UK Shale Gas

Debate between Eric Ollerenshaw and David Mowat

Thursday 18th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and to have your understanding that I may have to nip out and see a Minister about a school. I hope that I will also have the understanding of other hon. Members.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on ensuring that we could have this debate. I think that this is the fifth time in 18 months that we have had such a debate, and my right hon. Friend the Minister has had the pleasure of my company and that of other hon. Members only in the last few days on pretty much the same topic. I will try to take a different tack from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, given that I represent a constituency that sits on the majority of the Bowland shale, which apparently is becoming the nirvana of plugging our energy gap. That is how it seems to many of my constituents, who are worried on a number of grounds.

Personally, I have always tried to take the middle ground. I am not, and never have been, completely set against the use of shale gas in the UK’s energy mix. However, following conversations with constituents and having done my own research, I do have concerns about the safety and the environmental aspects of the fracking process. That includes, in particular, the integrity of water supplies for those who draw water from their own boreholes and not from the mains supply. That is an issue that I keep raising, and I have raised it in meetings with companies and civil servants, who still do not seem to understand that there are people in Lancashire who do not have a mains water supply. They are clearly concerned about the possible contamination that may occur with a process that goes on below the water table; but more importantly, they are also concerned about the quantities of water taken from the water table to use in this process. They are still waiting to have those questions answered.

My constituency is right next to where the small earth tremors happened. Test drilling at Preesall in the Fylde constituency was stopped to check what was going on. As hon. Members can imagine, in a county that was already seeing the speed at which people were trying to get to the shale gas but hearing few answers, the fact that a small tremor happened—whatever one wants to argue about the tremor itself—led to extremely serious worries among my constituents.

I accept that, since then, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has put in place a number of additional safeguards. Certainly, the regulatory system has been beefed up. He has also confirmed that all data from the exploratory process will be monitored to assess further the environmental impacts. The additional safeguards; the monitoring of seismic activity; a strengthening of the regulations in relation to wellhead integrity; and—this is the important one for me and I am grateful to the Energy Secretary for it—the presence of an independent expert on-site, while fracking takes place, are all moves in the right direction. They are important measures, but I believe that more can be done to strengthen things further, particularly the water safety element.

I understood the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion to refer to the DCLG in terms of the planning regulations, and we in Lancashire are waiting to see the nature of them. I hope to see very strong roles for the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive throughout this process. There needs to be some understanding that the area of the Bowland shale is rural Lancashire, so there are extreme concerns about the impact not just on the ground, but on some of the most outstanding countryside that we have in this country. We need to be assured that each site will be assessed on its own merits in terms of how it affects the local landscape. I have always made the same point in relation to applications for wind turbines, and it would be wrong of me to approach planning consents for shale gas well pad sites differently. Local people must be allowed to have a full say in the planning process.

I will now return to a familiar theme. Hon. Members have heard this long and hard from me, but the issue still concerns me. If we are to have large-scale extraction of shale gas, how will that represent a bonanza for the local community? The mineral rights belong to the Crown, to the duchy or to the county, and local residents will not see the sums that communities and landowners in the US or Europe could get. Moreover, the statements on the number of jobs that will be available are not convincing enough for me. Promises are being made, but I do not believe that this activity will create large-scale employment opportunities across Lancashire.

I accept that a move to industrial-scale production of shale gas has not been advocated by the Energy Secretary at this stage, but it does look as though there is more and more evidence that economically viable extraction is possible. I have seen a reference to £366 billion-worth of extractable gas from the Bowland shale. Therefore, the community’s share of the profits needs to be sorted. I am determined that if Lancashire is to produce shale gas that benefits Lancashire and the rest of the country, Lancashire residents will get financial recompense.

We have now heard that a community compensation scheme will be established, which is good news. However, we are told that it will be a voluntary scheme, run by the United Kingdom Onshore Operators Group. The plan is to provide £100,000 per well at the exploration stage, and once production starts, 1% of all revenues generated during the well’s lifetime will be allocated to the local area, with one third going to the county and two thirds to the local community. That is a good start, but I and others in this Chamber would like to see a lot more. We want to see more clarity, more certainty, a guarantee of additionality and, ideally, more money.

[David Mowat]

My hon. Friend is making a number of strong points on behalf of his community in Lancashire, and I agree with them all. I will just draw his attention, though, to the unemployment figures that came out yesterday. The three constituencies with the lowest unemployment in the country are all around Aberdeen, and that has been achieved without community transfers. Does my hon. Friend not think that there will be a bonus in terms of economic activity, potentially centred on his constituency?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

On balance, my hon. Friend makes a fair point. It has been put to me that, if the area were the first where fracking went ahead, the potential for university research, engineering and skills would be an advantage, but as I have tried to explain, against that is the fact that we have had one test drill, which caused an earth tremor. We have seen nothing else, and we need to see what one of these well pads does to the environment. No one has seen that yet.

Regional Growth Fund

Debate between Eric Ollerenshaw and David Mowat

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I am talking about a national average of 100 from 1995 to 2008. The hon. Gentleman’s area declined even further.

[David Mowat]

The point my hon. Friend is making extremely powerfully is that, in the last year of the previous Government, the north-south divide reached a peak for the previous three decades. That is extraordinary; it was brought about by the boom in the south-east and London, and it is a fact.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

Let me move on.

I congratulate the Government on being among those who recognised that something needs to be done. Yes, the regional growth fund is not the biggest thing, and we want more to be done.