Fracking gets the go-ahead

[marchesarosa]

Lucrative tax breaks to spur boom in shale gas exploration: Chancellor to cut reliance on supplies from abroad
By TOM MCGHIE
1 December 2012

Tax breaks: Chancellor George Osborne is keen to boost domestic gas exploration A massive expansion of controversial shale gas exploration – known as fracking – will be triggered by George Osborne when he unveils lucrative tax breaks this week. While the Chancellor’s announcement in Wednesday’s Autumn Statement will be welcomed by the energy industry, it will alarm environmentalists.They fear that the technique, which involves creating explosions deep underground to release gas, has the potential to contaminate ground water and they point out that it has already caused earthquakes.

In October, Osborne made it clear that he wanted to offer the fledgling shale gas industry a ‘generous new tax regime’ to encourage fracking exploration. This week he will make good his promise.
He will confirm in his statement that Britain is sitting on shale gas reserves worth £1.5trillion that could yield the country huge economic benefits.

The British Geological Survey, which has been commissioned by the Department of Energy to find out the extent of British reserves, has identified vast deposits of shale gas in the North West, North Wales, the Isle of Man, South Cumbria, East Midlands and the North East.

The huge extent of the gas fields is much bigger than previously thought and if exploited would potentially bring energy price stability and independence from imports for decades.

Even though only about ten per cent of the gas is in unpopulated areas suitable for extraction, it would still be worth £150billion. The Chancellor is desperate to boost domestic gas exploration as a way of reducing Britain’s dependence on foreign gas supplies.The sharp decline in North Sea gas finds makes Britain more reliant on energy supplies from Qatar, Russia and the US.

Osborne plans to exclude fracking from the current oil and tax regime. Instead it will benefit from targeted tax breaks aimed at encouraging investment.

To further emphasise the importance of gas to the economy, the Chancellor has instructed the Department of Energy to publish its long-awaited Gas Strategy document on the same day as the Autumn Statement. This will show how crucially important gas is to energy security in Britain.

Not only is gas ‘clean’ compared with coal and oil, it is also relatively cheap to build gas plants. At least 22 gas-fired plants are required to be built to help plug the energy gap over the next ten years as old coal and nuclear power stations are closed down. Gas-fired plants will be used only intermittently – in winter when demand is highest and when there is no wind to blow turbines – so they are uneconomic. Therefore power companies will need encouragement to start building them.

The Gas Strategy document will outline how the Government aims to subsidise the work.


www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2241465/Lucrative-tax-breaks-spur-boom-shale-gas-exploration-Chancellor-cut-reliance-supplies-abroad.html#ixzz2DqZQi6yq

[marchesarosa]

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9716558/Cuadrilla-set-to-resume-fracking-as-George-Osborne-backs-UK-shale-gas.html#disqus_thread

Cuadrilla set to resume fracking as George Osborne backs UK shale gas

Cuadrilla is poised to spearhead the creation of a new UK industry in shale gas extraction, its chief executive has said, as the company prepares to resume "fracking" in Lancashire.

more...

[marchesarosa]

Nick Grealy's blog on Fracking

www.nohotair.co.uk/

Steel Yourself: UK Shale Gas and the Steel Industry

[marchesarosa]

Public Media for Public Understanding

EXPLORE SHALE

An exploration of natural gas drilling
and development in the Marcellus Shale.
Learn More about this Project

exploreshale.org/


Inform yourselves from the horse's mouth, those of you who rely exclusively on the Guardian, Greenpeace and the BBC for your info.

[marchesarosa]

www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9721493/Lets-get-fracking-and-slash-our-gas-bills.html

Let’s get fracking, and slash our gas bills
State backing for the shale revolution is what Britain’s economy has been crying out for

Fracking of one kind or another has been used in Britain for decades
By Matt Ridley7:44PM GMT 04 Dec 2012265 Comments

As part of today’s Autumn Statement, George Osborne is expected to approve the building of 30 gas-fired power stations, simplify the regulatory process for fracking and provide tax breaks for shale gas production in Lancashire as early as next year. This is good news for Lancashire, for the British economy, for manufacturing firms and for the global environment. To do anything else would risk economic self-harm.

As recently as 10 years ago, there was a consensus that gas was going to run out in a few decades and grow ever more expensive in the meantime. Such pessimism is now a distant memory everywhere, except perhaps in the forecasting models of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Gas, the most abundant fossil fuel, is going to last at least a century, probably much longer.

Cheap energy is the surest way to encourage economic growth. It was cheap coal that fuelled the Industrial Revolution, enabling British workers with steam-driven machinery to be far more productive than their competitors in Asia and Europe in the 19th century. The discovery, 12 years ago, of how to use pressurised water (with less than 1 per cent kitchen-sink chemicals added), instead of exotic guar gel made from Indian beans, to crack shale and release gas has now unleashed an energy revolution almost as far-reaching as the harnessing of Newcastle’s coal.

Thanks to the shale gas revolution, the price of natural gas in the US is now one third of the price in Britain. This explains why America’s chemical companies and manufacturing firms are busy “reshoring” their operations from Europe and Asia to states like Pennsylvania, where energy is dirt cheap. America’s energy cost advantage now beats China’s labour cost advantage. In other words, if we do not treat the shale gas revolution as a huge opportunity for Britain, then it will become a dire threat to our economy: if we do not dash for cheap gas, we will lose much of what’s left of our manufacturing to countries that do.

Fortunately, the Bowland shale under Blackpool looks to be every bit as gas-rich as the best shales in North America, but even thicker. Nobody knows how much gas will be recoverable, but if it is anything like the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania, the impact on the North West’s economy will be huge. In America, shale gas now supports a million jobs, produces nearly $50 billion in tax revenue and halves the cost of energy for businesses and people. It has revived manufacturing industry, taken market share from coal, cut energy imports and promises to revolutionise transport, as buses and trucks shift to using cheaper, cleaner methane instead of petrol.

And if cutting carbon emissions is what floats your boat, you will like shale gas even more. The advent of cheap gas, by displacing coal from electricity generation, has drastically cut America's carbon dioxide emissions back to levels last seen in the early 1990s; per capita emissions are now lower than in the 1960s. (See charts here 3.bp.blogspot.com/-MzB1nCnvOr8/UBiM4UAxHLI/AAAAAAAAT9c/yEpdngVXASw/s1600/co2.jpg and here www.aei-ideas.org/2012/10/technologies-opposed-by-environmentalists-fracking-and-genetic-modification-have-cut-co2-emissions-to-20-yr-low/co2pc/ .) Britain's subsidised dash for renewable energy has had no such result: wind power is still making a trivial contribution to total energy use (0.4 per cent) while most renewable energy comes from wood, the highest-carbon fuel of all.

Best of all, the shale revolution is causing consternation in Moscow and Tehran, which had expected to corner the natural gas market in decades to come. As a sign of the panic it is inducing, a forthcoming Matt Damon anti-fracking film was financed partly by a company owned by the United Arab Emirates government. (The film’s plot had to be rewritten after the authorities absolved a gas company of causing pollution in a well-publicised case in Dimock, Pennsylvania.)

Exploiting shale gas is safe, according to the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Fracking of one kind or another has been used here for decades; the earthquakes it causes are no worse than a bus going past; it does not use much water compared with other industries; it’s not responsible for flammable tap water; and methane leakage is not as bad as has been claimed. Nor, with a mile of rock between the fractures and the aquifers, does it cause groundwater contamination. Last year there were 125,000 fracs in the United States. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, no frac has ever contaminated groundwater.

Yet still the environmental movement, deep in bed with the subsidised renewable energy industry, wants to impede shale gas, fearful that it might succeed. Until recently it looked as if the Government’s energy policy was to go beyond picking winners to pick losers – how else do you describe an policy that hands out the most money to the most expensive ways of generating power? – and even ban winners. How else do you explain repeated pronouncements about not letting shale gas production go ahead until we know it will work?

Let the drilling companies try extracting shale gas. If they fail, that’s their look-out. If they succeed, we will all benefit, because the price of energy will come down. In America they have driven down the cost so far that many shale gas companies are in trouble – too successful for their own good. The same thing happened with railways in the 1840s – most entrepreneurs went bust, but the travelling public got a railway system. As Joseph Schumpeter explained, that is how the market works – the consumer gets most of the benefit of innovation, not the producer. Whereas if subsidised wind fails to cut emissions or electricity prices, then we consumers pick up the bill. Bad deal.


Matt Ridley is the author of 'The Rational Optimist’ (Fourth Estate)

[marchesarosa]

Another kind of ‘fracking’, this produces geothermal energy
Posted on December 5, 2012

From the AGU fall meeting comes some pragmatic engineering tests with fracking like methods that produce geothermal energy.

Developers of renewable energy and shale gas must overcome fundamental geological and environmental challenges if these promising energy sources are to reach their full potential, according to a trio of leading geoscientists. Their findings were presented on Tuesday, Dec. 4, at 5:15 p.m. PT at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, in Room 102 of Moscone Center West.

Stanford geoscientist cites critical need for basic research to unleash promising energy sources

By Mark Shwartz

In fall 2012, Geodynamics Ltd. tested a 2.6-mile-deep well at its Habanero enhanced geothermal pilot project in Australia. The well produced a strong flow of steam with surface temperatures of 375 degrees Fahrenheit and higher. (Photo: Courtesy of Geodynamics Ltd.)

“There is a critical need for scientists to address basic questions that have hindered the development of emerging energy resources, including geothermal, wind, solar and natural gas, from underground shale formations,” said Mark Zoback, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University. “In this talk we present, from a university perspective, a few examples of fundamental research needs related to improved energy and resource recovery.”

Zoback, an authority on shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing, served on the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Committee on Shale Gas Development. His remarks were presented in collaboration with Jeff Tester, an expert on geothermal energy from Cornell University, and Murray Hitzman, a leader in the study of “energy critical elements” from the Colorado School of Mines.

more ... but only for those interested in REAL energy resources

wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/05/another-kind-of-fracking-this-produces-geothermal-energy/#more-75292

[marchesarosa]

UK Shale: could be 17 times bigger than remaining North Sea reserves
Posted: December 8, 2012 by tallbloke

IT’S HUMONGOUS: UK SHALE (Bowland) GAS DEPOSIT 50% BIGGER THAN THOUGHT
Tim Webb, The Times
Date: 08/12/12

The shale gas deposit around Blackpool is 50 per cent bigger than previously estimated, The Times has learnt. The news will put more pressure on ministers who are due to lift the ban on extraction as early as next week, to support what could prove to be a gas bonanza for Britain.

Cuadrilla Resources, the exploration company backed by Lord Browne of Madingley, the former boss of BP, hit the headlines after it set off dozens of small earth tremors around Blackpool, resulting in fracking being suspended.

Fracking involves blasting water and sand at high pressure into rock to release gas, a process that environmentalists fear could pollute aquifers used to supply drinking water.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) is carrying out an independent analysis of shale gas reserves which it plans to publish in the new year. It is understood that the BGS will estimate that the 1,000 square kilometres covered by the Bowland Basin to the east of Blackpool contains 300 trillion cubic feet of gas, equivalent to 17 times the remaining known reserves in the North Sea.


A year ago Cuadrilla published an estimate of 200 trillion cubic feet for the Bowland Basin. At the time the company said that the figure was conservative. But many experts dismissed it as unrealistic. The upward revision by the BGS will fuel the clamour for Britain to develop its shale gas reserves.

This week the Chancellor said that he would consult over plans to award generous tax breaks to shale gas developers such as Cuadrilla. His “dash for gas” would lead to at least 30 new gas-fired power plants being built by 2030, potentially powered by cheap, domestically produced shale gas. Mr Osborne is hoping that this would bring down energy bills but his plan is at odds with environmentalists who fear that it will result in Britain missing its targets to reduce carbon emissions.

Francis Egan, chief executive of Cuadrilla, declined to comment on the BGS estimate for the Bowland Basin Shale but said: “The company got a lot of flak for the 200 trillion cubic feet number. It’s likely to be conservative. I would say wait for the BGS number.”

He said that anywhere between zero and 40 per cent of the gas in the ground could be recovered and at a cost well below present gas prices.

Cuadrilla has previously said that it could drill up to 800 wells over 16 years if it moves into the production phase, creating 5,600 full-time jobs at the peak and generating between £5 billion and £6 billion a year in tax revenues.

Many doubt that Britain would be able to replicate the dramatic shale boom in the US over the past five years, which will result in the US becoming the world’s largest oil and gas producer by 2017. But Mr Egan said that matching even half the shale boom in the US would represent success for Britain.


tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/uk-shale-could-be-17-times-bigger-than-remaining-north-sea-reserves/#comment-37637

[marchesarosa]

Tom Barr says

There are over 20,000 wells fracked in the Barnett Shale in Texas, without any significant problems. Yet another inconvenient truth.

[visitor]

Dec 9, 2012 18:05:21 GMT marchesarosa said:

And what do you think about Visitor's pacifism, young pippop?

Could you please provide a link or quote that leads you to believe I am a pacifist?

[pippop]

Dec 9, 2012 18:05:21 GMT marchesarosa said:

Twice yay, young pippop!!

(see I'm moving from sexism to ageism - nothing if not flexible)

And what do you think about Visitor's pacifism, young pippop?

Like Aqua I would prefer it if you did NOT stick any old adjective in front of my name.

Thank you.

[marchesarosa]

Anything to oblige, pippop!

[marchesarosa]

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2244822/Thought-running-fossil-fuels-New-technology-means-Britain-U-S-tap-undreamed-reserves-gas-oil.html

Thought we were running out of fossil fuels? New technology means Britain and the U.S. could tap undreamed reserves of gas and oil
By NIGEL LAWSON


...The dramatic news emerged a few weeks ago that the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer in 2017.
America is already the world’s largest natural gas producer, and it is estimated that, by 2035, almost 90 per cent of Middle East oil and gas exports will go to Asia, with the U.S. importing virtually none.

For decades, the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, has had to shape, and sometimes arguably to misshape, its foreign policy in the light of its dependence on Middle East oil and gas. No longer: that era is now over.

For decades, too, Europe has been fearful of the threat that Russia might cut off the gas supplies on which it has relied so heavily.
No longer: that era will very soon be over, too. Thanks to the shale gas revolution, the newfound energy independence of the West is a beneficent game-changer in terms of world politics as much as it is in the field of energy economics.

That does not mean the West can become indifferent to the threat of war in the Middle East, as Iran continues with its ambition to become a nuclear power, or to the threat of al Qaeda-inspired terrorism.
Nor does it mean that we can or should regard Mr Putin’s Russia as of no importance.

In his Autumn Statement on Wednesday, Chancellor George Osborne announced a new gas strategy designed to promote the fastest practicable exploitation of the UK's shale gas deposits

There is more to international politics than oil and gas. But what it does mean is that we are — or very soon will be — no longer in any way dependent on either region, and that the political leaders of both have lost their biggest source of global influence.

Hardly a week goes by without new shale gas and oil deposits being discovered in America. As these new sources of energy are developed and extracted, energy costs are falling because of continuing technological innovation and economies of scale. And there are sizeable shale gas deposits in the UK, too......


Read more

[marchesarosa]

This could be a game changer for the West. Just the shot in the arm the UK economy needs - cheap back-up thermal power stations for those expensive, unreliable windmills and jobs, jobs, jobs.

And these fracking rigs do not make a huge impact on the environment for miles around like windmills. They are small, can be largely hidden behind hedges of fast growing Leylandii if necessary, and can be dismantled and removed completely after the gas/oil has been extracted leaving virtually no long term damage to the ground surface.

[marchesarosa]

Ignore the doom merchants, Britain should get fracking
Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph

It’s green, it’s cheap and it’s plentiful! So why are opponents of shale gas making such a fuss??

If it were not so serious there would be something ludicrous about the reaction of the green lobby to the discovery of big shale gas reserves in this country. Here we are in the fifth year of a downturn. We have pensioners battling fuel poverty. We have energy firms jacking up their prices. We have real worries about security of energy supply – a new building like the Shard needs four times as much juice as the entire town of Colchester.

Our nukes are so high-maintenance that the cost of disposing of their spent fuel rods is put at about £100 billion – more than the value of all the electricity they have produced since the Fifties. The hills and dales of Britain are being forested with white satanic mills, and yet the total contribution of wind power is still only about 0.4 per cent of Britain’s needs. Wave power, solar power, biomass – their collective oomph wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. We are prevented from putting in a new system of coal-fired power stations, since that would breach our commitments under Kyoto. We are therefore increasingly and humiliatingly dependent on Vladimir Putin’s gas or on the atomic power of the French state.


And then in the region of Blackpool – as if by a miracle – we may have found the solution. The extraction of shale gas by hydraulic fracture, or fracking, seems an answer to the nation’s prayers. There is loads of the stuff, apparently – about 1.3 trillion barrels...

cont'd here
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9733518/Ignore-the-doom-merchants-Britain-should-get-fracking.html





My view entirely.

[marchesarosa]

WRITTEN MINISTERIAL STATEMENT BY EDWARD DAVEY: EXPLORATION FOR SHALE GAS

EDWARD DAVEY, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

13 DECEMBER 2012

www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/wms_shale/wms_shale.aspx