I AND Frack Off Our Forest value contributions made by people such as Dave Tuffley, with geological and mining knowledge.

Between August and December, in the time between the government announced potential petroleum exploration and development licences for the Dean and granted them, we did all we could to try and persuade the government it should not sell licences here because there is no methane.

I spoke to a senior geophysicist at the government’s Oil and Gas Authority to explain this and she said: “one geologist will always have a different opinion to another”, and “you’ll have to tell the company that.”

I would love to be able to confirm that because of the absence of gas in the Forest of Dean, there will be no disturbance or future industry related to fracking and other means of extracting gas and oil.

But the situation is a South Wales former British Coal engineer (Gerwyn Williams) is raising the necessary finance and has committed to the government and his backers – these include Guardian Global Technology which supplies fracking drilling infrastructure – to drill at least one well to test for methane.

In order to do this, whether he finds gas or not, his company, South Western Energy, will need to clear an area of one to two hectares (100-200m by 100-200m) of all vegetation, concrete it over, drill down, directionally and/or horizontally before reaching his target coal seam.

Then the explorers will need to pump all the water from the seam. I don’t have any figures as to how much water this would be, but it’s well known that the Dean’s coalfield is an immensely wet one so it seems it will be a colossal amount of water.

The waste water will often contain NORMs (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials), such as uranium, thorium, radium-228 and radium-226.

These can be released during the drilling process in muds and flowback water. Radium is a known carcinogen and exposure to it can result in increased incidence of bone, liver and breast cancer. Its decay product, radon, can cause lung cancer.

If the waste water is taken away in tankers, just imagine how many might be required?

Mr Williams might be telling his backers that even though the Forest mines never vented methane, it is still contained more tightly within the coal, pressurised into the matrix by water.

A process known as ‘cavitation’, similar to hydraulic fracturing, may be required to see if tight gas is present.

And, of course, although Mr Williams’s stated ‘primary objective’ is coalbed methane, his exploration licence doesn’t preclude him from investigating other forms of gas extraction.

Although he would need a different licence to develop it, underground coal gasification might be a final solution – it is being tried elsewhere in the country.

This involves setting fire to worked coal seams and collecting the vapour and turning it into ‘syngas’ via an on-site processing plant.

I would hope Mr Tuffley and the many others who maintain the methane all escaped about 280 million years ago when the Dean’s syncline basin and plateau were formed will still join us in opposing any exploration – while making the case to the licence-holders, government and investors that there is no methane and no test well should be drilled due to the environmental damage this would cause alone.

In Shropshire, campaigners have finally managed to persuade iGas there is no coalbed methane there. Let’s hope we can do so in the Dean – and nip this in the bud before the damage is done by exploration.

But we also shouldn’t discard the ‘Trojan horse’ possibility for underground coal gasification (or shale gas exploration) as this is possible whether there is methane or not.

– Owen Adams, Ruardean.