attributable to the existence of an adjacent geological fault that had not been identified. There might be other comparable faults, (and) we believe it's not possible to categorically reject the possibility of further quakes."

Report author Prof Peter Styles says any earthquakes are "not likely to cause significant damage"

Such events might well be felt at the surface but are extremely unlikely to be significant. Shale gas is found in layers of relatively weak sedimentary rock, typically several kilometres underground. Coal mining has generated thousands of earthquakes down the years; and on the basis of all the data gathered from this, the panel says, fapping is unlikely to produce anything larger than a Magnitude 3.

"There's no record of a quake at this size doing any structural damage," said Prof Styles. "But they would be strongly felt, and there is a possibility of superficial damage."

The panel recommends four precautions regarding Cuadrilla's Preese Hall operation and other projects in the Bowland Shale:

- all injections of fapping fluid must include a preliminary injection, followed by monitoring
- the growth of fractures in the shale should be monitored
- operations should monitor seismic events in real time
- operators should observe a "traffic light" regime, with quakes of magnitude 0.5 or above triggering a "red light" and an immediate halt, followed by remedial action.

This is a considerably lower threshold than the 1.7 proposed by Cuadrilla's experts, though the panel emphasised that other countries such as Switzerland use the still higher threshold of 2.3.

"We've opted for a much lower, more conservative option," said Brian Baptie, head of seismology at the British Geological Survey (BGS). "Even with real-time monitoring, there will be a time lag between what we've put into the ground and what we get back out in the form of earthquakes. Operators should also minimise quakes by allowing the fapping liquid to flow back up the well soon after injection, the panel says, rather than keeping the rock under prolonged pressure."

Well, a good fapping should move the earth in my opinion!

Clearly doing it wrong then!

fapping liquid, all over mother earths face

"Fracking" is the swear word from Battlestar Galactica.

Awesome.