See this interesting article published recently in Scientific American.
It seems that cowboy operators using cheap and shoddy techniques and poor waste management are really the root-cause of the contamination problems associated with fracking.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/02/18/fracking-could-work-if-industry-would-come-clean/

Lads,
A bit of calm, the gas is going nowhere. My attitude is have moritorium on on any fracking in this coutry for at least 10 years. Gas is not getting cheaper and the technology for getting it out should be getting better.
Now if all the coutries in Europe who are doing this have polution problems then no way in 10 years. If we have weeded out the cowboys good and well…

Either Gas prices are going up and the best return of investment is leaving it in the ground for now.

The extracted fracking fluid was found to contain “significant amounts of chemicals and toxicity,” the Polish Geological Institute said. Source: The Wall Street Journal.
That’s enough to put me off it.

Nimby’s won’t like this report.

The EPA released a draft report on tests carried out on groundwater samples in Pavillion, Wyoming, where fracking continued for 16 years. The report showed significant amounts of chemicals associated with fracking. I say associated with, because gas companies are extremely tight lipped about the exact cocktail of chemicals used, a lack of transparency that I find strange if they are convinced this process is safe.

Lets go get it this time next.year we’ll be millionares yeeeeeehhhaaaa!

Putting chemicals into the ground affecting the water table has no positives. These chemicals are not benign. Wake up. They’ll tap every pocket of carbon no matter the human cost. Only financial cost matters.

See the above comment. I am not basing my opinion on Gaslands alone. The reason I mentioned the documentary is because I found it to be a fine, persuasive piece of investigative journalism, that shows the human impact of fracking. If you prefer to wade through the extensive amount of scholarly articles outlining the negative effects of fracking, or the hugely damning report by the EPA, then be my guest.

This ‘study’ is obviously biased toward, or funded by, the companies undertaking fracking. Watch the documentary Gaslands, then try telling people fracking isn’t harmful. Contaminated water supplies have caused death to livestock, and serious illness to whole communities in the States. Stop this barbaric destruction, before we are all directly affected.

What’s your proof that it’s not? It is my opinion that this research is biased, because I have read far more extensive research on fracking in America, where it was invented and has been used as a method of gas extraction for a number of years, therefore allowing the full effects on landscape and public water supply to be realistically assessed. It is my understanding that fracking has only recently begun in Poland, and that the government would have a financial interest in letting the shale gas extraction continue. Not that a government body would dream of only representing certain facts for financial gain, that has never happened. Ha!

They have only just started in Poland and sadly it may take awhile before damage in obvious, the wells start to leak after some time http://gasdrillinginbalcombe.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/44-of-wells-leaking-at-australian-gas-field/

Why should we jump in now? The gas will not belong to the Irish people, it will not make fuel prices cheaper here and we have the possibility of destroying our environment, loosing our tourism and agriculture industries in the north west and destroying the quiet rural way of life in the north west that attracted people here in the first place.
What will we drink when we have destroyed our ground water and the air quality is like that of a large industrial American city?

It is pre-mature of the Polish Authorities to declare Onshore Shale Gas Fracturing safe, as each wells can be fracked up to 10 times, and 50% of wells leak after 2 years.

21 Minutes into this Marcellus Tour video, they interview Sherry Vargson, who’s well was contaminated by Fracking, 18 months after the Frackers first set up their operation.

http://youtu.be/g5QqidiEEHw

The political classes within some EU countries don’t seem to have grasped that Onshore Shale Gas drilling and Fracking is a 1,000 times more expansive and invasive than conventional Natural Gas and Oil drilling.

Even if it extended the Gas Energy supplies for another 50 years within the EU, it would have destroyed all the Blue Gold (fresh water aquifers) and contaminated the soil irreversibly at that stage, as well as having destroyed the health and quality of life of the local citizens with toxic air pollution.

It is a cautionary tale about the Power of the Frackers’ Money over political lobbying at EU and National Level, that they are prepared to sacrifice fresh water, clean air and food producing land on the Altar of Shale Gas Fracking greed.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111123151916.htm

‘The Frackers – Merchants of Death’

http://youtu.be/dVn8Ua-cWtQ

My source was the EPA report. I find it sad that people are more interested in picking holes in my argument than researching the facts, and realising the implications that fracking has for all of us.

That’s a bit Polish that report