Green Britain Kills Its Shale Bonanza
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward
Sadly the eco-rabble along with virtue signalling politicians appear to have succeeded in shutting down Britain’s energy future:
Cuadrilla, the fracking company most active in England, has begun removing equipment from its only testing area after the work was blamed for minor earthquakes in August.
There are no plans to continue at the Lancashire site, and an imminent energy white paper from the government is set to prioritise renewable energy over fracking, which blasts a mixture of water and chemicals into underground shale rock to release gas.
Once lauded by David Cameron and George Osborne as a technique that would cut energy bills and create tens of thousands of jobs, fracking was losing political support even before the tremors at Cuadrilla’s site near Blackpool.
Jamie Peters, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: “Fracking in the UK is now dead. Cuadrilla’s test drilling at Preston New Road was the flagship scheme — and it’s gone badly.
“To get this industry off the ground, regulations would need to be relaxed, and that’s just not going to happen after those August quakes and the growing environmental concerns around fossil fuels.”
Even before the latest Extinction Rebellion protests last week, polls have suggested that mainstream public concern over climate change is growing, making it less and less likely ministers would champion a new fossil fuel industry.
Although the leadership of the Conservatives Party still officially supports fracking, between 30 and 40 Tory backbenchers are understood to favour a ban.
In a speech last Thursday in Northampton, Jeremy Corbyn said Labour would “ban” fracking, echoing calls from the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.
Full story (£)
What none of these morons have worked out is that we cannot simply run a modern economy on wind and solar power. Even the Committee on Climate Change have accepted that. In their Net Zero Plan they have said that we will still need large amounts of natural gas, both for power and heating, albeit subject to Carbon Capture & Storage:
Last year, gas power generation totalled 131 TWh, so the CCC’s projection of 148 TWh is actually an increase.
Domestic demand for gas is currently 309 TWh a year. The CCC reckon we will need 225 TWh of hydrogen from steam reforming to replace this. This process, of course, uses natural gas to produce the hydrogen. Furthermore some of the gas used in the process gets wasted, so it is likely that demand for gas will remain close to today’s levels.
With North Sea supplies of natural gas running out, perhaps the eco nut jobs might care to tell us where we will get it in future.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Putin will be relieved.
Heck, West Virginia might be relieved. What a criminal shame that the UK cannot be energy independent when it is right under your feet.
Since the election of Donald J. Trump, the West Virginia coal industry is in recovery. President Trump is also helping his friend and sons’ hunting partner, WV Governor Jim Justice, to finally sweep aside lingering attempts by the greenies to stop our pipeline constructions to the Norfolk, VA area.
I am concerned that the Great Donald keeps getting his plans to drain the swamp thwarted – often by spineless Republicans. The free thinking world needs him to shine a light on all the fiddling, cherry picking and lies that come from the global warmists in US government institutions in the hope that honest scientists everywhere will feel it is safe to tell the truth. Dr Peter Ridd still needs more donations to get to his $1.5m fund to fight JCU.
Gerry, England. Don’t be discouraged, a lot of swamp is being drained and much more prepared for draining. It is a messy business as the swamp is really unhappy at being drained.
There will be a large sucking sound of swamp down the drain with release of the Horowitz report at the end of the week. Attorney General Bill Barr and US Attorney for District of CT, John Durham have been on the grand tour of Europe (dare I say they checked in with the Ukraine?). They have popped in to the UK and Italy to name a few and without notice. All the better to find people at home and “unprepared.”
One of the reasons for the delay has been that their scope has been ever expanding with where their investigations are leading. They are finding new rabbit holes to go down. The corruption has been deep, wide and entrenched, involving both sides.
John Durham is known as a bull dog who has been successful in many cases. Don’t forget John Huber of Utah who was looking into the Clinton Foundation–a worldwide crime syndicate. For those who say that they let Comey off the hook…..why get him for jaywalking when you can wait to get him for armed robbery…..AND for those who worry about the DC courts which are decidedly leftist, John Durham can bring charges in CT and Huber in UT.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
The utter, blinkered and totally irresposible idiocy of this defies comprehension. I almost cannot wait for 2000 and whatever the target date for switching the lights off is. Rabid indigestion will follow the avalanche of words being eaten!!
If the millennium bug doesn’t get there first 😉
Agree with Joe public. Vlad will be dancing with joy. Russia’s wealth is dependent totally on oil and particularly gas, hence the investment in the Nordstream pipelines to supply central europe. As the middle east and now USA are supplying LNG in quantity the last thing Vlad wants to see is another supply in the market. I do wonder how much of the anti fracking protests is overtly and covertly financed by Russia and supported by all the ivans and Sergeis sat at their computer screens in a big room in St Petersburg emailing the Guardian
I think the links to Russia for the anti-fracking groups have already been shown but ignored as the Democrats tried to link Donald to the Russians.
There is no need for “reds under the beds” worries: we have all the madmen needed running the asylum already, fully supported by the billionaire owned and controlled UK press.
I don’t think the antis need any foreign encouragement, it’s enough encouragement to know they are knifing their own country in the back.
The shale gas ain’t going anywhere so this can be revisited – maybe in 12 years (or is it 11 now?).
The die is cast. The future will either be rolling black outs, or a system that works at a cost two or three times as expensive as optimal, or a combination of both. The economic/financial ‘disruptors’ hope for the second; reality will probably determine the third outcome, the very worst of all worlds.
But the loss of reasonably priced energy will be matched by a loss of personal freedoms as society tries to manage this future.
What perversity, what madness has entered the pyschic of western (wo)man to allow such destructive brainwashing to succeed?
Tellingly, because of their technological ignorance, the eco nut jobs cannot to tell us where we will get the essential gas from in the future.
No gas, hand knitted yoghurt yurts will keep us warm as we slide into a little ice age…..
There are so many stupid aspects to this but at risk of repeating myself I do have to tell you (again ^.^)
1. The government is ignoring ALL of the economic benefits of shale gas:
Even if we did not use it ourselves, natural gas is in demand all over the world.
A large number of well paid jobs would be created by exploiting UK shale.
There is oil as well as gas in the Bowland shale.
The size and quality of the Bowland shale deposit has never been made public (I have tried).
Because we are importing more gas all the time, our balance of trade would benefit hugely.
The size and quality:
This is from memory, The famous shale ‘plays’ in the US are between 200 and 400 feet thick. When Cuadrilla were forced to stop drilling, they had already drilled through 1200 feet of shale and they genuinly do not know how much more there was because they were stopped.
This information was only ever published in the accounts of the then parent company, A J Lucas in Australia
I am sure everyone on this site knows that CO2 does not cause global warming.
“This process, of course, uses natural gas to produce the hydrogen. Furthermore some of the gas used in the process gets wasted, so it is likely that demand for gas will remain close to today’s levels.”
Hence it will also be much more expensive.
Buy it from Russis which is why Russia helps fund these left wing groups.
Selenum is not a metal, heavy or otherwise.
Who mentioned selenium and why did you bring it up?
Fracking does cause earthquakes, dutchsinse on youtube has demonstrated this almost every day for years. We don’t want nuclear do we?! I don’t, I think of Sellerfield, Chernobyl and Fukushima and shudder. Wind and solar aren’t cost effective or reliable, that leaves coal. (There’s a mountain of it in Antarctica. I wonder how it got there) We could open the pits but nowadays there’d be traumatised children screaming in terror in the streets plus isn’t that where Sellerfield waste is? heheh we are fracked.
Sadly, this will enrich Iran and Russia and later China as Iran just discovered a massive pool of natural gas.
The super computer, Socrates, developed by Martin Armstrong has predicted China emerging as the next super-power. Woe Betide us then, lol, I’m glad I was born in the 1950’s, I won’t have to clean up the mess.
I was pro fracking until I experienced a 2.1 tremor in my flat along with thousands of others. I have now changed my mind.
Archer: You prefer to go without energy for transportation? That’s what rapid lowering of CO2 means… no gas no oil…with or without fracking.
“What none of these morons have worked out is that we cannot simply run a modern economy on wind and solar power.”
Exactly, and they should also remember that in the absence of carbon those alternative energies will have to do the impossible job of taking gigatons of CO2 straight out of the air and burying it somewhere…both so far yet to be defined quantitatively.
“And burying it somewhere”
And if you think earthquakes caused by fracking are bad, wait till the lunatics start pumping CO2 into depleted gas fields….
2.1? Did a really heavy artic. drive past?
Britain experiences earthquakes and tremors every year and we don’t turn a hair. As soon as one is reported to have been caused by fracking (and was it?), then suddenly people are scared stiff.
I have expected for months now to hear that Cuadrilla has given up on its Lancashire shale exploration. As I have posted numerous times over the years shale gas production is entirely dependent on the permeability of the shale and Cuadrilla’s early testing results with their very, very low flow rates was ominous. Their latest fracks when they greatly exceeded the permissible 0.5 Richter to about 3.5 Richter was, I suspect, a deliberate last throw of the dice to see what the potential ultimate delivery rate could be. Same story in Poland when Geo Soros’s San Leon Energy just walked away from an enormously promising shale reserve because the gas – though there – just didn’t flow. So much grief and waste would have been avoided if my suggestion – here and to my MP and others – had been followed – viz the government should have thrown its full weight behind, and shared the costs of, Cuadrilla’s testing program and ignored the Greenies. At the end it wasn’t them who made it fail but they certainly escalated the grief. A massive SNAFU by all involved.
The early test results were fantastic, where do you get such crap?
Please note that in the Fig. 5.4 posted above (and earlier by Paul) the vertical axis is in millions of tons. What is not provided by the CCS Industry is the weight of one part-per-million of oxidized carbon. That alone is almost eight billion tons. Do the math on dividing 8,000 million by the few millions on the chart. Might take a while, even for morons spray-painting airplanes?
On the other hand, 180 million tonnes per year is about 3 million barrels a day when liquefied at pressures of over 100 atmospheres prior to burial. That is, we will need an industry bigger than the North Sea just to bury the stuff – and only where it is use to flood reservoirs to enhance oil and gas production will that be productive. Otherwise, it’s just cost all the way.
The good news is that it will still be down there when we need it. Presumably the hole will be capped and left intact.
We need it now, grand solar minimum and no fusion or thorium reactors in sight.
Paul, just slightly off topic, but have you seen the letter in today’s Telegraph from Blaise Kelly, of the “Graduate Energy Institute” basically refuting the experience of Steve Proud on grid stability. Interesting that Kelly refers to nuclear fuel being a ” fossil fuel”
Proof of idiocy. Uranium is not a fossil.
Splitting hairs for no purpose. Coal is not a fossil, neither is gas.
Sadly, that was not hard to see. In fact, I am surprised that Cuadrilla made it for so very long considering that the odds were stacked massively against them. Britain will prefer to import all its energy.
cheer up people, the gas will keep flowing, just not from our shores –
https://www.britishgas.co.uk/the-source/our-world-of-energy/energys-grand-journey/where-does-uk-gas-come-from
“The UK currently produces enough gas to meet almost half of its needs (44%) from the North Sea and the East Irish Sea.
We also import 47% of the gas we use via pipelines from Europe and Norway. The remaining 9% comes in to the UK by tankers in the form of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
How important is gas in the UK’s energy mix?
80% of the UK’s 25 million homes are powered by gas – and around a quarter of the country’s electricity is generated by gas-fired power stations. Gas plants are one of the most flexible ways to generate electricity, as they can rapidly provide power during periods of high demand.
This means gas, along with other energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear, plays a key role in the UK energy mix.
As the amount of gas that can be extracted from the North Sea declines, we’ll need to import more to ensure a regular and reliable supply to the UK.
Continuing to use a balance of energy sources means our boilers stay on and the lights won’t flicker.
Take a look at our visual story about the journey energy goes on to reach your home.
*Published Dec 2017, all facts and figures correct at the time of publishing. Page updated in December 2017.”
my advice – buy a solar powered hot water bottle & onesy while you can (ps – let the kids freeze for a few nights, all in a good cause off course).