This article is from page 21 of the 2012-05-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 21 JPG
CONCERNS have been raised over the i mpartiality of technical information received from the University of Aberdeen which appeared in the Envi ronmental Protection Agency (EPA) study on hydraulic fracturing or fracking, released last week.
The Clare Fracking Concer ned Group have raised questions over the par ticipation of the Scottish university, who they believe are heavily backed by the oil and gas indust ry.
The Clare organisation did give the study a cautious welcome, saying that a more detailed repor t currently being compiled should shed more light on the prospect of fracking taking place in the Clare basin.
“Aberdeen is ver y much the hotspot of the North Sea oil exploration and a lot of things in the university are funded by Shell. You would have to question how objective the information gained from them is,” said Susan Griffin of Clare Frack- ing Concer ned.
“But you would have to assume that the person putting the repor t together would be aware of this and would t ake it into account and, so far, that seems to be the case.”
Clare Fracking Concerned have also said that more detailed research is necessar y before any decision can be made in Clare.
“It [the EPA repor t] was quite vague and I think we have to keep in mind that this is only a preliminary repor t. When Pat Rabbitte commissioned this, I don’t thank that he realised the extent of the opposition that he would meet. I think he thought it was a cheap enough repor t, it only cost them € 6, 000, so they should do it. I think that it is clear that we need something more substantial than this,” said Sarah.
“I think that it was quite cautionar y, which is good, and ver y objective. They do give time to both sides of the argument. It is a balanced repor t and it does admit that a lot more peer-review research is needed.
“I regret that the report did not look to the data compiled from other countries where fracking has already been banned, such as in Bulgaria and in France. They were mainly looking to studies done in the US and we don’t really compare to the US, in Ireland we have to abide by the European Water Framework so looking to European counties would have been much more appropriate. Often in Irish politics, we tend to follow the English speaking world – America and the UK – and I hope that in this situation, we can broaden out from that.”