The last time he was in Newfoundland Maurice Dusseault got an earful from a perfervid crowd of residents from the Island's west coast, who had packed into a banquet room at Corner Brook's Greenwood Inn to hear him speak about fracking.

That was last January, when Dusseault, a professor of engineering geology at the University of Waterloo, had been invited by Memorial University's Harris Centre to offer an engineering perspective on the controversial method of fossil fuel extraction to those curious about or opposed to it.

Nearly three months prior to that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador announced a moratorium on fracking until it conducted an internal review on the matter. Earlier in 2013 a few junior oil companies had expressed interest in fracking the west coast's shale rock formations to get at previously inaccessible fossil fuels. But given the associated risks and controversy around it, fracking became a major topic of concern for residents of communities like Corner Brook, Stephenville, Kippens, Bay St. George and Flat Bay, among others.

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