Fracking some way off for Ireland

Ireland is going to be a slow entrant to the list of countries involved in fracking. Regulations and environmental concerns will stall it for years to come, according to a civil engineer.

"It is going to take years and year and years," said Dr Pamela Bartley, who is also a hydrologist and runs a consultancy in Galway city. "I wouldn't worry about somebody moving rigs in next year," she said yesterday.

She was speaking prior to a lecture she gave at IT Sligo last night held as part of Science Week. She discussed the issues that arise should a company decide to pursue fracking here, including issues related to protecting water supplies and the range of national regulations that fracking would invoke.

Fracking involves the use of very high pressure water and chemicals to shatter shale rock hundreds of metres below ground, in the process releasing usable amounts of trapped natural gas. It would be no easy matter to begin fracking here, Dr Bartley said.

'Water supplies'
"Nobody has fracked in Ireland and all of the holes drilled are for water supplies. There have been a few deep geothermal exploration wells but nothing on the scale or depth you would need to explore the shales," she said. As a result geologists do not have a detailed understanding of the depth and nature of the shale rock that lies hundreds of metres down.

“Most water holes are 50 to 100 metres, maybe deeper, but shale, because we haven’t gone looking for it the shale is definitely going to be deeper than that, it could be hundreds of metres,” Dr Bartley said.

No fracking could be considered, however, before the Environmental Protection Agency completes a safety audit and assessment of the risk to water supplies, she said.