Shale Gas Production

Baroness Foster of Oxton Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As the noble Lord is aware, there was a further contracts for difference round held in December and onshore wind was able to bid into it. We will be announcing decisions on that shortly.

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, in 2014 Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the then NATO Secretary-General and former Prime Minister of Denmark, told a Chatham House meeting in London that Putin’s Government were behind attempts to discredit fracking across Europe. He said that Russia had

“engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations - environmental organisations working against shale gas - to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”

In 2017, the US media and Congress picked this up too. The propaganda and scare tactics also became prevalent in the UK. If energy security was not a concern before, it certainly should be now. Does my noble friend agree with me that it is vital that we need to become energy self-sufficient sooner rather than later, and that we should no longer rule out shale gas extraction in the United Kingdom?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her remarks. I suspect that she is probably right that there was an unholy alliance between Putin and some of the more extreme end of our environmental movement. Of course, both had the same objective in mind: to rule out shale gas production. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that there were some serious problems caused by the attempted fracking in Lancashire. I take the point which my noble friend is making. We are not ruling it out. If the scientific objectives can be overcome, and the tremors which were caused can be solved, it is potentially an option for the future.