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I'm Iain Stewart and I'm on the trail of what is perhaps | 0:00:07 | 0:00:12 | |
the most important geological story right now. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
The quest for a new source of power found deep beneath the earth... | 0:00:19 | 0:00:23 | |
..which could change the lives of us all. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
Its discovery has sparked a rush for energy in America... | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
..for a type of gas that appears cheap and plentiful. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:42 | |
And with just one way of getting it out the ground - | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". | 0:00:49 | 0:00:53 | |
What is this energy lifeline that's shaping up to be | 0:00:53 | 0:00:56 | |
the saviour of America? | 0:00:56 | 0:00:58 | |
As a geologist I want to know what it means for the planet, and for us. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:02 | |
'I'm going to meet some of the people who have become rich from | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
'this new energy rush.' | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
This one here looks like a vehicle bought with gas money. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
We see something we want, we buy it. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
'And the communities who are worried about the potential | 0:01:19 | 0:01:23 | |
'risks of fracking.' | 0:01:23 | 0:01:24 | |
Oh, gosh, look at that! | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
-Would I want to drink that every day? -Yeah. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:29 | |
If I lived in this house, absolutely not. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:31 | |
'I've come to America to find out what fracking is, | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
'why it's a potential game-changer | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
'and to see what we in Britain can learn from the American experience.' | 0:01:37 | 0:01:42 | |
MUSIC: "Ain't Wastin' Time No More" by The Allman Brothers | 0:01:56 | 0:01:59 | |
'I'm starting off in the eastern state of Pennsylvania. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:22 | |
'The people here have long looked to the rocks that surround them | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
'for new sources of power and wealth.' | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
What's wonderful about geology, really, is this feeling | 0:02:41 | 0:02:44 | |
that you can read the rocks, read the landscape, | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
every valley and hill tells a story about the planet's past. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:51 | |
And if you go back far enough, | 0:02:53 | 0:02:55 | |
this region here was once swampy forest. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
And that's left its legacy in the thick coal deposits that underlie | 0:02:58 | 0:03:02 | |
this area, that's made Pennsylvania famous, made it rich. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:06 | |
And that's the point, really, is that the towns | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
and cities that have flourished here in the past, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
their success was down to the rocks and the minerals beneath their feet. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:18 | |
'The glory days of coal lie in the past here, | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
'but the people are now returning to the earth for a new | 0:03:28 | 0:03:32 | |
'and controversial source of power. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:34 | |
'It too comes from deep underground.' | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
There it is. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
'And it's starting to make the state rich once again.' | 0:03:42 | 0:03:45 | |
Just glinting through the trees there. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:49 | |
That's what I've come to see, a live drilling platform. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
There's something like a thousand of these drilling sites | 0:04:04 | 0:04:06 | |
scattered across Pennsylvania | 0:04:06 | 0:04:08 | |
because this site is the epicentre of an industrial | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
renaissance in America, one that's creating tens of thousands of jobs, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:16 | |
because things like these are looking for a new form of energy. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:20 | |
For some, the great hope of the future - shale gas. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:25 | |
'It doesn't come out easily, this shale gas, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
'but a new form of extraction, a new technology has made it possible to collect. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:40 | |
'It's called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
'And we're all going to be hearing a lot more about it.' | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
Let me try and convey to you what hydraulic fracturing is. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:03 | |
If you imagined that this here is the ground surface, where we | 0:05:03 | 0:05:09 | |
are standing now, and that this is a drill. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
The drill goes down vertically and it's going down ultimately about | 0:05:12 | 0:05:18 | |
two miles but the point is that when it gets down at depth, it can do | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
something really clever, starts to bend round and it goes horizontal. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:27 | |
And then what happens is you inject down millions of gallons | 0:05:27 | 0:05:31 | |
of water, tonnes of sand, some chemicals all the way down here, | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
and that fractures open naturally occurring cracks in the rock | 0:05:35 | 0:05:41 | |
and you create these fracks, and that allows gas that's been | 0:05:41 | 0:05:46 | |
locked away in the rock to leak out and then move back to the surface. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:50 | |
'This tangle of high-pressure pipes is the reason we're now able | 0:06:03 | 0:06:07 | |
'to extract the gas. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:09 | |
'Because drilling on its own doesn't release the gas. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
'It's trapped in the rocks. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
'You need to pump water under very high pressure deep underground. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:23 | |
'That fractures the bedrock and the gas can then be collected | 0:06:23 | 0:06:28 | |
'and pumped to the surface. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:30 | |
'It's a big engineering project and it's only possible | 0:06:30 | 0:06:36 | |
'because of millions of gallons of water | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
'and chemicals that are added to keep the process lubricated.' | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
What's really clever is you can do that again and again. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
You can have another well that comes down and does that, | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
another one that comes across this way, another one here. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:54 | |
You could do 10, 20, whatever. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
And so it's this combination of horizontal drilling | 0:06:56 | 0:07:00 | |
and also this hydraulic fracturing of rock that has created | 0:07:00 | 0:07:04 | |
this gas revolution. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
'What all of this has done is given us | 0:07:10 | 0:07:12 | |
'access to vast reserves of gas we previously could not reach, | 0:07:12 | 0:07:17 | |
'and that has led to a full-scale dash for gas.' | 0:07:17 | 0:07:21 | |
This is a ten-well pad, we have ten wells on this particular pad, | 0:07:28 | 0:07:33 | |
six of which go out this way | 0:07:33 | 0:07:35 | |
and four of which go out that way. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:37 | |
So how far would they go? | 0:07:37 | 0:07:38 | |
-Would they go beyond that hill there? -Oh, much further. -Really? -Yeah. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:42 | |
Way, way beyond there. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:43 | |
It's about a mile-and-a-half long outward under the ground | 0:07:43 | 0:07:46 | |
-and about a mile-and-a-half deep. -Right. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:50 | |
You know, it's the scale of it. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:52 | |
I'm looking round, I can just see stuff everywhere. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:55 | |
I mean, huge amounts of water, of sand, | 0:07:55 | 0:07:58 | |
of material - of labour, as well, going into these things. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
They are huge investments aren't they? | 0:08:01 | 0:08:03 | |
There is, there's a lot. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:04 | |
There's great investment that takes place. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
This frack spread probably cost anywhere from 30 million to 50 million | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
to put on just for the capital. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:13 | |
'But as a geologist, | 0:08:29 | 0:08:30 | |
'I'm interested in how they've been able to achieve all this. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:33 | |
'And the technology that's made it possible in the first place.' | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
So what are we looking at? | 0:08:48 | 0:08:50 | |
The top of the grey, that's essentially the ground level, is it? | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
The top of the grey is essentially the ground level. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:55 | |
And then that's the drill hole coming down? | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
'They can identify with pinpoint accuracy the fracks that occurred | 0:08:59 | 0:09:03 | |
'deep underground when high pressure water is injected into the shale.' | 0:09:03 | 0:09:08 | |
They're the pops and the cracks that occurred as we stimulated | 0:09:10 | 0:09:15 | |
the reservoirs, so we had geophones down the well bores listening | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
to it so that we could then locate where all this was happening. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:21 | |
So you can hear the pops seven thousand feet below you? | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
That's incredible, isn't it? Look at that. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
And it gives us an idea as to how much of the rock we've stimulated | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
so we can figure out just about how much of an area we're | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
going to drain with the natural gas coming back through the well bore. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
What I find extraordinary is this is you imaging things, | 0:09:36 | 0:09:39 | |
tiny things going on, thousands of feet beneath our kind of feet? | 0:09:39 | 0:09:44 | |
Yeah, exactly, it's pretty cool. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:46 | |
And it's actually a kind of subterranean world that | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
really no-one else sees. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
You're the only person, people that really see this? | 0:09:51 | 0:09:53 | |
The first time you see the 3-D seismic is the first time | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
anyone's actually ever seen what the geology looks like 7,000, 8,000 feet under the earth. | 0:09:56 | 0:10:00 | |
'The United States has been leading the quest to extract shale gas. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:07 | |
'You can quickly see why some might find it attractive. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
'It's unlocked a new source of power from the planet. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
'But shale gas is not unique to America. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:39 | |
'Other countries, including Britain, are looking to follow. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:45 | |
'And to better understand the nature of shale, I've returned home... | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
'..to the Peak District, in Derbyshire. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:56 | |
'As ever, we're drawing upon pockets of energy laid down | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
'millions of years ago, which stretch right across the planet.' | 0:11:10 | 0:11:15 | |
So, to explore the origins of shale, I'm going underground. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:37 | |
I love places like this. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:07 | |
I think it's why I became a geologist actually, the idea of | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
exploring the nooks and crannies of the planet, you know, kind of | 0:12:11 | 0:12:16 | |
peeling back the skin and just diving in, understanding how things work. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:21 | |
And also that feeling that you're seeing a world, | 0:12:23 | 0:12:27 | |
a hidden world, that very few other people see or appreciate. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:31 | |
You know, we're only 50 metres below the surface | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
but we've gone back 350 million years. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:39 | |
'All that time ago, where I'm walking now, | 0:12:41 | 0:12:44 | |
'in fact, the rocks beneath what we call the Midlands, | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
'was at the bottom of a warm, tropical sea. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:51 | |
'A sea crucial to the story of shale gas, | 0:12:54 | 0:12:58 | |
'and evidence for that ancient, vanished water world is everywhere.' | 0:12:58 | 0:13:03 | |
This is such a great place! | 0:13:05 | 0:13:07 | |
Every so often, you get these tantalising glimpses | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
of how the rock used to be, forensic clues, if you like. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
I mean, they're everywhere and there's a really nice bit, | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
actually, there's a cracker just here. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
I'm going to get muddy now, but... see if I can get up here. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
Look at this! Look at that! | 0:13:23 | 0:13:25 | |
You can see this texture here amid all this smearing | 0:13:25 | 0:13:30 | |
and that is a huge, branching coral. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
Look at how it goes. That's huge. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:38 | |
And lots and lots of debris, shale debris around. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:42 | |
In the modern seas, coral reefs are | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
the centrepieces of marine eco-systems | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
and they were exactly the same 350 million years ago. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:53 | |
This tells us that the carboniferous seas were just teeming with life. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:59 | |
'But it wasn't just the sea that was rich with life. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
'The land was, too. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:10 | |
'It was covered in tropical rainforest, | 0:14:15 | 0:14:17 | |
'with lush vegetation and trees up to a hundred feet high. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:22 | |
'Plant life which is equally important to the story of shale.' | 0:14:24 | 0:14:28 | |
The nearest coast was over in that direction. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
There was lagoons and swamps | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
and a huge delta that kind of swept decaying tree and plant material | 0:14:35 | 0:14:39 | |
down into this, which would have been the ocean. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
I've got a sample of rock that you would find here. Look at this. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:48 | |
You can see all the plant material, the leaves, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
the ferns, absolutely gorgeous. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
And so you've got all this decaying plant material deposited | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
alongside decaying sea creatures like we saw in the cave | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
and plankton and bacteria, and they all become this | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
kind of organic mush that ends up embedded in this shale rock. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:07 | |
So inside this shale rock you've got | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
these little pockets of organic material | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
that gets cooked up and transformed into shale gas, | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
and it's this shale gas that's getting touted as the saviour of the planet. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:21 | |
'I want to see for myself this ancient rock that contains | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
'the shale gas. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:34 | |
'So I'm off to visit a fellow geologist | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
'who really knows this rock. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:41 | |
'In a series of warehouses, | 0:15:53 | 0:15:55 | |
'the British Geological Survey keeps 250 kilometres of core samples | 0:15:55 | 0:16:00 | |
'from wells and boreholes all over Britain. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
'Brought down from a dusty top corner is the rock we're all talking about.' | 0:16:04 | 0:16:11 | |
So is this it, this is the shale rock? | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
-Yeah. -Oh, look at that. -It's pretty heavy. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
It IS heavy. So this has been taken out of a drill hole | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
going down what depth roughly for this stuff? | 0:16:20 | 0:16:22 | |
This one's down to about 500 metres, | 0:16:22 | 0:16:24 | |
so about half a kilometre below the surface. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
I guess that's why it's so compact? The layers are kind of squeezed in. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:29 | |
Yes, it's been crushed by a whole lot of rock, weighing down on it | 0:16:29 | 0:16:33 | |
over a very long period of time, so it's pretty hard and compact stuff. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:36 | |
The thing is the rocks that I normally associate with | 0:16:36 | 0:16:39 | |
having gas in them are kind of sands and you can see the pores | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
but here, completely different thing, isn't it? | 0:16:42 | 0:16:44 | |
Yeah, this is so compact, so fine. You can't see anything. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
It's hard to believe there's gas in it at all. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:49 | |
It's incredible, isn't it? | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
'There's only one way to see what's trapped within the rock. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:56 | |
'By scanning wafer-thin samples with a focused beam of electrons, | 0:16:58 | 0:17:03 | |
'images are produced of the hidden world inside.' | 0:17:03 | 0:17:08 | |
So we've got a scanning electron-microscope image here, | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
a live picture, in fact, of a piece of shale. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:17 | |
The darker things here are probably plant material. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
This might be a spore, for example, here, and what you're seeing here | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
on these small, dark grey areas are pores, or holes between the particles, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:28 | |
and it's in these holes or pores that the gas actually collects. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:32 | |
Tiniest little pinpricks of space inside this really compact rock. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:37 | |
Yeah, we're only talking about a micron across | 0:17:37 | 0:17:39 | |
so a thousandth of a millimetre across. Very, very small. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:42 | |
'This is the stuff that drilling companies are after, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:47 | |
'essentially natural gas, but stuck in solid rock, | 0:17:47 | 0:17:51 | |
'sometimes several kilometres beneath the surface of the earth. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
'No wonder it takes all that high-pressure water to get it out. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
'Shale gas isn't just found in remote deserts or beneath the sea, | 0:18:17 | 0:18:21 | |
'places far away from our homes. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
'It's found under our backyards. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
'So it's not only an issue for the energy companies, it involves | 0:18:26 | 0:18:30 | |
'whole communities and there seems to be winners and losers.' | 0:18:30 | 0:18:35 | |
# On the other side of Jordan | 0:18:35 | 0:18:37 | |
# There's construction on a mansion just for me... # | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
Here in Louisiana, in America's Deep South, | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
some appear to have benefited. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
'It has at times transformed the lives of ordinary farmers | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
'because in the US, you can own the gas that lies under your land.' | 0:18:57 | 0:19:02 | |
This whole region is sitting directly on top of the shale rock | 0:19:05 | 0:19:10 | |
and it's the gas from that shale that's made | 0:19:10 | 0:19:13 | |
some of the farmers here millionaires overnight, | 0:19:13 | 0:19:16 | |
or as they're referred to here, "shalionaires." | 0:19:16 | 0:19:21 | |
So what was the kind of sum, then, that you got? | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
Well, I've got a copy of this... | 0:19:30 | 0:19:32 | |
-You've got a copy of what...? -The cheque that they gave me! | 0:19:32 | 0:19:35 | |
Let's have a look at that. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:37 | |
And there it is, well, it's like 434,000. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
434,000. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
I don't think I've seen a figure as much, as high as that. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:47 | |
'CB Leatherwood has made his fortune by selling | 0:19:47 | 0:19:51 | |
'drilling rights on his farm. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
'And now the wells are producing, that lump sum is topped up | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
'by a steady stream of royalty cheques popping into his mailbox.' | 0:19:59 | 0:20:04 | |
And this right here is onions. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:10 | |
-Spring onions, I recognise those. -Oh, yeah. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
'He's given money to his children | 0:20:13 | 0:20:15 | |
'and it allows CB to live the life that he's always dreamed of.' | 0:20:15 | 0:20:20 | |
I have about 30 mules and, I believe, seven horses. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:24 | |
Got one for every occasion. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
This is nice, isn't it? | 0:20:28 | 0:20:29 | |
This one here looks like a vehicle bought with gas money. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:33 | |
Tell me, this one's beautiful. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:35 | |
A Lincoln town car. We see something we want, we buy it. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
So what do you put all this good fortune down to? | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
It was a gift from the good Lord. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
A gift from up above? | 0:20:52 | 0:20:54 | |
-Gift from up above. -Not from down below, not from... | 0:20:54 | 0:20:56 | |
-It was a gift from up above. -I'm a geologist, I would have it as a gift from geology | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
but you have it from up there, upstairs. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
That's right, that's who made it for me. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:03 | |
# I have a source | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
# Of strength when I am weak... # | 0:21:17 | 0:21:23 | |
So, I can understand that some people, if they've got mineral rights, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:27 | |
and they've got gas underneath their land, they're benefiting. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:31 | |
What about other people? How do they benefit from it? | 0:21:31 | 0:21:33 | |
Well, bringing work into the country, communities. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:38 | |
You've got...you bring the drilling rigs in to drill the wells. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:42 | |
It furnishes jobs. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:44 | |
You bring the people in to build the locations. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
Jobs were scarce, the economy wasn't too good before this came around. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:53 | |
I mean, it was awfully slow. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:55 | |
So if we were to do a kind of a poll of all the houses around here | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
and all the people, | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
what proportion do you think would be for shale gas, be positive? | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
I'd say 90% of them. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
Really, as high as that? | 0:22:06 | 0:22:08 | |
It was great to speak to CB today. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
I know what he says you have to take with a pinch of salt. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
He's made a lot of money on the back of shale gas, but what I thought was | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
interesting was the idea the whole community had benefited, | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
that the rewards had seeped through right to the bottom level. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:45 | |
'But not everyone in a community sees cheques or jobs. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:59 | |
'One of the objections has been that all that machinery involved - | 0:23:05 | 0:23:09 | |
'the pipes, the lorries, the rigs, blights rural communities. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:15 | |
'And fracking is now taking place across the US, | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
'from sea to shining sea. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:30 | |
'It's startling how widely it's already spread.' | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
Take a look at this. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:45 | |
You don't just find shale gas in Louisiana or Pennsylvania. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:49 | |
You find it right across America. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
Energy companies reckon that there's more natural gas in America | 0:23:52 | 0:23:56 | |
than there is oil in Saudi Arabia. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
I mean, look at it. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:00 | |
It's estimated something like a million fracking wells, a million! | 0:24:00 | 0:24:04 | |
Production or exploration in 30 states. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
Now, what all that means is an energy renaissance, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
cheap abundant energy right on their doorstep. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
'Geology may be a science, but it seldom happens in isolation. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:21 | |
'It's tied up with politics, with economics | 0:24:23 | 0:24:28 | |
'and you don't have to look far to see how fracking is starting | 0:24:28 | 0:24:32 | |
'to change the politics and economics of this nation.' | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
The thing is, it's looking like a game-changer. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:04 | |
I mean, the price of gas in the US is something like a third | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
of what it is in Britain, and that should be | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
good for the American consumer, for American industry. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:14 | |
But actually, there's already signs that that's happened. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:23 | |
Those energy-hungry users, things like chemical plants, | 0:25:23 | 0:25:27 | |
manufacturing firms, they're already starting to | 0:25:27 | 0:25:30 | |
re-shore their operations | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
and that's because the cheap labour in places like that is trumped by | 0:25:33 | 0:25:38 | |
the cheap energy in places like this. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
'But there's another reason why fracking is being | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
'talked of as a game-changer right across the world. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:51 | |
'It's about how safe our energy supplies are, about energy security.' | 0:25:51 | 0:25:56 | |
'To give you an idea why that matters, I'm going | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
'to leave rocks and geology behind for a moment. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:08 | |
'I've come back to Britain, to the nerve centre | 0:26:09 | 0:26:13 | |
'of its National Grid, to get a sense of the bigger picture. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
'These are the people who have to ensure there's enough power - | 0:26:16 | 0:26:20 | |
'from nuclear, coal, gas, renewables - | 0:26:20 | 0:26:23 | |
to meet our energy needs, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:25 | |
'and I've chosen a rather special moment to visit, | 0:26:25 | 0:26:29 | |
'because tonight they're under pressure.' | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
CHEERING | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
'When Strictly Come Dancing ends, | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
'millions of us will put the kettle on.' | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
Ten! | 0:26:51 | 0:26:52 | |
'And these guys need to bring on more power at that precise moment.' | 0:26:54 | 0:26:59 | |
Eight. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
'What really fascinates me is how they choose to deliver it. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
'Hydro, water power.' | 0:27:08 | 0:27:11 | |
What we have is a top lake and a bottom lake, so during the night, | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
when electricity prices are cheap, we pump water up to the top lake | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
and during the day, we just let the water come down again | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
through the turbines to create electricity very quickly and flexibly. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
So, basically, as soon as electricity demand starts to rise, | 0:27:26 | 0:27:29 | |
-you throw water at it? -We throw water at it, yes. | 0:27:29 | 0:27:32 | |
Right, I'm going to ring the BBC controller now, Bernard, | 0:27:32 | 0:27:36 | |
to see whether he's got an update on the Strictly end time. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:27:38 | 0:27:40 | |
Hello, Jonathan, it's Neil Wise at National Grid. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
Thank you. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:49 | |
'The closing minutes of Strictly are tense.' | 0:27:56 | 0:28:00 | |
-This looks like the end. -OK. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:06 | |
'They have to time the release of water precisely, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:12 | |
'to match the sudden surge in demand for electricity.' | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 | |
Two seconds under, OK. Bye, now. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:22 | |
CHEERING | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
I think we're in business. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
'When the moment comes, Bernard opens the flood gates. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:34 | |
I'll send the Foyers now... | 0:28:34 | 0:28:36 | |
..and Cruachan as well. | 0:28:39 | 0:28:41 | |
I think, probably do the Ffestiniog as well, there we go. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:51 | |
'Demand begins to level off. They've made it. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:04 | |
That was pretty impressive. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:24 | |
I mean, watching those guys operate, watching them | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
judge the moment-by-moment changes in demand and then match | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
that against electricity generation from coal and from nuclear, | 0:29:30 | 0:29:34 | |
from wind, and those injections of water - that's pretty special. | 0:29:34 | 0:29:39 | |
The thing is, for decades that energy mix is what's kept | 0:29:47 | 0:29:50 | |
the lights on in Britain, but things are changing. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:55 | |
'If we want to continue to have this level of control in the future, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
'we're going to have to make sure we have the right energy mix | 0:30:03 | 0:30:07 | |
'at the right price and at the right time. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:10 | |
'You probably won't have heard of the Isle of Grain gas depot | 0:30:20 | 0:30:24 | |
'in Kent, but the chances are you may have used | 0:30:24 | 0:30:26 | |
'some of its gas to keep your house warm. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:30 | |
'It's a good place to see why energy security is so important.' | 0:30:32 | 0:30:38 | |
This is the biggest above-ground gas storage tank in Europe. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
Look at that! It's absolutely humungous. Let's get up there. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:55 | |
Don't know if this is a good idea actually. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:00 | |
'And it's not the only giant container here.' | 0:31:02 | 0:31:05 | |
Ha! | 0:31:08 | 0:31:09 | |
'In total, there are around a million cubic metres of gas.' | 0:31:13 | 0:31:17 | |
More steps! | 0:31:20 | 0:31:22 | |
'That may sound a lot, but we're an energy-hungry nation | 0:31:22 | 0:31:26 | |
'and across Britain, we store only enough | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
'for around two weeks of supplies.' | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
Something like 40% of the electricity we get | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
comes from burning gas, | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
and in future years that's going to dramatically increase. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
But the thing is, you see the gas that's in there and in there | 0:31:50 | 0:31:54 | |
and in there, it's not our gas. | 0:31:54 | 0:31:57 | |
Let me show you. | 0:31:57 | 0:31:58 | |
It comes from far, far away, brought in by ships like that. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:02 | |
'And this is not just any old ship. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:08 | |
'It helps keep Britain afloat. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:11 | |
'More than half of our gas is imported, | 0:32:15 | 0:32:18 | |
'a lot of it from one tiny country.' | 0:32:22 | 0:32:25 | |
It's just like a massive wall of steel. | 0:32:27 | 0:32:30 | |
Apparently, it's a quarter of a mile long from, bloody hell, | 0:32:32 | 0:32:36 | |
from there all the way across right to the far end there. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
And this monster has come 7,000 miles. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:43 | |
This is from Qatar, in the Middle East, right beside Iraq, to here. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:47 | |
You can see the gas just getting taken off through these unloading pipes. | 0:32:48 | 0:32:52 | |
There's enough gas in there to power 70,000 homes for a year. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:59 | |
'We get our natural gas from countries in the Middle East, | 0:33:09 | 0:33:12 | |
'from Africa and from Russia, | 0:33:12 | 0:33:15 | |
'so the political uncertainties are obvious. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
'And we're also subject to the vagaries of the market.' | 0:33:28 | 0:33:31 | |
Those beasts seem so slow and lumbering | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
but they operate in this fast-paced environment. | 0:33:39 | 0:33:43 | |
I mean, for a start, there's no guarantee that ship will | 0:33:43 | 0:33:46 | |
ever reach its intended destination. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
It might get diverted, mid-ocean, from Europe to Asia, just | 0:33:49 | 0:33:52 | |
because there's someone there that will pay a higher price for gas. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:56 | |
And that's the nub of the problem, really. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:01 | |
There is no absolute energy security with ships like that. | 0:34:01 | 0:34:05 | |
'That's what we, and all countries, mean by energy security - | 0:34:09 | 0:34:15 | |
'the ability to have certain supplies of gas at a price they can control and afford. | 0:34:15 | 0:34:20 | |
'And that's the other attraction of fracking. It's home-grown energy. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:27 | |
'Many here in America have become almost heady with the potential | 0:34:37 | 0:34:41 | |
'of fracking, for its economic benefits and energy security.' | 0:34:41 | 0:34:46 | |
As a geologist, you're only too aware that the planet | 0:34:47 | 0:34:51 | |
can change our world either for the better or for the worse, and there's | 0:34:51 | 0:34:56 | |
something in these hills that... a niggling thought that something's | 0:34:56 | 0:34:59 | |
not quite right, that there's more to this than meets the eye. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
'There's a lot of questions being asked about fracking. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:09 | |
'Some are about whether we should be investing in another | 0:35:09 | 0:35:13 | |
'carbon-based form of energy at all, | 0:35:13 | 0:35:15 | |
'and over the next few years, this charged debate is going to unfold. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:20 | |
'But what I want to look at now are some of the more immediate risks. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:25 | |
'I'm back in Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Endless Mountains. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:43 | |
'It's a good place to get to grips with one of the concerns | 0:35:43 | 0:35:47 | |
'I'm most interested in trying to understand. | 0:35:47 | 0:35:50 | |
'The risks that gas and contaminated water | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
'might be leaking out of the wells into the surrounding land.' | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
For months now, I've been reading solidly about fracking, just about | 0:36:07 | 0:36:10 | |
everything I can find, especially on the internet, | 0:36:10 | 0:36:13 | |
and if you go onto the internet, | 0:36:13 | 0:36:15 | |
what you find a lot of the stuff is about, you know, | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
people falling ill and the health effects of it and you can't really | 0:36:18 | 0:36:23 | |
find very much in the scientific literature about this, so what | 0:36:23 | 0:36:27 | |
I'm really interested in is finding a bit more about this, and actually, | 0:36:27 | 0:36:31 | |
it's been surprisingly difficult to find someone to talk about it. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
'That's because I've heard that some people who have fallen ill | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
'have received compensation and aren't allowed to talk about it.' | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
But I'm hoping today, up in these hills we're going to find | 0:36:45 | 0:36:50 | |
'a couple who are very happy to talk about it | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
'because they're in a bad way, apparently.' | 0:36:53 | 0:36:56 | |
Hello? | 0:37:21 | 0:37:22 | |
-Hi, are you Janet? -Yeah. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:29 | |
-I'm a very wet Iain. Hiya, how are you? -Welcome, come in. -Thank you. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:32 | |
When did you first hear that word, "fracking"? | 0:37:34 | 0:37:37 | |
How many years ago was it? | 0:37:37 | 0:37:39 | |
Two, at least 2½ years ago. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:41 | |
-Just as recently as that - two or three years ago? -Yeah. | 0:37:41 | 0:37:44 | |
I didn't really pay attention, you know, | 0:37:44 | 0:37:46 | |
until we got affected, | 0:37:46 | 0:37:49 | |
and then once we got affected, then you begin to wonder why. | 0:37:49 | 0:37:54 | |
That's when I actually looked at the word "fracking." | 0:37:55 | 0:37:58 | |
-Right. -You know what I mean? | 0:37:58 | 0:38:00 | |
Like, how could this have happened to us? | 0:38:00 | 0:38:02 | |
'Janet and Fred McIntyre live in a remote area of rural Pennsylvania. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:09 | |
'Two years ago, the energy companies arrived and began to frack for gas. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:13 | |
'Shortly afterward, the McIntyres and some of their neighbours fell ill. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:20 | |
'They fear that it might be connected to fracking, | 0:38:25 | 0:38:29 | |
'that somehow chemicals might have leaked into their drinking water. | 0:38:29 | 0:38:33 | |
'And they're now struggling to understand what is happening to them and their community.' | 0:38:35 | 0:38:40 | |
We got the flu, well, what we thought was the flu, got horribly ill, | 0:38:41 | 0:38:46 | |
violently ill and we were like that for a week. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:51 | |
'Because of their concerns, | 0:38:55 | 0:38:58 | |
'the McIntyres only use bottled water now, | 0:38:58 | 0:39:01 | |
'for drinking, washing and cooking. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:04 | |
'The US Department of Environmental Protection | 0:39:06 | 0:39:09 | |
'and the energy companies themselves tested their drinking water | 0:39:09 | 0:39:13 | |
'and they gave it a clean bill of health. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:18 | |
'But the McIntyres are unconvinced. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:20 | |
'It's a confusing picture. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
'We simply don't have the scientific evidence that separates out | 0:39:25 | 0:39:28 | |
'coincidence from a direct cause.' | 0:39:28 | 0:39:32 | |
Since they began drilling here, I suffer from seizures | 0:39:33 | 0:39:39 | |
and through all this, right before our water turned purple, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:47 | |
I went into renal failure. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:50 | |
So it's quite a lot of completely different things, it's not just... | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
Yeah, it seems to affect the very old, the very young and | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
if you have like a low immune system or you're sick, you really get sick. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:03 | |
These things have happened to me. | 0:40:03 | 0:40:06 | |
You can't prove it scientifically, that, | 0:40:06 | 0:40:08 | |
but you're convinced, are you? | 0:40:08 | 0:40:12 | |
It just seems weird. | 0:40:12 | 0:40:13 | |
'Around 50 people in their community now only use | 0:40:24 | 0:40:28 | |
'water from bottles, and paid for by charity, | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
'which Janet helps to deliver to isolated friends and neighbours.' | 0:40:31 | 0:40:36 | |
-Hi, there, how are you? -Hi, there. -What's your name? -Iain. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
Iain, OK. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:41 | |
All the way from Scotland, to deliver your water. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
Oh, bless you! | 0:40:44 | 0:40:46 | |
Six of these? | 0:40:46 | 0:40:47 | |
HE GROANS | 0:40:47 | 0:40:49 | |
We've good water but it's contaminated now. | 0:40:49 | 0:40:53 | |
I've lived here since eight years old and now they're ruining it. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:07 | |
Where do you want it? | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
The water stinks. The animals won't drink it. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
I don't drink the water any more, | 0:41:12 | 0:41:14 | |
and I have a hard time swallowing and breathing, and there's nothing they can do. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:22 | |
So do you know anyone around here, any of these houses, | 0:41:29 | 0:41:33 | |
that actually have decent water from their boreholes? | 0:41:33 | 0:41:36 | |
They used to but they're all on the water run. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
They go to the water bank or... | 0:41:40 | 0:41:43 | |
They're all going to your water bank? | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
Yeah. That one, that one, that one, that one. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:48 | |
That one, that one, this one, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:54 | |
that one, myself over there, beside me. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
They're all... | 0:41:58 | 0:42:00 | |
-Everyone, basically. -Yeah. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:01 | |
'What I've found here is a community that's become afraid of fracking. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:10 | |
'But what I think it is that feeds their fear is that it's | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
'easier to ask questions than to get hard answers.' | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
You know, a number of people have said that fracking has ruined their | 0:42:33 | 0:42:38 | |
water but the trouble is that good, solid, scientific evidence is pretty | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
thin on the ground, and what makes it even more complicated is that | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
gases like methane, for example, can occur naturally in drinking water. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:50 | |
What mining bosses say is that incidents of contamination | 0:42:50 | 0:42:54 | |
are few and far between and the result of accidental chemical | 0:42:54 | 0:42:58 | |
spillage on the surface or not quite casing the drill holes properly. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:03 | |
In other words, that they're the result of shoddy practice, | 0:43:03 | 0:43:06 | |
not fracking. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:08 | |
'Although there are no national figures, | 0:43:14 | 0:43:17 | |
'here in Pennsylvania some 6-7% of wells have reported what's | 0:43:17 | 0:43:21 | |
'termed "well failures" in each of the past three years. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:26 | |
'But what we don't know is | 0:43:27 | 0:43:29 | |
'if those problems have led to ground water contamination. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
'To make things even more complicated, US fracking companies | 0:43:33 | 0:43:37 | |
'have been reluctant to disclose exactly what chemicals they use.' | 0:43:37 | 0:43:41 | |
You know, the thing about the fracking chemicals is | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
that, in America, they're proprietary, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:48 | |
so that they're a closely guarded secret, | 0:43:48 | 0:43:50 | |
each company with their own particular mix | 0:43:50 | 0:43:51 | |
that they don't want the others to know about, so it's like a secret | 0:43:51 | 0:43:55 | |
recipe, really, like the ingredients of HP Sauce or Coca Cola. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:59 | |
In fact, even the guys that are handling | 0:44:01 | 0:44:03 | |
the chemicals on the fracking job might not know what | 0:44:03 | 0:44:07 | |
the particular chemicals are, and it's that secrecy that really | 0:44:07 | 0:44:10 | |
is at the heart of, I think, most people's suspicions, | 0:44:10 | 0:44:14 | |
that it's somehow, you know, a nasty, noxious cocktail of stuff. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:17 | |
'A new law in Pennsylvania does allow physicians special access to | 0:44:26 | 0:44:30 | |
'information about the trade's secret chemicals, | 0:44:30 | 0:44:34 | |
'but it's not straightforward. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:36 | |
'Dr Amy Pare has treated people with lesions to their faces who | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
'she thinks may have been exposed to the fracking chemicals, | 0:44:47 | 0:44:52 | |
'and the drilling companies will only tell her what those chemicals | 0:44:52 | 0:44:55 | |
'might be under stringent conditions.' | 0:44:55 | 0:44:59 | |
Well, they'll reveal those if you sign a confidentiality statement. | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
That's a lovely way, that's a Catch-22, isn't it? | 0:45:03 | 0:45:05 | |
So you can sign the form that says you won't tell anyone else | 0:45:05 | 0:45:09 | |
-and you know. -Right. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:10 | |
What does that mean, you can't tell the patient? | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
Oh, correct, you can't tell the patient, | 0:45:13 | 0:45:15 | |
so, say I suspected that you had been exposed to something. | 0:45:15 | 0:45:17 | |
If it's on a regular inhalational panel, fine, | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
but if you just can't figure out what exactly it was, you would sign | 0:45:21 | 0:45:26 | |
the confidentiality statement which is for these proprietary chemicals. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
They say that they'll release the chemicals that they may have | 0:45:29 | 0:45:33 | |
been exposed to and then if those tests come back positive, | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
I can't tell you about it. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:38 | |
So, can you tell my doctor? Can you tell anyone else? | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
No, I mean, I'm a plastic surgeon so I would refer you to | 0:45:41 | 0:45:45 | |
an occupational medicine doctor but I would just refer you. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:49 | |
So you couldn't then pass the information on to that | 0:45:49 | 0:45:52 | |
person of what, the information that you'd found? | 0:45:52 | 0:45:55 | |
No, I would refer you because it's a proprietary chemical. | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
It's a trade secret, so... | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
But essentially this is a gagging order placed right across you, | 0:45:59 | 0:46:03 | |
isn't it? | 0:46:03 | 0:46:05 | |
So, for physicians, in order to take care of your patients, | 0:46:05 | 0:46:07 | |
there needs to be transparency and this completely breaks | 0:46:07 | 0:46:11 | |
that down, and so, yes, it's very upsetting for us | 0:46:11 | 0:46:16 | |
because you want people to get better but if you can't | 0:46:16 | 0:46:19 | |
explain to someone what's happening to them, how do you get them better? | 0:46:19 | 0:46:23 | |
And then how do you find out | 0:46:23 | 0:46:24 | |
if other members of their family may have been exposed or other | 0:46:24 | 0:46:27 | |
people that are in the area have been exposed? | 0:46:27 | 0:46:29 | |
Because no-one can talk about it so it's, | 0:46:29 | 0:46:32 | |
it really goes against any type of modern medicine. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:35 | |
You know, the thing is, I'm not one for conspiracy theories or | 0:46:43 | 0:46:47 | |
anything like that but this secrecy is just...weird, really. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:52 | |
You know, as a kind of academic, as a scientist, | 0:46:52 | 0:46:56 | |
you're wanting transparency. | 0:46:56 | 0:46:59 | |
You want openness. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:00 | |
I know it sounds cliched, but you're wanting the truth. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:04 | |
What Amy is talking about here is just that. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:06 | |
She just wants to know the data, the scientific data. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
And the fact that that's been | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
kind of held back is just really exasperating. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:19 | |
It's really frustrating to try and get to the bottom of most of these | 0:47:19 | 0:47:23 | |
real, you know, controversies and what people want to know. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:27 | |
They want to know, is it safe? | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
We just don't know. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:31 | |
'But there's one scientist who has carried out a number | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
'of studies on the potential impact that fracking has on ground water. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:56 | |
'Rob Jackson and his research team have tested | 0:48:04 | 0:48:08 | |
'hundreds of samples from drinking water wells, like this | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
'one in north-western Pennsylvania, for evidence of contamination.' | 0:48:11 | 0:48:17 | |
So where's the water coming from? | 0:48:17 | 0:48:20 | |
Well, this is coming from a private well for the house | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
and it's coming from about 250 feet under the ground, and what Tom's | 0:48:23 | 0:48:28 | |
doing there is just hooking the hose up and we'll purge the water, run it | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
for a while to get a fresh water sample from that, from that well. | 0:48:31 | 0:48:35 | |
'The water is from a shallow aquifer which provides drinking | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
'water to the local community and, unusually, it's full of bubbles.' | 0:48:40 | 0:48:45 | |
What we have here is basically a methane leak detector. | 0:48:47 | 0:48:49 | |
This lets us determine if the bubbles we're seeing | 0:48:49 | 0:48:52 | |
are related to air trapped in the water, if it's | 0:48:52 | 0:48:54 | |
something combustible like methane or ethane. You'll see as we get..... | 0:48:54 | 0:48:57 | |
-INSTRUMENT BUZZES -Wow! | 0:48:57 | 0:48:59 | |
..Get closer, you know without a doubt this is basically methane | 0:48:59 | 0:49:02 | |
that's coming from the water. | 0:49:02 | 0:49:04 | |
'This drinking water is fizzing with gas, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:13 | |
'so saturated that bubbles trapped in a bottle quickly build up | 0:49:13 | 0:49:18 | |
'to worrying proportions.' | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 | |
Oh, there's a pop there! | 0:49:23 | 0:49:25 | |
Look at that! | 0:49:32 | 0:49:34 | |
It's burning. | 0:49:35 | 0:49:36 | |
A flaming bottle of gas. That's a lot of methane. | 0:49:36 | 0:49:39 | |
-You don't want that in your water, do you? -Certainly don't! | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
'By analysing the different kinds of carbon | 0:49:45 | 0:49:49 | |
'and hydrogen that make up methane gas, Rob | 0:49:49 | 0:49:51 | |
'and his team are able to determine where this gas has come from.' | 0:49:51 | 0:49:55 | |
Natural gas that's found underground and is formed under high heat | 0:49:58 | 0:50:01 | |
and pressure, millions and millions of years ago, | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
has a different fingerprint than natural gas | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
formed in shallower layers by microbes, by biological activity. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:10 | |
'Lab results are consistent with water that's come up to the | 0:50:12 | 0:50:16 | |
'surface from the deep shale layer two miles underground.' | 0:50:16 | 0:50:20 | |
This gas looks like what you find naturally in the Marcellus. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
The gas is actually mined by the companies for extraction. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:36 | |
Right, so that's down at that level where the fracking's going on, | 0:50:36 | 0:50:39 | |
-is it? -It is. | 0:50:39 | 0:50:40 | |
-Could I drink this? -You could certainly drink it. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:43 | |
I mean, yeah, all right, should I drink this? | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
I don't know, I probably wouldn't be crazy about drinking it. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:50 | |
I mean, apart from the bubbles, it looks pretty clear and all the rest of it. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:54 | |
It does. I certainly wouldn't want to drink it regularly. | 0:50:54 | 0:50:57 | |
Would I drink that now? Absolutely. | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
But would you, would I want to drink that every day | 0:50:59 | 0:51:01 | |
If I lived in this house? Absolutely not. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:03 | |
'One of his studies found measurable amounts of methane | 0:51:05 | 0:51:08 | |
'in 85% of the samples. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
'Now, methane can leak naturally from deep underground | 0:51:10 | 0:51:14 | |
'but the pattern that Rob found is revealing. | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
'He found levels that averaged 17 times higher | 0:51:17 | 0:51:21 | |
'from water sources located within a kilometre of a natural gas well.' | 0:51:21 | 0:51:27 | |
Yeah, there's no question that there are homes | 0:51:27 | 0:51:30 | |
and historical data that show methane in people's water | 0:51:30 | 0:51:32 | |
long ago, and there are stories going back | 0:51:32 | 0:51:35 | |
generations of people being able to light their water naturally. | 0:51:35 | 0:51:38 | |
I think what we see is that you have a much higher | 0:51:38 | 0:51:42 | |
prevalence of that for people who are living near a natural gas well, | 0:51:42 | 0:51:46 | |
so it's not that that doesn't occur, | 0:51:46 | 0:51:48 | |
it's just it occurs a lot more often if you're near a gas well. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
So, the million dollar question, then - | 0:51:51 | 0:51:53 | |
how is the gas getting to the surface? | 0:51:53 | 0:51:55 | |
Well, we think the most likely pathway is through the well | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
itself by drilling a hole into the ground, by not sealing it | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
properly with cement or by using steel tubing where the joints | 0:52:03 | 0:52:07 | |
aren't sealed, that it's actually kind of leaking out the well itself. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:11 | |
Probably not what people are most concerned about | 0:52:11 | 0:52:15 | |
and that's a direct communication from thousands of feet | 0:52:15 | 0:52:18 | |
underground, all the way up to surface through the rock. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
So it's unlikely, then, that you frack, and that there's a fracture | 0:52:21 | 0:52:24 | |
goes all the way up and gas starts to kind of follow it? | 0:52:24 | 0:52:27 | |
Yeah, I think it's very unlikely. | 0:52:27 | 0:52:28 | |
It's not impossible in an area even like this where you have | 0:52:28 | 0:52:31 | |
natural fractures and fissures underground. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:33 | |
A frack might connect to one of those natural fractures | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
but in general, I think that's much less, | 0:52:37 | 0:52:39 | |
much less likely than in a well that's constructed poorly. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
'If he's right, it suggests the problem here is not with | 0:52:45 | 0:52:48 | |
'fracking deep underground but nearer the surface with well construction, | 0:52:48 | 0:52:53 | |
'certainly when it comes to methane, | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
'but he didn't find any evidence | 0:52:56 | 0:52:58 | |
'there nor anywhere else that fracking fluid had leaked from a well. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:03 | |
'It makes for a complex picture, one that's just starting to emerge.' | 0:53:03 | 0:53:10 | |
So it sounds like there's lots and lots of questions, | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
and, at the moment, very few answers. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:15 | |
Yeah, there are a lot of unanswered questions | 0:53:15 | 0:53:17 | |
but a lot of good people in different groups around | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
the country and around the world trying to answer those questions. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
'And those questions are being asked around the world, | 0:53:29 | 0:53:32 | |
'because other countries, including Britain, are set to follow | 0:53:32 | 0:53:36 | |
'the Americans and start fracking, | 0:53:36 | 0:53:40 | |
'because if you look at a geological | 0:53:40 | 0:53:42 | |
'map of Britain, it's clear we have substantial reserves of shale gas.' | 0:53:42 | 0:53:48 | |
So what we're seeing now is, flying over Britain, about maybe | 0:53:48 | 0:53:55 | |
300 metres above the surface, | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
and ahead of us you can see following the road, is Mam Tor. | 0:53:57 | 0:54:03 | |
So this is where I was just the other day, | 0:54:03 | 0:54:05 | |
walking around on that hill. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:07 | |
What a great way to see it. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:08 | |
And if we start to descend, now this is the beauty of this model... | 0:54:08 | 0:54:12 | |
We crash through! | 0:54:13 | 0:54:15 | |
That's the ground, looking from below, and what we see here is the | 0:54:19 | 0:54:23 | |
bottom surface of the shale, and now you can see clearly this landscape, | 0:54:23 | 0:54:29 | |
places where the shale is deep, places where the shale is shallow. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:33 | |
Now we're coming out somewhere in the north of England, | 0:54:33 | 0:54:36 | |
by the look of it. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:38 | |
And what we have here is the Pennines, and to the right | 0:54:38 | 0:54:44 | |
and the left or the east and west, | 0:54:44 | 0:54:47 | |
the shale goes down deep underneath those areas, so into Lincolnshire | 0:54:47 | 0:54:51 | |
and, for example, under Blackpool and under Lancashire, | 0:54:51 | 0:54:55 | |
but also there's shale underneath these areas here, north of London | 0:54:55 | 0:54:59 | |
then curling round south of London to Sussex and also into Hampshire. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:03 | |
So a big question, really, how much shale gas is there? | 0:55:03 | 0:55:07 | |
All I can say is we know a lot about how much shale there is | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
but we don't quite know how much gas there is. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:13 | |
But it looks to me that there's a lot of it. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:16 | |
Yeah, there's a lot of shale | 0:55:16 | 0:55:17 | |
so the chances are there's quite a lot of shale gas. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:20 | |
'The go-ahead to frack has been given by the Government in Britain | 0:55:20 | 0:55:24 | |
'but on a small scale, and it's going to happen differently here | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
'in a legal and regulatory framework that's tougher than in the States. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
'For instance, in the UK, companies will have to disclose | 0:55:32 | 0:55:36 | |
'what's in their fracking fluids. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:38 | |
'But what I think British engineers | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
'and scientists will have to convincingly demonstrate is not | 0:55:42 | 0:55:45 | |
'just that they know the risks, but that they will manage them safely. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:51 | |
'There is one risk that arose here that needs to be put into context. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:05 | |
'When the first frack happened in Britain in 2011, | 0:56:05 | 0:56:09 | |
'it triggered an earthquake, a small one, similar to the 300 | 0:56:09 | 0:56:13 | |
'or so that take place in Britain every year because of mining. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:18 | |
'So, despite the alarm, from that perspective, | 0:56:21 | 0:56:23 | |
'the seismic risks are small.' | 0:56:23 | 0:56:26 | |
I set out to explore the American experience of fracking, | 0:56:48 | 0:56:52 | |
and it seems to me that there's some real lessons to be learned. | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
From a technical perspective, there's a consensus emerging | 0:56:56 | 0:57:00 | |
that says that the risks of ground water contamination are fairly low | 0:57:00 | 0:57:03 | |
as long as you can ensure the safe engineering of those gas wells. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:08 | |
In the UK, a Royal Society report came to pretty much the same conclusion. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
You know, there's broader questions. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:15 | |
I mean, should we do it? | 0:57:15 | 0:57:17 | |
Do we want to do it? And what is the ultimate price we're going to pay? | 0:57:17 | 0:57:21 | |
Answering those questions isn't just for scientists. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:25 | |
It's for all of us. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:27 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:57:52 | 0:57:55 |