I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been listening to people talking about how good it is to see the price of petrol, diesel and home heating oil coming down over the last few weeks.

Petrol prices fall to a four-year low and cost of heating oil plummets by a third – BelfastTelegraph.co.uk.

There seems to have been something missing from the coverage of this though. It was only a few months ago that hysteria was being created over the plans to drill a bore hole in Fermanagh to see whether there was shale gas that we could exploit – or more accurately that a Canadian company called Tamboran Resources could exploit.

While the media were very happy to report all the alleged environmental dangers that fracking poses at the time when the  fracking protests were going on in Fermanagh there has been a distinct lack of balance recently.

At no time during any coverage of the falling oil price have I heard any mention of the fact that the fracking boom in the US is a contributory factor. It is thanks to the exploitation of the shale gas reserves in the US that the oil price has fallen to its lowest level in a number of years.

Is it impossible to have a sensible, grown up conversation about fracking and the potential it offers for us all to save money on the fuel we consume every day?

Or will the arguments continue at the extremes – earthquakes being caused at one end of the scale and zero environmental damage at the other.

It seems to me we have a choice to make – and there is going to have to be a trade off somewhere.

But if we’re expecting our politicians to take the lead on this and try and engage in a sensible conversation then I can’t see much happening. Once again the local parties will respond to calls from an uneducated public (and I include myself in that) rather than seeking to explore the pros and cons of the argument in relation to fracking.

I don’t know how much damage fracking will cause – if any. What I do know if that I quite like the sound of lower fuel prices – and I don’t think I’m on my own.