Potential benefits of fracking too important to miss out on

YOUR Editorial (Yorkshire Post, January 13) referring to fracking seems to have missed the vital points.

Fracking should be pursued with closely monitored drilling allowed to satisfy the majority of the safety to the environment and viability of any commercial discoveries of shale gas. The potential benefits to our country’s energy supplies, its costs and the employment prospects are too important to be thwarted by the usual professional objectors.

On the other hand, its chances of acceptance would be enhanced, were it not for the bribes to local authorities to grant planning, just as similar bribes to local communities to accept wind turbines may well have persuaded planners in some areas to ignore the absolute worthlessness of these turbines.

If the test results on fracking are encouraging, then the benefits to all will be fairly obvious.

In the meantime, on one hand we have on-shore wind turbines where subsidies make it the most expensive supply of energy to generate occasionally, and usually when not required, up to five per cent of our energy supplies.

Any emission savings being negated by the use of fossil-fuelled power stations having to “tick over” to cover for the intermittent wind supplies.

On the other hand we have coal, the cheapest of our fuels, still supplying up to 45 per cent of our energy with the opportunity through carbon capture to make massive reductions in carbon emissions whilst creating significant employment opportunities in our area and guarantee of supply.

Both main parties seem to be agreeing, to some degree, in following through the fracking exercises and we cannot afford for these to be held up by the unrepresentative hooligans who should be charged with obstruction, trespassing or whatever and heavily fined to mitigate the policing costs and disruption on the highway.

From: Alan R Naylor, Springwater Avenue, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

WITH a rapidly growing population, we will need to produce or import more food. Building on green belt land would create serious problems for farmers. The drying out effect of new developments on surrounding ground is well known. It would also be easier to steal from farmers.

Fracking uses a great deal of water which would be a problem to farmers, who may rely on bore holes in any weather.

The HS2 would destroy a lot of useful land, and it would hardly be high speed as it meanders around all the obstacles.

We should, as Owen Paterson says, be buying British food, but we can also help our farmers in other ways, favouring food 
outlets that give a fair price to farmers, helping young farmers 
to get started, helping them to buy land that developers may 
be sitting on.

We should also do more to protect our stocks of wild fish in our seas and rivers.