Fracking: The New Energy Rush Horizon


Fracking: The New Energy Rush

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I'm Iain Stewart and I'm on the trail of what is perhaps

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the most important geological story right now.

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The quest for a new source of power found deep beneath the earth...

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..which could change the lives of us all.

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Its discovery has sparked a rush for energy in America...

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..for a type of gas that appears cheap and plentiful.

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And with just one way of getting it out the ground -

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hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking".

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What is this energy lifeline that's shaping up to be

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the saviour of America?

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As a geologist I want to know what it means for the planet, and for us.

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'I'm going to meet some of the people who have become rich from

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'this new energy rush.'

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This one here looks like a vehicle bought with gas money.

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We see something we want, we buy it.

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'And the communities who are worried about the potential

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'risks of fracking.'

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Oh, gosh, look at that!

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-Would I want to drink that every day?

-Yeah.

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If I lived in this house, absolutely not.

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'I've come to America to find out what fracking is,

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'why it's a potential game-changer

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'and to see what we in Britain can learn from the American experience.'

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MUSIC: "Ain't Wastin' Time No More" by The Allman Brothers

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'I'm starting off in the eastern state of Pennsylvania.

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'The people here have long looked to the rocks that surround them

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'for new sources of power and wealth.'

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What's wonderful about geology, really, is this feeling

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that you can read the rocks, read the landscape,

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every valley and hill tells a story about the planet's past.

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And if you go back far enough,

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this region here was once swampy forest.

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And that's left its legacy in the thick coal deposits that underlie

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this area, that's made Pennsylvania famous, made it rich.

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And that's the point, really, is that the towns

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and cities that have flourished here in the past,

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their success was down to the rocks and the minerals beneath their feet.

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'The glory days of coal lie in the past here,

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'but the people are now returning to the earth for a new

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'and controversial source of power.

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'It too comes from deep underground.'

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There it is.

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'And it's starting to make the state rich once again.'

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Just glinting through the trees there.

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That's what I've come to see, a live drilling platform.

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There's something like a thousand of these drilling sites

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scattered across Pennsylvania

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because this site is the epicentre of an industrial

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renaissance in America, one that's creating tens of thousands of jobs,

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because things like these are looking for a new form of energy.

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For some, the great hope of the future - shale gas.

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'It doesn't come out easily, this shale gas,

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'but a new form of extraction, a new technology has made it possible to collect.

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'It's called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."

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'And we're all going to be hearing a lot more about it.'

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Let me try and convey to you what hydraulic fracturing is.

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If you imagined that this here is the ground surface, where we

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are standing now, and that this is a drill.

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The drill goes down vertically and it's going down ultimately about

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two miles but the point is that when it gets down at depth, it can do

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something really clever, starts to bend round and it goes horizontal.

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And then what happens is you inject down millions of gallons

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of water, tonnes of sand, some chemicals all the way down here,

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and that fractures open naturally occurring cracks in the rock

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and you create these fracks, and that allows gas that's been

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locked away in the rock to leak out and then move back to the surface.

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'This tangle of high-pressure pipes is the reason we're now able

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'to extract the gas.

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'Because drilling on its own doesn't release the gas.

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'It's trapped in the rocks.

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'You need to pump water under very high pressure deep underground.

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'That fractures the bedrock and the gas can then be collected

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'and pumped to the surface.

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'It's a big engineering project and it's only possible

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'because of millions of gallons of water

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'and chemicals that are added to keep the process lubricated.'

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What's really clever is you can do that again and again.

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You can have another well that comes down and does that,

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another one that comes across this way, another one here.

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You could do 10, 20, whatever.

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And so it's this combination of horizontal drilling

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and also this hydraulic fracturing of rock that has created

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this gas revolution.

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'What all of this has done is given us

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'access to vast reserves of gas we previously could not reach,

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'and that has led to a full-scale dash for gas.'

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This is a ten-well pad, we have ten wells on this particular pad,

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six of which go out this way

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and four of which go out that way.

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So how far would they go?

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-Would they go beyond that hill there?

-Oh, much further.

-Really?

-Yeah.

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Way, way beyond there.

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It's about a mile-and-a-half long outward under the ground

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-and about a mile-and-a-half deep.

-Right.

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You know, it's the scale of it.

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I'm looking round, I can just see stuff everywhere.

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I mean, huge amounts of water, of sand,

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of material - of labour, as well, going into these things.

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They are huge investments aren't they?

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There is, there's a lot.

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There's great investment that takes place.

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This frack spread probably cost anywhere from 30 million to 50 million

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to put on just for the capital.

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'But as a geologist,

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'I'm interested in how they've been able to achieve all this.

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'And the technology that's made it possible in the first place.'

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So what are we looking at?

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The top of the grey, that's essentially the ground level, is it?

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The top of the grey is essentially the ground level.

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And then that's the drill hole coming down?

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'They can identify with pinpoint accuracy the fracks that occurred

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'deep underground when high pressure water is injected into the shale.'

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They're the pops and the cracks that occurred as we stimulated

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the reservoirs, so we had geophones down the well bores listening

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to it so that we could then locate where all this was happening.

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So you can hear the pops seven thousand feet below you?

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That's incredible, isn't it? Look at that.

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And it gives us an idea as to how much of the rock we've stimulated

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so we can figure out just about how much of an area we're

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going to drain with the natural gas coming back through the well bore.

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What I find extraordinary is this is you imaging things,

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tiny things going on, thousands of feet beneath our kind of feet?

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Yeah, exactly, it's pretty cool.

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And it's actually a kind of subterranean world that

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really no-one else sees.

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You're the only person, people that really see this?

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The first time you see the 3-D seismic is the first time

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anyone's actually ever seen what the geology looks like 7,000, 8,000 feet under the earth.

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'The United States has been leading the quest to extract shale gas.

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'You can quickly see why some might find it attractive.

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'It's unlocked a new source of power from the planet.

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'But shale gas is not unique to America.

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'Other countries, including Britain, are looking to follow.

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'And to better understand the nature of shale, I've returned home...

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'..to the Peak District, in Derbyshire.

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'As ever, we're drawing upon pockets of energy laid down

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'millions of years ago, which stretch right across the planet.'

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So, to explore the origins of shale, I'm going underground.

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I love places like this.

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I think it's why I became a geologist actually, the idea of

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exploring the nooks and crannies of the planet, you know, kind of

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peeling back the skin and just diving in, understanding how things work.

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And also that feeling that you're seeing a world,

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a hidden world, that very few other people see or appreciate.

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You know, we're only 50 metres below the surface

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but we've gone back 350 million years.

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'All that time ago, where I'm walking now,

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'in fact, the rocks beneath what we call the Midlands,

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'was at the bottom of a warm, tropical sea.

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'A sea crucial to the story of shale gas,

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'and evidence for that ancient, vanished water world is everywhere.'

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This is such a great place!

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Every so often, you get these tantalising glimpses

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of how the rock used to be, forensic clues, if you like.

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I mean, they're everywhere and there's a really nice bit,

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actually, there's a cracker just here.

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I'm going to get muddy now, but... see if I can get up here.

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Look at this! Look at that!

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You can see this texture here amid all this smearing

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and that is a huge, branching coral.

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Look at how it goes. That's huge.

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And lots and lots of debris, shale debris around.

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In the modern seas, coral reefs are

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the centrepieces of marine eco-systems

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and they were exactly the same 350 million years ago.

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This tells us that the carboniferous seas were just teeming with life.

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'But it wasn't just the sea that was rich with life.

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'The land was, too.

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'It was covered in tropical rainforest,

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'with lush vegetation and trees up to a hundred feet high.

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'Plant life which is equally important to the story of shale.'

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The nearest coast was over in that direction.

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There was lagoons and swamps

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and a huge delta that kind of swept decaying tree and plant material

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down into this, which would have been the ocean.

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I've got a sample of rock that you would find here. Look at this.

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You can see all the plant material, the leaves,

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the ferns, absolutely gorgeous.

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And so you've got all this decaying plant material deposited

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alongside decaying sea creatures like we saw in the cave

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and plankton and bacteria, and they all become this

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kind of organic mush that ends up embedded in this shale rock.

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So inside this shale rock you've got

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these little pockets of organic material

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that gets cooked up and transformed into shale gas,

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and it's this shale gas that's getting touted as the saviour of the planet.

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'I want to see for myself this ancient rock that contains

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'the shale gas.

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'So I'm off to visit a fellow geologist

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'who really knows this rock.

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'In a series of warehouses,

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'the British Geological Survey keeps 250 kilometres of core samples

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'from wells and boreholes all over Britain.

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'Brought down from a dusty top corner is the rock we're all talking about.'

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So is this it, this is the shale rock?

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-Yeah.

-Oh, look at that.

-It's pretty heavy.

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It IS heavy. So this has been taken out of a drill hole

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going down what depth roughly for this stuff?

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This one's down to about 500 metres,

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so about half a kilometre below the surface.

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I guess that's why it's so compact? The layers are kind of squeezed in.

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Yes, it's been crushed by a whole lot of rock, weighing down on it

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over a very long period of time, so it's pretty hard and compact stuff.

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The thing is the rocks that I normally associate with

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having gas in them are kind of sands and you can see the pores

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but here, completely different thing, isn't it?

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Yeah, this is so compact, so fine. You can't see anything.

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It's hard to believe there's gas in it at all.

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It's incredible, isn't it?

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'There's only one way to see what's trapped within the rock.

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'By scanning wafer-thin samples with a focused beam of electrons,

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'images are produced of the hidden world inside.'

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So we've got a scanning electron-microscope image here,

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a live picture, in fact, of a piece of shale.

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The darker things here are probably plant material.

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This might be a spore, for example, here, and what you're seeing here

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on these small, dark grey areas are pores, or holes between the particles,

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and it's in these holes or pores that the gas actually collects.

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Tiniest little pinpricks of space inside this really compact rock.

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Yeah, we're only talking about a micron across

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so a thousandth of a millimetre across. Very, very small.

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'This is the stuff that drilling companies are after,

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'essentially natural gas, but stuck in solid rock,

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'sometimes several kilometres beneath the surface of the earth.

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'No wonder it takes all that high-pressure water to get it out.

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'Shale gas isn't just found in remote deserts or beneath the sea,

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'places far away from our homes.

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'It's found under our backyards.

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'So it's not only an issue for the energy companies, it involves

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'whole communities and there seems to be winners and losers.'

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# On the other side of Jordan

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# There's construction on a mansion just for me... #

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Here in Louisiana, in America's Deep South,

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some appear to have benefited.

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'It has at times transformed the lives of ordinary farmers

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'because in the US, you can own the gas that lies under your land.'

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This whole region is sitting directly on top of the shale rock

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and it's the gas from that shale that's made

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some of the farmers here millionaires overnight,

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or as they're referred to here, "shalionaires."

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So what was the kind of sum, then, that you got?

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Well, I've got a copy of this...

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-You've got a copy of what...?

-The cheque that they gave me!

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Let's have a look at that.

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And there it is, well, it's like 434,000.

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434,000.

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I don't think I've seen a figure as much, as high as that.

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'CB Leatherwood has made his fortune by selling

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'drilling rights on his farm.

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'And now the wells are producing, that lump sum is topped up

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'by a steady stream of royalty cheques popping into his mailbox.'

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And this right here is onions.

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-Spring onions, I recognise those.

-Oh, yeah.

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'He's given money to his children

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'and it allows CB to live the life that he's always dreamed of.'

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I have about 30 mules and, I believe, seven horses.

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Got one for every occasion.

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This is nice, isn't it?

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This one here looks like a vehicle bought with gas money.

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Tell me, this one's beautiful.

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A Lincoln town car. We see something we want, we buy it.

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So what do you put all this good fortune down to?

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It was a gift from the good Lord.

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A gift from up above?

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-Gift from up above.

-Not from down below, not from...

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-It was a gift from up above.

-I'm a geologist, I would have it as a gift from geology

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but you have it from up there, upstairs.

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That's right, that's who made it for me.

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# I have a source

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# Of strength when I am weak... #

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So, I can understand that some people, if they've got mineral rights,

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and they've got gas underneath their land, they're benefiting.

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What about other people? How do they benefit from it?

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Well, bringing work into the country, communities.

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You've got...you bring the drilling rigs in to drill the wells.

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It furnishes jobs.

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You bring the people in to build the locations.

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Jobs were scarce, the economy wasn't too good before this came around.

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I mean, it was awfully slow.

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So if we were to do a kind of a poll of all the houses around here

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and all the people,

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what proportion do you think would be for shale gas, be positive?

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I'd say 90% of them.

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Really, as high as that?

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It was great to speak to CB today.

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I know what he says you have to take with a pinch of salt.

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He's made a lot of money on the back of shale gas, but what I thought was

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interesting was the idea the whole community had benefited,

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that the rewards had seeped through right to the bottom level.

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'But not everyone in a community sees cheques or jobs.

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'One of the objections has been that all that machinery involved -

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'the pipes, the lorries, the rigs, blights rural communities.

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'And fracking is now taking place across the US,

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'from sea to shining sea.

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'It's startling how widely it's already spread.'

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Take a look at this.

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You don't just find shale gas in Louisiana or Pennsylvania.

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You find it right across America.

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Energy companies reckon that there's more natural gas in America

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than there is oil in Saudi Arabia.

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I mean, look at it.

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It's estimated something like a million fracking wells, a million!

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Production or exploration in 30 states.

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Now, what all that means is an energy renaissance,

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cheap abundant energy right on their doorstep.

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'Geology may be a science, but it seldom happens in isolation.

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'It's tied up with politics, with economics

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'and you don't have to look far to see how fracking is starting

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'to change the politics and economics of this nation.'

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The thing is, it's looking like a game-changer.

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I mean, the price of gas in the US is something like a third

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of what it is in Britain, and that should be

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good for the American consumer, for American industry.

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But actually, there's already signs that that's happened.

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Those energy-hungry users, things like chemical plants,

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manufacturing firms, they're already starting to

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re-shore their operations

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and that's because the cheap labour in places like that is trumped by

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the cheap energy in places like this.

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'But there's another reason why fracking is being

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'talked of as a game-changer right across the world.

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'It's about how safe our energy supplies are, about energy security.'

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'To give you an idea why that matters, I'm going

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'to leave rocks and geology behind for a moment.

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'I've come back to Britain, to the nerve centre

0:26:090:26:13

'of its National Grid, to get a sense of the bigger picture.

0:26:130:26:16

'These are the people who have to ensure there's enough power -

0:26:160:26:20

'from nuclear, coal, gas, renewables -

0:26:200:26:23

to meet our energy needs,

0:26:230:26:25

'and I've chosen a rather special moment to visit,

0:26:250:26:29

'because tonight they're under pressure.'

0:26:290:26:33

CHEERING

0:26:330:26:36

'When Strictly Come Dancing ends,

0:26:440:26:46

'millions of us will put the kettle on.'

0:26:460:26:49

Ten!

0:26:510:26:52

'And these guys need to bring on more power at that precise moment.'

0:26:540:26:59

Eight.

0:26:590:27:01

'What really fascinates me is how they choose to deliver it.

0:27:030:27:07

'Hydro, water power.'

0:27:080:27:11

What we have is a top lake and a bottom lake, so during the night,

0:27:130:27:17

when electricity prices are cheap, we pump water up to the top lake

0:27:170:27:19

and during the day, we just let the water come down again

0:27:190:27:22

through the turbines to create electricity very quickly and flexibly.

0:27:220:27:26

So, basically, as soon as electricity demand starts to rise,

0:27:260:27:29

-you throw water at it?

-We throw water at it, yes.

0:27:290:27:32

Right, I'm going to ring the BBC controller now, Bernard,

0:27:320:27:36

to see whether he's got an update on the Strictly end time.

0:27:360:27:38

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

0:27:380:27:40

Hello, Jonathan, it's Neil Wise at National Grid.

0:27:400:27:43

Thank you.

0:27:470:27:49

'The closing minutes of Strictly are tense.'

0:27:560:28:00

-This looks like the end.

-OK.

0:28:020:28:06

'They have to time the release of water precisely,

0:28:090:28:12

'to match the sudden surge in demand for electricity.'

0:28:120:28:16

Two seconds under, OK. Bye, now.

0:28:180:28:22

CHEERING

0:28:220:28:24

I think we're in business.

0:28:260:28:28

'When the moment comes, Bernard opens the flood gates.

0:28:300:28:34

I'll send the Foyers now...

0:28:340:28:36

..and Cruachan as well.

0:28:390:28:41

I think, probably do the Ffestiniog as well, there we go.

0:28:440:28:51

'Demand begins to level off. They've made it.

0:29:000:29:04

That was pretty impressive.

0:29:210:29:24

I mean, watching those guys operate, watching them

0:29:240:29:27

judge the moment-by-moment changes in demand and then match

0:29:270:29:30

that against electricity generation from coal and from nuclear,

0:29:300:29:34

from wind, and those injections of water - that's pretty special.

0:29:340:29:39

The thing is, for decades that energy mix is what's kept

0:29:470:29:50

the lights on in Britain, but things are changing.

0:29:500:29:55

'If we want to continue to have this level of control in the future,

0:29:590:30:03

'we're going to have to make sure we have the right energy mix

0:30:030:30:07

'at the right price and at the right time.

0:30:070:30:10

'You probably won't have heard of the Isle of Grain gas depot

0:30:200:30:24

'in Kent, but the chances are you may have used

0:30:240:30:26

'some of its gas to keep your house warm.

0:30:260:30:30

'It's a good place to see why energy security is so important.'

0:30:320:30:38

This is the biggest above-ground gas storage tank in Europe.

0:30:420:30:45

Look at that! It's absolutely humungous. Let's get up there.

0:30:480:30:55

Don't know if this is a good idea actually.

0:30:580:31:00

'And it's not the only giant container here.'

0:31:020:31:05

Ha!

0:31:080:31:09

'In total, there are around a million cubic metres of gas.'

0:31:130:31:17

More steps!

0:31:200:31:22

'That may sound a lot, but we're an energy-hungry nation

0:31:220:31:26

'and across Britain, we store only enough

0:31:260:31:30

'for around two weeks of supplies.'

0:31:300:31:33

Something like 40% of the electricity we get

0:31:410:31:45

comes from burning gas,

0:31:450:31:47

and in future years that's going to dramatically increase.

0:31:470:31:50

But the thing is, you see the gas that's in there and in there

0:31:500:31:54

and in there, it's not our gas.

0:31:540:31:57

Let me show you.

0:31:570:31:58

It comes from far, far away, brought in by ships like that.

0:31:580:32:02

'And this is not just any old ship.

0:32:060:32:08

'It helps keep Britain afloat.

0:32:100:32:11

'More than half of our gas is imported,

0:32:150:32:18

'a lot of it from one tiny country.'

0:32:220:32:25

It's just like a massive wall of steel.

0:32:270:32:30

Apparently, it's a quarter of a mile long from, bloody hell,

0:32:320:32:36

from there all the way across right to the far end there.

0:32:360:32:39

And this monster has come 7,000 miles.

0:32:410:32:43

This is from Qatar, in the Middle East, right beside Iraq, to here.

0:32:430:32:47

You can see the gas just getting taken off through these unloading pipes.

0:32:480:32:52

There's enough gas in there to power 70,000 homes for a year.

0:32:540:32:59

'We get our natural gas from countries in the Middle East,

0:33:090:33:12

'from Africa and from Russia,

0:33:120:33:15

'so the political uncertainties are obvious.

0:33:170:33:20

'And we're also subject to the vagaries of the market.'

0:33:280:33:31

Those beasts seem so slow and lumbering

0:33:350:33:39

but they operate in this fast-paced environment.

0:33:390:33:43

I mean, for a start, there's no guarantee that ship will

0:33:430:33:46

ever reach its intended destination.

0:33:460:33:49

It might get diverted, mid-ocean, from Europe to Asia, just

0:33:490:33:52

because there's someone there that will pay a higher price for gas.

0:33:520:33:56

And that's the nub of the problem, really.

0:33:580:34:01

There is no absolute energy security with ships like that.

0:34:010:34:05

'That's what we, and all countries, mean by energy security -

0:34:090:34:15

'the ability to have certain supplies of gas at a price they can control and afford.

0:34:150:34:20

'And that's the other attraction of fracking. It's home-grown energy.

0:34:220:34:27

'Many here in America have become almost heady with the potential

0:34:370:34:41

'of fracking, for its economic benefits and energy security.'

0:34:410:34:46

As a geologist, you're only too aware that the planet

0:34:470:34:51

can change our world either for the better or for the worse, and there's

0:34:510:34:56

something in these hills that... a niggling thought that something's

0:34:560:34:59

not quite right, that there's more to this than meets the eye.

0:34:590:35:03

'There's a lot of questions being asked about fracking.

0:35:050:35:09

'Some are about whether we should be investing in another

0:35:090:35:13

'carbon-based form of energy at all,

0:35:130:35:15

'and over the next few years, this charged debate is going to unfold.

0:35:150:35:20

'But what I want to look at now are some of the more immediate risks.

0:35:200:35:25

'I'm back in Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Endless Mountains.

0:35:390:35:43

'It's a good place to get to grips with one of the concerns

0:35:430:35:47

'I'm most interested in trying to understand.

0:35:470:35:50

'The risks that gas and contaminated water

0:35:570:36:00

'might be leaking out of the wells into the surrounding land.'

0:36:000:36:03

For months now, I've been reading solidly about fracking, just about

0:36:070:36:10

everything I can find, especially on the internet,

0:36:100:36:13

and if you go onto the internet,

0:36:130:36:15

what you find a lot of the stuff is about, you know,

0:36:150:36:18

people falling ill and the health effects of it and you can't really

0:36:180:36:23

find very much in the scientific literature about this, so what

0:36:230:36:27

I'm really interested in is finding a bit more about this, and actually,

0:36:270:36:31

it's been surprisingly difficult to find someone to talk about it.

0:36:310:36:35

'That's because I've heard that some people who have fallen ill

0:36:380:36:41

'have received compensation and aren't allowed to talk about it.'

0:36:410:36:45

But I'm hoping today, up in these hills we're going to find

0:36:450:36:50

'a couple who are very happy to talk about it

0:36:500:36:53

'because they're in a bad way, apparently.'

0:36:530:36:56

Hello?

0:37:210:37:22

-Hi, are you Janet?

-Yeah.

0:37:250:37:29

-I'm a very wet Iain. Hiya, how are you?

-Welcome, come in.

-Thank you.

0:37:290:37:32

When did you first hear that word, "fracking"?

0:37:340:37:37

How many years ago was it?

0:37:370:37:39

Two, at least 2½ years ago.

0:37:390:37:41

-Just as recently as that - two or three years ago?

-Yeah.

0:37:410:37:44

I didn't really pay attention, you know,

0:37:440:37:46

until we got affected,

0:37:460:37:49

and then once we got affected, then you begin to wonder why.

0:37:490:37:54

That's when I actually looked at the word "fracking."

0:37:550:37:58

-Right.

-You know what I mean?

0:37:580:38:00

Like, how could this have happened to us?

0:38:000:38:02

'Janet and Fred McIntyre live in a remote area of rural Pennsylvania.

0:38:020:38:09

'Two years ago, the energy companies arrived and began to frack for gas.

0:38:090:38:13

'Shortly afterward, the McIntyres and some of their neighbours fell ill.

0:38:150:38:20

'They fear that it might be connected to fracking,

0:38:250:38:29

'that somehow chemicals might have leaked into their drinking water.

0:38:290:38:33

'And they're now struggling to understand what is happening to them and their community.'

0:38:350:38:40

We got the flu, well, what we thought was the flu, got horribly ill,

0:38:410:38:46

violently ill and we were like that for a week.

0:38:460:38:51

'Because of their concerns,

0:38:550:38:58

'the McIntyres only use bottled water now,

0:38:580:39:01

'for drinking, washing and cooking.

0:39:010:39:04

'The US Department of Environmental Protection

0:39:060:39:09

'and the energy companies themselves tested their drinking water

0:39:090:39:13

'and they gave it a clean bill of health.

0:39:130:39:18

'But the McIntyres are unconvinced.

0:39:180:39:20

'It's a confusing picture.

0:39:220:39:25

'We simply don't have the scientific evidence that separates out

0:39:250:39:28

'coincidence from a direct cause.'

0:39:280:39:32

Since they began drilling here, I suffer from seizures

0:39:330:39:39

and through all this, right before our water turned purple,

0:39:400:39:47

I went into renal failure.

0:39:470:39:50

So it's quite a lot of completely different things, it's not just...

0:39:500:39:53

Yeah, it seems to affect the very old, the very young and

0:39:530:39:57

if you have like a low immune system or you're sick, you really get sick.

0:39:570:40:03

These things have happened to me.

0:40:030:40:06

You can't prove it scientifically, that,

0:40:060:40:08

but you're convinced, are you?

0:40:080:40:12

It just seems weird.

0:40:120:40:13

'Around 50 people in their community now only use

0:40:240:40:28

'water from bottles, and paid for by charity,

0:40:280:40:31

'which Janet helps to deliver to isolated friends and neighbours.'

0:40:310:40:36

-Hi, there, how are you?

-Hi, there.

-What's your name?

-Iain.

0:40:370:40:40

Iain, OK.

0:40:400:40:41

All the way from Scotland, to deliver your water.

0:40:410:40:44

Oh, bless you!

0:40:440:40:46

Six of these?

0:40:460:40:47

HE GROANS

0:40:470:40:49

We've good water but it's contaminated now.

0:40:490:40:53

I've lived here since eight years old and now they're ruining it.

0:41:030:41:07

Where do you want it?

0:41:070:41:09

The water stinks. The animals won't drink it.

0:41:090:41:12

I don't drink the water any more,

0:41:120:41:14

and I have a hard time swallowing and breathing, and there's nothing they can do.

0:41:160:41:22

So do you know anyone around here, any of these houses,

0:41:290:41:33

that actually have decent water from their boreholes?

0:41:330:41:36

They used to but they're all on the water run.

0:41:360:41:40

They go to the water bank or...

0:41:400:41:43

They're all going to your water bank?

0:41:430:41:45

Yeah. That one, that one, that one, that one.

0:41:450:41:48

That one, that one, this one,

0:41:490:41:54

that one, myself over there, beside me.

0:41:540:41:58

They're all...

0:41:580:42:00

-Everyone, basically.

-Yeah.

0:42:000:42:01

'What I've found here is a community that's become afraid of fracking.

0:42:050:42:10

'But what I think it is that feeds their fear is that it's

0:42:180:42:21

'easier to ask questions than to get hard answers.'

0:42:210:42:25

You know, a number of people have said that fracking has ruined their

0:42:330:42:38

water but the trouble is that good, solid, scientific evidence is pretty

0:42:380:42:41

thin on the ground, and what makes it even more complicated is that

0:42:410:42:45

gases like methane, for example, can occur naturally in drinking water.

0:42:450:42:50

What mining bosses say is that incidents of contamination

0:42:500:42:54

are few and far between and the result of accidental chemical

0:42:540:42:58

spillage on the surface or not quite casing the drill holes properly.

0:42:580:43:03

In other words, that they're the result of shoddy practice,

0:43:030:43:06

not fracking.

0:43:060:43:08

'Although there are no national figures,

0:43:140:43:17

'here in Pennsylvania some 6-7% of wells have reported what's

0:43:170:43:21

'termed "well failures" in each of the past three years.

0:43:210:43:26

'But what we don't know is

0:43:270:43:29

'if those problems have led to ground water contamination.

0:43:290:43:33

'To make things even more complicated, US fracking companies

0:43:330:43:37

'have been reluctant to disclose exactly what chemicals they use.'

0:43:370:43:41

You know, the thing about the fracking chemicals is

0:43:430:43:45

that, in America, they're proprietary,

0:43:450:43:48

so that they're a closely guarded secret,

0:43:480:43:50

each company with their own particular mix

0:43:500:43:51

that they don't want the others to know about, so it's like a secret

0:43:510:43:55

recipe, really, like the ingredients of HP Sauce or Coca Cola.

0:43:550:43:59

In fact, even the guys that are handling

0:44:010:44:03

the chemicals on the fracking job might not know what

0:44:030:44:07

the particular chemicals are, and it's that secrecy that really

0:44:070:44:10

is at the heart of, I think, most people's suspicions,

0:44:100:44:14

that it's somehow, you know, a nasty, noxious cocktail of stuff.

0:44:140:44:17

'A new law in Pennsylvania does allow physicians special access to

0:44:260:44:30

'information about the trade's secret chemicals,

0:44:300:44:34

'but it's not straightforward.

0:44:340:44:36

'Dr Amy Pare has treated people with lesions to their faces who

0:44:430:44:47

'she thinks may have been exposed to the fracking chemicals,

0:44:470:44:52

'and the drilling companies will only tell her what those chemicals

0:44:520:44:55

'might be under stringent conditions.'

0:44:550:44:59

Well, they'll reveal those if you sign a confidentiality statement.

0:44:590:45:03

That's a lovely way, that's a Catch-22, isn't it?

0:45:030:45:05

So you can sign the form that says you won't tell anyone else

0:45:050:45:09

-and you know.

-Right.

0:45:090:45:10

What does that mean, you can't tell the patient?

0:45:100:45:13

Oh, correct, you can't tell the patient,

0:45:130:45:15

so, say I suspected that you had been exposed to something.

0:45:150:45:17

If it's on a regular inhalational panel, fine,

0:45:170:45:21

but if you just can't figure out what exactly it was, you would sign

0:45:210:45:26

the confidentiality statement which is for these proprietary chemicals.

0:45:260:45:29

They say that they'll release the chemicals that they may have

0:45:290:45:33

been exposed to and then if those tests come back positive,

0:45:330:45:36

I can't tell you about it.

0:45:360:45:38

So, can you tell my doctor? Can you tell anyone else?

0:45:380:45:41

No, I mean, I'm a plastic surgeon so I would refer you to

0:45:410:45:45

an occupational medicine doctor but I would just refer you.

0:45:450:45:49

So you couldn't then pass the information on to that

0:45:490:45:52

person of what, the information that you'd found?

0:45:520:45:55

No, I would refer you because it's a proprietary chemical.

0:45:550:45:57

It's a trade secret, so...

0:45:570:45:59

But essentially this is a gagging order placed right across you,

0:45:590:46:03

isn't it?

0:46:030:46:05

So, for physicians, in order to take care of your patients,

0:46:050:46:07

there needs to be transparency and this completely breaks

0:46:070:46:11

that down, and so, yes, it's very upsetting for us

0:46:110:46:16

because you want people to get better but if you can't

0:46:160:46:19

explain to someone what's happening to them, how do you get them better?

0:46:190:46:23

And then how do you find out

0:46:230:46:24

if other members of their family may have been exposed or other

0:46:240:46:27

people that are in the area have been exposed?

0:46:270:46:29

Because no-one can talk about it so it's,

0:46:290:46:32

it really goes against any type of modern medicine.

0:46:320:46:35

You know, the thing is, I'm not one for conspiracy theories or

0:46:430:46:47

anything like that but this secrecy is just...weird, really.

0:46:470:46:52

You know, as a kind of academic, as a scientist,

0:46:520:46:56

you're wanting transparency.

0:46:560:46:59

You want openness.

0:46:590:47:00

I know it sounds cliched, but you're wanting the truth.

0:47:000:47:04

What Amy is talking about here is just that.

0:47:040:47:06

She just wants to know the data, the scientific data.

0:47:060:47:10

And the fact that that's been

0:47:100:47:13

kind of held back is just really exasperating.

0:47:130:47:19

It's really frustrating to try and get to the bottom of most of these

0:47:190:47:23

real, you know, controversies and what people want to know.

0:47:230:47:27

They want to know, is it safe?

0:47:270:47:30

We just don't know.

0:47:300:47:31

'But there's one scientist who has carried out a number

0:47:480:47:51

'of studies on the potential impact that fracking has on ground water.

0:47:510:47:56

'Rob Jackson and his research team have tested

0:48:040:48:08

'hundreds of samples from drinking water wells, like this

0:48:080:48:11

'one in north-western Pennsylvania, for evidence of contamination.'

0:48:110:48:17

So where's the water coming from?

0:48:170:48:20

Well, this is coming from a private well for the house

0:48:200:48:23

and it's coming from about 250 feet under the ground, and what Tom's

0:48:230:48:28

doing there is just hooking the hose up and we'll purge the water, run it

0:48:280:48:31

for a while to get a fresh water sample from that, from that well.

0:48:310:48:35

'The water is from a shallow aquifer which provides drinking

0:48:370:48:40

'water to the local community and, unusually, it's full of bubbles.'

0:48:400:48:45

What we have here is basically a methane leak detector.

0:48:470:48:49

This lets us determine if the bubbles we're seeing

0:48:490:48:52

are related to air trapped in the water, if it's

0:48:520:48:54

something combustible like methane or ethane. You'll see as we get.....

0:48:540:48:57

-INSTRUMENT BUZZES

-Wow!

0:48:570:48:59

..Get closer, you know without a doubt this is basically methane

0:48:590:49:02

that's coming from the water.

0:49:020:49:04

'This drinking water is fizzing with gas,

0:49:080:49:13

'so saturated that bubbles trapped in a bottle quickly build up

0:49:130:49:18

'to worrying proportions.'

0:49:180:49:20

Oh, there's a pop there!

0:49:230:49:25

Look at that!

0:49:320:49:34

It's burning.

0:49:350:49:36

A flaming bottle of gas. That's a lot of methane.

0:49:360:49:39

-You don't want that in your water, do you?

-Certainly don't!

0:49:390:49:42

'By analysing the different kinds of carbon

0:49:450:49:49

'and hydrogen that make up methane gas, Rob

0:49:490:49:51

'and his team are able to determine where this gas has come from.'

0:49:510:49:55

Natural gas that's found underground and is formed under high heat

0:49:580:50:01

and pressure, millions and millions of years ago,

0:50:010:50:04

has a different fingerprint than natural gas

0:50:040:50:06

formed in shallower layers by microbes, by biological activity.

0:50:060:50:10

'Lab results are consistent with water that's come up to the

0:50:120:50:16

'surface from the deep shale layer two miles underground.'

0:50:160:50:20

This gas looks like what you find naturally in the Marcellus.

0:50:280:50:32

The gas is actually mined by the companies for extraction.

0:50:320:50:36

Right, so that's down at that level where the fracking's going on,

0:50:360:50:39

-is it?

-It is.

0:50:390:50:40

-Could I drink this?

-You could certainly drink it.

0:50:400:50:43

I mean, yeah, all right, should I drink this?

0:50:430:50:46

I don't know, I probably wouldn't be crazy about drinking it.

0:50:460:50:50

I mean, apart from the bubbles, it looks pretty clear and all the rest of it.

0:50:500:50:54

It does. I certainly wouldn't want to drink it regularly.

0:50:540:50:57

Would I drink that now? Absolutely.

0:50:570:50:59

But would you, would I want to drink that every day

0:50:590:51:01

If I lived in this house? Absolutely not.

0:51:010:51:03

'One of his studies found measurable amounts of methane

0:51:050:51:08

'in 85% of the samples.

0:51:080:51:10

'Now, methane can leak naturally from deep underground

0:51:100:51:14

'but the pattern that Rob found is revealing.

0:51:140:51:17

'He found levels that averaged 17 times higher

0:51:170:51:21

'from water sources located within a kilometre of a natural gas well.'

0:51:210:51:27

Yeah, there's no question that there are homes

0:51:270:51:30

and historical data that show methane in people's water

0:51:300:51:32

long ago, and there are stories going back

0:51:320:51:35

generations of people being able to light their water naturally.

0:51:350:51:38

I think what we see is that you have a much higher

0:51:380:51:42

prevalence of that for people who are living near a natural gas well,

0:51:420:51:46

so it's not that that doesn't occur,

0:51:460:51:48

it's just it occurs a lot more often if you're near a gas well.

0:51:480:51:51

So, the million dollar question, then -

0:51:510:51:53

how is the gas getting to the surface?

0:51:530:51:55

Well, we think the most likely pathway is through the well

0:51:560:51:59

itself by drilling a hole into the ground, by not sealing it

0:51:590:52:03

properly with cement or by using steel tubing where the joints

0:52:030:52:07

aren't sealed, that it's actually kind of leaking out the well itself.

0:52:070:52:11

Probably not what people are most concerned about

0:52:110:52:15

and that's a direct communication from thousands of feet

0:52:150:52:18

underground, all the way up to surface through the rock.

0:52:180:52:21

So it's unlikely, then, that you frack, and that there's a fracture

0:52:210:52:24

goes all the way up and gas starts to kind of follow it?

0:52:240:52:27

Yeah, I think it's very unlikely.

0:52:270:52:28

It's not impossible in an area even like this where you have

0:52:280:52:31

natural fractures and fissures underground.

0:52:310:52:33

A frack might connect to one of those natural fractures

0:52:330:52:37

but in general, I think that's much less,

0:52:370:52:39

much less likely than in a well that's constructed poorly.

0:52:390:52:42

'If he's right, it suggests the problem here is not with

0:52:450:52:48

'fracking deep underground but nearer the surface with well construction,

0:52:480:52:53

'certainly when it comes to methane,

0:52:530:52:56

'but he didn't find any evidence

0:52:560:52:58

'there nor anywhere else that fracking fluid had leaked from a well.

0:52:580:53:03

'It makes for a complex picture, one that's just starting to emerge.'

0:53:030:53:10

So it sounds like there's lots and lots of questions,

0:53:100:53:13

and, at the moment, very few answers.

0:53:130:53:15

Yeah, there are a lot of unanswered questions

0:53:150:53:17

but a lot of good people in different groups around

0:53:170:53:19

the country and around the world trying to answer those questions.

0:53:190:53:22

'And those questions are being asked around the world,

0:53:290:53:32

'because other countries, including Britain, are set to follow

0:53:320:53:36

'the Americans and start fracking,

0:53:360:53:40

'because if you look at a geological

0:53:400:53:42

'map of Britain, it's clear we have substantial reserves of shale gas.'

0:53:420:53:48

So what we're seeing now is, flying over Britain, about maybe

0:53:480:53:55

300 metres above the surface,

0:53:550:53:57

and ahead of us you can see following the road, is Mam Tor.

0:53:570:54:03

So this is where I was just the other day,

0:54:030:54:05

walking around on that hill.

0:54:050:54:07

What a great way to see it.

0:54:070:54:08

And if we start to descend, now this is the beauty of this model...

0:54:080:54:12

We crash through!

0:54:130:54:15

That's the ground, looking from below, and what we see here is the

0:54:190:54:23

bottom surface of the shale, and now you can see clearly this landscape,

0:54:230:54:29

places where the shale is deep, places where the shale is shallow.

0:54:290:54:33

Now we're coming out somewhere in the north of England,

0:54:330:54:36

by the look of it.

0:54:360:54:38

And what we have here is the Pennines, and to the right

0:54:380:54:44

and the left or the east and west,

0:54:440:54:47

the shale goes down deep underneath those areas, so into Lincolnshire

0:54:470:54:51

and, for example, under Blackpool and under Lancashire,

0:54:510:54:55

but also there's shale underneath these areas here, north of London

0:54:550:54:59

then curling round south of London to Sussex and also into Hampshire.

0:54:590:55:03

So a big question, really, how much shale gas is there?

0:55:030:55:07

All I can say is we know a lot about how much shale there is

0:55:070:55:10

but we don't quite know how much gas there is.

0:55:100:55:13

But it looks to me that there's a lot of it.

0:55:130:55:16

Yeah, there's a lot of shale

0:55:160:55:17

so the chances are there's quite a lot of shale gas.

0:55:170:55:20

'The go-ahead to frack has been given by the Government in Britain

0:55:200:55:24

'but on a small scale, and it's going to happen differently here

0:55:240:55:28

'in a legal and regulatory framework that's tougher than in the States.

0:55:280:55:32

'For instance, in the UK, companies will have to disclose

0:55:320:55:36

'what's in their fracking fluids.

0:55:360:55:38

'But what I think British engineers

0:55:400:55:42

'and scientists will have to convincingly demonstrate is not

0:55:420:55:45

'just that they know the risks, but that they will manage them safely.

0:55:450:55:51

'There is one risk that arose here that needs to be put into context.

0:55:590:56:05

'When the first frack happened in Britain in 2011,

0:56:050:56:09

'it triggered an earthquake, a small one, similar to the 300

0:56:090:56:13

'or so that take place in Britain every year because of mining.

0:56:130:56:18

'So, despite the alarm, from that perspective,

0:56:210:56:23

'the seismic risks are small.'

0:56:230:56:26

I set out to explore the American experience of fracking,

0:56:480:56:52

and it seems to me that there's some real lessons to be learned.

0:56:520:56:56

From a technical perspective, there's a consensus emerging

0:56:560:57:00

that says that the risks of ground water contamination are fairly low

0:57:000:57:03

as long as you can ensure the safe engineering of those gas wells.

0:57:030:57:08

In the UK, a Royal Society report came to pretty much the same conclusion.

0:57:080:57:12

You know, there's broader questions.

0:57:140:57:15

I mean, should we do it?

0:57:150:57:17

Do we want to do it? And what is the ultimate price we're going to pay?

0:57:170:57:21

Answering those questions isn't just for scientists.

0:57:210:57:25

It's for all of us.

0:57:250:57:27

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