Political reporter
Strained in underground rocks, a possible energy resource has removed generations of British politicians.
It is called shell gas and the method of removing it from the ground, known as fracting, has proved to be politically difficult.
Fracking, small for hydraulic fracturing, has been banned several times on concerns about earthquakes and environmental impacts by separate head ministers since 2011.
And yet, despite this, reform UK – which leads to the national opinion poll – is confident that it is worth going after gas again.
Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader and an energy spokesman, said, “We have achieved hundreds of billions of energy treasures in the form of shell gas.”
“It is financially negligent for a criminal degree to leave that value underground and not to remove it.”
Nigel Faraj -led party is asking energy firms to be ready for “drill, baby, drill”, if it comes to the government after the next general election.
Improvement UK says it is serious about Shell – but will its plan be successful where so many others have failed?
The history of fracting in the UK shows that it will not be easy.
Shell failed
Fracking has been running in the British oil and gas sector for decades and flew under the political radar on a large scale when shell gas extraction began to launch in the United States.
At that time, Charles was the Handry Energy Minister and first, he was carefully optimistic about the possibilities for a US-style shell gas boom.
But abortion efforts of the last decade have changed the former Tory MP in suspicion.
He looked at former Prime Minister David Cameron’s dash for a slow crawl for gas, as the projects were interrupted by delaying fracting, minor earthquakes, legal challenges and frequent protests.
Consequently, Cameron’s promise “Shell Gas Revolution” never physicized and in 2019, shocks were recorded at a fracting site, which led to a restriction.
“When ambition killed reality, it was not what people expected,” called Handry. “This is much more difficult than the US. It is more expensive. It is more polluting. It is more disruptive.”
The former minister says that there was a less space for fracting in the UK than in the US and resulting in more obstacles on the way.
Given the level of opposition to removing those obstacles, Handry is called Handry, the improvement for shell gas was considered wrong.
“Even reforms will be in weapons about voter ideas,” Handry predicted.
The most recent attempt to re -fracting is the story of another caution.
When former Prime Minister Liz Trus last lifted the fracting ban in 2022, opposition MPs forced a vote on the issue and although his government won, a major rebellion by Tory MPs shook confidence in his leadership and resigned the next day.
His successor, sage Sunak, prohibited the fracting and now the Labor Sarkar says it intends to ban practice permanently.
So, how will the UK navigate this political mine?
First, Ties says, improvement UK will immediately lift any faking ban.
Secondly, they say, an improvement will work with the UK government oil and gas companies and use new extraction techniques to detect shell gas in a couple of well -monitored wells using new extraction techniques.
“It will confirm the amount of gas available and satisfy people that it is safe,” Tice is called.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) has identified four regions where commercial shell has a gas extraction capacity, with the largest spreading Lancashire and many countries in Middlelands.
In a major study of 2013, BGS stated that “shell gas development is technical and economically viable” in the UK to prove that more testing was required. Nevertheless, BGS said, “It is definitely far away that the conditions that reduce shell gas production in North America will replicate in the UK”.
Despite this uncertainty, the tice is rapid and says that he would know within two years of the test whether the fracting for shell gas in the UK was worthwhile.
But unlike labor, which promised to spend £ 28BN a year on green energy, improvement would not invest any public money in UK fracting.
“The government’s job is to create an attractive regulator and tax structure,” says Tice.
Although the next general election is potentially closed yet, the ties and Faraj are already doing ground tasks for their fracting revival in meetings with oil and gas firms.
In such a meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland a few months ago, Tis and Faraj asked these companies to prepare an application for a license to search for shell gas.
“Don’t write to Britain,” Tice told them. “Keep us in mind, and in the run until the next general election, you should get your ducks in a line and prepare the application.”
Andrea Jenkins of Reform UK, Mayor of Lincolnshire, are also an enthusiastic enthusiast and recently met agaden resources, an oil and gas firm, with a license to target Shell gas in the area known as the Gainsboro trough.
The company is analyzing by the accounting firm Deloite, which estimates that gas in the trough can be a price of £ 140BN for the UK economy and can produce 250,000 jobs.
The evaluation of the deliite is not public and the aged will not share a copy with the BBC.
Mark Abbott, CEO of Agden Resources, says the company would invest millions in Shell Gas “if the regulator environment allowed it”.
He says that “there is a policy of clearly improvement that we are more helpful than the a while”.
Star Energy Group is another company that is interested in areas with potential shell deposits.
Its CEO Ross Glover has met UK councilors improvement in Lincolnshire, where the party controls the County Council.
“We know that there is a world -class resource,” Glover says. “I believe that whatever indigenous energy can be found to Britain, it should be wind, solar, geothermal.”
Energy infection
For Michael Bradshow, Professor of Global Energy at Warwick Business School, there is a sense of Days Wu.
He has been studying policies over the years and says that last time, the industry did not make any progress.
“The work done by geologists in our research program suggested that the complex geology of shell basins in the UK will make it quite difficult and expensive to remove it,” says Bradshaw.
He says that the estimated expenses of the production of British shells may mean that it will not be able to compete with cheap gas imported from Norway or other places.
As a result, Professor Bradshow says, energy bills in short term will not be reduced.
In any case, with labor in the government, fracting is a non-starter.
Labor is focusing on the manufacture of renewable energy of the UK and aims of clean power to meet the 100% electricity demand by 2030.
Energy Minister Mita Fahanbulleh says that the labor was going out to “seize clean energy infection opportunities”.
“We intend to ban fracting for good and create a clean energy superpower to Britain to protect the current and future generations,” Fenbulleh says.
“The biggest risk for our energy security is dependent on fossil fuel markets and by sprinkling only for clean electricity by 2030, Britain can withdraw its energy control and protect consumers from spilling at energy costs.”
Although fossil fuels are expected to be a feature of the UK’s energy and economic systems for the coming years, their role is decreasing as countries turn into cleaner options.
If an improvement government pivses back to fracting back in 2029, it can find itself out of a step in a world that is trying to get green in green.