Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Fracking hell
The Guardian reports that senior Conservatives are considering pushing for a lifting of the moratorium on fracking in England to become party policy.
The paper says that Conservatives have criticised the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, for Labour’s election pledge to end new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, and some are mooting a return to experimenting with drilling onshore for gas in an effort to lower energy bills:
There has been a moratorium on fracking in England since 2019 because of earthquakes caused by the method. Experts say extracting gas from shale would take years, is far less accessible than once thought and would do little to reduce energy bills. To frack, shale rocks, containing tiny pockets of methane, are blasted with a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to create fissures through which the gas can escape, to be siphoned off at the surface.
Andrew Bowie, the shadow energy minister, is supporting the shadow housing minister, Kemi Badenoch, in the leadership race. He said the next Tory leader should bring back fracking.
“I do support fracking,” he told a fringe event at the conference. “I represent an oil and gas constituency that is dependent in its entirety on the oil and gas industry. The experts will tell you that they are already fracking in the North Sea. I know it isn’t currently party policy to frack but I don’t know what Kemi will do on it.”
The shadow energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, suggested she would back lifting the moratorium, telling the Guardian: “What I am backing is cheap energy no matter where it comes from. If there is evidence that fracking would provide cheap energy then we would look at it. But I think what everyone wants is low bills and cheap energy and we won’t rule anything out.”
Badenoch did not rule it out: “I am not laying out specific policies yet, but I know there are colleagues who want to lift the moratorium and we will discuss policies at a later stage.”
The issue is hugely controversial among the public and in the Tory party because of the disruption to communities caused by fracking, including earthquakes. It also counteracts pledges to reduce oil and gas use in the UK.
The former prime minister Liz Truss tried to bring back fracking during her short-lived tenure and a chaotic vote on the matter is seen as one of the reasons for the collapse of her government. Shortly after her administration fell, her successor, Rishi Sunak, confirmed he would keep the moratorium, and that remains Conservative policy.
Essentially then, the Tories are trying to recover support by adopting a policy that is deeply unpopular in the affected communities, that mines a greenhouse gas and thus is environmentally unsound, and which is supported by Liz Truss. What could possibly go wrong.
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Fracking. How much do we know is underground? How profitable to the countries energy bill? When it comes to energy it would seem we will want more and more.Is it not feasible to keep oil, coal, gas under consideration by keeping them ,on the back burner, in reserve?
Then there is wave power. This will have to be developed for the countries use.We must develop a position where we have all sorts of resources to produce that energy.
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Then there is wave power. This will have to be developed for the countries use.We must develop a position where we have all sorts of resources to produce that energy.
# posted by 
: 11:46 AM
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