cuadrilla applies for fracking permission

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/29/cuadrilla-fracking-permission-lancashire-shale-rock


Cuadrilla, the UK's fracking pioneer, has submitted its planning application for a new site in Lancashire, where the company wants to drill four new exploratory wells.

The application to drill at Preston New Road will be considered by Lancashire county council, with a decision likely within 16 weeks, and is likely to spark further protests of the kind that were seen last summer at its oil-drilling site in Balcombe, Sussex. If granted, the application would allow Cuadrilla to drill, hydraulically fracture and test the gas flow from up to four wells.

An environmental impact assessment has already been carried out, and should be available to the public within two weeks when the council has validated the documents. A formal consultation process in which local people can make their views known will then follow.

If gas is found to be readily accessible at the site, more wells are likely to be needed in the area during the production phase, which could take several years to get under way.

Preston New Road is one of two new potential sites that Cuadrilla is targeting in Lancashire, with the other at Roseacre Wood. The company has eight sites in all in the region.

The company has suffered a series of setbacks in the four years of its attempts at drilling in the UK, including two small earthquakes at another Lancashire site that were later found to have resulted from the drilling, and protests at its oil site in Balcombe that delayed operations there. Cuadrilla has since said that it will not frack at Balcombe.

Cuadrilla was the first company to use modern hydraulic fracturing technology in the UK. Fracking involves blasting dense shale rock with a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals, to open up tiny fissures that release microscopic bubbles of methane trapped within it, which can then be collected and piped away. In the US, it has been associated with a dramatic fall in the price of gas, but critics say it leads to the industrialisation of the countryside, pollution, a drain on water resources and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier this month, Cuadrilla's crown as the biggest potential UK fracker was taken on by IGas Energy, when it bought rival Dart Energy in a £120m deal that will give the combined company access to potentially 1m acres of land, both for fracking and for exploring other sources of retrieving natural gas on land, such as coal-bed methane.

Last week, a British Geological Survey analysis of the Weald in southern England found that there was very little chance of finding gas in quantities there. However, there could be large reserves of oil in the area. That is likely to be a harder sell to the public, as gas can be portrayed as cleaner than coal in terms of its effect on climate change, but shale oil is relatively high in greenhouse gas emissions.

A similar survey of the north of England found a greater likelihood of shale gas being found in large quantities, amounting to enough to power the UK for several decades if much of it can be recovered. What must yet be established is whether it is sufficiently accessible to be produced economically, and this is what fracking companies are currently trying to do.