UK Shale Gas

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Barbara Keeley

Thursday 18th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

The debate here falls into two categories: a wider category and a narrower category. It is undoubtedly true in terms of the wider category that we will have to leave a lot of the carbon that we otherwise could get out of the ground in the ground over the next few years. Indeed the understanding of the Department of Energy and Climate Change of this process in terms of what will need to be done with regard to gas as a component of wider energy sources in the 2030s reflects that in the way in which gas will need to be used at a much lower level and fairly sparingly in the running of gas-fired power stations. But that is also an issue in terms of what we do with oil, coal and a variety of other mineral sources of energy under our soils.

We are talking specifically about shale gas in the UK, and I want to address the narrow issue of what the consequence would be of our deciding that we really were going to go for a shale gas “bonanza” in this country and try to extract as much shale gas as possible in order to underpin our energy economy. First, there is indeed a large amount of shale gas reserve under the ground in the UK. How much of it is recoverable is another matter. If we recovered what looks to be a possible level of recoverability from the present fairly uncertain estimates of how much shale gas there is, shale gas could perhaps underpin 10% of our overall necessary gas supplies in this country.

[Mr David Amess in the Chair]

For shale gas to do that, we would have to have just over 100,000 shale gas wells. There is a popular misconception that drilling for shale gas is like drilling for offshore North sea gas, but that is not the case, as we have already heard. A large number of small wells would be the order of the day; in themselves, they would not produce a large amount of gas but collectively they would produce quite a large amount of gas. Perhaps there would be about 100,000 to 107,000 wells. Admittedly, they would not be separate wells. Usually, there would be about six or seven wells on one pad, going outwards from the pad, which would create a need for about 18,000 pads. So, if we did a straightforward division between the constituencies of this country, each constituency would have to support 164 wells. Obviously, the wells would not be distributed constituency by constituency, because there would be concentrations in different parts of the country, but I can well understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) and my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley).

[Barbara Keeley]

Whatever number of wells my hon. Friend thinks each constituency would have to bear, does he think that there are particular issues in urban areas that already have very high levels of pollution, such as the ones I outlined?

[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, in the US shale gas drilling takes place right in the centre of a number of towns, such as Fort Worth. There are very considerable concerns about that, precisely on the grounds she refers to, not because shale gas will kill us all but because of particular concerns about how the shale gas is extracted: what happens with the waste water; what happens with the operation of the shale gas facility itself; and indeed the arrangements in the US relating to mineral rights that cause that drilling to take place. That would not be the case in this country, so I would not for a moment suggest that we will get a rash of shale gas wells in the middle of town, because there is an entirely different mineral regime in the UK. Nevertheless, she makes an important point.

How would those 100,000-plus wells be built? Well, as I have mentioned, it would be on the basis of pairs of football ground-sized pads across the country, concentrated in particular areas, perhaps including my own area. Hampshire and Sussex would be one area where there would be a fairly large number of those wells, if that is the sort of ambition we wanted to achieve.