Drill-seekers

IN 1815 William Smith published a map of British geology that, by identifying coal deposits, helped kick-start the Industrial Revolution. Exactly 200 years later, as the government tries to put more puff into the economy’s sails, it is hoping for a similar boost from another source of hydrocarbons: shale gas. Progress is being made, but painfully slowly, and there is still plenty of opposition to overcome.

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has been used before in Britain but never to extract shale gas. The process uses water and chemicals to split rocks deep underground and extract the gas. A group of MPs sought to impose a moratorium on the process, but they were defeated in a parliamentary vote on January 26th. The government undercut them by assenting to a ban on fracking in national parks and to new regulations that will make fracking harder: one, for example, will force companies to monitor fracking sites for a year before drilling.

Ken Cronin of UK Onshore Operators Group, an industry body, welcomed the outcome anyway. “We now need to get on with exploratory drilling to find out the extent of the UK’s oil and gas reserves,” he said. The prime minister, David Cameron, agrees, calling opponents “irrational”.

Different geology, higher population density and a more international gas market mean shale in Britain is unlikely to be the game changer it has been in America, where gas prices have plunged. But extracting onshore shale gas could make up for the decline in North Sea gas and make Britain less dependent on unreliable, distant suppliers. No wells have been drilled since a ban was lifted in 2012, however.

Before this week’s debate, a parliamentary committee had warned that drilling for shale gas was “incompatible” with Britain’s climate-change targets, even though the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s official advisers, said shale gas (which is cleaner than coal) can help slow global warming. “Certainly we need to cut reliance on carbon fuels,” says Quentin Fisher, an expert at Leeds University. “But in the meantime we need to become more self-reliant.” On January 28th the Scottish government announced its own moratorium on fracking.

Professor Fisher says NIMBYs have exaggerated the dangers. Drilling a well is noisy and disruptive, but after a few weeks only a building the size of a garden shed remains. “People may change their minds” he says, “once they see how safe it is.”

They might not see anything for a while. Cuadrilla, an exploration company, has applied to drill for shale gas in Lancashire, but this has been held up by local objections. On January 28th the county council deferred its final decision. Even if this application is unsuccessful, however, others are likely to succeed. Says Professor Fisher: “I have no doubt wells will be drilled in the next few years.”