Financial Times: UK shale licences attacked as ‘reckless race’

Energy companies will be invited on Monday to bid for a new round of fracking licences covering more than half the country, but ministers insist that tougher planning rules will put national parks out of bounds unless “exceptional circumstances” prevail.

The opening of the first tender process in six years will open up swaths of the countryside to the controversial practice of shale gas extraction, from Scotland and the northeast to parts of the south coast.

Matthew Hancock, business and energy minister, told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme on Monday that it “would be irresponsible not to explore” to unlock the potential of shale gas in Britain because it had the potential to provide “greater energy security” given that North Sea oil reserves are declining.
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