Cuadrilla Says Locals Benefit from Shale

UK shale gas explorer Cuadrilla said January 30 its total expenditure in Lancashire, the county where it is drilling, stands at £6.8mn, having increased by over £2mn during 4Q2017.

Cuadrilla said the near-£7mn total includes £161,000 paid out in community payments in 2017. Of the latter, £100,000 is to be spent by a local panel on the wider Lancashire community, while £61,000 is paid direct to local residents living close to the Preston New Road shale gas exploration site. Further payments to households will follow in the next quarterly tracker, it said.

Earlier this month Cuadrilla said it was encouraged by the samples recovered from a vertical pilot well at its shale gas exploration site in northwest England, and had "just commenced" the first horizontal UK shale gas exploration well, adding that once two horizontal wells had been completed they would be hydraulically fractured (fracked), most likely in 2Q 2018.

Cuadrilla is 45%-owned by Australian drill services firm AJ Lucas, 45% by US private equity group Riverstone, and 10% by current and past employees.

Lancashire's elected authority voted in mid-2015 to refuse Cuadrilla planning permission to drill and frack in the county, but its decision was subsequently overturned by the UK government in respect of one of Cuadrilla's two drill sites in the area; that permission was then affirmed in the courts in Cuadrilla's favour, following appeals by some residents. (The banner photo is courtesy of Cuadrilla)