Why block energy wells just when we need them?
Yesterday contractors began to arrive at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site in Lancashire. They are there to clear the place. Next Monday, they will start the process of pouring concrete into the only two horizontal shale gas wells in Britain, and keep on pouring until they will never be usable again. It is an eco-punishment, as vengeful as the Romans sowing the defeated Carthage with salt.
In the House of Commons, the junior minister answering, Greg Hands, said: “Gas wells need to be safely decommissioned at the end of their useful life. The Oil and Gas Authority is acting within its statutory remit to require the operator of these wells to decommission them.” But these two wells have been allowed no useful life at all. They are the victims of the government moratorium on shale gas extraction announced in 2019.
At any time, this behaviour would be extremely foolish. The wealth of energy contained in the Lancashire field is huge and the recorded damage of fracking there is tiny. As Lord Lilley eloquently put it: “UK shale gas regulations are up to 180 thousand times more stringent than in the US, requiring tremors equivalent to dropping a bag of shopping on the floor to be recorded as an ‘earthquake’.
“Cuadrilla’s wells produced – for just two seconds – movement that was half what standard construction sites are allowed to produce every single day.”
At this time, when Vladimir Putin’s rape of Ukraine is creating profound energy insecurity for Britain and the whole of Europe, to deny ourselves all future indigenous production of shale gas is crazy green dogmatism.
The BEIS Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is trying to treat this as a technical matter for the Oil and Gas Authority, and says he cannot intervene. It is far more than that – a political and strategic decision about our future energy security. Boris Johnson who, when he decides a U-turn is needed, can execute one with the speed and skill of a London taxi, has just started calling for increased production of natural gas throughout Europe. Mr Kwarteng should be similarly nimble, and stop the concreters before Monday.
On the whole, I don’t think
the BBC can be accused, in its reporting of the Ukraine crisis, of the “moral equivalence” between dictatorships and democracies of which it is sometimes guilty. After all, you have to be as extreme as Jeremy Corbyn to see Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as chiefly the fault of Western imperialism. My concern would be more about naiveté. It is hard-wired into the BBC (and many other media outlets) to see any offer of “peace talks” or “humanitarian corridors” as “a glimmer of hope”.
When dealing with someone like Putin, there is no such hope. He cannot be trusted in any agreement he might make, and he has no scruples about killing anyone.
Take the humanitarian corridors in Mariupol. They require the safe passage of Ukrainians out of the city. You can see why the Ukrainian government asked for them: it naturally wants its fellow Ukrainian women and children not to be killed and wishes to emphasise this before the world. But Russia agreed to the corridors not out of even temporary mercy, but because they make it easier to capture the city, taking the escapees hostage on the way – which is why most of the corridors proposed for various cities lead to Russia not to Ukraine. The Russians, the aggressors, control them, and Putin is perfectly free – and perfectly happy – to break his agreement and bomb, shoot or ensnare those escaping.
Similarly, President Macron of France gets a certain media kudos (and is seeking electoral prestige at home) by taking direct “initiatives” with Putin. Shortly before the invasion, he visited Putin in Moscow, which helped foster the illusion that Russia might hold back. More recently, he rang Putin to obtain commitments that nuclear plants in Ukraine would not be attacked in the conflict.
Naturally, it was easy for Putin to agree, saying he stood ready for talks between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ukraine and Russia. This makes him look semirespectable. He can always make sure the talks fail, if he wishes (blaming the Ukrainians), or make them “succeed”, but fail to implement their decisions. He will not be punished for this.
The effect on the West of initiatives such as Macron’s is simply to weaken resolve and make allied division likelier. In remarks following the Macron/putin phone call, a spokesman for the Élysée Palace not only made clear that the IAEA is now in some sense beholden to Putin. He also used the briefing to pour cold water on the US plan to supply fighter jets to Ukraine, urging “some caution on those issues”.
So, on balance, a win for Putin, not for peace. BBC reporting should show awareness of this.
In the piteous video of the entire
family blown up by Putin’s forces as they fled Irpin, near Kiev, an animal carrier was visible among their baggage. All the family were dead. The dog in the carrier was alive and barking.
Of course, the fate of an animal in such a situation is morally much less serious than that of human beings, but this detail of the picture nevertheless struck home.
Was the dog hurt? Will someone look after it? Its survival, all alone, feels somehow more poignant even than its death would have done.