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Shale Gas

I think that the reason why that will probably not happen is that the US, as recently as five or six years ago, was in the process of building substantial quantities of liquefied natural gas delivery depots, which were anticipated to take up a substantial shortfall in gas in the US; that shortfall was even greater in the US than in the UK. The US economy was therefore in a position where, as a result of the anticipated introduction of that large amount of LNG, prices reflected the situation regarding indigenous gas in the US, imported gas, investment prospects, and the likely prospect of a need to procure further large amounts of LNG for the US, at a time when there was increased worldwide demand for LNG in various other economies. Since five or six years ago, that particular metric has been entirely flipped over. The United States is now exporting, rather than importing, LNG. That has had a substantial flip-over effect on prices in the USA. I am not an expert in these matters, but that is my understanding of the situation. The position is not comparable to that in Europe or the United Kingdom. As I say, the production of shale gas will perhaps have some effect on the stabilisation of prices over a period of time, and some effect on the requirement for a secure gas supply within the UK, rather than us importing it through interconnectors or through LNG. We have, of course, fairly efficient gas interconnectors between the UK and the rest of Europe, although whether gas flows down them is another matter. However, the two propositions are entirely different in their likely effect on prices. The two propositions are similar, however, to the extent that there will be a significant effect on what one might term the energy security front—on what would otherwise be the question of where the UK will source its gas supplies from in future—although the UK interconnectors are pretty secure; they mainly go to Norway and other European destinations. Sourcing that gas from within Europe arguably brings us close to the energy security that we would have if we had an entirely indigenous supply. That is my take on why the price effect will not take off in the way that some people think it will. I want to emphasise and underline that point, as the Committee's conclusion is that there is not a case for banning or stopping the exploitation of that shale gas resource through drilling, but that there is a case for ensuring that there are careful, secure environmental guidelines to ensure that it is done in the best way for the protection of the environment. There is also a case for ensuring that, unlike the USA, we have careful continued regulation of not only the drilling but the capture of the gas, and regulation covering the fate of wells as they deplete and go out of commission. The point about multiple wells is that they do not have long, productive lives compared with more conventional forms of drilling. One of the issues in the United States has been that in a number of areas, because wells have often been drilled in a speculative and unorganised way, there are large numbers of abandoned wells scattered across the landscape, some of them well capped, some not capped and some not very well capped. Indeed, the magnificently named Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the whole business in Texas, is in the process of finding where those abandoned wells are and putting in place a programme of capping them. That is a regime that we cannot afford to have in the UK, because of the implications of gas leakage and the danger of those uncapped and untreated wells from an environmental point of view. The overall picture is that, with careful regulation, a reasonable contribution can be made to UK energy supplies from shale gas over the next period. We should not, however, run away with the idea that it will solve everything or that it should not be properly and fully environmentally regulated, to ensure that some of the things that we have heard about elsewhere in the world do not, by accident or by negligence, take place in a UK energy environment. I believe that that is a balanced view, and that the Committee has taken a balanced view on the future of shale gas. It is important for future debates on the energy economy that we keep that balanced view of what various elements of the UK energy mix can contribute to the overall welfare of our future energy supplies.