Nick Grealy
Administrator of NoHotAir/ReImagineGas Blog

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The opposition to UK Shale is fading fast as the Brits finally get to it and begin developing one of the best shale resources in the world in their backyard.

Three things happened in UK shale last week, but the most important thing is nothing happened.  Even worse than the paper tigers of shale opponents in UK who are in fact increasingly isolated, is the lazy shorthand of investment analysts who also seek to write off UK shale before it starts, often because of their perceptions of a public uproar over onshore gas and oil.  The reality is a yawn.

Firstly, we had Francis Egan of Cuadrilla appearing before House of Lords. This was the only one that I think should have got some airplay or column inches, because it went a long way to showing what UK shale 2017 and beyond will look like, not the 2008 to 2011. As it was , it was only given space at the fracking information (almost invariably negative) site Drill or Drop:

During an hour-long hearing before the House of Lords economic affairs select committee Francis Egan said:

• Lancashire site construction was due to start in early 2017, drilling in the spring and testing later that year
• In the four years it has taken Cuadrilla to drill one shale well in Lancashire, the US has drilled 120,000
• Low oil and gas prices benefitted exploration by reducing service costs – but Cuadrilla hoped to time production with rising prices
• Cuadrilla was likely to fund future expansion from the equity or debt markets
• UK shale gas would be competitive with imported LNG
• A 2ha shale gas site could host 40 wells
• UK shale gas sites could get fugitive emission down to 1%

This is in one way symptomatic of the UK media’s utter boredom with shale but, in another, it was a lost opportunity to explain how different UK shale in the late teens will be compared to the baby steps of shale in the Barnett and the Marcellus prior to 2011.  Given how the main fear of the UK is that shale will intrude on an Arcadian rural Britain of myth is literally groundless and the industry has finally cottoned on and addressed the issue, it’s a shame that the knee jerk opponents of shale don’t hear this more often.

Britain is a crowded country, but crowds give an incentive to use land wisely.  US shale use more land often because they have more of it.  The crowded island also gives significant savings over well access compared to many oil and gas projects world-wide.  However expensive UK shale may be, it’s peanuts compared to any off-shore investment.

Total, for example, has only just started production from the West of Shetland, after investing $5 billion and ten years. All they get for their trouble is a rather measly 90,000 boe equivalent per day  In natural gas terms that’s 5.02 billion cubic meters a year or just under 8% of UK use or 35% of LNG imports.  The UK Continental Shelf is increasing production today because the investments were made in the peak oil heyday of $100+ oil.

These sort of investments are gone and aren’t coming back in the new normal of $60 oil. They would never be made today.  Onshore, whatever our issues, won’t take anywhere near those amounts.  If it did, no one would do it. Total by the way, are partners with various players onshore, so they have wised up. And, learnt their lessons from US and Argentinian shale.

The next non-event was the National March Against Fracking on Saturday, November 12.  Why do they embarrass themselves? I’ll be charitable and take the organizers word that they had 2,000 marchers although the local police said 1,000.  That’s 2,000 out of 65 million UK residents (2.6  million in metro Manchester) isn’t exciting.  Even the local press, with their variation of the “Local man says….” coverage that historically gives any local resident’s opinion precedence over experts such as Prime Ministers, Presidents or Nobel Laureates, barely mentioned it. The only national coverage was in the Communist Party Morning Star newspaper (circulation 5,000).

The Morning Star is likely as unread in Downing Street as it is in Houston, Calgary or Wall Street.

Finally, in the increasing normalization of UK shale, we had the third planning approval of the year at an Igas/Egdon well in Nottinghamshire. Yes, it’s pathetic that that we only had three wells in 5 years, but looking at it from the perspective of three wells approved in three months, UK shale is getting some traction at last. That. too, got a media yawn in the national press and I asked a friendly Guardian journalist (there are some!) I ran into the next day why it wasn’t a story.  She yawned.

A view of Kirby Misperton, North Yorkshire

So should anyone. The next story is the Friends of the Earth High Court case on November 22 regarding the Third Energy Yorkshire site at Kirby Misperton, a site with a mile thick shale beneath it (pictured above). Hopefully, the case will be decided for the Council and FoE will think twice before paying the costs of more appeals, especially as the paltry response for legal appeal funds by protestors themselves show opponents have neither money, or more to the point not many mouths either.

This isn’t Balcombe 2013 anymore. Things have changed. All we need now is the gas (and oil) to flow. That will really change things.