It seems that a measure of common sense has prevailed over the future potential fracking of shale gas & oil wells in the UK.
After a failed attempt by a group of MPs to get a moratorium imposed on the practice under the Infrastructure Bill currently making its way through parliament, some sort of compromise position appears to be emerging.
So long as the Bill isn’t derailed in the House of Lords, it looks as if the UK’s putative shale gas & oil industry will get a green light giving access to large tracts of England.
But I am pleased that relevant ministers have accepted the need for a do not touch approach when it comes to national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and where drinking water is collected.
The idea that the companies should have open access to such areas was ludicrous in the first place. It is crucial that at least a proportion of these islands are treated as sacrosanct in environmental terms.
I think it is sensible too that new regulations will slow exploration by, for example, requiring a year of background monitoring before drilling can begin.
It certainly isn’t what the greens wanted . . . they were seeking a blanket ban. The pro-fracking brigade seem to have accepted that they’re simply not going to get carte blanche access to just about anywhere under the original proposals being forced along by chancellor George Osborne in his unseemly haste to get things moving.
The attempt to derail shale by the influential environmental audit committee of MPs, including former Tory environment secretary Caroline Spelman, was defeated after Labour abstained, or to put it another way, chickened out, probably on the basis of ignorance regarding shale-based hydrocarbon resources.
The committee said in its report that shale fracking was incompatible with UK carbon targets and could pose environmental and health risks. Fears were expressed over damage to drinking water resources and to air quality.
In my view, such claims are legitimate. But what a pity the quality of the research that went into their report was apparently so poor. I too read the accusations regarding heavy reliance on NGOs for information, the inference being that the outputs of such organisations is somehow suspect.
However, that is a dangerous assumption to make as I know high quality environment-related research has been carried out directly or sponsored by the likes of Friends of the Earth and Worldwide Fund for Nature to name but two.
While there is a minimal body of academic research into the impacts of shale exploitation in the UK . . . but then how could we, as we don’t even have one well producing yet . . . there is a growing flow of high quality research coming out of the US, where the shale revolution has had a dramatic economic impact.
I regularly tap that when reporting on shale in Energy. The audit committee should have done so too. There is nothing like hard evidence when it comes to swaying an argument, especially when there is a two-hour guillotine on debate and umpteen probably ill-informed calls for amendments.
And for what it is worth, all is not rosy in the US shale garden. It is imperative that lessons are learned from there before companies are let loose in these still relatively green and pleasant islands. Any attempt to replicate the US approach in the UK is asking for trouble from the Great British Public. We won’t stand for it, and that includes me.
Last August, I commented on the irresponsibility of government offering so much acreage in what amounted to its first shale round.
The area of land put up for grabs in July . . . whether conventional or tight . . . was some 37,000 square miles out of a total area of 88,745.
I said it was a staggeringly large proportion of these islands to offer. A maximum of 10% of the total UK area is what should have been offered, not more than 40%.
Moreover, the offer was made on the basis of very little geological knowledge with the arguable exceptions of studies carried out by British Geological Survey across a chunk of the north of England (Bowland Shale), some of sunny Sussex and a portion of Scotland’s Central Belt.
Meanwhile, Lancashire council has imposed a local moratorium pending a decision on Cuadrilla planning applications to drill.
and a surprise moratorium has been implemented here in Scotland pending further consideration of perceived issues. That will of course go down like a lead balloon with Ineos at Grangemouth. But then we must not allow companies like that to bully through decisions that favour them but possibly no-one else, ultimately.
I’d like to see shale oil & gas extraction gain traction here and in the EU. Scotland once had a shale oil industry and there were pockets elsewhere in Europe. The shale oil industry in Scotland’s Central Belt lasted 100 years, petering out just as North Sea gas was being discovered.
Perhaps these resource-strapped islands will yet get to a position where, as the North Sea peters out in a few decades, responsible shale-based extraction will have become possible, utilising some of the drilling and well design practices that were pioneered in our offshore waters, and drastically reducing the quantities of water required compared with current requirements.
Like it or not, we need oil and we need gas. As coined by the famous energy analyst and author of The Prize, Daniel Yergin, this is the Age of Hydrocarbon Man.
We are hooked until such time as ample feedstock substitutes are found; and that’s the difficult bit. Generating power using wind, solar, wave, tidal and hydro is the easy; feedstock substitution is far more difficult.
Indeed, feedstock is the really tough nut and that is very poorly understood by the anti-oil industry camp, many of whom are content to drive 4X4s to protest meetings and surround themselves with the trappings that characterise Western life.
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