Yorkshire fracking decision gives shale gas ‘a chance to prove itself’

The decision by North Yorkshire Council to allow fracking near Kirby Misperton has given the shale gas sector “a chance to prove itself” – both in terms of its commercial viability and its environmental safety, according to the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA).

On Monday the council’s planning committee granted planning permission to Third Energy to conduct eight weeks of tests at the well, fracturing it in five different places to gauge its productivity. The exploratory well was drilled by Third Energy in 2013.

EUA chief executive Mike Foster told Utility Week the decision was “massive in terms of the future of the shale industry”.

“I think Third Energy have got a huge amount of responsibility on their shoulders and at the same time it’s a great opportunity for them as well,” he said.

“If the shale gas industry in the UK is going to be viable and going to have public acceptance then it needs to be demonstrated that shale can come out of the ground safely…. Clearly as the first team out of the block they’ve got the best chance of demonstrating that.”

Foster said while the scientific consensus was that shale gas could be extracted in the UK without contaminating water, “the arguments have always been hypothetical”. “Here’s the chance to prove it,” he said.

He said the same is true regarding seismic activity: “I understand that there’s a whole raft of measures that are going to be applied so the seismic activity at extractions like this are really closely monitored. If you’ve got the measurement in place, then you’ve got the data to back up the argument.”

Yorkshire Water has said the risks to the water supply from shale gas production in North Yorkshire are currently “acceptable”, but if more companies apply for permission to produce shale gas by hydraulic fracturing, it will review each application on a case by case basis.

Gas Forum managing director David Cox agreed with Foster. He told Utility Week: “I think once you see something going on and there’s no end of the world earthquakes or contaminated water everywhere then people will start to relax a little bit.”

He said while the decision of North Yorkshire Council wouldn’t set a precedent in a legal sense it probably would “make it a bit easier for some other councils to grant approval as well”.

More importantly, he said, it will give the chance to prove shale gas in the UK on a commercial level: “There’s a lot of potential reserves down there but until you actually do the fracking and the drilling, you’re not sure about the economics and how much will come out because all the geology is different.”

Director of industry representative body UK Onshore Oil and Gas (UKOOG), Corin Taylor, said the tests could help fill in some blanks: “We know there’s a huge amount of gas in the ground. We know that the rock samples are good in terms of the actual content of gas in the shale rocks.

“What we don’t yet know is how much of that gas can flow to the surface. Will enough flow to the surface for it to make it commercially viable? That’s what the Third Energy test will help us to determine.”