Fracking FAQs

What’s the problem?

Opponents of fracking claim it can contaminate drinking water, bring unwanted petrochemicals to the surface and even cause small earthquakes.

What happens here?

Fracking has been carried out in Taranaki since 1989, and has only needed resource consent approval since 2011. The Green Party claimed in October that Taranaki Regional Council had no record of the chemicals injected since 1989. Subsequent reports have revealed Shell Todd Oil Services has asked for resource consent to use radioactive tracer chemicals at its Kapuni drilling site.

Are there benefits?

Ironically, fracking has greatly reduced the greenhouse gas emissions of the United States.

The process is widely used in the US and has produced so much cheap coal seam gas that gas has largely replaced coal in electricity generation. Gas produces 45 per cent less CO₂ than coal for the same amount of energy produced – so CO₂ emissions from electricity generation in the US are expected to fall by 20 per cent on a per capita basis for 2012. New Zealand generates electricity largely from hydro resources, so the same CO₂ savings would not necessarily apply.

Update

An interim report on fracking by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment last year found:

• “The potential for important aquifers to be contaminated as a result of fracking is very real.”
• Fracking can also trigger earthquakes, though these are usually small
• Fracking extracts natural gas, which is a cleaner fuel than coal, but still contributes to global warming when burned.

The report concluded that:

• Fracking is safe if international best-practice regulations are followed
• However there are “significant concerns” around the rules on fracking in New Zealand
• A second report, looking at the reality of how fracking is done and regulated in New Zealand, is due out around the middle of this year.

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