Crown Capital Management

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Fracking won’t survive, says Jane Thomas, campaigner for Friends of the Earth organization. And the US success in the field can’t be repeated due to smaller territories and lower general capacities, she told RT.

RT: On one hand, hydraulic fracking [a technique in which toxic chemicals are lowered into kilometer-deep holes drilled in the ground to isolate gas and oil from shale] clearly presents some environmental problems and dangers. On the other, it might be economically profitable to actually look at this source of energy. How can you reconcile these two conflicting interests?

Jane Thomas: I think it’s interesting what you say about economically profitable, so the first challenge we would say back at the government is, “Economically profitable for whom?” It’s quite clear in the UK context, and indeed in the European context, that the profits are more than likely to go to shareholders and to organizations like Cuadrilla. I think the basic issue for us is that you cannot replicate what’s happening in the United States with what’s happening over here. They’ve been fracking for 20 years, they’ve got drills - 2,500 drills. We’ve got 72 drills between the whole of Europe. So you cannot extract at all the sort of levels that they are being able to extract in America.
RT: On the other hand, this will create a lot of jobs and the possibility to employ people.

JT: Where you’re more likely to get more jobs is in the renewable sector, and one of the things we think has been really missing from this whole debate is government stepping up to the plate. This is the government who said it was going to be the greenest government ever -- and actually put their money where their mouth is and really invest in renewables. For example, in a place called Hull, which is on the east coast of Britain, they’ve got a potential project that the chamber of commerce projects could bring 10,000 jobs to a much-needed, deprived part of the country. And that’s in an offshore wind farm. We’ve seen the Atlantic Array possibly coming on stream. The London Array just opened. We’ve got a massive wind farm in Sussex. Those are the one bringing real, tangible jobs.

RT: From the economic perspective, that might not be something attractive to invest in, as there has been some rese