Dutch environmentalists to help Ukraine fight… fracking

Ukrainian and Dutch ecologists have announced cooperation in environmental protection. They claim that the Netherlands, the Royal Dutch Shell parent country, is observing a moratorium on shale gas extraction and Ukraine is also going to impose one.

The current situation looks rather strange, doesn’t it? “The anti-fracking movement is more and more spreading in Europe and the rest of the world today. Fracking is a technology that involves hydraulic fracturing to extract shale or tight sandstone gas. Shell is going to extract tight sandstone gas in Ukraine. Fracking runs a high risk of polluting the soil as well as surface and underground waters,” Pavlo Khazan, manager of the energy and sustained development campaign at the ecological association “Zeleny Svit/Friends of the Earth Ukraine,” said at a press conference. The environmentalist thinks that the existing shale gas extraction technology is injurious to Ukrainian landscapes and fertile black earth.

Dnipropetrovsk environmentalists have established close cooperation with the organization “Milieudefensie/Friends of the Earth Netherlands.” Recently they visited the places in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, where test drilling is underway. Drilling sites are also being prepared in Dnipropetrovsk oblast.

Ike Teuling, energy and natural resources campaign manager at “Milieudefensie/Friends of the Earth Netherlands,” says her country has seen public protests against fracking for five years. Oddly enough, Shell, a Dutch company, shows absolutely no interest in gas extraction in the Netherlands. The businesses that were going to extract shale gas in Holland are very small US and British companies. At first, the Dutch government allowed these companies to carry out fracking. They had already begun to invest money in the application of this technology, but the local Dutch authorities and communities began to protest, as their Ukrainian counterparts are doing now, against extracting shale gas by means of an imperfect technology. Many cities and districts resolved to proclaim them fracking-free areas. “The number of such municipalities is increasing day by day,” the environmentalist says. Under the Dutch law, the national government can overrule the local authorities’ decisions, but the country’s leadership heeded the opinion of local communities and imposed a two-year moratorium on fracking in Holland.

“We saw a similar situation in Ukraine,” Teuling says. “So we are going to wage anti-fracking campaigns in Ukraine, too. We are sure this technology represents an enormous risk: water and land will be polluted, landscapes will be disfigured, and air will be contaminated with methane, which is totally inadmissible.”

TO THE POINT

Graham TILEY, Shell Ukraine manager, in an exclusive interview with Den on July 9, 2013:

ON SOIL POLLUTION

“The hydraulic fracturing fluid we use is 90 percent water. The latter serves to create pressure which breaks the stratum. We usually add two types of additives to water. The first is sand. Pressure causes cracks in the rock, and sand penetrates into and keeps them from closing. As you rightly noted, this fluid also contains a certain share of chemical additives, which varies between 0.5 and 1 percent. These chemical additives play a very ‘ordinary’ role – for example, they ward off the development of bacteria in water. There are also special admixtures that reduce friction between the solution and the borehole during the pumping. In most cases, you can find these chemical additives at home. They are part of household chemicals and many of them are even used in the food industry.

“We are aware of public fears. This is why our company has promised the entire world, not only Ukraine, to disclose the composition of the fluid we use for hydraulic fracturing…

“…It is important to know that gas is held in sandstone strata at a depth of four to five kilometers. There are kilometers of rock between aquifers and these strata of sandstone. It is also important to know that the cracks that develop during hydraulic fracturing are rarely tens of meters long. On the basis of the well-known laws of physics, it would be rather naive to think that something can rise from this depth to the surface sooner than dozens of millions of years from now – provided the fluid still remains in the rock.

“Besides, you know that this rock holds gas for millions of years, and it does not ‘migrate’ anywhere from here. If gas, which is much lighter than water, cannot possibly migrate, how can fluid do so?”

ON WATER

“If you compare the Yuzivsky project with agriculture or public utilities, you will see that our project requires far less water.

“…We have made a commitment, not only to Ukraine, that we will not hinder the local population from consuming potable water.”

ON EARTHQUAKES

“…Most of the hydraulic fracturing-provoked seismic phenomena are in the microseismic range. They can in no way be felt on the surface. But it is important for us to thoroughly examine the site before we start working in order to avoid seismological anomalies, tectonic faults, etc. We extremely carefully select a drilling site and assess the borehole trajectory in order to bypass anomalous areas. But I must point out that the Dnipro-Donetsk basin, in which the Yuzivska field is in fact located, is an extremely quiet seismic area.”