Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
Yesterday, Britain’s fledgling shale gas industry was dealt another significant blow when three senior judges overturned a draconian injunction that had been granted to the company, INEOS, against anti-fracking campaigners.
One of Britain’s elite cycling teams has just announced that its new sponsor will be the UK’s richest man, petrochemical and fracking boss, Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
The UK’s fledgling fracking industry was dealt another significant nail in its coffin today when the High Court ruled that the current guidance from the Government on shale gas is “unlawful”.
The prospects for the shale industry are looking increasingly bleak this year as it haemorrhages investor cash, continues to experience widespread community resistance, especially in Europe, and fails to find adequate gas reserves.
As the UK’s fledgling shale industry lurches from crisis after crisis concerning public acceptability and causing repeated small earthquakes, the UK Government last month appointed what it termed an independent “Shale Gas Commissioner” whose job it is to listen to the concerns of local residents
As the fledgling UK fracking industry bleeds investors’ money in alarming quantities on a daily basis, plagued by ongoing issues of democratic accountability, seismic activity, financial viability and on-going legal challenges, it will find no comfort from looking across the pond.
In their belligerent and blinkered attempt to replicate the US shale boom in the UK, the fracking industry and Conservative Government cannot bury three immovable and inconvenient truths that treaten to kill off the industry, even before it has been shown to be commercially viable.
Yet again the Ministers and civil servants in charge of Britain’s climate and energy policy have shown their abject failure to show any concept of climate leadership or even joined up thinking.
The exploitation of shale gas on half of the land licensed by the UK Government for fracking operations could trigger earthquakes, according to a leading seismologist and former energy advisor to the Tory Government.
In 2006, the ex-British Prime Minister, David Cameron, famously went to the Arctic to see the effects of climate change for himself.
