With dire warnings of earthquakes, flames roaring from the taps of kitchen sinks and contaminated drinking water, shale gas is challenging nuclear power as the world’s most controversial energy source.
Opponents were dealt a blow today with the release of new estimates from explorer IGas of how much natural gas could be locked away in shale rock thousands of feet below the ground in northwest England.
Environmentalists were quick to pour cold water on the news, with Greenpeace dismissing Igas’s numbers as “pure hype”.
But the government appears to be anticipating a shale boom after lifting a ban on “fracking” – the practise of blasting rock with water, sand and chemicals to release the trapped gas – in December. Who’s right?
“Deciding how much gas there is based on the word of a shale gas firm is like buying a second hand car without lifting up the bonnet and asking the price. IGas may be keen to impress its investors in China but these figures are just hype.”
Doug Parr, Policy Director, Greenpeace, 3 June 2013
IGas says there is anything from 15 to 172 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of shale gas buried between Liverpool and Manchester. The central estimate is 102 tcf.
You don’t know what a trillion cubic feet of gas looks like. Neither does FactCheck. But 102 tcf is about 10 times as much as the company thought was there.
It takes the total (unproven) estimate of UK shale gas resources made by various companies from about 300 tcf to about 400 tcf.
Is the estimate accurate? Greenpeace thinks it is “just hype”. But energy companies are not allowed to just make these figures up to attract investors. They’re bound by strict stock market rules and would be in hot water with regulators if they deliberately gave out inaccurate figures.
In any event, if this is a lie, it will be exposed very soon. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has commissioned an independent report from the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the results are expected next month.
The 2010 official assessment of shale reserves by the BGS was just over 5 tcf but that is likely go up significantly.
IGas is not the only company to revise its estimate of shale reserves upward. Last week exploration firm Egdon Resources increased its estimate of shale available under Lincolnshire.
Corin Taylor, senior economic adviser at the Institute of Directors, who has written two detailed papers on shale gas, told us: “Every estimate is getting larger. The more companies are looking into this, the more they are finding big resources.”
Self-sufficiency?
Of course, this doesn’t spell the immediate end of Britain’s energy security worries. Even if all this gas is sitting underground, how much of will be actually be able to extract?
A conservative estimate of 10 per cent would give us 30 to 40 tcf. Current total UK gas consumption is about 3 tcf a year and we import about half of it.
Some fracking operations in the US manage much higher rates of extraction, and the technology is improving.
(In a blog on the organisation’s website, Damian Kahya from Greenpeace suggests that estimates of how much of the gas can really be extracted are exaggerated, saying: “The problem is that the gas in place is actually just one of many factors you need to examine to work out how much you can extract – and potentially not even the most important.”)
The Institute of Directors says that kind of windfall could create tens of thousands of jobs in some of the most economically deprived areas of Britain, and if the American experience is anything to go by, fuel bills should fall too.
Naturally there is considerable uncertainty to all of this. The extent of the reserves hasn’t been officially verified, the industry is still developing in this country, and there is considerable environmental opposition to fracking and shale.
Shaking all over
Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” became synonymous with earthquakes when the government put a stop to the practise in 2011 after two small tremors.
A study by Durham University found that fracking can cause seismic activity but most of it will be so small as to be unnoticeable. The researches said the biggest fracking quake measured 3.8 in magnitude – just about strong enough to be felt by people.
They noted that other kinds of mining and waste disposal can cause stronger shocks, concluding: “Hydraulic fracturing is not an important mechanism for causing felt earthquakes.”
Flaming taps
Gasland, a US-made documentary about fracking, caused a stir when it included this dramatic scene of a householder in Colorado setting fire to methane gas leaking out of a water tap.
But doubt was cast over whether a local fracking operation was to blame, after reports emerged of naturally occurring methane gas in the water supply decades before the fracking operation began.
A report by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering found that contamination of drinking water was unlikely, and that the health and safety risks of fracking could be managed by proper regulation.
Power plants that run on natural gas produce about half the carbon emissions of coal-powered stations, but methane leaking from the ground during fracking contributes to climate change, and many environmentalists say investment in shale will derail efforts to switch to greener energy sources.
By Patrick Worrall
