SOURCES: Sunak to re-instate ban on fracking in England

twitter ^ | Oct 26 | zerohedge

[RandFan]

@zerohedge

UK PM SUNAK WILL REINSTATE THE ENGLAND-WIDE BAN ON SHALE GAS FRACKING, SAYS FT, CITING SENIOR GOVERNMENT INSIDERS

[NorseViking]

Sunal already said that Truss did everything right. I wonder what was the point of swap then.

[Magnum44]

Brits seem stuck on stupid. At least they don’t have to wait 4 years to fire and rehire.

[Winniesboy]

Thank you for raising that point. No, there aren't many, and they're difficult to access. The geologist who founded Cuadrilla, the only company to drill experimentally before the ban was imposed, has said that he doesn't think, on the basis of that experience, that fracking is currently commercially viable in the UK. There simply aren't the extensive, easily accessible shale beds as in the US:

Fracking won’t work in UK says founder of fracking company Cuadrilla

All of which makes the political significance of the ban/don't ban farrago less significant than it might appear.

[hinckley buzzard]

UK has ample natural gas resources both on shore and offshore. They know where they are. But they refuse to drill for them. In. one case they had a gas well drilled and ready to go but they plugged it up with concrete instead.

[MalPearce]

Multiple dimensions to this.

Firstly, Sunak is WEF. He’s basically a Tory version of David Milliband from Labour.

Secondly, the clamour for a general election after having THREE prime ministers in as many months is reinforced by Liz Truss tearing up the Tory manifesto that got Boris elected. She immediately set about deviating from all carefully planned stuff that people actually voted Boris in to do, in favor of her conservative hobby horses. It spooked the markets and crashed the economy.

If Sunak had continued with her program it would’ve spooked the markets even further and increased the argument for a general election - which, right now according to the polls, would see the Tory Party come fourth after the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationals.

Existentially, Sunak HAD to revert to the Boris manifesto - it was either that or face an unwinnable general election.

[DesertRhino]

Well it was fun having a “conservative”.... for a whole DAY! LOL

Freeze in the dark limey idiots.

[StAnDeliver]

Cuadrilla had already moved in February to cap the last two remaining high-volume UK sites.

So he's banning what, exactly. An Australian company that admitted their UK fracking would have a “basically insignificant” impact on prices?

"George Osborne's plan to drive down energy prices through a shale gas revolution was dealt a blow when Britain's sole active shale gas producer said that even a boom would have a “basically insignificant” impact on prices.

At a meeting for concerned residents at a potential fracking site in West Sussex, a Cuadrilla representative was asked to comment on whether shale gas could drive down customers' energy bills.

“We've done an analysis and it's a very small…at the most it's a very small percentage…basically insignificant,” said Mark Linder, a public relations executive at Bell Pottinger who is also responsible for Cuadrilla's corporate development."

Just look at all that commerce LOFL!

2 people who still have jerbs in Cuadrilla's operations on the Continent, where the most productive shale is far more easily accessed than the UK.

[StAnDeliver]

"Fracking is not going to reduce gas prices in the UK, according to the chairman of the UK's leading shale gas company.

The statement by Lord Browne (former chairman of BP and former chairman of major fracking company Cuadrilla), one of the most powerful energy figures in Britain, contradicts claims by David Cameron and George Osborne that shale gas exploration could help curb soaring energy bills.

High-profile protests hampered Cuadrilla's operations at Balcombe in Sussex in the summer but Browne said: "Cuadrilla is not going to frack at Balcombe."

And there is the other shoe dropping. The Tories banning a non-extant industry in the UK prevents Green-grifting po'testors from inciting rural riots and creating bad optix in Torie-land.

[Vaduz]

Going to be a cold dark winter in the UK trees panic.

[StAnDeliver]

Fracking in the UK will be impossible at any meaningful scale and will not help with the energy price crisis, the founder of the UK’s first fracking company has warned

"Chris Cornelius, the geologist who founded Cuadrilla Resources, which drilled the UK’s first modern hydraulic fracturing wells in Lancashire, told the Guardian that he believed the government’s support for it is merely a “political gesture”. “I don’t think there is any chance of fracking in the UK in the near term.”

He said that when Cuadrilla had operated here, it had discovered that the geology of the UK was unsuited to widespread fracking operations. “No sensible investors” would take the risk of embarking on large projects here, he said. “It’s very challenging geology, compared with North America [where fracking is a major industry].”

Unlike the gas-bearing shale deposits in the US, the shale resource in the UK is “heavily faulted and compartmentalised”, making it far harder to exploit at any scale.

In February this year, the company said its wells – the only two wells to be horizontally drilled and hydraulically fracked in the UK – would be “plugged and abandoned”.

Cornelius resigned from Cuadrilla in 2014, after Lord Browne, former chief of the oil company BP, took over the chairmanship. Browne left in 2015.

Cuadrilla has spent “hundreds of millions of pounds”, according to its chief executive, Francis Egan, in its efforts start up a fracking operation. However, the company never produced any gas for sale."