You have to have a scintilla of sympathy for the shale gas industry. It cannot be easy winning round a skeptical populace when you routinely have to drop the phrase “Richter scale” into public statements. But at least the frackers have been able to count on the support of the British government. Or at least they thought they could. Of late, even business-minded ministers seem rather lukewarm. The industry is being throttled by regulations which ministers celebrate as the “toughest in the world”, even as insiders admit that the reasons for not easing the rules are more political than scientific.
In other circumstances, this might not matter, but time may be running out for the UK’s shale experiment. With the Conservatives the only party not ideologically opposed to fracking and their enthusiasm dimming, the shale gas revolution is petering out. This may be the last government prepared even to support shale gas drilling – and its hold on power is pretty tenuous. The political landscape offers little hope. The campaign against fossil fuels is gathering momentum. Environmental protests such as the Extinction Rebellion are drawing support and attention.
Opinion polls show that green issues are of particular importance, especially to the younger voters whom the Conservatives so desperately need to attract. Last week it emerged that Ineos, the energy company, had privately warned regulators that it may abandon plans to frack in the UK unless the restrictions on earth tremors are relaxed. The only major project in England, a Cuadrilla site near Blackpool in Lancashire, is failing because of regulations that require work to cease for 18 hours every time the seismic activity triggered exceeds
0.5. To offer some context: when, in October, a tremor of 1.1 was recorded Claire Perry, the energy minister, described it as “the equivalent on the surface of a bag of flour falling on the floor”. And yet fears of the bag of flour mean that Caudrilla has managed to complete the hydraulic fracture of just two of the 41 sections of the well.