The Economist: Drill-seekers

IN 1815 William Smith published a map of British geology that, by identifying coal deposits, helped kick-start the Industrial Revolution. Exactly 200 years later, as the government tries to put more puff into the economy’s sails, it is hoping for a similar boost from another source of hydrocarbons: shale gas. Progress is being made, but painfully slowly, and there is still plenty of opposition to overcome.

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has been used before in Britain but never to extract shale gas. The process uses water and chemicals to split rocks deep underground and extract the gas. A group of MPs sought to impose a moratorium on the process, but they were defeated in a parliamentary vote on January 26th. The government undercut them by assenting to a ban on fracking in national parks and to new regulations that will make fracking harder: one, for example, will force companies to monitor fracking sites for a year before drilling.

Ken Cronin of UK Onshore Operators Group, an industry body, welcomed the outcome anyway. “We now need to get on with exploratory drilling to find out the extent of the UK’s oil and gas reserves,” he said. The prime minister, David Cameron, agrees, calling opponents “irrational”.

Read the full article HERE