UK fracking moratorium reinstated

Fracking: note the deep shaft

The people doing the banning conveniently forget they can’t enough gas at the moment, including from the US obtained by the method they profess not to like. But importing fracked gas is no problem, essential even.
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The ban on fracking in England will be reinstated, new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.

It reverses a decision by his predecessor Liz Truss, says BBC News.

Fracking was first halted in England in 2019, amid opposition from green groups and concerns about earth tremors.

What is fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.

It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.

Wells can be drilled vertically or horizontally in order to release the gas.
. . .
What has the government said about fracking?

Rishi Sunak was asked about fracking at his first Prime Minister’s Questions, by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.

He told the Commons he “stands by” the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto, which pledged to maintain a ban on the practice in England.

It had banned fracking earlier that year and stated that it would not be allowed unless the science changed. A scientific review into fracking by the British Geological Survey says there is still a limited understanding of the impacts of such drilling.

Mr Sunak’s stance reverses a decision taken by the government in September, when Liz Truss was prime minister.

At that time it said fracking could go ahead in some places. It said it could help the UK strengthen the security of its energy supplies, amid uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

The Scottish and Welsh governments continue to oppose fracking, and say they will not use their powers to grant drilling licences.

Full article here.

UK shale gas: open letter replying to an MP’s demands for ‘clean energy, not fracking’.

UK Onshore Oil and Gas (UKOOG) attempts the difficult task of trying to persuade a renewables-obsessed MP that relying on imports of gas is illogical when we have plenty of our own waiting to be exploited, if only official policies were anywhere near realistic.

Read the rest here.

How the Energy Minister failed his MoT

For non-UK readers: the MoT (Ministry of Transport) test is the annual road-worthiness check for vehicles at least three years old.

Let me start with an anecdote, writes Julian Flood in The Conservative Woman. It’s relevant so please bear with me.

A friend needed an MoT on his 4×4. We’re a working village and many of the big Range Rovers and Toyotas you see are working vehicles, not status symbols. This one has had a hard life but it does the job. Drive from home, into the garage, up on the ramp.

There was a problem. It registered only vanishingly small levels of NOX and particulates, so obviously the test kit had failed. It had to go back the next week after the machine was recalibrated.

Drive from home, into the garage, on to the ramp. No NOX, no CO, no HC, no particulates, or at least levels too low to measure.

Tories face extinction in this climate of hysteria

Trevor Kavanagh blasts the ineffective UK government over its Brexit and climate dithering.

H/T Climate Change Dispatch

The Tories are facing extinction, having beaten themselves to a pulp over Brexit, and are too stupefied to defend themselves over false global warming claims.
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The Tories are facing extinction – without even the pleasure of a rebellion.

Having beaten themselves to a pulp over Brexit, they are now too punch-drunk to defend themselves over global warming.

Lifelong Swampy Jeremy Corbyn has latched on to climate change as a lethal weapon against a party which has lost control of the agenda. Idealistic young voters are all ears.

There is a solution to our looming energy crisis — cheap, clean shale gas. But feeble Energy Secretary Greg Clark threw it away, forcing fracking tsar Natascha Engel to quit yesterday in disgust.

Do You Really Understand How Shale Gas Companies Drill Horizontally?

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No? Well, join the club and find out from this brief guide for the interested layman.

PA Pundits International

By Dr. Jay Lehr ~

Admit it, you have no clue. Of course we have all seen the diagrams of Shale Gas Wells with the pipe going vertically down into the ground and then turning a right angle to proceed horizontally where the well will be hydraulically fractured (not Fracked). How is that possible? Can you think of any mechanism underground where pipe could turn ninety degrees and keep the end of the pipe, where the drill bit is spinning 360 degrees, to continue penetrating the rock encountered? Of course you can’t, because it cannot be done. Yet amazingly, surely 90 percent of all folks even remotely interested in the topic of shale gas development do not question the possibility of this impossibility. So read on, this well kept secret will be unveiled.

Hydraulic fracturing flat schematic vector illustration. Fracking process with machinery equipment, drilling rig and gas rich ground…

View original post 677 more words

South Korea accepts geothermal plant probably caused destructive quake

National flag of South Korea

Is this the end for ‘enhanced’ geothermal technology? Note this quake was 1,000 times stronger than the next one of similar causes.

The nation’s energy ministry expressed ‘deep regret’, and said it would dismantle the experimental plant, as Nature News reports.

A South Korean government panel has concluded that a magnitude-5.4 earthquake that struck the city of Pohang on 15 November 2017 was probably caused by an experimental geothermal power plant.

The panel was convened under presidential orders and released its findings on 20 March.

Fracking could cut Britain’s gas imports to zero by early 2030s

Credit: mygridgb.co.uk

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

The numbers can be debated, but the point that there is an economic opportunity in front of the UK is clear. Take it or ignore it?

LONDON (Reuters) – Fracking Britain’s shale gas reserves could cut the country’s imports of gas to zero by the early 2030s, an industry group said on Monday.

Britain currently imports more than half of its gas via pipelines from continental Europe and Norway and through shipments of liquefied natural gas from countries such as Russia, the United States and Qatar.

Spain, Europe’s second largest carmaker, plans combustion engine ban

The craze for national economic self-harm in the name of supposed climate virtue-signalling seems to be spreading, among politicians at least.

Proposal put forward for country’s first climate law takes swipe at auto-industry, scraps fossil fuel subsidies and sets 2050 goal for 100% renewable power, reports Climate Home News.

Spain is proposing to ban fossil fuel subsidies, dump investments that encourage dirty energy use and drive lighter diesel and petrol vehicles off the road.

Jim Ratcliffe: Government using ‘slippery’ manoeuvres to kill off British shale gas

Credit: mygridgb.co.uk

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
Relying on interconnectors to get out of trouble when the wind isn’t blowing won’t be a good plan long-term, when most of Europe is pushing its own wind-dependent electricity plans forward. Nuclear and coal are largely fading out of the UK scene, so for industrial-scale reliable power it has to be gas or bust in the end, whether UK-sourced or not.

The chairman of Britain’s biggest private company has accused the government of using “slippery back door manoeuvres” to kill off fracking in the UK, reports City A.M.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire founder of Ineos, said the government is sticking to a plan which is “unworkable, unhelpful and playing politics with the country’s future”.

Understanding physics could lead to big gains in shale oil recovery

Credit: mining.com

A longer delay in the middle of an existing process could be the key to even greater success than is currently being achieved.

Oil companies are missing out on vast sums of recoverable oil in unconventional reservoirs, according to Penn State experts, as Phys.org reports.

The researchers propose that companies are applying tried-and-true transport mechanisms for conventional oil extraction but are hitting recovery stumbling blocks because they are not accounting for the difference in physics found at unconventional reservoirs.

Limit On Fracking Tremors Will Stop Shale Gas Development, Says Ineos

Shale gas drilling site [image credit: BBC]

If they applied the same rules to the railways there might not be many freight trains around. The Richter scale doesn’t even rate tremors below magnitude 1, and describes those between 1.0 and 1.9 as ‘Micro-earthquakes, not felt, or felt rarely’. Upto 2.9 is ‘Felt slightly by some people. No damage to buildings’.

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Shale gas is unlikely to be developed in Britain unless strict limits on earthquakes caused by fracking are relaxed, the company with the biggest exploration rights has warned.

Extinction Rebellion and Anti-Frackers in Westminster Bridge Footshooting incident

The extreme end of the environmentalist movement decided on a novel approach to getting the public on their side this weekend; by blocking five bridges in central London, causing a huge traffic jam. Predictably, the result was a lot of unnecessary carbon dioxide and particulate emissions from stationary vehicles.

We can only recommend the organisers read this article by Stephen Moore
published in April 2016 on the Real Clear Politics website.

The U.S. Department of Energy published data last week with some amazing revelations — so amazing that most Americans will find them hard to believe. As a nation, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent from last year. Over the past 14 years, our carbon emissions are down more than 10 percent. On a per-unit-of-GDP basis, U.S. carbon emissions are down by closer to 20 percent.

Even more stunning: We’ve reduced our carbon emissions more than virtually any other nation in the world, including most of Europe.

Lancashire shale gas surfaces as UK LNG imports peak

Shale gas drilling site [image credit: BBC]

Finding our own gas instead of paying for costly imports should be a no-brainer, but some people seem to be too squeamish, or too ideologically obsessed, to accept such realities.

In the week that saw three tankers of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) arrive into the UK on the same day, Cuadrilla has announced that is has succeeded in flowing gas to the surface from the first of two horizontal wells to be hydraulically fractured (fracked) at its Preston New Road site in Little Plumpton, reports Lancashire for Shale.

“This is fantastic news, and a real credit to the expertise and tenacity of Cuadrilla and its partners, proving that it is possible to safely recover gas from the rich shale deposits beneath our feet,” said Lee Petts, Chair at Lancashire For Shale.

Fracking row continues as UK shale gas drilling recommences

Credit: mygridgb.co.uk

Opponents seem to imagine there’s a magic button to press for extra energy when it’s dark and not windy, rather than use the reliable power of fuel-burning. But in the real world the UK already uses vast amounts of gas for heating, cooking, electricity generation, industrial processes and more.

Exploratory shale gas drilling will begin today in the UK for the first time in seven years, reports PEI.

However, already this morning protesters have tried to prevent shale gas firm Cuadrilla from recommencing ‘fracking’ at a site in Lancashire, England.

Fracking campaigner FAILS in High Court battle

Another waste of time and money for all concerned. Time for the real work to begin.

An environmental campaigner has failed in his High Court action to temporarily block energy firm Cuadrilla from fracking in Lancashire, reports TLE.

Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan had described the challenge as “a last gasp attempt at trying to frustrate the process.”

Three jailed over Cuadrilla fracking protest

A reminder that exceeding the permitted limits of protesting can have negative consequences for the protesters themselves as well.

Three protesters have been jailed for a causing a public nuisance after they climbed on to lorries outside a fracking site, reports Energy Voice.

The disruption at energy firm Cuadrilla’s base in Preston New Road in Little Plumpton, Lancashire, in July 2017 lasted just short of 100 hours as the campaigners refused to come down.

British government finally gives green light to fracking shale gas

Shale gas drilling site [image credit: BBC]

After years of wrangling, the UK (or at least England) seems to have at last run out of ways to avoid tapping in to the wealth that is the gas under the nation’s feet, in this case anyway. Why import what can be produced at home?
H/T The GWPF

Shale gas developer Cuadrilla on Tuesday became the first operator in Britain to receive final consent from the government to frack an onshore horizontal exploration well, reports Reuters.

The government said it had granted approval for so-called hydraulic fracturing to take place at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site in northwest England.

The Texas well that started a revolution and changed the world forever

Permian shale, Texas [image credit: fulcrium.com]

Not a bad idea from someone who admitted “I was just trying to keep my job”.
H/T The GWPF

Two decades ago, an engineer tried a new way to get gas out of the ground. Energy markets and global politics would never be the same, writes Russell Gold @ The Wall Street Journal.

DISH, Texas – Twenty years ago this month, a well was drilled here that changed the world.

Nothing at the time suggested the unassuming well in this rural town north of Fort Worth would hobble OPEC, the powerful oil cartel that had governed prices of the world’s most important commodity for more than a generation. Or that it would help turn the U.S. into a global energy exporter, or shuffle the geopolitical deck.

But it did all of that – and more.

Nicola Sturgeon asked if she misled Scottish Parliament on fracking ‘ban’

Our indecision is final?

When is a ban not a ban? The Telegraph quotes the SNP’s own website which currently states: “The Scottish Government has put in place a ban on fracking in Scotland – meaning fracking cannot and will not take place in Scotland.” Seems clear enough from the renewables-mad SNP – but read on…

The Scottish Government’s claim in court that it had not banned fracking has been described as ‘beyond humiliating’; as two petrochemical companies argued that ministers did establish an ‘unlawful’ ban, reports the Daily Telegraph.

A lawyer for Ineos, which runs the giant Grangemouth refinery complex, said that ministers had created a policy through public statements that would prevent a fracking industry from developing in Scotland.

Cheap energy forever: Permian’s mammoth cubes herald supersized shale future

Permian shale, Texas [image credit: fulcrium.com]

The rise and rise of US shale continues to defy the arguments of its critics, shaking up the world with new ideas and greater efficiency.
H/T Bloomberg

‘Cube development,’ which taps multiple layers of shale all at once, could accelerate the U.S. shale boom and make the world swim in cheap and abundant energy for much of the next 250 years, as The GWPF reports.

In the scrublands of West Texas there’s an oil-drilling operation like few that have come before.

Encana Corp.’s RAB Davidson well pad is so mammoth, the explorer speaks of it in military terms, describing its efforts here as an occupation.