Sorry if you couldn't make it to the recent meeting on the health impacts of fracking by health charity Medact. We’d like to tell you about it briefly, and also make a couple of points about the Draft Joint Minerals Plan, which West Sussex County Councillors will soon have to address. Here’s a link to a review of the Medact meeting in The Middy: http://www.midsussextimes.co.uk/mobile/news/health/warnings-on-the-health-effects-of-fracking-1-7335089. Panellist Dr Tim Thornton, a retired GP, came down from Ryedale in North Yorkshire to address the meeting in Haywards Heath. He spoke of the weight of peer-reviewed science gradually accumulating about the health dangers of unconventional oil and gas exploration. Children, he said, were particularly at risk, along with the unborn. Over 80% of the scientific papers published on fracking have come out in the last two years, he said, and over 80% of those identified health harms. Problems in children included rashes, nausea, headaches, nosebleeds, wheezing and neurological problems, and in adults increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Balcombe resident Charles Metcalfe stressed that the meeting was not just about Balcombe. Thousands of wells could be drilled across the Weald, many thousands across the UK. To back this up, a short film was shown of Stephen Sanderson (CEO of UKOG, the company who have been exploring for oil at Horse Hill near Gatwick) speaking to potential shareholders and explaining how his company would like to drill a very large number of wells across the area. This is the full transcript of his speech: ‘(Horse Hill) is located in the South East of England, just north of Gatwick, and perhaps, you know, the game changing part of it really is what lies underneath and that's a very thick sequence of oil-bearing shales and limestones that we sort of call tight oil. We are dealing with quite a pervasive type of deposit over our area, that's 55 square miles but I think more importantly, you know, these deposits extend over 1,200 square miles or so or more of the Weald. So if we can put a commercial development together, then clearly you know, you can have incremental step-outs over quite a large area. This type of oil deposit very much depends on being able to drill your wells almost back to back so it becomes very much like, erm, an industrialised process. Because that's how you get the improvements in cost and efficiencies, the flow at the start of the year when you put the well on, compared to the flow at the end of that year can decline by 60 or 70 % or so, so generally you have to drill a lot of wells close to each other so you can maintain a certain level of production. The potential to actually increase the flow rate using horizontal drilling and stimulation is very considerable. I mean, we'd definitely come back to this well, we want to put it on to a much longer long-term production test. The biggest issue we have, in fact the whole of the industry has in the UK onshore, is the time it takes to get permissions to do anything. Hopefully we're meeting with the government fairly shortly in the coming weeks on quite a high level to see if we can fast track this process.' See the video of the speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zBAD-EJHyk And see this article from Ruth Hayhurst discussing the prospect of the Weald being turned into an oilfield: https://drillordrop.com/2016/04/18/weald-oil-production-could-generate-52bn-over-40-years-but-2400-wells-needed/ According to Sussex resident Professor Lawrence Dunne (an expert in chemical physics who was on the panel at the meeting): ‘No long-term study has been done anywhere in the world on the health effects of chronic exposure of human populations to the emissions from gas/oil extraction. Hence, the long-term risk is not known. However, it is known that extended exposure to the radioactive and chemical emissions typically associated with gas/oil operations poses a serious mortality and morbidity risk. The risk to residents living within a few hundred metres of a well pad may be very significant. ‘Of very considerable concern is the potential use of extremely toxic hydrofluoric acid for the extraction of tight-oil in the Sussex Weald. Very few politicians and councillors appreciate the risks involved.' Indeed there have already been disturbing reports from around onshore oil developments in this country that residents have already suffered, particularly from leakages of gas. Those near Horse Hill have experienced strange smells, headaches and nosebleeds: http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/staff-animals-horse-hill-equestrian-11003757 These symptoms are similar to those experienced at a conventional oil site in West Newton in East Yorkshire in 2014, and have much in common with effects experienced by those living among oil and gas developments in Australia and America: https://drillordrop.com/2015/02/05/investigation-what-went-wrong-at-west-newton/ The meeting in Haywards Heath concluded with a speech by John Ashton, a career diplomat who served as UK Special Representative for Climate Change from 2006-2012 under three successive UK Foreign Secretaries. 'And as for the climate, it is perfectly clear,’ he said, ‘You can be in favour of fracking and other methods for getting ever more oil and gas out of the ground. Or you can be in favour of dealing with climate change. But you cannot be in favour of both at the same time. Those who claim otherwise are either deceiving themselves or trying to deceive you.' He continued: 'In the case of unconventional oil and gas, we do not have a government that is on our side. We have a government which is the enemy of the people.' His full speech can be read here: http://frackfreesurrey.com/2016/04/john-ashton-speech/#more-1198 And so to the Draft Joint Minerals Plan. We are aware that West Sussex County Councillors will soon be considering WSCC’s Draft Joint Minerals Plan: https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/media/7363/mlp_draft_reg18plan.pdf We believe that as it stands it affords insufficient protection where oil and gas is concerned. Ten of the twenty four policies outlined in the document are relevant to hydrocarbon extraction/fracking. We in Balcombe contest much of the content. We believe that neither planning officers nor councillors are in possession of all the evidence. We are in the process of fully analysing this consultation document now. An expansion of oil and gas exploration in Sussex to the extent required for fracked or acidised wells would be completely at odds with the 'vision' and 'strategic objectives' of this document. This is a document that will determine the future nature of our county. It is not something to nod through uncritically on the basis that national government has declared hydrocarbon extraction as a desirable way forward. We hope our councillors will consider the views of communities, and take a moral, open-minded stance on whether we should be seeking more oil and gas in West Sussex. Government policy on drilling and fracking is still unclear. Recent changes to the law, rules and recommendations around fracking are still incomplete. Recently in the House of Commons, Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom made it clear that refinements to the Infrastructure Act in relation to fracking apply to ‘what happens underground, not at the surface’. ‘We’ve held a consultation and new restrictions will be announced soon about drilling at the surface,’ she said, referring to special areas. Already the law allows for fracking in National Parks, AONBs etc in ‘exceptional circumstances’ or when it is considered to be ‘in the national interest’ – so long as the fracking happens more than 1,200m below the surface (as opposed to 1,000m elsewhere). The WSCC draft document underlines this. This means there is, in truth, no guarantee that there will be no fracking from the surface in our special areas. Don't forget that already current legislation clearly means that many of these protected areas can be drilled under, putting air quality at risk, but also risking the possibility of fluids and gases travelling along fault lines, natural or man-made, into soil, water or air within the protected areas. This article by David Smythe Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, University of Glasgow, explains this potential mechanism: http://www.davidsmythe.org/fracking/fracking.htm The government has changed the definition of fracking so that it now legally refers just to the actual moment of fracturing the rock below ground, not to activity above ground before and after the actual fracking moment. And the term ‘fracking’ now applies only to ‘jobs’ where more than 10,000 cubic metres of water is used for the whole well, or more than 1,000 cubic metres per section of the well. This means that many activities previously classified as ‘fracking’ will no longer be called fracking. And that will give a lot of leeway to the oil and gas industry. In addition, it seems that the industry will begin in the Weald by targeting oil from the easier-to-access calcium-containing strata. Tiny pockets of oil trapped there can be freed by ‘acidising’ – making pathways through the rock using acids. This is what was done recently at Horse Hill, and it brings its own hazards and stresses for local communities. Like oil in shale, this ‘tight oil’ trapped in calcium-containing seams of rock is not free-flowing, so it’s known as ‘unconventional’, as opposed to ‘conventional’ oil extracted from the more porous rocks through which the oil can easily flow once the well is drilled. Early proposals by UKOG (the company exploring at Horse Hill) for the Weald suggest super-pads of 16 well slots, 12 of them producing wells with associated horizontal spurs, machinery, flaring and traffic (the others for water and waste disposal). Although not fracking, this acidising process will bring heavy industrialisation of the countryside just as fracking does (as outlined above by CEO Stephen Sanderson.) http://www.ukogplc.com/ul/executive-summary-report---xodus.pdf And further below these calcium-rich layers is shale – we should recognise that extracting this shale oil is very likely the end game once the ‘easy’ oil has been taken, and we should not be fooled into believing otherwise. Fracking also has serious implications for climate change – and not only because it releases new, once inaccessible fossil fuels. In America over the recent fracking years, studies have highlighted a very significant increase in methane released to the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. More methane escapes typically from fracked wells than from conventional wells. Surely we owe it to future generations not to allow this: http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying-new-chemistry/ In the interests of tackling climate change, we believe it is the duty of our elected officials simply to oppose hydrocarbon developments. The draft document addresses the need to minimise greenhouse gas emissions during operations. It fails to address the fundamental conflict between our commitments under the Paris climate agreement and the prospect of extending hydrocarbon extraction within West Sussex. Notes and detailed research: · Medact study on fracking and health: http://www.medact.org/fracking/ Medact is a charity for health professionals and others working to improve health worldwide. ‘The arguments against fracking on public health and ecological grounds are overwhelming. There are clear grounds for adopting the precautionary principle and prohibiting fracking.’ · CHEM Trust study on the impact on health and environment of chemical used in fracking: http://www.chemtrust.org.uk/fracking/ CHEM Trust is a UK registered charity that works at European, UK and international levels to prevent man-made chemicals from causing long term damage to wildlife or humans. ‘Fracking operations require large numbers of wells, and need substantial volumes of water and chemicals. This chemical use, combined with the substances that flow back from underground, makes fracking a potentially significant source of air, land and water pollution’. · Chartered Institute of Environmental Health report on fracking and health: http://www.cieh.org/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=53520 The CIEH is an independent organization representing the interests of the environmental health profession. ‘Both the European Union and the United Nations Environment Programme have concluded that fracking may result in unavoidable environmental and health impacts even if the gas is extracted properly and more so if done inadequately’ Thank you for reading this! Please pass this information on to any of your local elected officials to let them know of the plans to industrialise the weald and the risks oil and gas exploration carry. Most importantly, look at the draft joint minerals plan yourself and consider making a comment on it, or at least telling your councillors it is a matter of concern. The more voices are heard the better! Crucially, North Yorkshire County Council have just said 'yes' to fracking. Join thousands in saying 'NO!' and spread the word: https://www.foe.co.uk/act/add-your-name-peoples-declaration-say-no-fracking-b?utm_expid=4681116-67.vX00I5B8QMq2vXCI6phPPw.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fdub120.mail.live.com%2F%3Ftid%3DcmiwuUEIgi5hGnItidZ19Fmg2%26fid%3Dflinbox The No Fracking in Balcombe Society