KATE LOCK’S scare stories on fracking don’t stand up to scrutiny (Column, February 7).

The “earthquakes” are minor tremors, smaller than a bus going past your house. A fracking well uses much less water than a golf course. Water pollution is unlikely as fracking is not allowed in the UK underneath freshwater aquifers.

One fracking well produces as much energy as dozens of wind turbines; it does so even on cold still winter evenings when wind turbines and solar panels are useless, and it can be screened by trees so it won’t damage house prices as wind turbines do.

No new technology is risk-free and fracking must be properly regulated. But in the UK we are blessed with shale gas deposits thousands of feet thick: potentially hundreds of years’ worth of gas supply.

Gas prices have more than halved in the US. Cheap energy is helping drive their much faster economic recovery. The EU with its expensive, intermittent renewable energy is the only region of the world that isn’t growing economically.

For the antidote to Frack-Free York’s scare stories, Roger Helmer MEP, the author of UKIP’s common-sense energy policy, will be speaking at the Hilton York Hotel on March 17.

Keith Anderson, Treasurer, UKIP York, Spring Bank Avenue, Dunnington, York.