Liz Truss to lift fracking moratorium
Thu 12:03 pm +01:00, 8 Sep 2022 5The prime minister has given the go-ahead to fracking in England.
The moratorium, which has been in place since 2019, will be lifted.
Opening a parliamentary debate on energy this morning, Ms Truss said fracking would be allowed where local communities supported it.
She told the House of Commons:
“It is vital that we take steps to increase our domestic supplies of energy
“We will end the moratorium on extracting our huge reserves of shale which could get gas flowing as soon as six months, where there is local support for it.”
She gave no details of how support would be demonstrated, whether fracking would be fast-tracked through the planning system or even if the moratorium had now been lifted.
Earlier in her speech, she said:
“This is the moment to be bold”.
“Energy policy had not focussed enough on securing supply”, she said. This had left the country vulnerable to volatile markets, she said. This should not happen again.
She set a new ambition for the country:
“We will make sure that the UK is a net energy exporter by 2040.”
At the start of the debate, the House of Commons speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, said he was disappointed that a Written Ministerial Statement setting out government plans had not been published earlier. It was only just available. This is a discourteous to the house, he said.
The Labour leader, Kier Starmer, said fracking and a dash for gas in the North Sea would not cut bills or strengthen energy security.
There have been media reports that fracking could begin within weeks.
But there are currently no sites in England with planning permissions for fracking or drilling for shale gas. See our review of the past decade of fracking.
The moratorium was imposed on 2 November 2019 on after fracking at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site near Blackpool induced earthquakes.
The industry regulator, then called the Oil & Gas Authority, concluded that it was not possible with current technology to predict accurately whether fracking would cause tremors and how big they would be.
The government said at the time:
“Fracking will now be paused unless and until further evidence is provided that it can be carried out safely here.”
That month, the Conservative’s 2019 general election manifesto said:
“We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.”
Yesterday, Liz Truss’s press officer told journalists the manifesto “still stands in full”.
There was no information in the prime minister’s speech about whether the science has changed.
High volume hydraulic fracturing has taken place at only three wells, all operated by Cuadrilla in Lancashire (at Preston New Road in 2018 and 2019 and at Preese Hall in 2011). All the fracks induced earthquakes.
A shale gas well has been drilled at Misson in Nottinghamshire but it has not been fracked and no longer has planning permission.
No shale gas produced in England has been supplied to homes and business in the past decade.
A review of the science of fracking, commissioned by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, was delivered in early July. It has not yet been published. The prime minister’s statement did not refer to it.
The BGS, which wrote the review, confirmed yesterday that there had been no comprehensive estimate of the potential volume of shale gas in England since a study in 2013.
On 6 March 2022, the then business secretary, now chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, said:
“Even if we lifted the fracking moratorium tomorrow, it would take up to a decade to extract sufficient volumes – and it would come at a high cost for communities and our precious countryside.
“Second, no amount of shale gas from hundreds of wells dotted across rural England would be enough to lower the European price any time soon.
“And with the best will in the world, private companies are not going to sell the gas they produce to UK consumers below the market price.”
Fracking has not received majority support at any point in the past decade.
A poll by Survation this week found that 34% supported gas from onshore fracking while 45% opposed.
Other announcements
The prime minister also announced:
- Energy bills capped for two years with an average cost of £2,500 a year
- This is in addition to the £400 energy bill support scheme
- Support for businesses, charities and public sector organisations
- Fiscal statement to set out expected costs later this month
- Created a new energy supply task force.
- Negotiating new contracts with electricity and gas suppliers
- New licensing round for North Sea extraction, which could lead to 100 new licences
- Speed up deployment of new renewable technologies
- Review of energy regulation
- Pro-business/pro-growth delivery of Net Zero
She said the would be no windfall tax.
More details coming soon. Reaction here
https://drillordrop.com/2022/09/08/liz-truss-lifts-the-moratorium-on-fracking/#more-95220
So, our North Sea gas and oil has now depleted after being told for years that we have enough rersources for millenia to come??
How short do they think our memories are? Odd that only last week looking out over Morecambe Bay gas fields, there wasnt a single flare stack alight. Maybe we should just re-start production and put an end to the energy shortage charade??
If we had a sovereign government the solution would be to set at UK price for UK sourced gas giving UK consumers 1st dibs on the gas at a price that provides sufficient but not excessive profits for the producer.
Parasitical billing companies who provide nothing & add costs should be abolished being replaced with a single national billing agency.
Fracking in certain areas? Await strong resistance from locals. Every fracking site in Britain causes earthquakes damaging houses and making all unsaleable for miles around. Our underground is riddled with fault lines from mining for over two hundred years. We’ve been through this nonsense enough times. Farmland is made so toxic it’s unuseable as are water sources. This is a mistake from Truss along with her willingness to drop nuclear weapons on Russians if required to – by whom may we ask? Not that fucking idiot Biden. Pulease.
Pure poetry Tap. Says it all.
I heard the reason why we have no North Sea oil or gas deposits to fall back upon is because once these industries were privatised their new owners pumped out what they could as fast as they could purely to release it on the markets in their chase for profits. These large sales of oil and gas depressed market prices, which didn’t matter to the new owners who were simply chasing the cash, but the French used those depressed prices as an opportunity to buy what we flooded the markets with to restock their own strategic reserves on the cheap. There was no attempt to extract it strategically, just pump it and sell it and pocket it.