Colin Tinto writes to say –

‘Shale only releases the oil when it’s fracked; therefore a large field will presumably have to be fracked chunk by chunk, which must require multiple wells. … This will make reserve calculation tricky. … Oil companies are valued by their reserves, which means the amount of oil in the licences/concessions they own.’

Colin has expert legal knowledge of the field, and is certainly right to point out that the whole fracking industry is based on an unknown resource. Which makes the British government’s eagerness to embrace it seem even more reckless.

Meanwhile, the international protest gains momentum. The French government yielded to public outcry in 2011 and banned fracking indefinitely, reaffirming the ban in September 2012. Elsewhere, the fight goes on.

The photo below, showing demonstrators outside the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan as Governor Andrew Cuomo holds a birthday fundraiser, is by CREDO: Cuomo Policy Summit / Flickr, and appeared on www.truth-out.org. The second one is of protesters in Hastings, further up the Hudson River, and was taken by Danny LoPriore for the Yonkers Daily Voice.