Fracking could have saved us from this energy crisis
The UK has vast gas reserves that we are refusing to exploit.
Rob Lyons
Columnist
23rd September 2021
Rising prices and dwindling supplies of natural gas have sparked fears of an energy crisis. Energy bills are shooting upwards. The government is even having to step in to support the production of fertiliser – and its vital byproduct, carbon dioxide – which relies on affordable gas supplies. If only the UK had a bountiful supply of natural gas of its own…. Well, it does – but thanks to eco-warriors and spineless ministers, we’re not exploiting it.
For decades, thanks to the rich gas fields of the North Sea, the UK was self-sufficient in natural gas. But supplies have been in decline for years, down from 107.8 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2003 to just 39.6 bcm in 2019. Now just 48 per cent of UK gas comes from the UK continental shelf, according to the government. In 2018, 72 per cent of our imports came through pipelines from Norway. Gas prices in the UK are also influenced by happenings in the wider world market, particularly the market for liquefied natural gas from Qatar and Russia.
Offshore gas supplies may have declined. But we could increase domestic gas production markedly if we would only take advantage of our vast, onshore shale-gas deposits. According to the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics, estimates of UK shale-gas reserves range from 2.8 to 39.9 trillion cubic metres (tcm). In 2013, then prime minister David Cameron said that if just 10 per cent of known reserves could be extracted, it would provide the equivalent of the UK’s total gas needs for 51 years. The way to extract this gas is to replicate what the US has successfully done, by combining horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing – aka, fracking.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/23/fracking-could-have-saved-us-from-this-energy-crisis/
