Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lilley]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, but I want to make a little progress.

A number of fears have been raised about water supplies, the first of which is the fear of well failure. We have drilled 2,000 onshore wells in this country and, as far as I know, not one of them has resulted in contaminated water supplies. If that has happened, it has not resulted in any ill health to anybody.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

This is one of the myths that my right hon. Friend has fallen into. We have only fracked at shallow depth for natural gas. The only time we have fracked at depth for shale gas was in Fylde, which is why the question of the independent regulation of this industry hangs in the balance this evening.

[Mr Lilley]

I am sorry but my hon. Friend misheard me. I said that we have drilled 2,000 onshore wells—I was not talking about fracking wells. As for the risks of escape of gas, it does not matter whether it is fracked or not. We have drilled 2,000 such wells, only 200 of which have been fracked, and they tend to be shallow and small pressure. I will move on to the issue of fracking, but if people are worried about methane or liquids permeating to the surface, that is an issue about well casing. We have very adequate and strong controls on that, and, as far as I know, there is not a single case among those 2,000 wells where a problem has resulted.

The second issue is whether fracking—the use of high pressures, at depth, as my hon. Friend says—will lead to those fractures reaching up to the water table. The useful report produced by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, which is studiously ignored by those who wish to raise fears and concerns, makes it absolutely clear that that is extremely unlikely. For fractures to permeate requires immense energy and for them to remain open proppants have to be put in; sand is injected to try to keep them open. The idea that they will be able to be kept open for several hundred if not thousands of feet, extending up to the aquifer, is almost laughable. Even this well-measured report states:

“Sufficiently high upward pressures would be required during the fracturing process and then sustained afterwards over the long term once the fracturing process had ceased. It is very difficult to conceive of how this might occur given the UK’s shale gas hydrogeological environments.”

Even if that did occur, an upward flow of fluids would not result unless

“the permeability of the fractures”

was

“similar to that of the overlying aquifer for any significant quantity of fluid to flow. In reality, the permeability of the aquifer is likely to be several orders of magnitude greater than the permeability of the fractures. Upward flow of fluids from the zone of shale gas extraction to overlying aquifers via fractures in the intervening strata is highly unlikely.”

That is an understatement.

Concerns have also been raised about the process resulting in excessive abstraction of water—too much water being used—putting our water supplies under threat. The report states that the amount of water

“needed to operate a hydraulically fractured shale gas well for a decade may be equivalent to the amount needed to water a golf course for a month”.

It states that

“the amount lost to leaks in United Utilities’ region in north west England every hour”

exceeds the water required by one shale gas well for a decade, so there is no danger of excessive water abstraction and use as a result of this process.

Then we hear the frequent assertion, “We just can’t take the risk. This is a new, untried, untested process. We don’t know what dangers could result.” In fact, 2.5 million wells have been fracked worldwide and not a single person has been injured or harmed as a result of contaminated water. Not a single building has been damaged by the resultant seismic events that are so small that they would probably be less than if we dropped one of the Dispatch Boxes on the floor.

We are dealing with a well-tried and tested procedure worldwide. In this country, we have drilled 2,000 wells well below the aquifer and had no problems of contamination. We know from very respected bodies such as the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society that the risks are negligible, certainly if we continue with the sort of processes and environmental protection that they say already exist, although they do recommend that they could be strengthened in certain ways.

I urge the House not to be frightened by those who are trying to scare us into failing to exploit a resource that is potentially of immense value to this country and, not least, to those areas where shale is most prolific.

--- Later in debate ---

I support the Government and very much hope that the House will throw out these unnecessary and unwelcome amendments.

[Miss McIntosh]

This has been a good debate on the amendments. I pay tribute to the Minister for steering a difficult piece of legislation through the House. My hon. Friend the Minister has not had the advantage of the years in opposition which show that the detail should appear on the face of the Bill. The House will unite around the fact that we present a hostage to fortune by allowing some of the detail that will no longer be on the face of the Bill, which was achieved through consensus around an Opposition motion on Report which united the House on specific aspects—

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

One of the details I am particularly concerned about is coal bed methane, which is exploited at depths of 150 to 400 metres—unlike high-volume hydraulic fracturing, which is done below 1,000 metres—and which is not defined in the Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be a prohibition on all gas exploitation at depths of less than 1,000 metres?

[Miss McIntosh]

I am sure the Minister will respond.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) put his finger on the issue before the House today. I would not stand in the way of fracking in Thirsk, Malton or Filey, which is a deeply rural constituency dependent on farming and tourism in precisely the area for which, I am told, the licence application is to be submitted in March, before the regulations have come before the House. There are too many unknowns in the regulatory regime. My question to the Minister—I have tabled a question in this connection—is which independent regulator will enforce the controls, the traffic light system which the Prime Minister refers to, stopping seismic activity above 0.5%? This is the big difference between drilling in every other aspect and causing an earthquake below ground, making the earth move, possibly never to return to where it had been before.

I would also like to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister the matter of ground water contamination. How can Third Energy hope to remove by pipes the waste water at a depth of less than 2 metres underground? How can it possibly hope to submit a plan for a licence application by the end of March without having a traffic movement plan or a waste disposal plan?

I leave the House and the Minister with the thought that in the present economic climate, given the fall in the price of oil, we can allow ourselves the luxury of making sure that the regulatory regime is independent and fit for purpose and that no fracking will take place until the regime has been tried and tested.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I had not intended to speak tonight but, having heard the debate, feel that I must contribute. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) made the important point that some of the people who are against fracking are patently against it for environmental reasons; I do not associate myself with those people, and neither does he. However, I think that many people in this country have genuine concerns about fracking. In my constituency, where there are a number of test sites, I find that many people are very reasonable, in that they would be open to the option of fracking as long as they felt that the regime was strict enough and that there were enough environmental protections in place.

What concerns me about tonight’s debate is the restricted time, our inability to vote on all the amendments, and what has happened between the Lords and the Commons with regard to what I thought we agreed in the Commons a week or so ago. It leads many people to conclude that the Government are in league with the extraction companies or that there is something to hide. I do not believe that is the case at all, but given our concerns, I think there is a very strong argument indeed for pausing and thinking again about this issue, particularly given what has happened to oil prices internationally. That is why I and other Members on both sides of the House recently voted in favour of a moratorium.