MUN BRIEFING PAPER

Hydraulic Fracturing: What Is The Frack All About?

Hi, I’m Armin, and I’ll be your chair at this year’s GWC MUN conference, providing you were wise enough to choose Environment 1.

You may not be aware of this, but beneath your feet, a few hundred yards down perhaps, is potential cash. Stable jobs and a plethora of other wonderful things, if you believe what you hear on Exxon Mobil podcasts. Hydraulic Fracturing, colourfully known as ‘fracking’, is undoubtedly the energy future of our ever power hungry planet. It provides vast sums of natural energy, can be found in abundance throughout the Western world, and is a godsend to Nations dependent on Arab oil. But it comes at a price: fracking has been shown to cause a host of damages to the environment, and today dozens of governments debate as to whether it is worth the vast economic boosts.

If you plan to represent your country’s views with all the passion, charisma and flair necessary to make chairing an interesting and worthwhile experience for me, you should be armed with a dozen or so useful facts. Let’s read on:

What Is Fracking?

The process of Hydraulic Fracturing begins with a water-sand-chemical mix being injected at exceptionally high pressure into an oil or gas wellbore. This creates tiny fractures throughout the wellbore, deep within the earth. The hydraulic pressure is then released, and the cracks are held open with small grains of rock and aluminium. From these cracks, natural gas emanates and is collected in the well and processed above.

Current State Of Affairs

The vast majority of governments currently have no legislation against Fracking. In 2011, France became the first nation to ban it, citing environmental and health concerns. The United States however, has ramped up its fracking operations recently, seeing it as a straightforward way to gain jobs for Americans and become, as John Kerry eloquently puts it, ‘the Saudi Arabia of natural gas’. Many nations are now following suit, and starting huge fracking operations, including Great Britain. Find out what your nation thinks, and bring your views to the debate. Mainly, the main opposition to fracking originates in the countryside, where fracking occurs.

George Watson’s College MUN Conference 2014 MUN BRIEFING PAPER

The Benefits

It is true that we are going to run out of oil at some point, and coal is hugely damaging to the environment. Fracking offers huge amounts of relatively clean natural gas in an efficient and economic way. It also creates consistent jobs, and strengthens the nation’s economy. It provides foreign energy dependent nations more autonomy. Many countries, including the powerful US, are dependent on the whims of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), which could quite easily shove the West into recession with an oil price hike, as it did during the 1973 oil crisis.

The Costs There is a formidable opposition to fracking, and they're not getting together just for the fun of it. There is considerable evidence that suggests fracking causes enormous damage to the environment around it. It releases dozens of toxic chemicals into the ground, which seeps into the water supply. It releases a good deal of gas into the air supply, which is of course, bad for the atmosphere. Aesthetically speaking, fracking clogs up picturesque country views with huge machines and mining activity.

Quick Facts And Figures

The first experimental use of hydraulic fracturing was in 1947

As of 2010, it was estimated that 60% of all new oil and gas wells worldwide were being hydraulically fractured

As of 2012, 2.5 million hydraulic fracturing jobs have been performed on oil and gas wells worldwide, more than one million of them in the United States.

Proven global reserves amount to five times as much as fossil fuel

Some wells require between 1 to 8 million gallons of water to frack, about 30% of which is recovered.

What to do now? Remember, this is simply to get you off the ground. Fracking is an important and hugely controversial issue, so research materials are abundant and informative.

You now need to write a Position Paper on this issue which has to be submitted to me by the 14th of February 2014 at the latest. A Position Paper is a short statement of around 50 words describing your country’s position on the chosen topic Please submit your position papers to [email protected]

George Watson’s College MUN Conference 2014 MUN BRIEFING PAPER

You are also expected to write and bring at least two Resolutions with you when you come to the Conference. You must bring six copies of each and an electronic copy on a flash drive or equivalent, saved in Microsoft Word, Pages or RTF format.

After that, I suggest you get pumped up for an exciting, thrilling conference that only comes once a year. Like Christmas! Be there or be square.

For Additional Research: On this topic http://www.theguardian.com/uk http://www.dangersoffracking.com/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14432401 http://www.reuters.com/search?blob=fracking

For Country Profiles and lots of other useful information: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/country_profiles/default.stm

For issues of current international debate: http://www.newint.org/ http://www.idebate.org/ http://www.amnesty.org/

George Watson’s College MUN Conference 2014