Has the ‘shale revolution’ ended before it’s begun?

Yet another shale gas application has suffered a setback. So can we really say that the UK “shale revolution” is underway?

Shale developers have been circling like sharks, tenaciously submitting applications to explore for shale gas. Not long ago the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) confirmed that 27 onshore blocks from the 14th Onshore Oil and Gas licensing round would be formally offered to companies, in what was described as a “major boost for the UK’s fracking sector”.

Prime minister David Cameron insists the government is going “all out for shale” and confirmed in August that shale gas planning applications will now be “fast-tracked” through a new, dedicated planning process, which will include measures to ensure planning call-ins and appeals involving shale applications are prioritised by the Planning Inspectorate.

However, a decision on an application by fracking firm IGas to monitor groundwater has been delayed by at least a month, and many UK projects have recently been blocked by councils.

Chief executive of trade group, UK Onshore Oil and Gas, Ken Cronin, fully believes that fracking is a vital part of the energy industry’s future. “If you work on the basis that gas is going to be around for a long time, the question then comes: where are we going to get the gas from? In the last 16 years we’ve gone from a net exporter to a 50 per cent importer. In the next 16 years we’re going to go from 50 per cent to somewhere around 80 per cent, and that brings with it energy security issues, it brings with it moral and environmental issues, and also cost issues.”

He tells Utility Week there has been a “significant increase” in applications happening around the UK over the course of the last two or three months. As well as IGas’ application, Third Energy has a pending application in Yorkshire, and Cuadrilla is currently in the process of appealing a decision to block its applications in North Yorkshire.

“And there will be a number of other projects going through the pre-consultation process and into planning over the course of the next six months,” Cronin says. “So I think from a slow start, we 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.”

This may well be the case, but whether or not these applications are approved by councils is a different story and, under pressure from anti-frackers, councils often don’t. Add to that the fact that half the UK member countries are opposed to the extraction technique, and the fracking industry starts to run into problems.

Exercising their devolutionary autonomy, Scotland and Northern Ireland have been vocal in their opposition to fracking. At the Scottish National Party Conference last week, the majority of delegates voted in favour of Scotland’s existing moratorium against fracking, but many called for an even harder line against the controversial extraction process, and Twitter told of a “massive cheer” when party members called for a complete ban on fracking. And in the strategic planning policy statement for Northern Ireland, the “go-to” guide for those involved in the local planning system, published recently, environment minister Mark Durkan “set out in black and white” a no to fracking policy.

Energy and Utilities Alliance chief executive Mike Foster tells Utility Week he finds it “difficult to understand objectors who didn’t want the exploration to be done”. “If the tests and the exploration came back and said it’s not a viable industry, then they wouldn’t have shale gas and fracking in their area,” he says. “The same people who argue that shale gas exploration in the UK poses environmental threats will make the same arguments about the testing that’s done, so it’s whether you believe those arguments.”

According to recent reports in The Guardian, civil servants are “concerned” that Cuadrilla’s appeal process may not conclude until November 2016 at the earliest. “It is no exaggeration to say that the rest of the industry is keeping one eye on Lancashire because if the appeal is unsuccessful there, it will become a blueprint for future anti-fracking campaigns.” And with IGas’ application the latest to be delayed, is this the end for the budding UK shale gas industry?

Cronin remains optimistic that it’s not. “I think that people are beginning to understand that although there have been some isolated problems in the US with regard to shale gas extraction, those sorts of issues could not happen in the UK because of the regulation,” he says. “Because the regulatory system puts a break on things to ensure that they’re done properly, I think people are now beginning to understand that a little better.”

He continues that the moral, economic and environmental argument for extracting shale gas in the UK is “strong”. “That’s the reason why I think that the government, alongside all of their other policies, are taking shale gas seriously.”