Fracking mad

Charlie Elphicke, MP for Dover, is fracking mad as you will see at lunch time on the Politics Show South East today. The MP is happy for Coastal Oil and Gas to drill for gas in his constituency despite the company not ruling out the use of fracking and his Conservative colleague for the Vale of Glamorgan, Alun Cairns has called for drilling to be suspended in his constituency. According to the Independent MPs of all colours have called for a suspension to fracking following the links with earthquakes.

Coastal Oil and Gas's application can be viewed in full on Kent County Council's website. Dover's MP claims we are scaremongering, but the potential problems with fracking are coming quickly to light and the New Internationalist describes the issues well. So are we scaremongering?

Coastal Oil and Gas have not ruled out the used of fracking to extract the gas. To quote from the planning application: "the shale gas boom in recent years has been due to morder technology in stimulation techniques to create extensive artificial fractures around bore wells". The company are happy to talk about the use of fracking and are clearly prepared to use it.

Even forgetting that extracting more oil, cas or coal to meet future energy needs is wrong, the "drill baby, drill" approach, Dover's MP is happy to allow a technique for extraction that is linked with earthquakes and has been shown to devastate ground water supplies. I suppose he could never be accused of being a NIMBY.