UK won’t frack its way to energy security

The energy crisis comes with few, if any, really good policy options. The choices for softening the impact of rocketing gas prices and bolstering the country’s energy security have variously looked too slow, too complex, too blunt, too expensive, too environmentally damaging, too prone to unintended consequences, or some winning combination of the above.

Some just feel a bit pointless — and it is on to one such gem that the UK government has latched, pledging to lift a three-year ban on fracking in England.

The process of forcing pressurised liquid and materials into rock formations to create small fractures has become a topic of totemic political importance and quasi-religious conviction.

To believers, fracking is a quick, safe and proven way to tap into the UK’s bountiful gas reserves and is the best chance of quickly securing the country’s future energy security.

To opponents, it is a dangerous technology, banned in England since 2019 following an outcry over earthquakes at a test site in Lancashire — and one that wouldn’t lower fuel bills, and only adds to the climate emergency.

The real problem, however, is that it is unpopular, something that remains the case despite the war in Ukraine, soaring gas prices and the ensuing disintegration of the retail energy market.

There is less certainty around fracking in the UK than either side would have you believe. No one really knows how much shale gas there is. The idea that the UK is sitting on 50 years’ worth of gas is based on a 2013 estimate from the British Geological Survey, which suggested the Bowland-Hodder shale in the Midlands and North could hold up to 65 trillion cubic metres (tcm). A 2019 report came up with a figure of 4 tcm. There aren’t even estimates for what might be commercially or technically recoverable, an important question in a small, densely populated country.

A new BGS report, requested by the government in April into seismic effects, went to the business department in early July but has yet to be published. The answer from that desk exercise may yet be: we don’t really know without further investigation.

The industry has a point that the ultra-sensitive “traffic light” system, which halts drilling every time there is a tremor of more than 0.5 on the Richter scale, is basically a block on activity. But opponents argue that the heavily faulted geology of the UK could make extraction particularly challenging, and that even small tremors near to wells can cause damage enabling gas or fluids to escape.

The reality is that the public attitude to fracking is so dire as to make this feel a little irrelevant. No one knows what the Liz Truss condition of “where there is local support” means in practice for lifting the moratorium. But the appeal of fracking is supposedly speed: the prime minister’s promise it could produce gas in six months was rather ahead of even sector forecasts from the likes of Cuadrilla and IGas Energy, based on unconditional, gung ho government support.

Either reform moves quickly, lifting drilling restrictions, changing planning rules to override local opposition and risking community and political blowback. Or this seems to require a softly, softly process of education and coalition building that is at odds with the rapid-response billing.

The starting point isn’t good. Polling by Survation this summer found that only a third of respondents supported fracking compared with 74 to 81 per cent for wind and solar, where planning change is also needed to speed deployment. As important for the risk of town hall rage, 45 per cent opposed fracking compared with 10-12 per cent for renewables (figures that include those answering “don’t know”).

Community support schemes can have limited cut-through on the ground, say some industry sources. And even the idea of 25 per cent off energy bills gets support to just 53 per cent of adults (excluding don’t know answers), according to a survey by YouGov for industry group UK Onshore Oil and Gas.

The challenges facing the UK shale industry would look sizeable even with the benefit of limitless political capital and time. It is not clear it has either.

helen.thomas@ft.com
@helentbiz