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"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.

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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."