Shale gas drilling has been given the go-ahead by members of the UK parliament who have insisted that the process is safe. An inquiry by the Energy and Climate Change committee concluded that fracking, the process by which gas is extracted from shale rock, poses no risk to underground water supplies as long as drilling wells are properly constructed.

Therefore a moratorium on drilling in the UK would be inappropriate, the committee said, as long as it is monitored closely by government.

Committee chairman Tim Yeo MP said: "There appears to be nothing inherently dangerous about the process of fracking itself and as long as the integrity of the well is maintained shale gas extraction should be safe.

"The government's regulatory agencies must of course be vigilant and monitor drilling closely to ensure that air and water quality is not being affected."

According to the British Geological Society the UK's onshore shale gas resources could be as much as 150 million cubic metres, worth £28bn and equivalent to one-and-a-half years of total gas usage. But even that could be dwarfed by offshore resources.

The report says that although exploiting shale gas would reduce the UK's dependence on gas imports, there would be little impact on domestic energy prices.

Yeo added: "Offshore reserves may be much higher and, while more costly to recover, could potentially deliver self-sufficiency in gas for the UK at some point in the future."

The report adds that using shale gas could encourage a movement away from using coal – but might also take investment away from renewable energy sources. Yeo said the emergence of shale gas "increases the urgency of bringing carbon capture and storage technology to the market and making it work for gas as well as coal".

Concerns have been raised about the safety of the chemicals used in shale gas extraction, while in the United States footage appeared of people setting their water supply alight – apparently because of the high quantity of methane emissions produced by fracking. Yeo accepted that those concerns were understandable but said regulations were much tighter in the UK.

Writing for PublicServiceEurope.com earlier this month, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation Dr Benny Peiser highlighted the Europe-wide potential for a shale gas "revolution".

"Poland, France and the Ukraine alone may have supplies sufficient to last for 200 or 300 years. No wonder then that many European countries see shale as a golden opportunity to generate cheap energy as well as reduce their reliance on imports from Russia and the Middle East.

"Already, Germany is set for the conversion of its energy mix away from nuclear and towards gas. Berlin announced only last week that its new energy policy will now focus on building more gas-fired power stations to fill to looming gap caused by Germany's accelerated nuclear phase-out," he wrote.

Public Service Europe, 24 May 2011

UK Lawmakers: No Evidence Shale Gas Threatens Environment

Dow Jones Newswire, 23 May 2011

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- There is no evidence that properly conducted drilling for shale gas poses a direct risk to underground aquifers, a group of lawmakers on the U.K. Parliament's Energy and Climate Change Committee said in a report Monday.

These conclusions could be a boon for the shale gas industry, which has transformed the energy landscape in the U.S. following a huge surge in new production. However, even as it gave a green light to shale gas development, the committee warned that the industry would likely have a far smaller impact on U.K. energy supplies than occurred in the U.S.

The committee rejected requests for a moratorium on shale gas extraction in the U.K., although it urged the government's Department of Energy and Climate Change to monitor drilling "extremely closely" as long as the industry remains in its early stages.

"There has been a lot of hot air recently about the dangers of shale gas drilling, but our inquiry found no evidence to support the main concern--that UK water supplies would be put at risk," said Tim Yeo, the Conservative member of Parliament who is chair of the committee. "There appears to be nothing inherently dangerous about the process of 'fracking' itself and as long as the integrity of the well is maintained shale gas extraction should be safe."

Fracking is the key process of shale gas extraction. It involves fracturing the rock around the well bore using high pressure fluids in order to release the natural gas that is trapped inside. Environmental groups have warned that fracking fluids, which can contain hazardous chemicals, could seep through the rock in an uncontrolled manner and contaminate ground water. There have also been cases in the U.S. where surface spills of fracking fluid have caused environmental damage.

A boom in shale gas extraction in the U.S. has transformed its energy landscape, lowering gas prices and largely eliminating the need for imports of liquefied natural gas. However, the industry is also drawing increasing criticism from environmental groups, which says its activities are too loosely regulated.

The committee's report said a successful U.K. shale gas industry could reduce dependence on foreign imports, but "is unlikely to have a dramatic effect on domestic gas prices."

"The U.K.'s onshore shale gas resources could be as large as 150 billion cubic meters--equivalent to roughly 1.5 years of total U.K. gas consumption," it said.

Yeo also said that a significant shale gas industry could help the U.K. hit short-term carbon dioxide reduction targets by speeding the switch away from coal in power generation, "which in some cases could halve power station emissions." However, such a switch wouldn't do enough to hit long-term carbon reduction targets, the report said.

UK Panel: No Water Risk From 'Fracking'

The Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2011

A U.K. parliamentary committee said it had found no evidence that hydraulic fracturing, the much-debated process used to extract natural gas from dense shale rocks, poses any risk to water supplies and rejected calls for a moratorium on permits for shale-gas activity.

The conclusion, contained in a long-awaited report, was condemned by environmental groups but greeted by producers, in particular Cuadrilla Resources Holdings Ltd, which is trying to extract gas from shales in northwestern England.

Hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking," is the practice of injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into the ground to free natural gas locked up in the tight pores of shale formations.

Its widespread use, coupled with horizontal drilling, has revolutionized the U.S. energy industry, allowing companies to tap vast new reserves of natural gas. In 2000, shale gas made up just 1% of U.S. natural-gas supplies. Today it is about 25%, and could increase to 50% within two decades.

The technology is now being exported to Europe and Asia, which also boast huge reserves of unconventional gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently estimated that shale gas adds 40% to the world's technically recoverable natural-gas resources.

But environmental concerns have tended to slow its development in Europe. Critics fear chemicals used in the fracking process can leech into water supplies, a claim the industry rejects.

Earlier this month, a study by scientists from Duke University in North Carolina found that drilling for natural gas was allowing potentially explosive methane gas to seep into some drinking-water wells in Pennsylvania and New York. While not considered a toxin, methane bubbling out of the water can build up and cause fires or explosions.

Responding to such concerns, France's lower house, the National Assembly, passed a bill this month which barred shale-gas exploration and revoked permits that have already been granted. The proposal will be debated in the upper house, the Senate, next month.

In its report, published Monday evening, the Energy and Climate Change Committee of Britain's House of Commons said there was "no evidence" that fracking posed a risk to underground water aquifers—provided the wells are constructed properly. It said the risks of water contamination were due to issues of well integrity—whether the well casing was intact or not—and as such were "no different" to the concerns that arise in conventional oil and natural-gas production.

At the same time, the committee recommended that the U.K.'s Environment Agency force companies to declare the "type, concentration and volume of all chemicals added to the hydraulic fracturing fluid" so they can be detected in water supplies should any leakage occur. The lawmakers also called on the government to monitor exploration in the Bowland Shale in northwestern England—the area where Cuadrilla operates—to "assess the likely impact of large-scale shale gas extraction in the U.K."

The conclusions are good news for Cuadrilla, a small oil-and-gas company which reported last December that one of the wells it had drilled in the Bowland Shale had encountered gas, marking the first potential shale-gas discovery in the U.K.

Mark Miller, Cuadrilla's chief executive, welcomed the committee's findings. "Cuadrilla will continue to maintain its high standards for exploration of natural gas from shale in the U.K. and across Europe and to work closely with all the regulatory agencies on an on-going basis," Mr. Miller said.

But environmentalists were disappointed.

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