Shale gas geology
Dr Benny Peiser reports on the tortuous processes facing shale gas explorers in the UK.
‘In Texas, it takes seven days to get a permission for hydraulic fracturing of shale. In Britain, the wait has been going on for a whopping seven years’
http://www.thegwpf.org/benny-peiser-how-britain-is-wasting-its-real-shale-potential/
While we might not want a seven day approval period on a fairly crowded island, seven years seems a bit ludicrous.
No wonder some drilling firms have given up on the idea.
Government inertia may be rattled by the Ukraine crisis, as Dr Peiser suggests.
But will anything change apart from the rhetoric?
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
No gas at all. Windmills and snake oil – unless something changes.
This government will very shortly determine that fracking will be politically expedient.
That will become apparent when the police are instructed to disperse the greenie-hippy disrupters.
I see no reason for this government and it’s vested interests to change a thing. Not while the sheeple keep paying their wildly inflated bills, and if the Ukraine blows up then it’s just another excuse for another round of energy prices hikes. A nice little filler before the elections.
Fracking/coal gas/unconventional gas extraction is a distraction from job of erecting yet more renewable boondoggle schemes, and friends of the government claiming evermore government subsidy. What’s not to like?
There certainly will not be unconventional gas extraction of any worth before the next election. Why should there be -it advantages no one in power.
7 days! Sheesh that’s one way to allienate people but then again so is dithering until the 2020s when the AMO will be ‘flipping cold’ phase 😉
Flap mouthed alarmists at Oxfam not helping the debate (they want the poor to freeze or burn dung presumably? )
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10783205/Political-focus-on-energy-bills-is-destructive-warns-Oxfam.html
Saw something in passing on RT about a fracking landgrab in the UK but not found anything to back it bar this from Aug last year
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10245697/Church-of-England-in-fracking-land-grab.html
Balance of interests is what we need but will end up no doubt with the usual mangled legislation with loopholes galore. Especially if we keep kicking the decision into touch and then panic when the blackouts roll out
[reply] Craig: the government has been quietly signing up diesel generator capacity from any enterprises willing to be connected to the grid in return for standby payments (‘STOR’). This is the ‘last resort’ option.
Tallbloke: Totally off-topic and I know it.
I wonder if I might impose on our host to read this essay … http://www.principia-scientific.org/almost-as-many-greenhouse-gas-theories-as-clueless-climate-scientists.html … by John O’Sullivan and tell me if you agree with him. If he makes any errors, could you point out what those errors might be.
I find that I am in substantial agreement with the essay, but realize that this is not my field of expertise (if I have any). It would be nice to get a reading from some folks here as I find this blog to be one I really respect in the field of science.
Thanks in advance.
— Mark
[reply] Mark: Thanks for the vote of approval. Tallbloke is on holiday so we’ll have to put your query to one side for now.
The US shale gas boom has occurred entirely on private or state lands. Gas production on lands where the mineral rights are owned by the US federal government has in fact declined since the boom began.
All the mineral rights in the UK are owned by the UK government.
‘Nuff said.
The UK geology and pressure/temp histories are very different from those of America. Recoverable reserves in volume and cost are going to be much less and more, respectively. It is outrageous that so much rhetoric and venom has flooded the public arena before the what, where or how has been determined. Everyone loses when you can’t try something new without already knowing the results. It’s ironic: the only change the greens want are those they already have done.
It could be explained to a ten year old in five minutes why dependence on part-time wind power can never work. But the so-called greens can’t or won’t get it.
Children are natural born sceptics. A ten year old has only been worked on for a few years and has not been impeded in advancement, but after that the brainwashing becomes pointed. Accept or you will not be advanced, after 10 to 12 years of that few survive intact. This has been going on at least 60 years. I remember my introduction to Liberal Progressive culling of the herd on the college track. Sceptics and conservatives are not wanted and will in fact be stymied at every opportunity.
Many people have “read only memory”, once trained in the cults dogma, can not be reprogrammed. All cult leaders know this and try to get them young. The Liberal Progressives’ have had control of higher education for 150 years and lower levels for nearly 80. This will take more then argument, this will take a disaster to wake people to the threat to their lives and liberties.
Prophecies say that things will get so bad, it will forever discredit the”Philosophy of Moore”
People are beginning to wise up. This net that covers the world is working to that end. Most people are untrained but not stupid. These are the ones we must communicate with. True believers are a waste of time. They can not be reeducated as they can’t listen to unbelievers. pg
In 1963, when I was a student at the LSE I boarded for a few weeks in Regent’s Park with a retired director of the Coal Board.
He told me that during the Second World War the UK Government wanted access to the entire UK foreshore in order to prepare for the Normandy Landings. (Broadly, the foreshore is the part of the shore between high tide and low tide.)
Instead of passing an Order in Council giving wartime access under the War Measures Act, or whatever they called it, the UK Government decided to deal with all landowners individually.
My landlord described the scene in which a senior civil servant stood in a vast room at an oversize lectern on which was mounted a master index. In concentric circles about him were seated other less senior administrators with special registers on their desks like schoolboys.
The man at the lectern would call out a location and his “schoolboys” would describe the rights to which the landowner was entitled, in some cases the rights dated back to William the Conqueror.
The scribes seated along the walls duly recorded the details of location and rights to be taken into account for negotiating wartime right of access and perhaps, I cannot recall, payment.
The process took months, possibly years to complete. But of course it was not completed because after D-Day it was not necessary to continue the process to disguise the area where foreshore access had been needed.
Fracking rights must not follow this antiquated approach. We must have a statute that creates a more simple process that gives access for exploration and exploitation of deep strata and reasonable compensation to landowners determined by statute and not by negotiation..
@ Chris M
Bureaucracy at its worst by the sound of it. Have you heard anything about this?
‘Under a new law, landowners have until October [2013] to assert their rights over mineral rights. The commissioners have told the Land Registry that they wish to do so.
As a result, the registry is now sending official legal letters to residents informing them of the Church’s “unilateral” claim to benefit from any mines and minerals under their land.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10245697/Church-of-England-in-fracking-land-grab.html
They don’t mention the name of the ‘new law’.
Ah – could be this one:
http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/structure/churchcommissioners/mineral-registration-programme.aspx