Prepare for fracturing

Trapped in underground rocks, a potential energy resource has escaped generations of British politicians.

This is called shale gas and the method to get it out of the ground, known as hydraulic fracturing, has proven to be politically difficult.

Hydraulic fracturing, the abbreviation of hydraulic fracturing, has been prohibited several times by various prime ministers since 2011 for concerns about earthquakes and environmental impacts.

And yet, despite this, Reform UK – which leads to national opinion polls – believes that it is worth resuming gas.

“We potentially have hundreds of billions of energy treasures in the form of shale gas,” said Richard Tice, the deputy leader of the party and energy spokesperson.

“It is largely neglected financially to a criminal degree to leave this underground value and not to extract it.”

The party led by Nigel Farage told energy companies to prepare for “drilling, baby, piercing” if it enters the government after the next general elections.

Reform UK says he is serious about the shale – but will his plans succeed where so many others have failed?

The history of hydraulic fracturing in the United Kingdom shows that it will not be easy.

Hydraulic fracturing takes place in the British oil and gas sector for decades and has largely stolen under the political radar until 2010, when the extraction of shale gas began to take off in the United States.

At the time, Charles Hendry was the Minister of Energy and at the beginning, he was carefully optimistic about the prospects of a boom of American style shale.

But the aborted fracturing efforts of the last decade have transformed the former conservative deputy into skeptic.

He looked at the dashboard of former Prime Minister David Cameron for slow gas to a ramp after hydraulic fracturing projects were hampered by planning delays, minor earthquakes, legal challenges and persistent manifestations.

Consequently, the promised “gas revolution” of Cameron has never materialized and in 2019, tremors were recorded on a hydraulic fracturing site, leading to a ban.

“When the ambition struck reality, it was not what people hoped,” said Hendry. “It is much more difficult than in the United States. It is more expensive. It is more polluting. It is more disruptive.”

The former minister says that there was simply less space for hydraulic fracturing in the United Kingdom than in the United States and therefore more obstacles on the way.

Given the level of opposition to the elimination of these obstacles, says Hendry, the zeal reforming gastronomy for shale gas was wrong.

“Even reform voters will be in arms about the idea,” predicts Hendry.

The most recent attempt to advance hydraulic fracturing is another story of prudence.

When former Prime Minister Liz Truss lasts last time the ban on hydraulic fracturing in 2022, opposition deputies forced a vote on the issue and although his government won, a major rebellion of conservative deputies rocked confidence in its direction and resigned the next day.

His successor, Rishi Sunak, restored the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and now the Labor government says that it intended to prohibit the permanent practice.

So how would Reform UK sail this field of political mines?

First, said TICE, Reform UK would immediately raise any hydraulic fracturing ban.

Second, he says, a British reform government would work with oil and gas companies using new extraction techniques to explore shale gas in some independent supervised fracturing wells.

“This will confirm the amount of gas available and will satisfy the people he is sure,” says Tice.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has identified four areas where there is a potential for commercial shale gas extraction, with the largest Lancashire and several midlands countries.

In an important 2013 study, the BGS said that more tests were necessary “to prove that the development of shale gas is technically and economically viable” in the United Kingdom. Even then, the BGS said: “It is far from certain that the conditions underlying the production of shale gas in North America will be reproducible in the United Kingdom”.

Despite this uncertainty, Tice is optimistic and says that they would be able within two years after having tested whether hydraulic fracturing for shale gas was worth it in the United Kingdom.

But unlike work, which has promised to spend 28 billion pounds sterling per year in green energy, Reform UK would not invest in hydraulic fracturing.

“Government’s work is to create an attractive regulatory and tax framework,” said TICE.

Although the next general elections are still years of leave, TICE and FAGE have already laid the foundations for their hydraulic fracturing resurrection during meetings with oil and gas companies.

During such a meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland, a few months ago, Tice and Farage told these companies to prepare license requests to search for shale gas.

“Do not stream Great Britain,” said Tice. “Keep us in mind, and in the perspective of the next general elections, you should have your ducks in a row and prepare the applications.”

Andrea Jenkyns of Reform UK, the mayor of Lincolnshire, is also passionate about hydraulic fracturing and recently met Egdon Resources, an oil and gas company that has licenses to target shale gas in an area known as Gainsborough Trough.

The company praised the analysis by the accounting firm Deloitte, which estimates that gas in the hollow could be worth 140 billion sterling pounds to the British economy and create 250,000 jobs.

Deloitte’s evaluation is not public and Egdon’s resources would not share a copy with the BBC.

Mark Abbott, CEO of Egdon Resources, said that the company would seek to invest millions in shale gas “if the regulatory environment allowed it”.

He says that “clearly the reform has a policy that is more favorable than we have seen for some time”.

Star Energy Group is another company that has interests in the fields with potential shale deposits.

His CEO Ross Glover met British reformist advisers in Lincolnshire, where the party controls the county council.

“We know there is a world class resource there,” said Glover. “I believe that the United Kingdom needs any native energy it can get, whether wind, solar, geothermal.”

For Michael Bradshaw, world energy teacher at Warwick Business School, there is a feeling of deja.

He has been studying hydraulic fracturing policies for years and said that the last time, industry has made no progress.

“The work carried out by the geologists of our research program has suggested that the complex geology of shale basins in the United Kingdom would make much more difficult and expensive to extract,” said Bradshaw.

He says that the estimated expenses of the production of British shale may mean that it would not be able to compete with cheaper gas imported from Norway or elsewhere.

As a result, says Professor Bradshaw, energy bills would not be lower in the short term.

In any case, with work in government, hydraulic fracturing is a non-starter.

The workforce focuses on the construction of renewable energies of the United Kingdom and aims for clean power to meet 100% of electricity demand by 2030.

The Minister of Energy, Miatta Fahnbulleh, affirms that the work was everything to “seize the opportunities for the transition of clean energy”.

“We intend to prohibit fracturing for good and to make Great Britain a clean energy superpower to protect current and future generations,” explains Fahnbulleh.

“The greatest risk for our energy security is to remain dependent on the markets of fossil fuels and it is only by sprinting that the clean power by 2030 can regain control of its energy and protect consumers against spiral energy costs.”

Although fossil fuels should be a characteristic of the UK’s energy and economic systems for the years to come, their role decreases while countries turn to cleaner alternatives.

If a government of reform repels hydraulic fracturing in 2029, it could be out of step in a world that tries to go green.