![Author Author](/universal/images/transparent.png)
Outgassing
![Date Date](/universal/images/transparent.png)
![Category Category](/universal/images/transparent.png)
It looks as though we are going to finally get a look at the British Geological Survey's report on shale gas resources later today. The media seem to have got their hands on a press release and there are some big numbers being touted around:
UK shale gas resources may be far greater than previously thought, a report for the government says.
The British Geological Survey was asked to estimate how much gas is trapped in rocks beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire.
It said there could be 1,300 trillion cubic feet at one site alone, but it is unclear how much could be extracted.
With UK demand at slightly less than 3 tcf per annum, that looks like very good news, but of course the figure of 1300tcf (assuming the reports are correct) is not what will ultimately be extractable. There's an interesting exchange of views about these figures on Twitter, with Greenpeace's Damian Kahya (an ex-BBC journo) saying that we should be using a figure of 4% and the BBC saying 10%. Nick Grealy notes that the average in the USA is 18%, and one has to recognise that this incorporates all the older wells, in which relatively primitive fraccing approaches were used. Cuadrilla have said that 15-20% will ultimately prove to be a conservative estimate, as the technology improves, and numbers as high as 40% have been mooted by industry insiders.
I'm not sure this will even make a difference though. If there really is 1300tcf at one site alone, the amount of gas in place in the whole country must be so huge as to make the recoverable percentage somewhat irrelevant.
[Updated - the 40% figure covers good parts of the shale - the bits you decide to exploit. Some parts of the shale will be so unsuitable for exploitation they will not be touched at all.]
![Registered Commenter Registered Commenter](/universal/images/transparent.png)
The BGS report is here. Interestingly, it covers the Bowland Hodder region only, rather than the UK as a whole. So the 1300tcf figure is only part of what's out there.
Reader Comments (111)
Entropic Man: "Thank you, I stand corrected." Thank you.
Regarding "My prime objections are economic. In the US a temporary boom is already showing signs of turning into a gas bubble. In the UK conditions would make shale gas harvesting marginally profitable. The cheap gas arguments are likely to be hype, rather than reality."
If oil companies want to risk their capital on shale gas in the UK, why stand in their way? If they fail, its their (shareholders) money they risked. If they succeed, everyone benefits. What's not to like?
Entropic Man,
Thank you for elaborating on the concerns of the people in Fermanagh, it can allow me to address the issue more precisely.
The geological conditions which you have outlined to exist in the area are not unusual (peat is not an uncommon soil type and shallow groundwater tables being close to the surface is the norm). The overburden groundwater table will be confined by the glacial till below as the till will have a very low hydraulic conductivity, therefore lateral groundwater movement in the soils above the till would be your concern. Peat is considered to be semi-pervious and therefore falls in the middle of the scale of hydraulic conductivities when compared to other soil types. When establishing a groundwater monitoring plan, or remediation plan for that matter, this can be used to your advantage. Monitoring wells advanced will have a greater zone of influence and give provide better information than more impervious soil types. Groundwater monitoring wells can be cheaply and easily advanced through these types of overburden soils and it would be quite feasible to construct rings of monitoring wells around a fracking site, which could be monitored on a regular basis to ensure that shallow groundwaters are not being impacted. Even in the event of contamination (which would be over a very small area due to quick detection in the monitoring well network), in-situ treatment systems would work very well in these conditions. If you wanted to be ultra-conservative low-porosity barrier walls can easily be advanced through peat overburden. The locals in Fermanagh would do well to talk to hydrogeologists and environmental engineers in the locality who deal with contaminants in these conditions on a daily basis. I'm sure that they would be amazed at the technologies and techniques which are used not only to remediate contaminated sites, but prevent contamination from happening in the first place.
By the way, I am from the west of Ireland and would be as upset as anybody to see the Shannon be contaminated by such projects. But the reality is that agriculture, petrol stations, septic systems and residential oil tanks present a far greater risk to these water systems.
Kilroywashere +1
Sound, sensible professional advice.
But the damage to the economy from producing energy at a loss doesn't go away because the losses are concentrated in one group of people (energy company shareholders) rather than another, wider group of people (taxpayers). (And in any case that group of energy company shareholders is going to feature pension funds...) If it did, then the government could solve the problem of wind being uneconomic by - presto! - funding the wind-energy subsidy through a special tax on all energy companies. On the other hand, what would make the losses go away somewhat for the UK is for the energy-company shareholders to be foreigners.
There's also a planning problem. Things like nuclear power plants of course have long lead times and are capital-intensive. If cheaper shale gas undercuts other means of electricity supply, and the government bases its planning on the confident assumption that this bonanza will last, say, forty years, then there will be unpleasant consequences if the good times end prematurely - say, after five to seven years, by which time other sources of supply will have gone to the wall. (Even more so since gas is much more compatible with solar or wind than nuclear is, so any large-scale renewable-energy supply relying on a shale-gas backstop is going to come a cropper too.)
Of course, if everything works out and shale provides lowish prices to the consumer, long-term profits for the producers, and many years of plentiful supply then none of this will turn out to have been a problem.
How are they going to be producing enrgy at a loss? Oil companies drill exploration wells all the time. Cairn Enrgy drilled 3 dry holes offshore Greenland that cost $150 Million each. That's the nature of the business. Oil companies take a risked approach, if shale gas won't make money they will soon know and move their capital elsewhere.
Its a fantastically successful business model that has been working for 100 years plus without state subsidy, bringing higher standards of living and affordable energy to the world. Why interfere, just let them get on with it.
Anonym; If shale turns out to be a chimera, we are back to status quo ante - North Sea Gas, LNG, etc.. They will not disappear while we flirt with shale That could even be the kick to get coal gasification up and running (the way we made all our gas before the N. Sea bonanza) except this time it would be done underground.
thinkingscientist
Your argument about the text I copied from the Cuadrilla website is with them and not me. However Cuadrilla is an American company with shale expertise gained from US fracking experience. Methinks that on certain topics thou doest talk out of thy unmentionable orifice.
The whole of British society seems to be infested with the "what if something goes wrong" mind set rather than "wow what if this works out!". The yanks get things done.
J4R; I have only just read back to your post about synfuels. There is more to the story and it has a very dark side.
The development of large-scale production of fuels from coal was pioneered in the 20s by the German chemical industry cartel, IG Farben. They invested colossal sums in synfuel plants believing that oil was about to run out, based on the US presidential commission (among many) which warned of shortages within 6 years. Then huge new oil fields were found in Texas, followed by even larger discoveries in the Middle East.
Facing financial disaster, they sought and won subsidies from the Nazis which led to the company becoming dependent upon and totally intertwined with the Hitler regime with appalling, disastrous consequences for the peoples of Europe and Russia. This is not the place to say more; "Hell's Cartel" by Dairmuid Jeffries is a good account.
J4R,
I too have just read your posting. It set me thinking that there used to be an industry based on chemical extraction from (certain types of) wood which produced turpentine, methanol (wood alcohol) and tars amongst other things. The technology obviously dates back further than some companies would tell us, new cutting edge developments are much more attractive to politicians might be a reason for this.
@ThinkingScientist
The building industry has been producing houses and offices with overall success for well over a century, but that didn't stop it from losing a staggering amount of money in the last decade.
Anonym: We are talking about a risk based business in the oil industry. That doesn't mean that they sell a house for a loss, it means that sometimes they risk miilions of dollars (even hundreds of millions of dollars on a well) that turns out to be a dry hole. At that point they walk away and accept the loss. I am not sure what the global success rate for exploration isnow, but I should think its probably around 1 in 3 to maybe 1in 10 for frontier exploration.
That means in exploration they write off the cost of the well between 60 and 90 % of the time. Completely. That is not like the housing industry. If you wait long enough, a built house is still worth something. The moment a well is drilled its either worth millions (sometimes billions) of dollars...or absolutely nada if its dry.