Planners at a council in northern England have recommended rejecting applications for shale drilling at a meeting next week, dealing another blow to government efforts to kickstart the nascent industry, Bloomberg said Jan. 21.
Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. has applied for permission to drill at two sites in Lancashire, where the Bowland Basin is thought to hold as much as 1,300 trillion cubic feet of gas, enough to meet demand in the U.K. for about 50 years. One of those permits was granted by the Environment Agency last week.
The U.K.’s Conservative Party-led government has opened up swathes of rural Britain to bidding and is offering tax breaks to drillers in a push to emulate the shale boom in the U.S. as oil and gas reserves in the North Sea dry up. The opposition Labour party says baseline monitoring needs to be carried out for a year before any drilling activity.
The shale-drilling technique is opposed by locals who are concerned about water contamination, increasing traffic and noise, and the industrialization of the British countryside.
“It has not been satisfactorily demonstrated that noise impacts would be reduced to acceptable levels and would therefore unnecessarily and unacceptably result in harm to the amenity of neighboring properties by way of noise pollution,” the Lancashire County Council said in a statement on its website.
The recommendations will be considered next week by the county council’s Development Control Committee.
Cuadrilla has “come forward with measures that would mitigate the noise of drilling and fracturing and the proposed noise levels are within the limits set out in government guidance,” the Lichfield, England-based company said in an emailed statement.
Shale-drilling applications by Celtique Energie Ltd. in southern England were rejected last year by the West Sussex County Council and the South Downs National Park Authority.
Recommended Reading
Baltimore Port Closure Could Dent US Coal Export Volumes, EIA Says
2024-03-28 - Baltimore handled exports of 28 million short tons last year, making up 28% of total U.S. coal exports.
EIA: Oil Prices Could Move Up as Global Tensions Threaten Crude Supply
2024-02-07 - Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and ongoing risks that threaten global supply have experts questioning where oil prices will move next.
EIA: Blame Associated Gas Volumes for Sticky Low NatGas Prices
2024-03-14 - Low natural gas prices are forcing U.S. producers to finally pump the brakes on what has been record production. But the pullback in drilling will have muted effects on a market already glutted with too much gas, federal experts say.
US Leads Global Oil Production for Sixth Straight Year-EIA
2024-03-11 - The Energy Information Administration says it is unlikely that the record will be broken by another country in the near term.
The Secret to Record US Oil Output? Drilling Efficiencies—EIA
2024-03-06 - Advances in horizontal drilling and fracking technologies are yielding more efficient oil wells in the U.S. even as the rig count plummets, the Energy Information Administration reported.