In the recent past, an event like last week’s UK Shale conference would have attracted a demonstration .  This year, even the old Frack Off tactic of showing up afterwards, taking a picture of demonstrators in gas masks and sending them off to the Guardian didn’t happen.

At the same time, the conference had half the number of attendees as last year. That’s no reflection on the agenda, which included a rare visit to these shores of one of the greats of the of industry, Terry Engelder of Penn State. (One of George Mitchell’s granddaughters was in the audience as well, which led to almost embarrassing genuflection by some, including yours truly).

But let’s face it. Nothing much is happening in UK shale, in most parts due to an echo of the “controversial” shale gas meme of 2012/13.  But that echo is receding for several reasons. The most important is how US has shown that shale was far more productive than even enthusiastic predictions foretold. At the same time far less problems have been produced than shale antis predicted.

Simply put, a lot positive is being produced as nothing much at all negative is happening in incidents or pollution. US shale is normalizing. Natural gas is becoming boring again, although not to real environmentalists who see the bridge to a low carbon world opening up before them. US shale co-exists with surging wind, green and efficiency breakthroughs. It’s this reality that the thinkers of the Green movement now deal with, if not the motley crew who show up in handfuls by the side of the road, often appearing borderline disturbed.

UK Shale Opponents

UK energy seems to sits in a mire where not much is happening at all. The most interesting aspect for the shale industry may be that the general uncertainty will present a chance to achieve something instead of talking about talking about doing something. What’s especially notable is how the election shows shale is irrelevant. Shale gas has been described as “controversial” for so long that it’s become part of the furniture. The reality is that politically, it’s a non-issue. Shale is very important to a very small group of people.

Whatever UK MPs do, they can all count. The ludicrous “Mass Lobby” of Parliament in January showed MP’s outnumbering the usual shale suspects ten to one. The votes on the Infrastructure Bill further proved what a non-issue shale is, when 257 voted for, 203 against and 190 didn’t bother to show up and give an opinion either way.

Even on BBC Question Time last week, there were no questions about shale, strange indeed given that Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, and Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party both appeared. Since this is the tv show that allegedly highlights the great issues of the day, the fact that Bennett didn’t have any planted questions in the audience was surprising. One would think that given her recent meltdowns on the economy and the armed forces she would welcome a chance to say the F word.

But she didn’t and even if she had, we could expect Ed Davey to provide a reality check as he did a few days later to the green base over at Carbon Brief:

I do want to make this distinction, though, between coal, and oil and gas, because we are going to need a lot of oil and gas over the next 30 or 40 years. Hopefully, used more efficiently. Hopefully, in gas’s case, used with carbon capture and storage. But, there is a lot of nonsense talked about how quickly you can get out of fossil fuels.

As I said earlier, we’ve taken two-and-a-half centuries to get to where we are. We can’t go out of it overnight. What we need to do is, in a methodical way, to keep our economies growing and decarbonise in a sensible way: we need to get out of coal as quickly as possible. Or unabated coal as quickly as possible. I’m being really clear about that.

Oil and gas, we need to phase out when we can. But we’re not there yet. I mean does anyone seriously think that the 30 million-odd vehicles in the UK are suddenly going to go all electric overnight? And if they were, that they can be powered by clean electricity?

I mean, come on. It’s going to take a bit longer than that. So they need oil and gas for quite some time as we build up renewables, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency, nuclear and so on. So, I just think people need to look at the numbers and work out that there is a role for oil and gas in the next few decades and actually, in a well developed plan of decarbonisation, that’s environmentally sensible.

For now, the debate is divided between the industry waiting for the nation to decide about other matters, and the irrelevant nucleus of fractivists only important to themselves. Excluding Scotland, the rest of the UK simply doesn’t care. In Scotland, no one cares either, it’s just that the battle between the SNP and Scottish Labour to show how eager they are to show their significance, extends to a desire to being able to punch themselves in the head simply because the English tell them not to.

Elsewhere, the anti-shale movement is collapsing into a mishmash of nimbys, eccentrics and revolutionaries that depends on the tea making skills of retired people with too much time on their hands. What they don’t have will be votes. Let’s hope that we have a government after May that can act on anything. On shale, the best government will be one that reflects the views of the voters: a big yawn.