Liz Truss, we support fracking too – that’s why we know it can’t work for Britain
In one of her first acts as prime minister, Liz Truss pledged to lift the ban on fracking in England, with the aim of opening up access to Britain’s copious onshore natural gas resources.
You would imagine that we, as the founder and former public affairs director of Cuadrilla Resources, an oil and gas exploration company, would welcome this news. Although we are no longer involved with Cuadrilla, we believe this news is positive. But it is misleading to imply that the announcement will lead to meaningful supply of new gas in the UK in the foreseeable future. And we believe there are other more practicable steps that could be taken to produce significant energy in a timely manner. Here’s why.
Fracking – more technically known as hydraulic fracturing – is necessary to liberate methane molecules from hard shales and many other rock types. This takes place 2-4km below the surface, about the distance between Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London, under a number of impermeable layers of rock. The techniques have been made needlessly controversial in the UK due to misrepresented concerns about isolated incidents ofgroundwater contamination and microseismicity, the former of which only take place when mistakes are made during well management. Fracking has been regarded as safe practice by knowledgable regulators in countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina and others – countries, where manythousands of wells are fracked on an annual basis.
We would not be able to import liquid natural gas (LNG) from the US and Canada if it were not produced by fracking in those countries.
Disagreements about safety are not the real challenge, however. In our view, there are two key additional barriers: technical and economic
Read more on theguardian.com
