Introduction Two of my previous blog articles dealt with Professor Paul Younger’s expertise in hydrocarbon exploration and in quantitative modelling of fluid flow, respectively. This third article on the subject of his expertise discusses his published views on several case histories involving hydrogeological flow through sedimentary layers and up faults, in the context of shale fracking. This topic is, or should be, well within his domain of expertise. I have split this article into two separate parts since the question of his expertise on groundwater below the Fylde, where Cuadrilla is about to start fracking, deserves its own blog. This will be issued as part 3B. The technical versions of much of this debate may be found in the several comments by Professor Younger on the discussion paper I published in January 2016, together with my replies to these comments. These exchanges spanned several months up till mid May 2016. Karst terrains The issue here concerns two case histories of potential targets for fracking of shale in faulted karst and/or limestone terrains. Karst is the landscape caused by dissolution of the limestone by rainwater, which is slightly acidic. The Languedoc example This example is important because the eastern Languedoc region near Montpellier was formerly under licence to Total for unconventional shale exploitation. Professor Younger has evidently not actually read these
;
0