Seeking alternatives

UK: Despite the drilling catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the search for oil and gas continues. Exploratory drilling for shale gas in the north-west of England promises to turn Blackpool into the shale-gas capital of England.

Representatives of Cuadrilla Resources, the company doing the drilling, says the shale gas recovered locally could reduce Britain's need for oil or gas imports. It’s the first well of its kind in the UK. "It will take a lot of exploration and a lot of effort by small companies like us, and larger companies as well, but ultimately we are hopeful that we would find certain deposits here that would add to the net reserves of the UK," Cuardilla’s founder Chris Cornelius told The Guardian.

Amy Myers Jaffe in
The Wall Street Journal "Shale gas is the game-changing resource of the decade"

Geologists have known about shale gas for decades, but it was not thought possible to extract it economically before now. Huge reserves of natural gas have been found in shale rock, most notably in the US, but new methods for extracting the gas more cheaply and efficiently have excited investors and energy experts. Amy Myers Jaffe of The Wall Street Journal, who has been studying energy markets for 30 years, calls shale gas the “game-changing resource of the decade”.

Burning natural gas produces fewer carbon emissions than burning coal or oil, which makes it a good alternative until renewable energy is widely available. But extracting shale gas creates other environmental problems. Deep wells are drilled to reach the gas, then water and chemicals are used to break up the rock in order to release the trapped gas. The drilling fluid could seep into ground-water reserves and poison drinking water. In the US, criticism is growing. Gasland, a recent US documentary on the topic, showed tap water so full of methane gas that it caught fire.