Fracking in the United Kingdom

Hydraulic fracturing in the United Kingdom has been carried out for many years on North Sea fields , but ashore is in its infancy. According to a 2011 report of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, "Shale gas resources in the UK could be considerable—particularly offshore—but are unlikely to be a "game changer" to the same extent as they have been in the US, where the shale gas revolution has led to a reduction in natural gas prices." The Committee's chairperson, Tim Yeo, has since revised his personal opinion, however, and now argues shale gas is a "game changer" that could "transform the UK's energy independence". Interest in fracking comes just as imports of gas to the UK have surpassed domestic production for the first time since the 1960s.

In the United Kingdom, as in other countries—and in particular the United States, where the industry is most advanced and extensive—induced hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has generated a considerable amount of controversy. The process was unofficially suspended in the UK between June 2011 and April 2012 after triggering small earthquakes, but a report into the incidents recommended the process be given nationwide clearance. The report looked at fracking's possible effects on renewables and the UK's efforts to tackle climate change, nor the issue of environmental safety, with discussion of the chemicals used precluded by the companies withholding precise information "for commercial reasons". A review into these issues was carried out by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. According to Robert Mair, chairman of the review, "well integrity is of key importance but the most common areas of concern, such as the causation of earthquakes with any significant impact or fractures reaching and contaminating drinking water, were very low risk."

Background

The surge of interest in fracking in the UK can be traced to 2007, when Cuadrilla Resources was granted a licence for shale gas exploration along the coast of Lancashire. Cuadrilla is an American-Australian-British affair, though close ties have developed between China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and one of Cuadrilla's backers. The company's first fracking job was performed in March 2011 near Blackpool. Other companies, including Eden Energy, UK Methane Ltd, Coastal Oil and Gas, Celtique Energie, and IGas Energy, have since obtained exploration licences, with test drilling being carried out in Somerset, Glamorgan, Cheshire and other locations.

Areas with shale gas potential

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has identified large areas of eastern and southern England as having the "best shale gas potential":

The main area identified runs from just south of Middlesbrough in a crescent through East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and the Cotswolds to Somerset and Wiltshire. It then turns along the South Coast and Downs, including most of Dorset, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Shale gas sites are under investigation in the Sussex commuter belt, near Haywards Heath, the Mendip Hills, south of Bath, in Kent, Lincolnshire, south Wales, Staffordshire and Cheshire, as well as more sites near the existing find in Lancashire.

In September 2011, Cuadrilla announced a huge discovery of 200 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas under the Fylde Coast in Lancashire. The find alone is equal to the proven gas reserves of big energy-exporting countries such as Venezuela, though only a fairly small minority of the Fylde gas is actually recoverable, with Cuadrilla saying it would be happy if it could extract even 10–20% of it. Lord Browne ignored this latter point in media interviews, claiming that the Lancashire discovery could satisfy the UK's gas consumption "for 56 years", with similar, sensational media reports claiming that the find was "so rich it could meet Britain's needs for decades", or that it had "the potential to do more for Lancashire than the cotton industry." (For comparison, the cotton industry in Lancashire employed, at peak penetration in 1811, 37% of the county, or about 70,000 people; Cuadrilla believes fracking will create 1,700 jobs in Lancashire, current population 1.1m). The British Geological Survey—responsible for producing inventories of the UK's mineral resources, and far more cautious in its estimates—felt prompted, however, to re-evaluate its projections in light of the find, which Cuadrilla believes could provide 5,600 jobs in the UK at the peak of production. Industry estimates suggest shale gas in Lancashire alone could deliver £6bn of gas a year for the next three decades. Subsequent public comment from the British Geological Survey hinted at even more substantial shale gas reserves offshore BGS are due to issue a revised assessment "in weeks" which could be as high as 1,200 to 1,800 Tcf according to industry insiders - a radical increase over its previous 5.3 Tcf estimate that is based on work done in 2008.

A few of the other more notable discoveries of shale gas include the 4.6 Tcf IGas find in the Ince Marshes site, though it is again unlikely that more than 20% of it will be recoverable; - later IGas announced that the reserves were likely at least twice as big following preliminary evaluation of their test well a recoverable 14 Tcf in countryside south of Horsham, West Sussex; and £70bn worth in South Wales. and 1.5bn bbl oil equivalent in Northern Ireland according to a report by PwC.

Reasons for caution

As well as the fairly small minority of shale gas retrievable, industry and other estimates provide another example of the need for circumspection, for it is in companies own interests to embrace large estimations of reserves. In the United States, companies have been subpoenaed on suspicion that the projections they provided to investors, and thus their press-release figures, were inflated, and downward re-evaluations of US and other countries' reserves by their respective national agencies have been dramatic.

Companies also face the problem of a well's yield curve: fracked wells generally keep producing for 28 years, but production can fall off sharply after the first year or two.

Environmental and other concerns

See also: Environmental concerns over hydraulic fracturing in other countries

Water contamination and depletion

In January 2011, a few months prior to Cuadrilla's inaugural fracking, a Tyndall Centre study recommended "a precautionary approach" to the activity until the growing number of environmental dangers were more fully understood and taken account of. Tyndall pointed to the US, where concern exists that fracking poses (amongst other things) a "significant risk of ground and surface water contamination", noting the UK's situation was further complicated by its high population density, meaning any wells associated with shale gas extraction will be relatively close to population centres. It also observed that the vast amounts of water used during the process "could put considerable pressure on [local] water supplies". The Environment Agency, the government body tasked with assessing any impact on water supplies, does not yet know exactly what is the safe distance required between a fracking well and groundwater supplies.

For people living in drier areas, in East Kent, for example, this last point has added another layer of concern about fracking and water supplies. East Kent falls within the Environment Agency's Southern Region, the third driest region of England and Wales, where "water is a scarce and often over-committed resource".

Earthquake risk

The DECC dismissed the Tyndall Centre study's concerns because Cuadrilla had assured it there was no appreciable risk of adverse environmental impacts from fracking. Cuadrilla voluntarily suspended its operations just a few months later in June, however, after fracking activity caused two small earthquakes in Lancashire, one of 2.3 magnitude and the other of 1.5. The company's temporary halt was pending DECC guidance on the conclusions of a study being carried out by the British Geological Survey and Keele University, which concluded in April 2012 that fracking was safe and could be used nationwide.

Cuadrilla commissioned an investigation into the seismic activity, which concluded that the tremors were probably caused by the lubrication of an existing fault plane by the unintended spread of fracking fluid below ground. Cuadrilla's estimates of how far up along faults fracking fluid could migrate during such incidents reinforced concerns among campaigners in Balcombe that, if accidental lubrication of an undetected fault line could and did occur there, it might result in disastrous contamination of the area's water table.

Regulatory issues

Even as Cuadrilla began fracking, it emerged that the effects (at least those less immediately obvious than earthquakes) of its activities, as well as the company's estimates of how much gas it could extract, would be kept secret for four years. The latter veil of secrecy is important because drilling proponents, including investors and many politicians, tend to embrace optimistic projections; in the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed several companies to see whether they were accurately portraying the amount of recoverable gas to investors. Six months later, a leaked series of letters between government officials and Cuadrilla revealed that the UK's fracking industry will face only minimal regulation; for example, companies were not being expected to monitor, measure or analyse the polluted liquids that come back up the boreholes and that must be disposed of elsewhere. A heavily criticised 2004 study by the US Environmental Protection Agency—which concluded fracking posed "little or no threat to drinking water", a conclusion that was the likely basis for fracking's controversial exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005—operated within this same narrow framework: complete inattention to anything other than the injection phase of the fracking process. The leaked correspondence also showed, amongst other things, that the government had thus far looked into neither the issue of fracking and climate change, nor the effects of the industry on renewables. According to The Guardian, even Cuadrilla wants better regulation of the UK fracking industry, but the Energy Secretary Charles Hendry is not in favour.

Opposition

In September 2011, with licences having been granted to two energy companies for exploratory drilling in Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset Council voiced concern that, should the test drilling yield a significant find of shale gas, any subsequent fracking could contaminate Bath's famous hot springs. Similar worries about future fracking have been aired in a number of other places, including the Vale of Glamorgan and Woodnesborough, Kent. Industry assurances about its forthcoming plans were tarnished in January 2012, though, when Cuadrilla Resources came under fire for its categorical denials of plans to frack near Balcombe after documents from parent company AJ Lucas materialised appearing to indicate the complete opposite.

The campaign to prohibit Coastal Oil and Gas from even test drilling at the Llandow Industrial Estate, in the Vale of Glamorgan, met with initial success after local councillors unanimously refused the company's plans, though Coastal immediately indicated it would exercise its right of appeal. Residents feared that successful exploration would be the prelude for fracking. The basis of the Council's decision was a letter from Welsh Water stating that there was "a very small risk" of contamination of its reserve groundwater sites from exploratory drilling. The rejection came despite the Council being told that, strictly from a planning point of view, there were no "reasonable or sustainable grounds" to refuse, and despite the drilling application containing no explicit mention of fracking. The company had additionally claimed that, since the "gas shales in the Vale are not as thick as elsewhere", any discoveries would be "very unlikely" to require fracking for extraction.

As was likely, the company decided it was in its best interests to appeal to the Welsh Government, rather than undertake legal action against the local authority, and a public enquiry is set to begin in May 2012. Coastal's chances of success at the enquiry were boosted by Kent County Council approval of the company's near-identical plans for preliminary drilling in Woodnesborough, and were increased to near certainty after Welsh Water effectively retracted its previous risk assessment.

Industry response

In arguing its case, Cuadrilla contrasts its approach with the one taken in the United States, claiming that only three chemicals—a polyacrylamide lubricant commonly found in cosmetics, hydrochloric acid, and a biocide used to purify drinking water—will be used in the UK, compared with the hundreds that can be used across the Atlantic; that it has invested in more expensive, better equipment than that used by companies operating in the US; that its wells have three layers of pipe casing to line the wells, whereas many American ones only have two; that the barrier between the gas escaping up the pipe and ground water is thicker; and that carcinogenic drilling fluids will be collected in closed steel tanks, rather than being released into open pits, as often happens in the States. The company also relies heavily on industry analysis of a European Climate Foundation report, though the analysis is rejected by the ECF itself. According to Cuadrilla's communication advisor, "Gasland (the US documentary about shale gas) really changed everything. . . . Before that, shale gas was not seen as routinely controversial."

Protest groups

There are now a number of protest groups, which range from the nationwide Frack Off, to local ones such as Residents Action on Fylde Fracking, Ribble Estuary Against Fracking, NO Fracking in Sussex and The Vale Says No!

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has proposed an early day motion on fracking that calls for a moratorium. In the UK and Europe, hydrocarbons are considered government property, so opposition to fracking is less easily bought off than in the US, where landowners are given production royalties.

See also

• Environmental impact of the oil shale industry
• Cost of electricity by source

External links

• Illustration of fracking
• DECC's FAQs on shale gas
• British Geological Survey's information about shale gas
• Guardian coverage of shale gas and fracking
• Cuadrilla Resources