ALTHOUGH I have not read the report of which he speaks, I must take issue with Mark Openshaw ( Letters, March 9). In addition to the points he mentions, there is much that his letter misses out that is undoubtedly relevant.

He reports that “regulatory structures are … largely in place”. This was true of Piper Alpha but did not prevent the many horrendous deaths in that disaster. In any operation, there is always the risk of human error and when it is combined with a profit motive, that risk is magnified.

Moreover, the claim that “fracking onshore is… far more benign, less likely to go wrong and much easier to deal with” does not bear scrutiny. Offshore may involve a more hostile environment – though that should not be a problem if adequate risk management means that all precautions are already taken – but the area and the numbers involved are inevitably limited. Onshore, as in Central Scotland, the reach horizontally of fracking, often quoted as a radius of at least four kilometres, puts many thousands of residents, totally unconnected with the operation, at risk.

The crucial factor in the central belt, which seems to be generally overlooked by the supporters of fracking, is that the entire area sits above a massive rabbit warren of old mineworkings, all completely unmapped. We are told that all drillings are concrete lined, but how do you line a space that unexpectedly crosses another, much bigger space? Any drilling in this area must inevitably cut across an unknown number of disused, sometimes flooded mines. In discussing this with a qualified hydrologist, I was told that in such a situation there were no precautions possible that could prevent contamination of water courses.

Even more important in this connection is the high risk of subsidence to people’s homes. If they care to check, owners of houses built from around 1900 until feu duty was paid off about 1970 or so, will find in the title deeds, under the “Burdens” section, a statement that, should any new work affecting these unrecorded mines cause damage to the property in question, restitution is the responsibility of the contractor involved. As these conditions may well apply to at least many hundreds, possibly thousands of properties, does anyone really believe that Ineos will pay repair or possibly rebuild costs of every house that suffers subsidence? With these conditions in title deeds, no insurance company will pay up and even if they did, the owner would thereafter suffer massively increased premiums.

This scenario is no remote possibility. I know of one house already suffering subsidence of an entire gable end due to mineworkings; another with cracks in a dividing wall between houses. Surely these risks are not something that can be dealt with by “regulatory structures” or risk management?

This is not a question of just nimbyism. If fracking goes ahead, the homes of thousands of Central Scotland’s residents are put at high risk, as well as risking our water supplies. Better by far to increase investment in research in wave, tidal, local hydro power and energy storage.

P Davidson,

Gartcows Road, Falkirk.