Blog

There has been a huge amount written over the last few days about the plummeting oil price. One British newspaper is warning of an “oil war” as the price of Brent crude “tanks” on the back of oversupply in the market.

For years politicians in Britain have been looking with increasing envy at the burgeoning shale boom in the US, believing that it could be replicated in the UK.

Could this be the fracking industry’s Silent Spring moment? One of the most alarming aspects of fracking is how little we understand the long term risks of the technology. As the shale boom explodes in the US, concerns about the health and environmental impacts have been largely ignored in the rush to frack.

As the shale gas revolution continues a pace in North America, so does its wider environmental impact. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the burgeoning demand for frac-sand.

The oil industry’s public relations arm, the American Petroleum Institute (API), has reached new lows in its attempts to twist the on-going debate about the safety of crude-by-rail trains in the US.

The American authorities have “slashed” the amount of recoverable oil from the vast California Monterey shale deposits by a whopping 96 per cent.

The North American fracking industry is hailing the production of its billionth barrel of fracked oil from the vast Bakken oil fields as a cause for celebration.

The mayor of Albany, the capital city of New York State, has become the latest elected official of a major American city to demand that the Federal government increase the regulatory oversight of crude by rail trains.

And on it goes. One accident after another. But this time a major disaster was averted by a whisker. On Monday a freight train, which was carrying fracked and highly flammable shale oil from North Dakota, derailed on a bridge over the Schuylkill river in South Philadelphia.

The string of oil by rail accidents in recent weeks has forced regulators in both Canada and the US to re-appraise the safety of oil by rail.