'Starting Pistol Fired' On UK Fracking
Updated: 1:38pm UK, Friday 23 May 2014
By Ian King, Business Presenter
Today's twin announcements from the Government mark what ministers hope will be the firing of the starting pistol on the shale revolution in the UK.
The report by the British Geological Survey (BGS), stating that there are vast reserves in the Jurassic Weald Basin beneath Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, is a definitive piece of research that lays bare the potential for fracking in those areas.
It is likely to have as dramatic an impact in terms of attracting investor interest - both from domestic and foreign investors - as the BGS study, last year, that revealed the Bowland Basin in the north of England contained around 1,300 trillion cubic feet of gas.
The second announcement is just as dramatic.
The plan to offer a sweetener to communities affected by fracking, which will average around £800,000 per site on top of a one-off payment of £100,000 and a one per cent share of profits will, ministers hope, help overcome any anger that will be aroused by stripping land owners of the right to block fracking through use of the trespass laws.
Yet both are likely to prove explosive. The latter measure is likely to raise objections from civil liberties campaigners as well as those opposed to fracking.
And both, meanwhile, potentially reignites the row opened last year by Lord Howell, a former Conservative energy minister in the 1980s, who said that it would be better to frack in the North - where areas have been left 'desolate' by deindustrialisation - than it would be to do so in the South, where there are many more well-heeled landowners with pockets sufficiently deep to try and drag the Government or any oil and gas companies awarded licences, through the courts.
It has even been suggested that ministers deliberately held back from making these announcements until after the European and local elections.
These announcements raise the scope for more mass demonstrations against fracking in the south of England that would make those in Balcombe, West Sussex, last year look like a vicar's tea party in comparison.
The Government, however, is unabashed. These measures are likely to be one of the biggest and most important in the Queen's Speech next month.
The prize, potentially, is enormous. Even if only a tenth of the gas discovered in last year's BGS study was extracted, it would still be enough to make Britain self-sufficient in gas for the next four decades.
The reserves in the South, revealed in the latest BGS study, raise the tantalising prospect of Britain becoming a major exporter of energy - bringing in countless billions to cash-strapped Exchequer.
That is on top of the tens of thousands of jobs that would be created by a shale revolution and the sharp reduction in domestic energy bills it would bring about.
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