Bring back fracking for energy renaissance, Frost tells Johnson

A TORY revolt is mounting over the fracking ban, with more than 30 MPs and peers claiming that the policy is unconservative and that shale gas production would allow the country to avoid future energy crises.

In a joint letter to Boris Johnson, Lord Frost joined 29 MPs, including John Whittingdale, the former culture secretary, and Bob Blackman, the 1922 Committee executive secretary, to insist that it was “time to reverse this moratorium”, which has prohibited the mining of shale gas since 2019.

It comes after it emerged that Cuadrilla, the energy firm, had been told to seal off England’s only two viable shale gas wells, despite ministers’ insistence on the need to rely less on gas imports.

Last night, Lord Frost said: “If our economy is to boom after Brexit, British industry needs a competitive and reliable source of energy which we hold in our own hands and brings investment into this country. Shale gas production achieves all this and more.

“If we don’t produce it here, as we have seen, all we do is import gas from elsewhere, and push up overall carbon emissions, too. So let’s reverse the moratorium on shale gas and let a British energy renaissance begin.”

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Francis Egan, Cuadrilla’s chief executive, states: “Using domestic shale gas should be a no-brainer.”

Last week, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new Minister for Brexit Opportunities, called for the ban to be lifted. However, Mr Johnson resisted the move. A government source said: “The Prime Minister has made clear it is not something we will be reversing.”

A Whitehall source said: “Even if new scientific evidence emerged and we lifted the moratorium tomorrow, it would take 10 years before sufficient quantities of gas could be produced for the market.”

But the letter to Mr Johnson, organised by Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker, the chairman and deputy chairman of the Conservative Net Zero Scrutiny Group, states that shale gas mining would “allow us to combat the cost of living crisis, level up, create jobs, opportunity and a renewed sense of community in the north, improve our energy security, reduce our reliance on imported gas, stabilise energy prices and achieve net zero without increasing the cost of living”.

The group said that the Bowland Shale formation of gas under Lancashire and Yorkshire “offers at least 50 years of cheap and sustainable gas”.

They added: “If levelling up is to mean anything it must be centred around empowering communities, rather than telling them what they can and cannot do. With the lack of public debate about our strategy to reach net zero, we have abandoned this fundamentally conservative principle... It’s time to reverse this moratorium.”

The Business Department said: “The development of domestic energy sources, including fracking, must be safe and cause minimal disruption and damage. We ended support for fracking on the basis of scientific evidence showing that it is not currently possible to accurately predict the tremors associated with fracking.”

Using domestic shale gas should be a no-brainer. Instead, a rig will arrive in approximately one month to seal up with cement Britain’s only two horizontal shale gas wells. This is because the authorities have decreed that now is the right moment for Cuadrilla to “plug and abandon” the only wells which could demonstrate that shale gas can provide affordable, secure and relatively clean energy. In the US, where domestic shale gas production flourishes, wholesale gas prices are approximately six times lower than in the UK. By contrast, UK and EU policy makers are constraining regional gas supply while global demand grows, spending billions annually to import it from all corners of the globe.

This might make some sense if we weren’t able to exploit our own gas resources. But the same gas that we are importing is sitting right under our feet in the Bowland Shale which stretches across the north of England. Some 37.6trillion cubic metres of shale gas sits unused, when only 10 per cent of this could meet UK gas needs for 50 years.

Developing and producing this precious resource would create tens of thousands of well-paid jobs and empower local communities in the North. Red Wall councils would raise millions of pounds in local taxes, and tax on domestic gas production could generate revenue for the NHS.

Leaving our gas in the ground is also hindering our ability to deliver net zero. Importing gas is estimated to produce double the pre-combustion carbon emissions of home-grown shale gas. But for some unfathomable reason the Government’s net-zero figures only count “territorial emissions”, meaning we don’t hold ourselves to account for the emissions created by the everincreasing volumes of gas we import.

I take climate change seriously, and a revived British shale gas industry is a more effective and honest way of achieving it. The energy crisis has also shown how vulnerable some of our European allies are to Russian influence because of their gas import dependency. Russia’s LNG (liquefied natural gas) capacity tripled between 2016-19 alone and the former Nato chief has warned that Russia is deliberately undermining attempts by Western countries to develop shale gas capacities, to maintain its influence.

Instead of abandoning our wells in Lancashire because one of them caused a two-second vibration, we should unleash the potential of a sustainable, safe, and well-regulated approach to shale gas. By reversing the shale moratorium and the requirement to plug Lancashire wells, we would be following the science – not pressure groups – creating jobs and opportunity across the North, securing our gas supply for decades, reducing energy costs for hard-pressed families and helping to clean up our planet.

I can’t think of a better opportunity for this country to seize.