Shale gas exploitation has recently been given the go-ahead in the UK. With all the excitement, claim and counter claim, it would be easy to forget that to date not a single molecule of methane from shale gas has been produced and sold. We have drilled one shale gas well. That’s an 8½ inch borehole in Lancashire, a little like pushing a pin through the ceiling of your living room and looking through the hole. It does not tell you much about what’s in there. So will this new source of gas make a difference?
Let’s start with some numbers. Present UK annual production of natural gas is around 1.5 TCF (trillion cubic feet), but each year we use about 3.3 TCF. In the USA in the last 10 years, approximately 20,000 shale gas wells have been drilled and they now have an annual shale gas production of 3-4 TCF per year. If we use the USA as an analogy, the UK would need to drill thousands of wells to prove the reserves exist and make up just a part of the annual 1.8 TCF short-fall. Unlike wind energy, where there has been a move to develop it offshore, this is ecomomically unviable for shale gas because the rate of flow of gas for each well (i.e. revenue) is low relative to gas from other types of rock . So we cannot get away from it – researching the risks and an open and honest debate about them is an essential element in gaining the social acceptance of the technology that will be required.
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