Shale Gas

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing this debate.

The benefits of unconventional drilling have been well flagged. While bridging to a low-carbon future, it might provide the UK with a secure source of energy. However, the Government have only one opportunity to get things right, as my hon. Friend said. We are routinely told about the economic value associated with extraction, so in that context it is critical that people, especially those living near extraction sites, have cast-iron confidence that proper and sufficient investment is being made to ensure their safety during and after the drilling period. My constituency has seen exploratory drilling conducted near Balcombe under a licence granted in 2013 to Cuadrilla. The concerns of many residents were far from being assuaged and, if the resource is to be exploited, public acceptance and support are critical. The Government must ensure that the public have complete confidence that their overriding concern remains the safety of their citizens around the sites.

There are advantages to a country in being a second mover. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) referred to the US experience, which is clearly useful to learn from. I am sure that the Minister will place on the record her Department’s continuing monitoring of the US experience. We have much to learn from it and, given the far higher concentration of population in the UK, it is essential that we do so. However, I have constituents who are concerned that the Minister’s Department, having in large measure set out a safety regime, will cease to focus as much on the US experience. I would like a reassurance that that is not the case, not only in the Minister’s response today, but, more critically, in how the Department responds to the stories that emerge from the US in the coming months and years.

I also support my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton in calling for the monitoring of fracking activities not only to be independent, but in every respect to be seen to be independent. It would be damaging for the industry if a perception were to emerge that those being paid to monitor activities had a vested interest in those activities being ongoing.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that environmental impact assessments are key, in providing information to local communities before planning applications and looking at possible consequences, so that they may be taken into account and dealt with early in the planning processes?

[Jeremy Quin]

I agree with my hon. Friend in every respect. Other hon. Members have referred to the importance of getting information out there to reassure the public, and that is one example of us doing exactly that.

Water contamination is one example where reassurance might be required, as was referred to earlier. The construction of wells is key to this, with sufficient casing and cementing being essential to prevent groundwater contamination and manage the flowback fluid. As we have seen in Pennsylvania, there is inevitably a failure rate in certain new wells. Will the Minister provide a reassurance that the regulatory regime on well construction is sufficient to prevent substances from leaking? Monitoring of groundwater for contaminants is essential, not on the basis of an investigation every three years, but as a regular, routine undertaking during and after drilling. I appreciate that the Infrastructure Act 2015 specified that

“hydraulic fracturing will not take place within protected groundwater source areas”.

A lot may hang on the exact definition of what “groundwater source areas” comprise, so I look forward to that being clarified.

Lastly, under the Environment Agency’s recent consultation, flow testing could be covered by a standard permit granted to the explorer. The Minister will appreciate that, at this early stage of unconventional drilling in the UK, particularly in the context of early flow testing, anything that suggests a standard approach without particular consideration and monitoring will cause concern. We look forward to that being clarified in due course.

I have no doubt that the Minister will act with her usual boldness and determination in pushing this agenda forward. I simply ask that, in doing so, she uses the same determination—I have every conviction that she will—to ensure that the safety regime is not only highly effective, but capable of assuaging the concerns of people living close to drilling operations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and congratulate him on obtaining the debate, and on his impeccable timing, given the news on the decision in Lancashire. Time is clearly of the essence, so I shall crack on.

Five themes have been brought out in the debate, and alignment between them is needed if fracking is to be a viable part of the energy mix: safety, public support, climate change, how that fits in with the total energy mix, and economic viability. Dealing with this is to be devolved to Scotland. Scottish Ministers have suggested a moratorium while concerns are explored. That is welcome and it will go a long way towards ensuring that discussions on the food and drink and tourism industries, which my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) mentioned, are not put in jeopardy by fracking.

There is a question about whether new licences will be issued while the process is going on—it has been suggested that they will not—and there is also a question about licences that have been granted, and how they will be considered when things are devolved. I think there are issues about the economics. If we are to have a truly safe regime it needs to be gold-plated, but that is likely to be more expensive, and I understand that it will be more expensive in the UK than it would be in the United States. Doing things more safely than they are done in the United States, from a more expensive cost base at the start, with gas prices considerably lower than those of a number of years ago, brings the economics into question. I take the point that if shale gas extraction is not economic it will not happen, but we need to consider that when time is spent on exploring.

Perhaps the biggest issue is not economic viability or whether shale gas will change our dependence on fossil fuels, but whether it would be the best use of this country’s resources, from the carbon dioxide point of view, and whether we are going to meet our objectives on reducing carbon emissions. Shale gas will produce more.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. Time will not be added on for this intervention.

[Callum McCaig]

Perhaps the hon. Lady will be brief.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that burning coal is more deleterious than shale gas, which has a lower carbon footprint?