The WA Conservation Council has launched Frack Free Future - new anti-fracking campaign to press the issue ahead of next year's state election.

The campaign includes a survey of 600 people from around WA, which shows 78 per cent of respondents in Geraldton, 74 per cent in Forrestfield and 73 per cent in Perth's western suburbs did not support fracking.

The Conservation Council’s Piers Verstegen says the results are unsurprising.

“We know from past government polling that there is strong opposition to gas fracking and we can see through our polling that that opposition is strengthening,” he told the ABC.

“Western Australia depends very much on our groundwater and gas fracking is an industry that would put that groundwater seriously under threat.”

WA’s geology means that fracking is not used for coal seam gas, but rather to extract shale gas and tight gas.

“It's the same as gas fracking that's been undertaken at a very large scale in the United States,” Mr Verstegen said.

“Thousands of wells drilled through our groundwater aquifers and pumped with very high pressure chemicals to fracture those underground rocks to release that gas.”

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association’s chief operating officer Steadman Ellis said the environmentalists are misleading the public.

“WA's had a two-year parliamentary inquiry. It found, as has every other parliamentary or expert inquiry in Australia over the last few years, the risks associated with fracking can be managed safely with proper regulation,” he told reporters.

“WA's in a very good position to do that, we've got more than five decades experience of oil and gas activity and we've been able to demonstrate the industry can operate safely.

“There's no reason why the onshore industry shouldn't be assessed in the same way as the offshore industry.”

Mr Ellis said WA’s aquifers were quite shallow, but the drilling of wells could be done safely enough to protect the aquifers.

He said opponents to fracking did not give the full picture.

“The United States is the only country in the world which is meeting its Kyoto Protocol obligations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions despite the fact that it didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol,” he said.

“Why has it been able to do that? It's because of the development of its onshore gas industry.”

WA's new Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Sean L'Estrange, says public anger over fracking was fuelled by “scare tactics”.