Protests over fracking near the West Sussex town of Balcombe have rekindled the debate about the controversial gas and oil drilling process. “The widespread use of shale gas is quite simply incompatible with the government’s international commitments to keep global warming below two degrees,” argued Green MP Caroline Lucas – who was arrested for protesting – in The Independent.
Lucas also pointed out that Deutsche Bank, Chatham House, and Ofgem “all predict that it will not bring down fuel bills”. The US is a very different country, and comparisons with the boom across the Atlantic “just do not stand up”. Instead of shale, there should be “a future based on renewables, alongside greater investment in energy efficiency”.
Yet in fact, notes The Daily Telegraph, while the potential rewards from fracking have greatly increased, “it has been happening in this country for decades and with little fuss”. For instance, “Wytch Farm in Dorset has been producing thousands of barrels of oil a day since the 1970s, pumping water into wells to fracture the rock and force out oil and gas”. The operation “is so peaceful and clean that many in the local community do not even know it is there”.
The environmental impact has been exaggerated for political reasons, agrees Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. “The number of aquifers contaminated by fracking in America, where hundreds of thousands of such operations have been carried out, is exactly zero.” Wild allegations that fracking in the US led to “flames erupting from a man’s kitchen tap” were similarly debunked by the Environmental Protection Agency. Sadly, “the demonstrators will not be deflected by mere reason, and they are more than capable of making up new scare stories”.
Britain may well be facing an energy crisis, writes the Financial Times. However, that doesn’t excuse the government from having to win over public opinion. By proceeding without getting approval, “the government risks undermining the very industry it hopes to promote”. This approach might well work, since most people “accept the need for gas to act as a bridge between dirtier fossil fuels and a cleaner energy future”.
However, at the same time, “it will also have to acknowledge that shale gas can only succeed if it is presented as part of a broader policy in which renewables have their place”.
The arrest of Lucas at the protest is “hardly going to give ministers a sleepless night”, writes Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. However, they do need to ensure “that communities feel they have a stake in the shale gas exploitation taking place on their doorstep”. While the Government Association “has been calling for councils to get 10% of fracking profits”, the government seems to think that 1% is a “good offer”. It therefore seems clear that “the government has a way to go to make the case for fracking to communities likely to be affected by the drilling”.