Cuadrilla Expects Environmental Permits from Environmental Agency in December

UK-focused Cuadrilla Resources said that the Environmental Agency expects to grant the environmental permits for the shale gas exploration site at Preston New Road. 

‘The decision is subject to a final round of consultation that runs until December 8,’ reads the note released on Monday.

“We will of course comply fully with their requirements for our proposed new sites,” commented Francis Egan, CEO of Cuadrilla. 

The news come in a moment of highs and lows for shale gas. Recently, Romania’s PM said the country does not have significant shale gas resources. On the other hand, an increasing pro-shale gas rhetoric in the UK seems to indicate a momentum in Great Britain.

British newspapers wrote on Tuesday that the country should relax its legislation for shale gas development, mentioning a recent study by Rob Westaway and Paul L. Younger. The two professors of the University of Glasgow published their Research Article on Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology & Hydrogeology, asking for a change in legislation that would allow stronger earthquakes induced by shale gas activities.

‘Events of that magnitude would result in PGV above our proposed regulatory limit and might be sufficient to cause minor damage to property, such as cracked plaster; we propose that any such rare occurrences could readily be covered by a system of compensation similar to that used over many decades for damage caused by coal mining,’ the two professors wrote in their article accepted in August 2014. 

Westaway and Younger advocated that authorities should work on a new regulatory framework, replicating the laws used for quarry blasting.

‘We suggest that the existing regulatory limits applicable to quarry blasting … can be readily applied to cover such induced seismicity.’