MPs on Parliament’s energy watchdog are launching an inquiry into the impact of shale gas on the energy UK market.
The energy select committee wants to find out whether shale gas could push down the price of conventional gas, as well as why estimates of the UK’s shale gas resources are so “changeable”. This follows the Committee’s previous inquiry earlier this year. Some optimistic analysis puts the figure at more than a trillion cubic metres in reserves under the UK.
Some developers hail shale gas as a “game changer” but the fuel has taken flak from environmentalists who say the UK would be better to focus on renewable energy. There also concerns the technology has not been fully tested for its impact on local water supplies.
The committee will also ask whether the UK should consider setting up a wealth fund with the tax revenue from shale gas, something Norwegians have done successfully with their own oil and gas assets.
July 30th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
UK shale gas is off-shore and thus not feasable. At all. As for a wealth fund, the time to do so was when the UK was a net energy exporter, not a net energy importer!
Report comment Report commentJuly 31st, 2012 at 11:39 am
JJ Butler ,
When you mention offshore , are you talking about the Northern European Permian Basin which stretches from Poland with the basin edge onshore just inland from Grimsby ? Or out towards Ireland on the West Coast ?
How can you be sure there is so little recoverable from onshore deposits until Cuadrilla , Dart , Egdon , Rathlin , Celtique , Aurora , Igas , Europa , Coastal and the others are allowed to use their own money to drill and fracture stimulate shale and tight reservoir rocks to obtain a better estimate of how much is likely recoverable ?
Report comment Report commentJuly 31st, 2012 at 3:06 pm
JJ Butler,
The shale gas they are referring to is ONSHORE in the Midlands. There is a huge amount there. Shale gas is an emotive topic because an American Josh Fox produced a film showing tap water being ignited. What he failed to explain was that this is a naturally occuring phenomenom. There is film evidence of fawcett fires 26 years before fraccing was ever invented.
Natural gas has been perculting up from beneath the earth for millions of years contaminating all sorts of aquifers.