Back to Political Basics. One: The Environment

In the last couple of years, I have been taking a break from active politics. Unfortunately in life, politics does not return the favour. Predictably, following the hardest possible Brexit introduced by the Conservatives, people in the UK are getting poorer and standards, of regulations, of political ethics and accountability, and of living are getting lower and lower. 

This blog however is not intended to indulge in party politics. Sitting back and viewing the current field, I don’t think any of the UK’s political parties have covered themselves in glory recently. So, I am going to ask the big question: what should we be campaigning about? Both the global and UK contexts will be considered. 

This was meant to be a single blog post but, having started, I realise that it is going to be part of a series. There is too many areas to cover.  The aim though is to focus attention on the things that are the root issues. That is not to say that other things do not matter but in themselves are part of the bigger picture. For instance, when it comes to tackling poverty, education, healthcare, and housing are all part of the issue and solution. 

All the challenges that we face are interdependent but let’s start though with the environment. Without a healthy environment, it will be difficult to sustain human life and civilisation. You may ask why I don't lead with the rise of CO2. It is vital to reduce and reverse CO2 output but again, there is no simple solutions. Each section of these blogs will have this global problem interwoven with the issues being addressed. 

This year has seen the birth of the eighth billion person to be alive on this planet. As many has pointed out and for a long time, the human population of the planet continues to grow. The driving force for this is not increasing birth rates but the elderly lasting longer. None of this is controversial, go and look it up. So if we are as a global society are to preserve the health of the planet, and ultimately our societies and ourselves, biodiversity has to be cherished and the trend in species extinction to be reversed. While there is understandably a lot of focus on the melting ice sheets and warming of the Arctic and Antarctic, the causes are to be found elsewhere. 

1. We must conserve the world’s forests. The major woodlands of the boreal and tropics are both major carbon syncs and the focus of biodiversity on the continents. They continue to be cut down globally. This must stop. In the British Isles, we have over the centuries all but destroyed our natural woodlands, resulting in some of the poorest biodiversity in Europe. There is talk of re-wilding projects and these should go ahead, at all scales. Whether it is the use of micro forests in urban parklands or the replanting of upland woods, long scalped by sheep grazing and grouse moors, these are necessary to returning these islands to environmental health. 

2. Perhaps even more importantly, the global oceans are in deep trouble. Seventy percent of the world’s surface is covered by water and the oceans average a depth of five kilometres. As such, it is a far more important carbon sync than any forest on land, but still is less well understood. Of the global fisheries that have been studied, six percent are under-fished, sixty percent are fished to the maximum limits of sustainability, and the remaining thirty four percent are over-fished. There are studies suggesting that bottom fishing is disturbing carbon sedimentation, releasing CO2 back into the environment. What is worse, few seem to be asking the question how much fossil fuel is the global fishing fleet burning while fishing? For us in the UK, the relatively shallow waters of the North Sea and adjacent Atlantic are an important nursery for many species.

Both woodland and oceans are important carbon syncs and centres of biodiversity. With the UK being an island nation it is vital that we play a major part in regional conservation. Ironically enough, this means further restricting industrial fishing in the surrounding seas. Of the seventy six marine protected areas designated by the UK government, only four of them are currently protected from bottom trawling and dredging. Therefore it can be concluded that the other seventy two marine protected areas are in name only. 

I use the term ironic because the fishing industry was used as a political touchstone to justify Brexit. Sorry about this folks but Brexit probably means, along with restricting our ability to export UK seafood, that the necessary expansion of marine reserves will, in the short term at least, mean even more restrictions on the fishing industry than currently exist. The resetting of our fisheries will ultimately mean more healthy and sustainable fisheries in the longer term and a healthier planet. 

A Letter to the Children of Class P4

Candidates were invited to respond to the letters written by the class of P4 of Calderbridge Primary School, Wishaw. The children have already received my letter. Below is a copy of my reply to their questions and concerns.

Dear Sophie, Dylan, Eva, Taylor, Polly, Caleb, Alexa and all of the class of P4.

Thank you very much for your letters and for telling me of your worries for the environment and the future of the planet. I am typing my reply because my handwriting is not as neat as yours!

May your teacher, Mrs Currie-Smith, forgive me for the long reply. I feel I am able to do so because I have some things to say. Like I hope many of you will be able to, I was lucky enough to go to university. For me, it was not once but twice. The first time I studied geology, that is the history of the Earth. The second time I studied energy, that is how we use energy to power our lights, homes and phones, and the problems that come if we continue to use the wrong kind of fuels.

You may have heard the term “fossil fuels”? I’ll try to keep this short but it is important to know why burning them as we do today is a bad thing for us and for the animals and plants we share our planet with. So I will tell you, briefly, where fossil fuels come from.

Many hundreds of millions of years ago, there was no life on land. There was life in the sea but on land, there was nothing but deserts. Plants started to colonise the land, spreading out from rivers. Plants use sunlight as an energy source to grow and elements from the ground and air for material. As plants evolved, over millions of years, trees formed vast forests which grew over the land. They took the carbon they needed to form their wood from the air and the hydrogen they need for food from water. When these forests died, their remains were buried and, again over millions of years, the dead wood formed vast coal beds. This is important to remember.

Other plants stayed in the oceans. Many millions of years after the coal beds formed, there were so many tiny plants in the oceans (this was during the time of the dinosaurs) that, when they died they sank to the bottom of the seas. Usually when this happens the plants are eaten but there were special occasions when they were buried instead. So much material that was buried that oil and later, gas, started to form in the rocks from their remains. Like coal, they are made from carbon and hydrogen and there are huge amounts of them. Together coal, oil and gas are known as fossil fuels.

A lot lot later. Tens of millions of years later, people came along. Our ancestors. For thousands of years we have grown crops using just sunlight and water. Power for our tools came from ourselves, animals like oxen and horses, the wind and water for grinding our wheat and for sailing our ships. About 300 years or so ago, we discovered that coal could be burnt to boil water, and the steam used to give greater power to our machines. Our ancestors first used these as pumps to keep mines clear of water, power looms to make cloth and then turned the pumps into steam trains to move goods and people across land, and later steam ships to carry cargo from continent to continent. Later still, we used oil to power our cars, trains, ships, airplanes and tractors, and gas to heat our homes and schools. Coal, oil and gas are still used to generate electricity. We were able to grow more crops, develop more chemicals and medicines, and so, during the 20th Century, the century I was born, there grew to be so many more people than there was previously on Earth. When I was born, there was about three and a half billion people alive. Now, in 2021, there are nearly eight billion people alive! Each one of us, you and me included, need to be fed, kept warm (or cool) and to have a decent life. We need fuel to do this.

Here’s the problem. Currently we still rely upon fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, to power our machines. To give it a percentage, 80% of the energy we use for our electricity, heating, cars, ships and airplanes comes from these fossil fuels. As we burn these fuels, the hydrogen and carbon that was locked up in the Earth for tens and hundreds of millions of years is being released back into the atmosphere. The hydrogen is not a problem: the combines with oxygen to form water. Oxygen combines with carbon too, forming carbon dioxide (known as CO2). When this happens in large amounts, there is a problem because CO2 helps locks the heat of the sun into the Earth’s atmosphere. And we are doing this over a very short amount of time: a couple of hundred years. Compare that with the millions of years it took all that carbon to be locked up into the ground! Over the past couple of hundred years, we have released thousands of billions of tons of CO2 back into the air. So much so, that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere has not been so high since long before people first evolved on Earth. The rate of change has been very short: a couple of hundreds of years. Animals have not had a chance to evolve quickly enough over such a short period of time. The additional heat, trapped by the CO2 blanket, is warming the planet and is the reason the ice caps at the poles are melting. This is the reason why animals like polar bears are having problems. Taylor, you mention the that it is the Sun that causes the ice caps to melt and the fires to burn. We cannot do anything about the Sun but what we can do it control the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The extra heat trapped by the CO2 does not just sit and mind its own business. Heat is a form of energy. That energy is used in some places to form strong storms and floods. In other places, droughts occur, causing forests to burn more quickly and over greater areas than before. You mentioned the fires in your letters Dylan. There have always been droughts, storms and forest fires but seldom have there been so many happening time and time again. This is all part of climate change, caused by people like us, over the past few hundred years.

Sophie, you asked what will happen when all the ice caps will melt? It will be a big problem if this happens. Many cities will have to be abandoned and more people will have to find new places to live. We have to do what we can to keep the rise in global temperatures down and preserve the ice caps.

As you ask Polly, what can we do about it? As I said, we are still burning too many fossil fuels and allowing too much CO2 into the atmosphere. If we suddenly stopped though, a lot of people would have a hard time and even die! Homes could not be heated or cooled, which means that in hot summers or cold winters, people would suffer from either heat or cold stress in their own homes. More people would starve because we use fossil fuels on our farms while growing food. I do not mean to scare you but that is the truth. Like you Alexa, I want a good future! It is facts like this why politics and who is elected to be politicians is important. We have to make the choices for the way forward. The choice cannot be between animals and people, the environment or our homes. All are important but the way forward is not easy. In order to achieve the good future that you ask for Eva, politicians have to listen to scientists. This is where we can get objective information from. It is important for you and me to be informed as to what the facts are. Unfortunately a lot of people do not listen to facts, preferring to hold their own opinions. Many people chose to believe only those facts that back the ideas and opinions they already hold. A very big example of this is the current president of Brazil, who is ignoring the science and encouraging big landowners to continue cutting down the rain forests of the Amazon. The world has to tell President Bolsonaro that he is wrong and that the rain forests of Brazil need to be saved.

Another part of the answer to the problem is for us to need less energy. We all need to insulate our homes against the cold in Scotland so we need less fuel to heat them. We also need to get away from releasing carbon when we produce our energy. Solar panels and wind turbines are some of the ways to do this but they take up a lot of land (or sea). Plus we need to store the energy produced. That is a whole load of other technology but here is a hint - batteries are not the best way to store large amounts of energy. Politicians can help to bring all these things about.

The oil and gas industries want to find ways of separating the carbon from the hydrogen before we burn it. The hydrogen would be burnt and the carbon pumped back into the ground. If they succeed, this would get us through your lifetimes but would not be an answer for your grandchildren.

You mention cars Caleb. It is true that we all need to use them less often and that their fuels need to change. I admit I love driving but whenever it is practical, I take the bus and leave the car at home. Cycling is also very good for us but we need better cycle lanes. In this we are still very far behind our neighbours in Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany.

These things are all complicated. I would advise you to be careful of any politician who claims to have easy and quick answers. In truth, not many people, including politicians, understand all the problems involved and how to solve them. That is why we have to work together and be guided by science and the facts. It is up to politicians like me to decide what can be done, what must be done and how fast it is possible to do it. In a democracy like ours, politicians cannot give orders. We have instead to pass laws that can make the system work how we all need it to be.

What can you do at your age? My best advice to you is to give space to the small things near to you. Polar bears and penguins are important but far away. Look after the nature that is close to your homes and gardens. Plants and insects are important. Give homes to bugs like slaters, insects like bees and plant native species if you have gardens. If you don’t (and even if you do) have a garden, ask to join in local conservation groups and get to know and help your local environment and wildlife.

Why is this important? Polar bears don’t eat ice. They are what biologists call apex predators. They need seals, who in turn need fish and squid and, in turn need smaller fish and crustaceans (like shrimp) who ultimately need plants. So the key is to look after the small stuff like plants and bugs and the environment in which they can be happy. If there is enough of them, they will feed larger animals and ultimately big animals like polar bears.

I am sure you have many questions. I am sorry I am not there to answer them. Perhaps one day I can visit your class and answer your questions in person. For the moment though, that is not possible. I am also sorry my letter to you is so long. It is a problem that really interests me. I wish to have the opportunity to deliver answers directly to you, the people of Motherwell and Wishaw and to our country. Maybe one day I will be in the position to help people and the environment better than I am now but for now that is up to your parents and how they vote.

I am proud to be a Liberal Democrat because although we have policies designed to address all the challenges I have told you about, the party does not say to me “You have to think this way and say these things.” Being a liberal means thinking for yourself. I have benefited from wonderful teachers who have helped me to do so. I am old: 55 this year. The last time I sat an exam was only three years ago so, whatever we do, we can choose never to stop learning. Make the best of your time at school. If you need help, ask for it. For those you who do well, everyone can celebrate in your success. If your classmate isn’t doing so good, ask them how you can help. Look after and be kind to each other. If you look after each other, then there is a good chance that your generation will go on to look after the planet too.

If you have any more questions, please give them to Mrs Currie-Smith to pass on to me. I cannot promise to get back to you ahead of the election date but I will try my best.

Kindest regards and best wishes,

Seven Questions. Greener Leith.

1. In your opinion, what is the most pressing environmental issue facing the Edinburgh Northern and Leith constituency?

The two most pressing environmental issues facing the constituency is cleaner transport and warmer homes.

Of these, the transport one is the easier to tackle.  We can encourage cycle use by upgrading cycle lanes on streets, like Leith Walk and Lower Granton Road, wide enough to handle them.  26,000 people live with 800m of Leith Walk and in storage right now, there is enough materials to have the trams run to the Foot of the Walk.  Let's get on with it.


2. If elected, how will you use your role as MSP to encourage the Scottish Government and Edinburgh Council to improve how they work together on environmental issues facing this constituency?

Edinburgh Council is currently undergoing severe levels of cuts and while the Scottish Government  always demand more services, it's no good if there is no funding for the changes.  Liberal Democrats would free councils to raise and keep more money to spend in their local communities instead of having to be dictated to by central government.
If elected as your MSP, I will ensure that I keep good lines of communication open with Edinburgh Council. It is important that each level of government understand each other and, despite any party differences, common ground is found to work together for the good of all.

The main environmental issue affecting the city (and nation as a whole) will be to bring up the energy efficiency of our existing homes.  We will need transparent communications between central government and local authorities to achieve this.

3. How will you use your role to inspire and encourage greater pride and civic engagement in our public spaces?

It would be great if we have more of them!  We really need more green spaces and play spaces  incorporated in the new residential plans for the Port of Leith.

What parks that we have are well used and I would be sympathetic to turning over more space to allotments.  This is already been done in Victoria Park for instance.  For public health and fitness, I would also like to see more outdoor gyms, as already exist in Musselburgh and Silverknowles.  These can be put into quite small spaces that would otherwise be neglected.
I want to see Stedfastgate brought back up to some form of good use.  The fountain monument there has been vandalised, brick paving ripped up and seating damaged.  If areas like these had some form of dual usage then they are more likely to be appreciated.

4. When local issues are so important for many constituents, how will you ensure that the global issue of climate change, and our impact, is always kept front of mind?

I spent twenty years travelling the world in energy so know the reality of global energy generation first hand.  We live in exciting times however because even the industry itself realise that the time of oil is drawing to the end.  Our energy is moving over to electricity and that means more local generation.  It does not mean however that Scotland is isolated from the rest of the world.  We will be still importing gas for the next twenty or thirty years while our renewable industry grows.  Scotland will still be a part of the UK and European-wide power network and will, at different times, be an energy importer and exporter.
It is for these reasons that Scotland cannot be isolationist in outlook.  How the UK and Europe generates energy will continue to affect us and greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what we do here.  We have to continue to take an interest in the global energy picture.


5. Which environmental policy do you think the current Scottish Government has been successful at implementing over the last 5 years, and which policy could do with some improvement?

Liberal Democrats do welcome the start made by the Scottish Government on land registration, with private land being registered by 2025 and public land by 2020.

I wish I could be more generous but I can't think of another damn thing that has been successful.  Great and ambitious environmental targets are set but are never reached.  The Scottish Government has a statutory duty to eradicate fuel poverty by November 2016. It refuses to accept this is going to be missed despite the fact a third of households (845,000) are in fuel poverty. In some rural and remote areas (Orkney for instance) it is almost two-thirds.
I have been at hustings where the SNP claim that the nation is on target to meet our renewable heating targets by 2020.  The target for that year is 11% and currently we are at 3% renewable heating production.  How is that even near being "on target"?  If we are going to be anywhere near the 40% target set for 2030, we have to move on this immediately.

If the SNP are serious about reducing Scotland's greenhouse gas emissions, why is it that at a Spectator event here in Edinburgh on the 28th of April, George Kerevan MP, SNP representative on the Treasury Select Committee, appeared on stage with Gordon Dewar, chief executive of Edinburgh Airport, and agreed to half tax on Air Passenger Duty by 2018?  Anybody with environmental awareness knows that that air travel is the worst method in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and that aviation fuel is otherwise untaxed at any level.


6. Where do you stand on amending the current law on ownership of Scottish land or property by overseas companies to say that the land must be owned through a UK registered company or other organisation? (E.g. Much of the ownership of brownfields land in the constituency is by offshore companies who are hard to trace.)

The law needs changing.  Where I live in Newhaven Harbour, I look over the brownfield site whose exact ownership is only known to the lawyers involved.

Liberal Democrats will work with other parties to ensure:

An effective and transparent land register for Scotland

We will work with other parties to establish fair taxation based upon land value in order to replace the council tax.

Liberal Democrats would like to see the right for local communities to purchase land extended to urban communities, and especially applied to neglected or abandoned plots.



7. What is your stance on equal rights of appeal under the planning system? Currently only planning applicants can submit appeals, not councils or other community organisations.

I see the need for reform, especially when councils fail to represent the views the local community.  The redevelopment of the Accies site in Stockmarket was railroaded through by the council in the teeth determined local opposition.  In these circumstances the local community should indeed have the right to appeal and that any process should be affordable.

Local communities cannot have the right to veto in all circumstances however.  Now it is debatable whether the trams were a good idea or not but imagine if each neighbour had the right to appeal the route.
A balance is required between local effects and greater needs.  Thus the effects of a retail development (such as Accies) is local and should be able to be appealed.  I would want to look at the effects upon developments that have wider applications and am open to ideas on the issue.

Fracking for Beginners (Part Two)

In Part One, we examined the basics involved in setting up a well site and the impact on local communities. This time we have a closer look at fracking and the possible impact the process has on the environment. If you have not read Part One and only have a vague idea what happens on a well site, you would be well advised to read that one first then come on back here. I have tried to keep technical terms to a minimum but unless you know what the basics are, some of what follows below may be lost.


As stated in Part One, a well bore is cased and cemented and this is no small thing as the cost of casing is often as much as fifty percent of the entire well. Usually that is enough to prevent sub-surface fluids migrating up the outside of the casing and reaching upper rock layers or even the surface. This is still important whether a well is to be fracked or not. Unfortunately not all cement jobs are tip-top. On a well offshore Angola, I once identified a zone devoid of cement, over which the client intended to perforate the well. If they had done so, at best some oil would have been wasted as it migrated up the outside of the casing and into upper formations. (Not that I got any thanks for telling them of course, you’re welcome). Bad cement jobs can be fixed though. After cement has been allowed to set, acoustic logging tools should be run, which will tell the company whether their casing has a good bond with surrounding rock. If it is found that there is bad cement contact, the well can be repaired (known in the business as a “squeeze job”). Of course, this is an extra expense but given the risk to surface waters, a necessary procedure. Thus the wells used in fracking should be surveyed for cement bonding and repaired if necessary. In addition, it is standard practice that all cased wells should be pressure tested to prior to being perforated to ensure structural integrity. It cannot be emphasised enough as to the importance of the casing and its bond with the formation.

Fracked wells are different from standard wells though insofar that in a usual reservoir, the oil and gas has already migrated from a source rock and have been accumulated naturally. So when a well bore pierces an accumulation, there is only one way for the hydrocarbons to go – up the well. An artificially fractured formation on the other hand releases its gas and it goes in the direction of low pressure – into the well bore again or, if the pressure difference is not enough, upwards. After all, gas and oil are less dense that water and therefore floats, even up through a column of rock unless it meets an impassible barrier. It is suspected that this has been the issue in Pennsylvania where some fracked wells have been accused of polluting water supplies. In those cases, the wells have been extremely shallow, less than half a kilometer deep, so it can easily imagined that extra release of gas would rapidly make its way to surface. One of the problems with the US is that there was no measured baseline that could tell consumers what was in their water before fracking started so it cannot be ascertained what levels of natural gas were making its way to the surface before fracking began. That should not be the case in the UK where water supplies are well monitored and companies ought to know already what is coming out of our taps.

If I might be allowed a digression, I would like to illustrate the point of gas migration. Natural gas (methane) is produced from both shale rich in organic content and coal. As you know, accumulations of methane in a coal mine are extremely dangerous so the British Coal Board used to syphon off the methane and it would end up in the national gas grid, providing the tax payer with a nice little extra income. When the mines closed, so did much of the gas collection associated with them. That means for nearly thirty years now, that gas has just been naturally dissipating up through the surface layers and into the atmosphere. What a waste, especially since methane is ten times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

This small tale of woes illustrates however that gas migration is a natural event. With this in view it would be unwise to frack shallow formations. Gas from deeper formations has far more chance of being trapped against higher, impermeable layers of rock. The same can be said for the fracking fluid. A shallow target is far more likely to pollute shallow ground water. It has to be pointed out though that deep ground water has often been down there for millions of years and as a result can be pretty nasty stuff itself, often rich in salts and dissolved metals. Any fluids coming to surface from the well bore will have to be treated as industrial waste. I believe at this time most of it is reused in the drilling / fracking process. Of course, fracking water is unlikely to migrate as quickly as gas but one must be alert to the possibility. Such risks have already been recognized by the British Geological Survey; in their paper THE UNCONVENTIONAL HYDROCARBON RESOURCES OF BRITAIN’S ONSHORE BASINS - SHALE GAS certain potential targets in Midlands have already been ruled out of development owing to their near-surface position. Drawing on analogies from the USA, the BGS have identified that potential target shales should be at the depth of at least 1000m, with most of them being a lot deeper.

Earthquakes have also been fretted over as a potential threat from fracking. Let me be very clear: fracking causes earthquakes. In fact, almost by definition, fracking is the artificial inducement of localized earthquakes but of a magnitude so small as to be undetectable by human senses. The recorded earthquakes caused by fracking activity, those nearby Blackpool in 2011, were of magnitudes 1.5 and 2.3. My theory of what happened is that the fracking pumps introduced additional energy into a system that is metastable. What does that mean? Let me illustrate it by comparing it to settling alight a lump of coal. If one was to strike a match under a coal and expect it to burn, it will be a cold night. There isn’t enough energy to start detaching the hydrogen atoms from the carbon – it is this breakage that releases additional energy in the form of heat. So a fire of tinder then of wood kindling is built up first, then the coal is introduced. The energy now available is enough to set up a chain reaction in the coal and release the energy within. It is the same principle with the Blackpool earthquakes – energy which was stored up in that part of the earth was released when the addition energy from the fracking was introduced. So can it happen again? The answer is yes. It should however be put into context.

A couple of years ago I was in a hotel in Haifa when, closed to ten o’clock in the evening, my bed started to sway gently. At first I thought I was imagining it but no, it really was happening. After ten seconds or so it stopped. I had just survived my first earthquake. It was a magnitude 5.5 with the epicenter in Cypress where it measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. Although no longer used by geophysicists, the Richter scale remains the public benchmark of earthquake intensity. It is logarithmic, which means a magnitude 2 earthquake is ten times more powerful that a magnitude 1, and likewise a 3 is ten times stronger than a 2. So that 5.5 Haifa quake was 2000 times stronger than the Blackpool earthquake at 2.3 on the scale (10x10x10x2). What is accounted as a large earthquake, a magnitude 7, would be 70,000 times stronger and the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011, which led to tragic Japanese tsunami and the destruction of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, was a magnitude 9.1 (8x10x10x10x10x10x10), eight million times stronger that the strongest Blackpool event. The energy involved in such large events are almost beyond human imagination; certainly beyond all nuclear arsenals owned on the entire planet. Wikipedia gives it at 600 million times stronger that the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima and fair play to you if you can encompass that in your imagination because I cannot. I can see though that the energy provided by thirty or so pump trucks used in fracking is miniscule by comparison. That is not to say though that we are totally in the clear however. A recent paper in Science suggests that larger earthquakes far from fracking sites could trigger smaller but still quite powerful (magnitude 4 to 5) quakes around fracking sites, along the principle of the extra energy introduced could lead to greater local instability. If that is the case there is still the possibility of some damage to property. On that basis, it would be sensible for the government to ensure that license holders are suitably insured to cover potential claims.

None of this answers the basic question of “Does the UK need fracking?”

The graph above is based upon figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and is worth a moment’s consideration. The first peak in oil production (in blue) coincides with the miners’ strike of the 1980s and the subsequent need to pay the resulting unemployment and disability benefit, as well as replace coal as Britain’s major source of fuel. This replacement of coal also explains the “dash to gas” (in red). Giving up coal though is not a bad thing as far as greenhouse gases are concerned because of all the fossil fuels, coal is the dirtiest. As is painfully clear from the graph, production from the offshore has been consistently falling from the turn of the century and despite the promise of new finds in the future, this trend will continue unless new sources are discovered. At this time, coal still makes up 30% of how our energy is produced and coal imports are rising, as are imports of both oil and natural gas. From its peak in the late 1990s, UK oil production is down 67% and gas has fallen 66%.

New sources should certainly not be restricted to hydrocarbons. In government figures published in 2012, the UK is slightly under-achieving on our renewable targets but I would make the point that if the focus of both private and public investment is switched purely into fracking, the nation will miss the modest target of fifteen percent renewable energy by 2020. The current total of wind and solar is 4.5%, with the remaining five percent being made up by hydro-electricity. Germany on the other hand is looking towards a 35% target for renewables by 2020. Cynics might say “Good! Let Britain compete with cheaper energy costs” but the retort is “what happens when the hydrocarbons run out?” Germany will have already made the investments necessary to keep the lights on and the factories working.

Another important question is will fracking result in cheaper energy? I doubt it; the promise of free electricity was first made with nuclear power in the 1950s. What will definitely happen, if the promised levels of gas can be produced, is that price-rises will be slowed. It is simple economics, demand for energy is rising globally but meeting some of that demand locally will give some counter-balance to that trend. Nuclear power will also have a role to play in the future as it is clear that Britain’s old nuclear power stations are at the end of their respective lives. I am no fan of nuclear energy (mainly for its waste and the weaponisation of by-products) but the new generation seem to offer less waste and there is potential in thorium-based technologies, which is easier to obtain than uranium and far less useful to designers of nuclear weapons.

At this time it is not possible to know how many new jobs will be created due to fracking because, as I pointed out in Part One, it is impossible to know for sure what is down there until the hole is drilled. It is known though that at this time about 85,000 jobs are linked to offshore work and that we are an aging workforce. Certainly those with technical skills, engineering and science-based degrees will be demand by both the fracking and renewable industries. This has the potential to be a golden time for UK colleges and universities but one can be sure if the people here do not possess the necessary skills, the posts will be filled somehow.

The government should not leave it up to private companies to enforce their own safety standards, especially when the results of a large accident are so potentially damaging, in terms of the danger to human life and environment yes, but also in terms of public relations. Few blowouts that occur offshore make it into public consciousness but it would not be difficult to imagine the outcry if images of a well out of control on land would make on the television screens. Cuadrilla, the main player in the infant UK fracking field at this time, claim on their website they are subjected not only to careful planning regulations but also to unannounced site visits. I sincerely hope that public staff in this area has not been cut back in recent years because if the projections for the number of wells are accurate, there will be a need for a knowledgeable and well-funded (no pun intended) governmental inspection regime.

While on the topic of government intervention, I am somewhat nonplussed by the Conservative’s tax break for fracking companies and the reason for my puzzlement is this: despite the fact it is in its infancy, drilling on land is much cheaper than drilling offshore. Rigs are less expensive to rent than their offshore counterparts and the logistics are far easier. So why would companies need large incentives to open up land operations and in comparison making offshore investment less attractive?

During a Twitter exchange and subsequent blog, a friend offered the view that the Conservatives were pushing for fracking purely to preserve the South East from development by renewables such as wind farms. I thought this “wonderfully cynical” until proved wrong the very next day by Lord Howell speaking in Parliament. What is evidently clear is that the whole issue of energy supply is too important for short-term politics. A single technology does not hold the key to securing our energy future. It is vital that as much investment as possible is put into renewables now; to look ahead to 2050 still relying primarily upon fossil fuels would be irresponsible in the extreme. Nuclear too will have a role. When it comes to electricity generation, gas-fired power stations are the cleanest option that fossil fuels gives us so fracking will play an important part in making our greenhouse gas targets by replacing coal. Wide-scale activity such as fracking and renewables could also herald the re-industrialisation of the United Kingdom.

But maybe people prefer to leave the money-making to the City and the global banks nowadays? If that is the case, let me know how it works out.

Fracking for Beginners (Part One)

It has finally happened. I have been threatening to write this blog for some time. Over the years I have visited and worked on a number of land-based rig sites across five continents. I have also been on a total of three fracking jobs, two on land. I think we can ignore the marine survey as neither the Tories of southern England nor Greenpeace / FOE are likely to superglue themselves to Dyce heliport. What happens over the horizon, out of sight of land, is out of mind as far as most of the population is concerned.


I have decided to do this blog in two parts with this, the first part, being based upon my actual experiences of land-based well sites. In the second blog I intend to look at the pros and cons of drilling in the UK, fracking, and where, if at all it fits into the nation’s long term energy and economic needs.

What follows in this first part will be broken down into easy-to-swallow segments. We will first address what the average well site consists of; the amount of disturbance is created in terms of land use, noise and traffic, and also the benefits of being near a well site for communities and local businesses (yes there really are some!). We shall also examine what goes into the creation of a borehole and how it is fracked.

Now I cannot claim expertise in all the fields as each are specialised. In fact that is what few really appreciate about working the oil patch: we are a collection of experts with very few able to perform all the tasks involved. In order to know our own job though, it is necessary to know what the other folks are doing. In the process of making an oil well (technically it is called a bore hole or well bore because most drilled do not contain oil!) there are many variables so those readers who know me professionally, please understand you are not the target audience. Generalisations will be made, processes simplified and technical terms exiled.

The first question that springs to mine is how on earth does a company decide to drill in Location A and not Location B? Especially since Location A maybe in the South East, be in rich farm land near to several quaint villages (with accompanying astronomic property prices) while Location B is some blasted heath in the far-flung corner of the North East, which seems to be the Conservatives preferred location for such industrial activity. Of course, the answer is geology and a technique known as seismic is the most usual method for surveying the sub-surface of the Earth. Now the planet is 1000s of kilometres thick but as prospectors we are only interested in the top five kilometres or so. The reason for this is that as we go deeper into the planet, the hotter it gets; too hot and any oil and gas is literally baked away. Picture the different rocks as layers in a cake; sometimes though the cake layers have been tilted and even bend or broken. These layers can be mapped across the country and linked to where they break the surface. In fact, when it comes to England, the layers are angled so in general they come to the surface in chronological order, with the youngest rocks coming to the surface in the East and oldest in the West of the country. So it is quite possible that in economically poor areas, there simply isn’t the right layer present while those in the South East are once again sitting upon a fortune. Geology doesn’t have a social conscience.

It is possible to target a given layer but until somebody drills into it, it is simply unknowable what it contains. In most cases the contents turns out to be water; sedimentary rocks are saturated with the stuff. On occasion though, oil and / or gas does accumulate and are trapped in certain layers. These are the juicy targets that petroleum geologists are seeking for. Now some people (in fact a surprising number of people) think as an oil accumulation forming in a vast cave underground and that that drilling into it is like pushing a straw into a drinks carton. I’m sorry but it ain’t so. The top layers of the Earth are more like a sponge with the water, oil and gas in the microscopic holes between the solid bits of rock. It is important that these tiny holes are interconnected though; more on this later.

So the oil company have decided where to drill, have paid the lease rights to both government and landowner. This is a problem for companies for the last thing they want to deal with is a host of small-holders each holding out for a fortune. They much rather deal with a few large-scale estates. One well I working upon in the North West of England was leased from a Duke, as the family holdings were extensive and the negotiating process simplified as a result. So the first practical point is that if you are waiting for an oil company to show up and pay you a fortune for drilling in your back garden, you can forget it.

One benefit though of drilling on large estates though is that well sites are often surprisingly discrete. Unless they are positioned right on the side of a road (or somewhere are flat as the Lincolnshire Fens), most people will just notice the occasional obscure sign with an arrow giving directions. Of course, I am the first to agree that if you are in plain view of a rig site, it does nothing to enhance the landscape. There is a lot of traffic movement related to the setting up and running of a well site but drivers, especially those with heavy loads, are given strict routes to follow in order in minimalise disturbance to local communities. It is strange but well sites can be the deuce to find for the first time. Which is all to the good as they are not pleasant places to be. A drill site location has to be levelled and since the average site is the size of two football pitches (roughly 3.5 acres / 1.4 ha) it is no small feat. The site has to be recorded for the intention is to return it to its original condition, including contours, once the drilling is over. But in the meantime activity is twenty-four-seven; the site brightly illuminated at night and generators constantly running. On such a site will be the drilling derrick (the rig), its power supply, a large area of shallow pools for the storage of drilling mud and other fluids, storage areas for drill pipe and casing (more of which later), a narrow elevated platform called a cat walk, reserved zones for specialist vehicles such as cement and wireline trucks, a container park, portable cabin offices, catering (sometimes), some crew quarters and a car park. The zone will be serviced by a heavy-duty forklift and will have a mobile crane either permanently on site or on hire and thus a frequent visitor. The work area will be surrounded by a fence (with emergency access gates) and with have a single entrance in order to keep animals, the unwary and the innocent out. It is an industrial site and strict safety rules are enforced for the protection of all.

A basic drill string consists of a drill bit, a set of weights known as the collars and the drill pipe, which is stacked in sections upright in the derrick. The borehole is actually drilled by rotating the drill string from the derrick. As you will know, dig a hole deep enough and it will start to fill with water. The deeper the hole and the water will fill up the hole with greater force. This is prevented in a wellbore by the use of drilling mud, which stabilises the pressure and keeps the hole from collapsing. Drilling mud is actually clever stuff; it has to be heavy enough to keep the fluids from the Earth coming in but not so heavy that it actually starts to break the rock down. This stuff is pumped through the hollow drill string and returns to surface where it is constantly monitored for contamination by water, oil or gas. If the volume of the mud has found to increase more that would be due to thermal expansion (remember, it’s hot down there) then this could indicate fluid from the well coming into the mud. Known as a kick, this could be the precursor to a full blowout.

Now, I am sure most of you remember the old movies where the old drillers strike oil which gushes up in a fountain, all us rig-monkeys dance around singing “We’ve struck oil! Yeehah!” and the oriental clients shout up to Bruce Willis “You No.1 driller Harry!” Well, if oil starts shooting out of the derrick anywhere near me, you can be sure I would be legging it. That is known as a blowout and is A Very Bad Thing. The drilling mud is the primary defence against a blowout but in case that is not enough, the well can be closed (shut in) by the BOPs – blow out preventers. In the worst case scenario, the whole string can be severed and the well closed in by what is effectively a massive pair of sharpened gates – the shear rams. At this point most readers are going to think of images of the Deep Water Horizon and you would be right. But Horizon was a failure of not just the BOPs but also the cement as well, which we will discuss next.

The well is drilled in sections. A “typical” well may be first opened using a 30” diameter bit, then the next section a 20” bit, deeper still 12.25” then 8.5” and for a really deep or high pressure well (usually deeper than 4.5km), down to a 6” bit. As a gross generalisation, an average well is in the order of two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half kilometres deep. As each section is completed, it is lined with steel casing and this is secured with cement to prevent any fluids returning up the outside of the casing. In the case of Deep Water Horizon, not only did the controls to the BOPs fail but the oil was able to come up the outside of the casing; it was a disastrous triple failure of mud, BOPs and cement.

Before the final bit of casing is run into the hole to secure it though, the well has to be surveyed. Despite what most drillers think, it isn’t all about “makin’ hole!” The geologists are rather keen to know what said hole is being made in. The most certain way to find out is to take a core sample but this is slow and expensive. The well can also be “logged” with a variety of electronic tools that, using electricity, sound, radioactivity and magnetic resonance (same technology as the MRI scanners in a hospital), building up a picture of what the rock properties are, the ratio of solid rock to space, how the spaces are connected and what fluids they contain. Fluid samples and pressures can also be taken. All this information goes into making up a picture of what is actually down there.

We have the geological picture, some oil and gas has been found (if they are not found then the well is cemented back and abandoned), the well has been cased and cemented firmly, so what happens next? The well has to perforated and tested. Perforation means holes are blown through the steel and cement over target zones. The fluids released are then allowed to flow.

You know these pictures of oil wells burning off gas in a big flare? During exploration this most usually happen during the well-test phase. The company has to know the rate of flow and at this stage there isn’t the infrastructure in place to keep any of the hydrocarbons produced so that is why they are flared off.

I just want to pause for a moment and reflect upon some of the information mentioned. As can be gathered, a well site is not a safe place. There is heavy machinery, crane lifts, stacked equipment, radioactive materials, explosives, and fluids under extremely high pressure around. All personnel have to undergo a large amount of safety training. Jobs have to be carefully planned and co-ordinated in order to avoid disasters occurring. The most effect way to stay safe is not to be somewhere you don’t have to be.

I also mentioned some advantages about having a well drilled nearby. The most obvious would be if one was an owner of a small business. While some workers would have accommodation on site, many would not. Hotels, guest houses and owners of property available for rental would definitely benefit, as would local shops, cafés, restaurants, bars and taxi services. Those who would suffer most would be those unfortunate to be on the main trucking routes. The disruption would last in the order of months.

With a standard oil-filled reservoir, that would be the end for that well until in required a work-over. A wellhead would be fitted and the rig would move on to the next location, which may be nearby or far away. But with fracking, that isn’t the end of it. The well is perforated but the difference between a rock that requires fracking and one that does not is the microscopic connections between the voids. In a traditional reservoir, those pathways exist; in a fracked well they have to be created. The primary ingredients of a frack solution are water and sand but, depending on the constituents of target rock, other chemicals such as acids may be added. This solution is forced through the perforated casing, into the rock and breaks up the formation, thus releasing the oil and gas. This is fracking. If the rig pumps are not used (perhaps the rig has moved on to a new location) fracking requires truck-based pumps and there can be a lot of them on site. The site I worked in Quebec had nearly thirty of them. But again, the operation is temporary; both land operations I took part in lasted less than one month.

Finally, a pipeline would have to be laid in order to bring the produced gas from the wellhead to storage and processing. Burial increases the cost of the pipeline but if I was an energy company in the UK (which, by the way, I am not, nor do I represent one) I wouldn’t even consider laying one across the surface. It is important that the countryside is returned to as near to its original state as possible.

This has been a long blog and I appreciate you making it this far. In Fracking for Beginners Part Two, I will be having a closer look at fracking, what can really go wrong, what are the choices we face and recommendations as to what can be done to ensure that the UK has the energy we and our children will need for the century ahead.

Click here to read Part Two

Watching the Waves

From where I am sitting, I have a lovely sea view. It is fairly calm, the dark water is lightly ruffled and the sky is mostly overcast; the occasional patch of blue showing through the fluffy swollen clouds. And it is warm, about 22 degrees Celcius maybe more. Which tells you I’m not in Scotland. Another thing that detracts from the overall pleasure of the scene is the noise: hisses, bangs, throbs and crumps are all around, causing the cupboard doors to oscillate, my legs to vibrate and the metallic box in which I am currently sitting to occasionally shudder. Yes, the joys of being on board a deep water oil rig.

As those of you who were kind enough to read my earlier blog “Air” will already know, I am a seismic engineer. When performing a survey, the equipment I use puts an awful lot of energy into the environment. Nowadays that means looking out for marine mammals, prior to using the equipment. Which is fair enough; with power comes responsibility.

Usually when on the look-out for marine mammals, I don’t see anything that would interfere with the job. Occasionally up in the Moray Firth, I have spotted the distant breaches of bottle-nosed dolphin or harbour porpoise. From a lifting chopper I even once caught a glimpse of an Atlantic white-sided dolphin. The only time I have even had to postpone a job (so far) was off Mauritania, when on the point of deployment about 400 common dolphin decided to pass the rig. That was some sight; it took about twenty minutes for the last of the animals to move out of range. But even then they didn’t come too close. The previous week a calf had got trapped in the moon-pool (in this case, the hollow centre of the ship through which the drilling apparatus passes through) and had subsequently died. So who can blame them for staying away? But that has been the exception: most days marine mammals are noted for their absence.

That is not to say however that one doesn’t see anything. In the North Sea one often views a wide variety of birds. Gulls of course, varying in size through greater black-backed (wing span a little under two metres), through less black-backed, herring and down to common and black-headed gulls and kittiwakes. Off the Shetland Isles, one has an excellent chance of seeing Arctic skua, the heavy brown pirate gulls of the north. Gannets, fulmars and auks are common sightings. Perhaps more unexpected are the migrant species that occur. Often one sees something small and brown flitting in the shadows without being able to get a positive identification of it, but on other occasions they are in clear view: starling, robin, blackbird, flycatcher have all shown up. On a rig in the southern North Sea I once saw a large owl on the helideck, and on another occasion even a heron! A couple of eagles decided to make the drill ship there temporary home ninety miles off Mauritania (and for those of you who like their omens, yes, a lot of oil was found on that well) but for me, the most memorable occasion was when the rig played host to a flock of brambling. They are a small, colourful bird: think of a fancy sparrow and you get the idea. Anyway, the weather was freezing and these poor things must have been hungry. The birds were approaching the crew, sitting on their shoulders even, just begging for food. And we fed them: bread, porridge oats, fruit and water. It is amazing to approach a flock of wide birds, not have them fly away and come to the hand for food. The brambling started to recover after about three days of this treatment; at least they certainly had enough energy to fly away at our approach. I have no idea if they made it to land. The odds were against them but one never knows.

So, what did I see today? In the Mediterranean sea birds do not seem to be so common. In fact I haven’t seen any today. What is on show are medium sized tuna. Last night there were hundreds of them around the rig, attracted by the bright lights. I’m not certain what species they are: maybe yellow tailed? They are not small: averaging a couple of feet long. While waiting for some crane lifts today I decided to take a walk around the rig. Sure enough, the tuna were still there, either being dark narrow silhouettes, with electric-blue pectoral fins or rolling on their side, displaying their deep, shimmering, silver flanks. About forty metres off the starboard aft of the rig there was a sudden formation of splashes, as if a volley of mortar shots had hit the water. Away about fifty meters aft, six or so of the tuna launched themselves into the air. Something was hunting them. A big crescent splash then a brief view of a large dark back. Porpoise? A terrified yellow-tail hurled itself skywards followed in a split second by a massive dark fish: and fish it was. About six feet in length, the blue fin tuna cleared the water completely, turned in mid-air and splashed back into the sea.

I uttered a soft, Californian-style “Wooooow!”

How Green is my Oil Industry? A personal look at the last ten years.

Today I joined the Green Liberal Democrat group on facebook and I’m feeling rather a hypocrite. The reason being is that I work in the oil industry which, to put it mildly, is not the greenest of places to be.

Standards in the North Sea have gone up in the past decade; that is certain. When I first went offshore in 1997, waste was not segregated, recycling was non-existent and the attitude towards spills was to follow the Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Get Caught. I still smart under the dogs’ abuse I suffered from the crew of a British rig for reporting a half-mile slick to the OIM (Offshore Instillation Manager: the captain of a rig or platform). Although the rig management was supportive of my action, the guilty crew were less than amused and accused me of making a fuss over nothing more than five litres of light lubricant. I told them that when it came to pollution, I have no sense of humour.

Things are better now. Led by the Scandinavians, waste is segregated effectively, although standards could still be higher in some rigs in the UK Sector. Oil-based mud (used in drilling) is not used when there is a viable and more environmentally-friendly alternative and when it has to be used, the rock cuttings are tightly controlled and are shipped back to land for cleaning and processing. The Scandinavians are not ahead on everything though: in my particular line of work, seismic surveying, the regulations on the disturbance to marine mammals are far tighter in the UK sector than either Denmark or Norway. The Norwegians used to have a popular tee-shirt that read “If we had dolphins, we’d eat them too!” so I guess there are cultural differences to be bridged in both directions.

That is the North Sea. Although the major oil companies are keen to use green-wash, outside Europe the colour drains quickly away. Friends who have worked in Nigeria tell me that if Shell wants to drill a well in the Niger Delta, a straight channel is simply dredged through the marshland in order to position the swamp-barge in the desired position. Anybody who has flown over Baku can tell one of the pools of oil left over from years of activity, both under the Soviets and Western companies.

Another relic of Soviet activity is the ghost platforms in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Turkmenistan. Sailing through them is a thought-provoking experience. The Russians used to have a platform-factory in Cheleken. As Turkmenistan became independent, the Russians left but not before trashing the facility and sinking an unfinished platform in the deep-water access to the port. Sailing out into the Caspian gave a example into both the great industry and the limitations of the Soviet system. I counted about fifty platforms before reaching my destination and I’m sure that they continued over the horizon beyond. But all of them were in various states of disrepair: from being reasonably intact to being completely wrecked, some just a few bits of metal sticking proud from the sea. The reason was the Soviet Union did not have the technology to produce effective drilling mud. (Mud is important to keep the over-pressured fluids, be they oil, gas or water, from reaching the rig in an uncontrolled manner. The physical forces of such blowouts are tremendous and if hydrocarbons are present, stand well back and hope nothing lights the blue-touch paper). Anyway, the Soviets didn’t have effective mud and over one fifth of their rigs in that field suffered catastrophic blowouts. I was told 1500 men died in three years of activity during the 1980s. God only knows and at the time nobody cared about what the effect was on the environment.

The worst example of mass pollution I actually witnessed was in Cabinda, Angola during the Millennium celebrations of 2000. I had arrived in Cabinda just before Christmas (lucky me!) and apart from being separated from friends and family, the place wasn’t bad. Turtles were heaving themselves up the crab-infested sandy beach and a family of sea-eagles seemed to be the local royalty. The first I saw something was wrong was the helicopter with the spray-boom going up-and-down about a mile offshore. This went on for a couple of days before I started to smell the oil. On the third day the slick struck the beach. It is hard to describe how sickening a large oil slick is: the sweet-stale-chemical odour that fills one’s nose and after long exposure tears the eyes. The wildlife was wiped out. What was the oil company’s reaction to all this? Nothing. The staff at the oil camp were told nothing. Outgoing calls were monitored and if the slick was mentioned the line would be cut.

Naturally the story spread in the camp though. It seems that a local employee on night-shift in the oil-storage depot had heard an alarm go off at about one o’clock in the morning. Instead of doing something about it, he knocked off the alarm and went back to sleep. By eight in the morning between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil had been pumped into the ocean. The local base did what it can with the resources available to disperse the slick but it was too much. Now here’s the cynical bit: corporate headquarters in Houston decided to suppress the incident rather than act upon it and call in help from outside. Under international law, a major spill is more than forty barrels of oil. The oil company calmly announced that thirty nine barrels had been spilt and that it was amazing how a little oil could cause such a mess. Yes, it is amazing. When I left Cabinda and flew along the coastline, the beaches were black all the way down to the mouth of the Congo, about 180 miles to the south.

And the name of this beacon of global partnership? Let’s just say I have an urge to throw something at the television if an advert for Chevron appears.

That was seven years ago. It is natural to dwell on such dramas but the day-to-day running of the business is, in its own way, just as polluting. I have never dared to go to one of these websites that calculates one’s carbon footprint. I recycle at home, my wife takes the bus rather than the car, the house is fitted with low energy lighting where practicable… but all that is nothing when compared to how many business miles I fly in a year. Many companies are keen to recruit young people from developing countries, which is good; then move them to developed countries in order to keep pay low in the industry. Naturally people want to return home at least once a year so those extra flights are part of the deal. The actual running of an oil rig must be extremely energy consuming. I once asked why the external lighting has to be kept on during the daytime. The reason is that the generators run more efficiently under full loading. At my home base in Aberdeen, I have often tried to get people to turn off computers (or at least the monitors) at the end of the day but to little effect. The other week I mentioned the lack of aluminium recycling facilities and was told that situation was known but to put my criticism down in writing.

As Kermit the Frog said: its not easy being green. But one has to keep trying.