UKIP Energy Spokesman Roger Helmer replies to The Tap on fracking/shalegas/CBM

Email sent to Roger Helmer MEP

Hi Roger,

Thank you for your reply to my email.

The fracking dirty dozen has been out there a while now.  In the US the corporations have had time to put out rebuttal statements which you (or your assistant) has picked up here.  I have seen these rebuttals before.  I know which half of the information is the more believable to me.  I am sure you are intelligent enough, Roger, to go through this in detail and see which you believe yourself.

The website frackfree colorado is quite small.  It has another section listing out individual cases where people have become ill and died, birth defects and many other of the usual results of severe poisoning of human beings exposed to endocrine disruptors, carcinogens and nerve disruptors.  The problems are not all at the drill head, where a little better concrete work and better regulation would, it is claimed, save lives.   

Once the drill bits are underground, do you really think you will be in any form of effective control up on the surface?  In East Yorkshire, they obtained planning permission promising no heavy vehicle would leave the site, or arrive except after ten minutes since the previous truck.  That was a load of b......  They travel around in convoys of twenty at a time.   Even on the surface in broad daylight, they do exactly what they want, and no one does anything to stop them, disregarding their planning terms with Police in full support.

The destruction of water reserves is not a short term issue.  Once the aquifers are contaminated they will remain contaminated.   Do you want your independent Britain to have to import its water?  That's not the kind of independence that will appeal to your voters.  I think you need to do a major rethink here.  There is time still.  

Coal technology is so advanced now.  They can do carbon capture at the point of combustion, not as being done by the current UK government, and use the carbon to form methanol cheaply by adding hydrogen.  I thought you were a chemist?  The energy expert I tried to introduce to you earlier in the year, Peter Fagiano of Altona, has since sadly died.   

If you want to delve into carbon capture and methanol, I am sure I can find someone to assist you.   Britain can fuel herself with coal for hundreds of years, as has South Africa for decades.  We don't need to destroy 64% of our country turning it into a toxic gas field, unless we particularly want to destroy our countryside and aquifers for some other reason I'm not aware of (The water agenda). 

It's fracking that is draining The Great Lakes, which coal-mining never managed to achieve.

On the political front, there are 120 Conservative seats where fracking/shale gas/CBM is a big issue.  Do you want to win seats?  Only asking.  If so, help yourself.  Drop your support for fracking/shale gas/CBM and get going politically and economically, and save our water and health at the same time.  Not often can you find a win-win-win-win.

Best regards,

Henry Curteis

www.frackfreecolorado.com