Bloomberg: Cameron’s Bid to Tap Shale-Gas Boom Flounders Amid Fracking Bans

The drive by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to spur a shale-gas revolution is floundering before it’s even started.

In the past three weeks, Scotland and Wales temporarily banned hydraulic fracturing until they study new environmental safeguards. While the U.K. Parliament rejected a similar moratorium, the government accepted calls by opposition lawmakers to ban fracking in national parks and beauty spots.

Eighteen months after then-energy minister, Michael Fallon, said he expected as many as 40 new wells over two years, none has been drilled amid opposition from campaigners and residents near planned sites. The faltering U.K. ambitions to lower its dependence on fossil fuel imports follow disappointments in Poland and leave Europe with little hope of emulating the U.S. shale-gas boom.

“The economics of this are different in the U.K. because we have a densely populated island, whereas America has vast areas where there are very, very few people,” Tessa Munt, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker who quit her job in government after voting against its fracking proposals, said in an interview. “I can imagine that our policy will be quietly abandoned. It’s going to be quite difficult to get public support for this.”

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