Last month’s media coverage of the mounting protests against Cuadrilla at Balcombe in Sussex has been hard to avoid.
The fact that the company is planning to drill for oil at that location and not shale gas, and that fracking will not be employed appears to have been missed by the protesters.
Objectors are largely feeding off materials that have made their way across the Atlantic where thousands of shale gas wells have been drilled and where fracking has stirred emotion in some areas.
However, those in favour of shale gas extraction in Britain point to a well-established practice that can be repeatedly deployed safely within the existing environmental regulatory framework.
The Government couldn’t be clearer. If commercial production can be achieved from UK shale, and then it has an important part to play as a future source of indigenous energy.
Local communities, previously unaware of the resource that apparently lies beneath their feet, find themselves suffering from protestor fatigue, if reports are to believed.
The narrative is not a new one and it is one that is replayed every time new developments in the UK are proposed; such as the HS2 high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham/Manchester.
Proximity to people and their communities and environmental impact are common threads.
However, all such propositions must go through a process governed by the Town and Country Planning Act, the purpose of which is to test and assess the credentials of a proposed development against local and national planning policy and through the input of statutory consultees to the determination process.
As a nation we struggle with striking the balance between addressing legitimate concerns, ensuring pace of development and balancing local interest with national benefit.
It’s a little-known fact but mining communities once benefited from a share in the coal production, with the proceeds ploughed directly into those directly affected by the mine.
Even today these same towns and villages around the country find community life centred on the miners’ social clubs built and sustained from these funds.
A whole generation has grown up without the memories of obvious industrial activity in the landscape such as coal mining. Perhaps the move to put in place a drilling pad community levy of £100,000 and a guaranteed share in future production signals a return to the learning of the past.
This is starting to happen with windfarms and some communities have already benefited significantly, including in Aberdeenshire.
Whether it is shale or coal-bed methane, the potential prize is significant, however, the scale of development will also be considerable, should gas-bearing formations demonstrate commercial viability.
Comparable well site spacing in the US would indicate that, currently, one site would be needed every 1-1.5sq.km (less than a square mile) in order to access the resource. And each site would require a power supply, water treatment facilities, gas connections and interl inking pipelines as it is developed.
This potential market presents an opportunity for existing UK oil and gas centres, particularly Aberdeen, even though its focus is primarily offshore. Shale gas and CBM represent complementary diversification.
Of course, any transfer of skills will require adjustment to the new context. New behaviours in land management might generate opportunities for building up banks of land with development potential and which can be appropriately managed on behalf of exploration and development companies holding licences . . . from initial drilling, through production and eventual decommissioning.
Having the ability to screen proposed sites for both individual site impact and wider development cumulative impact is critical for understanding the local context, environmental and special designation status required to shale gas extraction especially.
It will require considerable skill to take well design, direction, facilities and field development and translate both surface and subsurface engineering accurately into planning applications that stand up to the determination test.
The estimated resource in place within unconventional reservoirs, coal and shale is substantial; with an estimated recoverable resource of 130trillion cu.ft in the north of the England (the Bowland Shale) according to British Geological Survey.
However, while there is currently huge excitement regarding that potential, the risk of disappointment cannot be discounted. Poland was thought to have massive potential, but a run of poor flow rates from the few wells drilled has dented interest.
As for technology, there is talk of so-called smart fracks to unlock the prize in a reservoir. It is technically interesting and has environmental merit in terms of water usage and land take at surface.
It may be that only the smart frack, at least in the short term, will be the one that achieves that age-old requirement … “banker’s burn”.
In order to give the best chance of achieving commercial flow-rates, it may mean trying to replicate hydraulic fracking techniques applied successfully in analogous US formations. However, for now it is questionable whether there is sufficient competent equipment in Europe to enable this.
If the resource is to be developed there will be a considerable supply chain challenge. Already doubt is being expressed as to whether the capability exists within the UK to deliver this resource onshore, despite the massive offshore skills base.
However, I believe that, in the main, it does. Land management, civil construction, pipelay, facilities design and build already help underpin a wide range of other sectors and should be easily transferred into unconventionals.
Land rigs and frack pump equipment, however, are in short supply and likely to limit the pace of resource development. In Aberdeen, perhaps training schools expertise can be turned to developing intensive skills development for a new generation of onshore roughnecks and drillers.
Most of the current UK land rig fleet was built for a different era. New generation, mobile units with a smaller footprint are needed.
They would need to meet planning standards on noise, height, lighting and emissions. They would need to fit our rural roads as mobility will be a requirement.
It is conceivable that facilities design experts in Aberdeen might even develop a new model for fracking that is more suited to crowded Europe, perhaps developing a cluster-based approach, with a central fracking fluid pumping and recovery unit servicing several sites simultaneously.
But perhaps the starting point in the challenge of ensuring that production is achievable is to employ the world-class reservoir skills and knowledge that has grown in Aberdeen by harnessing that resource to cracking the complexities of unconventionals reservoirs. Offshore unconventionals are already a part of the diet in Europe’s energy capital.
If all of this can be brought together in scale, then perhaps local communities can be persuaded that this can be done with minimal impact and be accepted as an important contributor to the UK’s energy portfolio. Moreover, it could become a win-win relationship,
Tom Pickering has the unconventional resource consultancy Pickering URC Ltd
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