There are some mixed messages on the shale gas front this morning. The FT is reporting that the brakes are being put on the nascent industry in the UK, although there doesn't seem to be anything new here - the story covers some of the dodgy old stories about UK shales being more heavily faulted than US ones and sounder ones about the regulatory burden in the UK - so I'm not quite sure what prompted it.
Meanwhile, the BBC is reporting that Cuadrilla reckon the amount of gas in the Bowland may have to be revised upwards from the figure that astounded the country last year.
Based on data from two wells that it had fracked in 2011, Cuadrilla estimated that there was around 200 tcf in its licence areas.
Now a more detailed analysis of seismic and well data suggests a significant upgrade to the gas potential of the area.
"In terms of the resource in place, we originally came out with 200 tcf," said Huw Clarke, a geologist with the company, told a conference in London.
"That was just off one well, that was ratified by the BGS, and we were very happy about that. Since then we've drilled two extra wells and we've shot 100sq km of 3D seismic information and I believe there's closer to 330 tcf in place just within Cuadrilla's licence area alone."
Interestingly, Lord Oxburgh gets quoted at the end of the story, still whiffling on about the idea that the decline rates in shale gas wells is something we should worry about. As Chris Wright pointed out in his evidence to the Lords' Economic Affairs Committee, getting most of the gas out at the start of the well's lifetime is a feature, not a bug.