Ed Davey: I’m proud to have stopped fracking, despite energy crisis
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
It appears that a certain Ed Davey bears special responsibility for our energy crisis:
Sir Ed Davey has said he remains proud that he was the person who “basically stopped” fracking in the UK, despite the current energy crisis.
Sir Ed, the Liberal Democrat leader, served as energy secretary in the coalition government between 2012 and 2015.
He told The Telegraph his party would run on an anti-fracking platform against the Conservatives in by-elections and at the next general election if the next Tory leader tried to resume the drilling as prime minister.
In 2012, he introduced a strict regulation that means companies have to halt work if they trigger tremors over 0.5 magnitude.
Shale gas firms have said commercial fracking cannot take place under the rule. Appearing on Channel 4 in 2019, Sir Ed said the rule had “actually meant that the fracking industry has not developed in this country at all”.
“I’m very proud that you’re looking at the person who basically stopped the fracking industry in this country,” he added.
In the same interview, he said fracking was not needed because of the “success of our renewable policy, particularly in offshore wind, means we’re not going to need anywhere near the amount of gas we did before”.
Craig MacKinlay, a Tory backbencher who is backing Ms Truss against Rishi Sunak, hit back by claiming the Lib Dems bore “a unique responsibility” for the current crisis because they had “prevented any sensible energy policy during the coalition years”.
“I hope that Sir Ed Davey will publicly apologise for stopping the potential for domestic shale gas, which could have made a decent impact in delivering energy security, lower costs and CO2 savings compared to imported liquefied natural gas,” he said.
Despite the rule he introduced, Sir Ed spoke in support of fracking when he was energy secretary before later changing his mind. In 2013, he said it was “not the evil thing that some people try to make it out to be” and could bring “jobs, tax revenue and greater energy security”.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Clearly paid to adopt his current position. As are no doubt so many more.
I have pointed out his responsibility on here and other blogs, a number of times.
For the innumerate, seismicity is usually expressed on the Richter scale. Which is logarithmic. So a tremor of Richter 4.0 (the rule of thumb level which may rattle cups and possibly lead to trivial plaster cracks), releases Antilog(10) (4.0-0.5). Or 3,162 times as much energy as Richter 0.5 which is borderline imperceptible. ‘Normal’ planning consents etc. stipulate Richter 4.0 for when an interest may be taken on quarrying, forging, deep mining (in the old days), or transportation. Not automatic cessation. Higher levels are accepted in some instances. Entirely natural seismic events will probably occur annually somewhere in the UK. 0.5? probably daily.
If you pay a man enough danegeld you can get him to change his mind. The man Davey has sold his soul and sold his country. He is no patriot.
(Definition of danegeld
: an annual tax believed to have been imposed originally to buy off Danish invaders in England or to maintain forces to oppose them but continued as a land tax.)
Another sexually self sufficient politician.
But not sustainable…
Unfortunately this misinformed individual is a member of the political party that so many disappointed revert to in local elections. Perhaps in future they should consider the implications of such a party being in power. We have recently suffered their idiotic schemes in the failed coalition. Davey like Clegg and their cohorts should be ignored.
The LD provided the electorate with a clear choice at the last GE, and I felt it was laudable to give Brexit Remainers an outlet for their frustrations. The electorate made their choice. Amongst other things, Jo Swinson lost the Dunbartonshire East seat in supposedly pro-Remain Scotland.
As the beaten Jo Swinson was no longer available to act as leader, the LD turned to the next best they have, and the quaint Mr Davey gives us the best they have to offer.
As do the Labour Party with Starmer.
And the Tories too, with “The Sunak-Truss Dichotomy” of who’s going to spend the most to dig us out of the mess they have made.
Sigh!
Was he not the Energy Secretary who signed off on Drax receiving subsidies for burning wood? A policy that even Caroline Lucas, ex leader of the Greens objects to.
Let us all not forget that Potato Ed was the Energy Secretary who signed up for the Hinkley C Nuke. (Of course, LimpDims are always against nuclear, which explains his choice, perhaps.)
The Hinkley C proposal was then (and still is) clearly the worst available proposal. Most Expensive. Most unlikely to work properly. (projects in Finland and France then, and still now, on enormous cost increases and lengthy delays, not working to this day.) And then (and now) the most French and the most Chinese.
What’s not to like.
Nothing.
We just signed up for Sizewell C.
Danger! ‘Experts’ at work!
Well, he did go straight from his public ’employment’ to – as I recall, a nice little earner in the ‘Greenosphere’.
His Party are a bunch of Luddites and Nimby’s across the plot. Local Lib (non-) Dems successfully stopped the proposed and very low impact reservoir construction near Abingdon, for instance.
Keep them away from any powerful public positions!
Currently 0.93MW of wind off 25GW installed capacity (visible to NG) is not my understanding of what success looks like.
I would extend the spirit of your (good) comment to the whole electricity privatisation experiment launched in 1988 with usual barrage of MrsT’s over-reaching bluster.
If this is considered to be success for risk-taking in the private sector (and yes, the private sector has been committing £billions), we can only wonder what failure would look like.
Apologies for that, but it does become difficult to contain the cynicism.
So now we know. Provided somebody explains the consequences we will never hear from him again.
Wasn’t he, at that time, in cahoots with EDF?
The likes of Potato Ed, like Lord Deben, Like Chris-the-Crim Huhne and dozens more are ALWAYS in cahoots with someone. Anyone who sends out nice Xmas cards, in fact.
But yes, Harry, quite correct as usual.
It is a disaster that so many of our politicians do not understand the facts or else merely follow mass beliefs like sheep without any analysis.
Sorry…meant as a reply to Martin Brumby.
Spot the difference:
1. “In 2012, he introduced a strict regulation that means (gas-fracking) companies have to halt work if they trigger tremors over 0.5 magnitude.”
2. Green, ‘good’, fracking for geothermal:
4.0magnitude-local is 3,162x bigger and 177,812x stronger than the 0.5magnitude-local permitted for fracking for gas.
Potato head Ed Davey is the man who said there would be no oil found in the Falklands, several days before a large discovery was announced, the largest discovery of the year globally.
Shouldn’t the headline read more honestly:
Ed Davey: I’m proud to have played my part in creating our energy crisis.
I doubt my comment will be welcome
But there are problems with fracking. No doubt due to bad energy planning there will be a rush to fracking. I am not against fracking provided the problems are considered. One problem is fracking does require a lot of water and produces a lot of contaminated water. Fresh water is preferred but Sea water can be used sometimes. The water has to be either piped or trucked in and out or left underground. If there is a drought and large scale fracking this could produce shortages. Yes they should build more water reservoirs.
The water table has to be protected , yes they can drill below it but the concrete shielding can crack from the shocks. As the drilling is mostly sideways you don’t want to be drilling under property unless you have good compensation schemes. I used to live near a quarry and the sudden blasts would shake you up. Not as bad as the earth tremors in Hong Kong.
I think a lot of the problems can be avoided by fracking or side drilling offshore.
There are extra costs involved and gas deposits that you would miss the same way that we are missing coal deposits.
There may be the odd legitimate concern.
There are legitimate concerns about the management and environmental and safety impacts of whelk stalls and jam factories.
I do not wish to belittle your concerns, but point out that with Regulators (EPA in USA) even more GangGreen than our beloved Environmental Agency, the USA has more than a million successful fracks, a handfull of problems, all resolved to EPA’s satisfaction.
(And I should point out that even the lowliest EPA employee who could point to a really serious problem with Fracking would likely be a Nobel Prize Winner and appointed by the DNC as the next Presidential Candidate.)
I want to contribute to this man’s re-election campaign. He’s making me a very rich man, as almost 100% of my stock portfolio is in North American oil & gas development and distribution.
The world needs more people like this, so I can become even richer.
Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove the point. QED
Well said!
Doesn’t that apply to all MPs?
You make a very fair point.
What self indulgent repartee ……
Didn’t 0.5 magnitude equate to someone slumping hard on to a chair?
Not all that hard…
Dropping a small book?
Well, now everyone knows who to send their impossible to pay energy bills to . In simpler times such people would have been tarred and feathered
There’s no fool like a Green fool
I think he should get physical protection against violence by the many defrauded and suffering electricity consumers. But no exemption to being called out as a pompous, self important, Ill educated, stupid person responsible entirely for the cold deaths of say 30,000 people.
Three troughs here he’s got his snout in:
https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/former_decc_secretary_ed_davey_lands_trio_of_renewable_energy_roles_2899
Davy was a complete wombat then and still is. Him and his party had no idea about how the world works, no clue about science, absolutely no clue about value for money or project management. He should be hunted down and paraded in the House of Commons to apologise for grievous errors in judgement and basic science.
Craig MacKinlay seeks to put all the responsibility on the LibDemns but as I recall the PM was a Tory and most Ministers and back benchers who sustained the Cameron-Clegg government in office were Tories. Further, the Labour Party and SNP did nothing to resist or object to the Net Zero, gas free policy.
Just as with Covid, the MSM and HM Opposition objected to Net Zero only because it did not go far enough fast enough.
I’m afraid the real reason you don’t have fracking in the UK is that after you produced the Magna Carta you forgot about private property. Correct me if I’m wrong but your citizens have no property interest in the minerals under their land. They will not benefit directly if oil or gas is extracted from beneath their property.
In the US landowners own the mineral rights below their land. They can even sell or lease them separately from the surface rights. I used to live in Pennsylvania. Many areas had oil and gas that could be extracted by fracking. Pennsylvania had laws setting a minimum royalty of 12% that must be paid to a land owner for extracted gas. However, the landowner could negotiate any deal he could with the drilling company. Most deals also included a one time “bonus” which could be several thousand dollars per acre. Royalty rates were invariably higher than the minimum in areas where oil or gas was known to exist.
Fracking wells extend out thousands of feet from the drill site so most landowners will not have any drilling equipment on their property. There are many new millionaires in rural areas of Pennsylvania because they owned farms of 100 acres or more over the Marcellus or Utica shale formations. Believe me that when 20%+ of the population of a state is in a position to make significant income from fracking the politicians take notice. In some areas a great majority of the voters stand to benefit from fracking. Any politician representing such an area would be pro-fracking or contemplating another line of work.
In fact, we do have fracking in the UK.
It started in the late 1970s with fracturing of the conventional oil and gas fields near the North Sea.
An estimated 200 conventional onshore wells have been subject to low volume hydraulic fracturing; around 10% of all onshore wells in the United Kingdom, including Wytch Farm, which is the largest onshore conventional oil field in western Europe.
https://www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/projects/wytch-farm-oil-field/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing_in_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=Hydraulic%20fracturing%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom%20started%20in%20the%20late,wells%20from%20the%20early%201980s.