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The number of fracking applications which reach the planning stage looks set to increase over the next six months, according to trade group UK Onshore Oil and Gas (UKOOG).
The group’s chief executive Ken Cronin told Utility Week that “from a slow start”, the body has “seen a significant increase in applications happening around the UK over the course of the last two or three months”.
He said that, over the course of the next six months, there will be a number of other projects going through the pre-consultation process and into planning.
“[W]e are now starting to understand as a country that we need the gas and that the gas should come from the UK, and I think you’re seeing operators starting to put applications in.”
In the last 16 years, the UK has gone from a net exporter to a 50 per cent importer of natural gas and, in the next 16 years this amount looks set to increase to around 80 per cent.
“That brings with it energy security issues, it brings with it moral and environmental issues, and also cost issues, in terms of being a price-taker through either the LNG market or through continental Europe,” said Cronin.
“I think that the moral, economic and environmental arguments for taking shale gas in the UK is quite strong. That’s the reason why I think that the government, alongside all of their other policies, are taking shale gas seriously.”
In August, the government confirmed measures to fast-track shale gas planning applications, including identifying councils which repeatedly fail to determine oil and gas applications within the 16-week statutory timeframe, with subsequent applications potentially decided by the communities secretary.
In the same month, the Oil and Gas Authority confirmed that 27 onshore blocks from the 14th Onshore Oil and Gas licensing round will be formally offered to companies. And two gas development firms, Third Energy and IGas, made first steps towards fracking at their respective sites in North Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.
IGas expects to hear this week whether its application for planning permission to monitor groundwater, with a view to fracking in the area, has been successful.
Fellow fracking firm Cuadrilla was refused permission to explore for shale gas its Roseacre Wood site, and, after much deliberation, a decision was made to reject the firm’s Preston New Road. The company has appealed the decision. However, civil servants have warned that the appeal process could take “at least 16 months”, which means a decision would not be reached until November 2016.
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