Is fracking the answer to our energy crisis?

Last Friday, British energy firm Cuadrilla started drilling for oil just outside the village of Balcombe in West Sussex, to the accompaniment of protesters chanting outside. This is the first time that the company, which is pioneering the technique of hydraulic fracturing or fracking' in Britain, has been able to start its exploratory drilling, although it says it has no plans to frack for at least nine months.

Fracking is seen by its supporters as the answer to Britain's energy challenges. In America, gas prices have fallen by as much as 80% as a result of using the technique. Britain "desperately" needs cheaper energy to fuel more rapid economic growth. Shale gas could also give us independence from "the bad guys" who "sit on the bulk of the world's oil and gas reserves", says Tim Rayment in The Sunday Times.

Nevertheless, the technique remains "highly controversial", says Fiona Harvey in The Guardian. It involves blasting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under very high pressure against dense shale rock, opening up fissures that allow trapped natural gas to escape and to be funnelled to the surface. The main concerns are that the gas can easily leak or needs to be flared, and that toxic chemicals could find their way into water supplies.

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Hydraulic fracking is not the panacea its proponents "would have us believe", says Bianca Jagger, also in The Guardian. "Their claims that fracking will be good for the country, achieve energy independence, create jobs and bring down the cost of fossil fuels are false." A report by a cross-party group of experts, led by former energy minister Charles Hendry, which followed a nine-month inquiry, concluded that any boom in shale gas production would be "unlikely to give the UK cheap gas".

Yet "most scare stories... simply aren't true, and those that are are plainly the product of cowboy industries springing up in the American wilderness, which Britain simply wouldn't stand for", says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Burning natural gas also produces considerably fewer CO emissions than most "real-world alternatives". Environmentalists "need to grow up". Wind and hydro aren't going to save the planet.

"The physics might work but the human co-operation angle simply isn't achievable." We ought to be able to cheer any alternatives or improvements that are less polluting, be they nuclear, fracking, or even new coal if it is burnt in a better way. For the armchair climate-sceptic, "nimbyism is the only argument left".

Even that isn't particularly relevant, says Dominic Lawson in The Independent. Cuadrilla's chief executive, Francis Egan, says that 100 shale-gas production sites could produce enough to supply a third of Britain's annual gas demand, while occupying only a "total area of just two square kilometers".

Hard though it may be for the likes of Bianca Jagger to believe, "this is the truth". If you doubt it, consider this: the largest onshore oilfield in Europe, The Wytch Farm oilfield, has been "discreetly situated" in the Purbeck district of Dorset, an area that is "much more ecologically sensitive than the High Weald".