Well, it’s been a high profile month for fracking with media coverage popping up everywhere.  Here’s a quick round up of some of the coverage we’ve seen recently.  Just in case you missed it.

25th January – Christchurch City Council requests a moratorium on fracking

19th February – Anti-fracking pressure grows as Kaikoura District Council calls for a moratorium on fracking

20th February – Selwyn District Council decides to request fracking moratorium

23rd February – Heatley criticises the ‘misinformation’ being put out about fracking and praises the integrity of reports from Taranaki Regional Council

24th February – An extraordinarily biased and ill-thought out opinion piece from the Taranaki Daily News

27th February – Heatley rejects CCC call for moratorium on fracking

29th February – Heatley answers question re fracking moratorium in parliament (video)

3rd March – Opinion piece by Mike Yardley on CCC request for fracking moratorium

Not here unfortunately.  Here we’re still full steam ahead on welcoming the gas industry with an environmental policy which seems to basically be: “if you guys say it’s safe, it must be”. 

But in Bulgaria they’re a bit bolder.  The government has recently declared that US company Chevron cannot use fracking when exploring for shale gas.  There’s been a lot of public protest in Bulgaria over the last few weeks.  So perhaps sometimes governments do listen to the concerns of their citizens.  Good on the Bulgarians. 

Here’s a quick round up of other countries and regions that currently have moratoriums or bans on fracking.

France

Quebec

Donegal and Sligo (Ireland)

Karoo (South Africa)

New Jersey (USA)

Ah, just as we were starting to think that the ground below had settled down…it goes and does it again.  This time press reports say that the shakes are being generated from a “patchwork of faults” below Pegasus Bay. 

Wherever they’re coming from, it’s exhausting and unsettling for us here in Canterbury.  And it serves to remind us of one thing, despite all the studies, we really don’t know that much about what’s happening beneath our feet. 

So it just amazes me that anyone could even contemplate fracking in Canterbury when there are so many unanswered questions about the practice and its connection with earthquakes.  Or “seismic activity” as the frackers prefer to call it. 

We already saw, earlier this year, that fracking caused two small tremors in an area of the UK where quakes are unheard of.  So the obvious question seems to be – what effects might it have in a seismically active area? 

Personally, I think the answer is that nobody really knows at the moment.  But let me leave you with a quote from an expert,  US geophysicist Michael Hasting.  Hasting works in the gas industry in the US and is in his own words someone who believes in fracking.  However, here’s an extract from the Water for Gas evening that was held at Canterbury University earlier this year:

Is it possible for fracking to cause larger earthquakes?

Michael Hasting: In my opinion yes it is.  If you’re injecting high pressure fluids into a fault or near a fault that’s active or near failure or stressed to a point where it’s near to go,  those fluids can lubricate the fault and cause it to slip.  There are many examples of this around the world.

So would it be okay for fracking to go ahead in Canterbury without first checking the earthquake safety of the region?

No, you shouldn’t do it.  It would be absolutely irresponsible to go out in an area like Canterbury which is a known area of tectonic fractures and start injecting fluids without understanding the reservoir, the system and where you’re injecting these fluids.  So you want to determine where these faults are and how close they are to failure before anything else is done

You can’t 100% guarantee that you won’t induce a large scale event in a tectonically active area like New Zealand.

The Say No To Fracking South Island group have been busy raising awareness of fracking.  We’re still surprised by  how many people haven’t heard about it and what it might mean for Canterbury.  So getting the word out there is important.  We organise screenings of relevant documentaries, hold information sessions, distribute flyers in communities, run this website and continue to think up new ways of bringing the issue to people’s attention. 

All this doesn’t happen for free.  We’re happy to donate our time and group members have dug into their pockets to cover expenses.  But we want to do more, so we’re also asking for donations to help us pay for printing of information flyers. If you can give a couple of dollars to help raise awareness of fracking, please make donations to:

Account Name: Say No To Fracking -

Kiwi Bank – Account Number: 38 9012 0282042 00

The No Frack petition requests a moratorium on fracking until there has been a proper investigation into the environmental risks.  Which seems very sensible.  Isn’t it good to understand the full impact of things before you start doing them? 

If you’d like to sign the petition you can now find it in places all over Canterbury from Rangiora to Cust, Lyttleton to Rolleston.  There are also petitions available for signing at several locations in central Christchurch.  A big thank you to the business owners for letting the petitions take up counter space. 

So find out where you can sign the petition by clicking here. 

If Gaslands is a bit over hyped for you why not check out what’s happening with fracking a bit closer to us – over in Australia.  The documentary Gas Rush takes a look at the impact of the gas industry on farming communities in Queensland.  Check it out tonight at Oxford Town Hall, 7.30pm.