Anthony Hilton: US shale revolution makes fracking a must for UK industry

Excerpt from the Evening standard:

Until a few years ago Europe and America paid more or less the same amount for their petrochemical feedstock — the US had a slight advantage but not so great after transport and other costs had been factored in. (Middle East plants, sited right by the oilfields, did have such a price advantage but lacked scale.)

This is no longer the case thanks to the fundamental changes across the Atlantic. The Marcellus field, which spreads over several states and is just one of many in the US, produces 15 billion cubic feet of gas a day which is almost twice the UK’s entire consumption. But the result is that US prices have disconnected from the rest of the world and the subsequent feedstock prices have given American chemical plants so vast a price advantage that, on paper at least, there’s no way Europe can compete. It is staring down the barrel of bankruptcy, not now, but in a few short years, unless it can find some way to get its raw-material costs down to American levels.

Shale Wars: The most expensive energy battle of all time

Credit: fuelfix.com

Thanks to ever-improving technology, one shale CEO said earlier this year about U.S. oil production: “We’ve doubled it. We can double it again.”

So far it has cost Saudi Arabia something like $200 billion to undertake one of the most expensive experiments of all time, says the GWPF.

The Saudi government has been draining its massive $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund to cover revenues lost from the petroleum price collapse over the past couple of years.

What we’re witnessing is a two-part test. The first question is how much damage have low oil prices caused America’s shale industry. Then the second and far more critical part of the test: As oil prices rise, will the shale industry limp or roar back? If it roars back, high oil prices are history.

Labour party energy/climate policy revealed in leaked manifesto

_____Image Credit: Matt.______

The UK Labour party has a leak, and its election manifesto has escaped into the wild. Here’s what it says about energy and climate.

Sustainable Energy

Labour’s energy policy is built on three simple principles:

• To ensure security of energy supply and ‘keep the lights on’

• To ensure energy costs are affordable for consumers and businesses

• To ensure we meet our climate change targets and transition to a low carbon economy

The UK energy system is outdated, expensive and polluting. Privatisation has failed to deliver an energy system that delivers for people, businesses or our environment.

One-in-ten households are in fuel poverty, yet according to the Competition Markets Authority customers are overcharged an enormous £2 billion every year.

Labour understands that many people don’t have time to shop around, they just want reliable and affordable energy. So the next Labour Government will:

The shale revolution crushes wind and solar

Credit: dragonproductsltd.com

H/T GWPF / RealClearEnergy

The author notes that ‘the rigs are getting roughly twice as productive every three years. No other energy technology is improving that quickly.’

Wind and solar are now experiencing a declining rate of improvement as those technologies start to approach their limits in terms of what physics permits. Shale technology is a long way from its physics limits. In fact, the shale industry is at the beginning of what I’ve earlier termed Shale 2.0.

The Promethean task of supplying energy to the U.S. economy and the rest of the world involves scales that are truly difficult to visualize. Many options appear to make sense until you crunch the numbers. That’s why Bill Gates said that people need to bring “math skills to the problem.”

Consider petroleum alone, which accounts for about one-third of global energy use.

Controversial gas from Peruvian Amazon arrives in UK

River Amazon in the Peruvian rainforest

The UK is importing from halfway round the world what could be produced by its own workforce within the country.

A tanker docking in the UK is transporting a controversial cargo of gas from the Peruvian Amazon, says BBC News. It is thought to be the first shipment to the UK from the Camisea project in rainforest 60 miles from Machu Picchu.

Supporters of fracking say the UK should frack its own gas, rather than importing from sensitive regions like the Amazon. But opponents of fracking say the practice creates disturbance and pollution and fuels climate change.

The tanker Gallina, owned by Shell, is scheduled to arrive at the Isle of Grain in Kent. The gas project at Camisea field has been hugely contentious.

Fracking is acceptable, says Church of England

Sometimes, that is. Any financial returns would also be acceptable no doubt.
H/T GWPF

The Church of England has concluded that fracking can be morally acceptable in a move that shale gas explorers hope could pave the way for drilling to take place on church land.

After years of internal debate on the issue, the church has published an extensive briefing paper giving cautious support for fracking subject to conditions, including strict regulation, environmental monitoring and compensation for those affected.

It concluded that fracking could be useful to tackle climate change as long as shale gas replaced dirtier energy sources. The position puts it at odds with groups such as Christian Aid, which opposes all fracking on climate grounds.

Friends of the Earth admits false fracking claims

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So-called environmental campaigners telling porkies? Whatever next?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

From the Times:

A green campaign group has agreed not to repeat misleading claims about the health and environmental impacts of fracking after complaints to the advertising watchdog.

Friends of the Earth spent more than a year trying to defend its claims, which were made in a fundraising leaflet, but has been forced to withdraw them.

The group’s capitulation is a victory for a retired vicar and a retired physics teacher who have been working for years to expose what they believe is scaremongering about a safe technique for extracting shale gas.

The Rev Michael Roberts and Ken Wilkinson complained about Friends of the Earth’s claims to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which also received a complaint from the fracking company Cuadrilla.

The authority found that Friends of the Earth (FoE) failed to substantiate claims that fracking could cause cancer, contaminate water supplies, increase…

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High Court rules fracking can go ahead in North Yorkshire

Now these ‘campaigners’ know how wind turbine protesters feel when they get overruled in their neighbourhoods.

Anti-fracking campaigners have lost their legal challenge to a decision to allow fracking to take place in North Yorkshire reports BBC News. Third Energy was granted planning permission to extract shale gas at Kirby Misperton in Ryedale in May.

Friends of the Earth and residents had challenged North Yorkshire County Council’s decision in the High Court. Mrs Justice Lang ruled the council had acted lawfully.

USGS discovers “largest oil deposit ever discovered in America”

Familiar sight in Texas [image credit: StateImpact Texas]

Close to a trillion dollars worth of oil at today’s prices – this should be music to the ears of the incoming Trump administration. Anti-fossil fuel groups not so much.
H/T GWPF

The US Geological Survey said Tuesday that it found what could be the largest deposit of untapped oil ever discovered in America, reports Business Insider.

An estimated average of 20 billion barrels of oil and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are available for the taking in the Wolfcamp shale, which is in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin. Based on a West Texas Intermediate crude oil price of $45 per barrel, those deposits are worth about $900 billion.

US energy prices would skyrocket under EU-style regime, says report

US energy sources in 2015 [credit: EIA]

A ‘$676 billion drag on the economy’ by going down the EU path, or ‘nearly half a trillion dollars’ from fracking? The U.S. chose fracking, as The Daily Caller points out.

The U.S. would lose more than 7 million jobs if it adopted the kind of energy policies popular in many European countries, according to a report published Friday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The European energy policies would impose a $676 billion drag on the U.S. economy, the report states, and result in Americans paying an extra $4,800 per year to heat their homes.

UK Government overrules council to give go-ahead to fracking

Hydraulic fracturing wellhead
[image credit: Joshua Doubek / Wikipedia]

Fracking permission takes a week in Texas but nine years in Britain, as the GWPF’s Dr Benny Peiser points out. Some objectors still claim the technique is unproven despite years of experience in the USA and elsewhere.

Communities secretary Sajid Javid has upheld an appeal made by Cuadrilla in February against the decision by Lancashire County Council to refuse permission to carry out hydraulic fracturing at two sites in the region reports Utility Week.

In a letter to a lawyer representing the drilling company, Javid said it will be allowed to drill and then fracture four exploratory wells at its site on Preston New Road, subject to some conditions.

Govt floats plan to pay individual households fracking dividend

Residents affected by fracking could be paid a proportion of the proceeds of shale gas projects, the government has suggested.

A shale wealth fund was unveiled in 2014 to set aside up to 10% of the tax proceeds from fracking to benefit communities in the UK hosting wells.

The PM is now considering paying the money directly to individual households instead of councils and local trusts.

The plan is one option due to be outlined in a consultation on Monday.

Colorado Supreme Court rules fracking bans are “invalid and unenforceable”

Shale formation for natural gas in Pennsylvania, USA.
[image credit:
businesskorea.co.kr]

Another setback for fear-and-doubt merchants with this legal victory for shale gas development, as Somewhat Reasonable reports. Lack of evidence perhaps?

On Monday, May 2 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on what the New York Times (NYT) called: “a lengthy battle for energy production.” The court’s unanimous decision to strike down two cities’ limits on fracking is a victory for oil-and-gas companies and a “disappointment” to anti-fossil-fuel activists. 

Several states, including Colorado’s neighbors, New Mexico and Texas, have faced similar anti-oil-and-gas initiatives that have also been shot down.

Fracking would pose no danger to water supplies, new research suggests

Hydraulic fracturing wellhead
[image credit: Joshua Doubek / Wikipedia]

It’s enough to make celebrity anti-fracking protesters choke on their cakes. — H/T Phys.org

Potential future fracking activity in the UK is unlikely to pose a pollution danger to overlying aquifers, new research from a leading academic suggests.

One of the primary concerns of those who oppose the development of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing is that creation of new fractures in the earth could cause fracking fluids to leak into, and contaminate, underground freshwater aquifers.

Phelim Macaleer: Facebook Suspends Filmmakers Page after Campaign by Anti-fracking Activists

Deletes Court Reports Exposing Collapsing “Pollution” Case

Phelim Macaleer : Fracknation.com

FACEBOOK has removed posts and suspended the page of a journalist covering a controversial court case after a targeted campaign by anti-fracking activists.

Journalist and filmmaker Phelim McAleer has condemned Facebook for allowing the censorship of posts that are court reports of an important case. The attacks on the FrackNation page started as McAleer’s posts on the alleged Dimock Water Pollution trial proved popular and revealed just how weak the case is.

Dimock is the village in Pennsylvania which has been described as the “ground zero”  of fracking pollution. It has featured in documentaries such as Gasland and hundreds of other national and international media articles.

Phelim McAleer, the director of the FrackNation documentary, is the only reporter permanently covering the case and his reports on the FrackNation Facebook page, before the page was shut down, revealed there was almost no evidence to back up the allegations in the lawsuit.

How fiendish is Friends of the Earth

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The fracking disinfo campaign waged by FOE continues…

Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin

For a time I was an active member of Friends of the Earth and supported all they did.  I then moved house and job and my membership lapsed. That is something I regretted as I felt I should be do more for the environment and that Friends of the Earth was one of the best organisations doing that.

That remained the case until March 2014 when I went to a meeting organised by RAFF (Residents against Fracking; Fylde) at Inskip (10 miles from Preston). I was unimpressed with the low level of accuracy in the presentation. i challenged some of this and to my surprise the local FoE activist supported the speaker in the inaccuracies. In two minutes my respect for FoE evaporated. RAFF also handed out a leaflet Shale Gas; the Facts  which they withdrew after a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/complaint-to-asa-against-raff-residents-action-on-fracking-fylde-for-gross-errors/

Over the next 15 months…

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Fracking ‘could give Scotland independence from England’ says top industrialist

North Sea oil and gas – a sunset industry? [image credit: matchtech.com]

The notion of an independent Scotland boosting its economy with the proceeds of North Sea oil may be looking a bit threadbare after the recent slump in the price of oil, but there could be another way forward as E&T Magazine reports.

Scotland should embrace fracking in order to gain economic independence from England according to the chief executive of chemicals company Ineos.

Jim Ratcliffe made his comments prior to a debate on the issue held today by the Scottish National Party (SNP) at its conference in Aberdeen, where party members narrowly rejected a bid to toughen up the stance on fracking amid calls for an outright ban.
Ineos has acquired fracking exploration licences across 700 square miles of central Scotland.

Too late for OPEC to stop the shale revolution

[image credit: mining.com]

Saudi Arabia may go broke before the US oil industry buckles, reports the Daily Telegraph.

If the oil futures market is correct, Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years. It will be in existential crisis by the end of the decade.

The contract price of US crude oil for delivery in December 2020 is currently $62.05, implying a drastic change in the economic landscape for the Middle East and the petro-rentier states.

The Saudis took a huge gamble last November when they stopped supporting prices and opted instead to flood the market and drive out rivals, boosting their own output to 10.6m barrels a day (b/d) into the teeth of the downturn.

Contract awarded for first floating LNG facility in the US

LNG vessels [image credit: offshoreenergytoday.com]

This is part of the big US push to challenge the world leaders Russia and Qatar in the export of gas, mostly sourced from fracking sites. Expect a price war.

Bechtel announced today it has been selected by Delfin LNG, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fairwood Peninsula Energy Corporation, to perform front-end engineering and design for the first U.S.-based floating liquefied natural gas vessel (FLNGV) to go into service at Port Delfin. 

Port Delfin is a proposed deepwater port and floating LNG facility that will be located approximately 50 miles off the coastline of Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Delfin LNG’s project will be the first offshore floating natural gas liquefaction facility in the United States.

More, Grossly Deceptive Reporting From The BBC

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It’s obvious that whatever controls are supposed to be in place to ensure the BBC is ‘impartial’ – admittedly difficult to define, but you know when you’re not seeing it – are not working.

Lancashire CC has been warned it is likely to lose a legal challenge on appeal and will incur costs as a result.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-33211020

The BBC have been up to their tricks again.

A US environmental group has written to Lancashire County Council urging it to refuse permission to allow test drilling for fracking.

The letter, signed by 850 elected officials in New York State, comes days before the council decides whether to approve test drilling at two locations….

Elected Officials to Protect New York – made up of current and former politicians – has written to Lancashire’s councillors asking them to note the findings of a two-year study by New York State Department of Public Health.

In fact, the letter was not signed by “850 elected officials”, but just 10, not all of whom are elected either.

http://www.nyelectedofficials.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/EOPNY-Letter-to-Lancashire.pdf

Many are no more than what we would call parish councillors. For instance, Cooperstown boasts an impressive population of just 1852, yet offers us two trustees to sign.

They have…

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