The last barrel
Ignorance, it is said, is bliss. However, when said ignorance is espoused by a nation’s would-be rulers, it is, quite frankly, worrying. Shale and fracing aren’t exactly strangers to controversy, with opposition appearing to sprout—regardless of location—whenever the words are uttered in public, so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to learn of more rumblings of hostility—this time from across the pond in the UK.
Fracing. Faced with mature fields, aging infrastructure, an appetite for natural gas, and a dearth of substantial offshore discoveries of late, one would think, or hope, that the UK would be going full-tilt to unlock the nation’s shale resources. According to the British Geological Survey, northern England’s Bowland shale, alone, contains an estimated 1,329 Tcf of gas-in-place (P50). And while the ruling Conservative Party has, quite rightly in my opinion, been supportive of the UK’s nascent shale industry, the Labour Party, which is currently in opposition, threw down the gauntlet last month and vowed to ban fracing, in a speech that no doubt sent the nation’s enviros into fits of ecstasy.
Speaking at the Labour Party’s annual conference, Barry Gardiner, shadow secretary of state for international trade, and shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, said that “technical problems,” which can be resolved, aren’t “a good enough reason” to ban fracing.
However, according to Gardiner, the “real reason to ban fracing is that it locks us into an energy infrastructure that is based on fossil fuels, long after our country needs to have moved to clean energy; so, today I am announcing that a future Labour government will ban fracing.”
The pledge was greeted by considerable applause from conference attendees, and, rather unsurprisingly, it was welcomed by Greenpeace UK and the Green Party as the best thing since sliced bread.
However, the pledge appears to be at odds with reality, and ignores the fact that households and industries across the nation are dependent on natural gas. The British people will continue to need gas, which, thanks to fracing, has been credited with reducing CO2 emissions in the U.S. for years to come—there is no way around that. The only question is, where will that gas come from? After all, if the UK can’t produce enough natural gas domestically, the balance will have to be imported, which raises a whole host of complexities in today’s troubled world.
The Conservative party hit back at the proposed ban, saying that the plan showed Labour wasn’t “a credible alternative” government; meanwhile GMB, the union for energy workers, warned that such a ban would force the UK to rely on resources from countries run by less-than-desirable characters.
Head-choppers. “Given we will need gas to heat our homes and power industry, the question is, therefore, where are we going to get our gas from,” Gary Smith, GMB Scotland Secretary, said. “We are increasingly going to be dependent on regimes fronted by henchmen, hangmen and head-choppers for the gas we need. That isn’t ethical, and is surely an abdication of our environmental and moral responsibilities.”
In his speech, Gardiner insisted that a future Labour government would consult with its colleagues in industry and the trade unions on the best way “to transition our energy industry, to create those vital jobs and apprenticeships, which we are going to need for the UK’s low-carbon future.”
However, he appears to have some convincing to do. Stuart Fegan, GMB National Officer, said, “It is nonsense, that any political party serious on forming a government after the next planned general election in 2020, could promote a ban on shale gas extraction outright. With our national dependency on gas consumption set to increase in the immediate future, ruling out the possible use of a natural fuel that exists beneath our feet, in parts of the UK, is ridiculous.”
Fegan made clear that he wasn’t opposed to renewables per se, but “when the wind doesn’t blow, and the sun doesn’t shine, we need other secure forms of energy to power the sixth-largest economy in the world.” Quite so.
Gardiner’s hostility to fracing is particularly ironic, given the recent arrival of the first shipment of U.S. shale gas in the UK. The INEOS Insight multi-gas carrier docked at Grangemouth, Scotland—which just happens to have a moratorium on fracing in place—on Sept. 28, with 27,500 m3 of ethane derived from U.S. shale. Jim Ratcliffe, chairman and founder of INEOS, hailed the cargo’s arrival as a “game-changer for British manufacturing,” adding that it “guarantees the security of thousands of jobs in Scotland and could spark a shale gas revolution.”
However, I can’t help but think that to be consistent, Labour, should it be elected, should go the extra mile and emasculate the nation by banning all future imports that are derived from fracing. After all, it seems rather sad to lock another country into an obsolete energy system by encouraging dastardly fracing. What’s the point in having principles if you don’t stand by them?
Shale operators in the U.S. Lower 48, where the local populace is likely to have at least some familiarity with the oil and gas industry, have faced repeated opposition. However, many Britons, excluding those who work in the industry, have little experience with the upstream, meaning that if operators in the U.S. have a hard time communicating the facts to the local populace, the task for Britain’s beleaguered would-be fracers is even greater—perhaps too great. Posturing and grandstanding like Gardiner’s won’t help.
OPEC. Meanwhile, OPEC caught everyone off-guard at the end of last month with a proposal to cut production to 32.5 MMbpd to 33 MMbpd. Production levels for each country are yet to be determined, but I do wonder if this will all fall apart at the group’s next meeting. 
