In the decades ahead, imported gas is set to blow an even bigger hole in our trade deficit. By the end of the decade, we’ll be importing 70 per cent and by 2050 - when we’re meant to hit that magical net-zero for carbon emissions - 85 per cent of the gas we need will be imported.Įven as billions have been poured into renewables, gas is still the biggest generator of electricity - accounting for on average 40 per cent, and more than 50 per cent when the wind isn’t blowingīritain currently runs a balance of payments deficit equivalent to 4 per cent of our GDP and energy already accounts for a big chunk of it. But instead of extracting it from our own lands, we’ll have to import it.Īlready 50 per cent of the gas we need comes from abroad - mainly Norway and Qatar, with some from Russia. Even as billions have been poured into renewables, gas is still the biggest generator of electricity - accounting for on average 40 per cent, and more than 50 per cent when the wind isn’t blowing. Of course, we’re still going to need gas. Remember that next time you hear a Cabinet minister wittering on about levelling up the North with the South. Far from developing shale gas when we most need it, the unthinking and often uninformed Westminster consensus is to make sure none of it ever sees the light of day.Īs a result, massive investment in the North will not take place and 75,000 well-paid, skilled jobs in places where they are most needed - such as Lancashire - will now never be created. The Government should be ashamed of itself - as should all those Opposition politicians who support it. But they were enough to kill off Britain’s nascent shale industry.Įven that’s not enough for the Green Blob.įar from exploiting our shale reserves, the Oil and Gas Authority, a state quango which increasingly dances to the green net-zero carbon emissions tune, has ordered Cuadrilla, the drilling company, to seal forever its two shale gas wells by pouring concrete down them. They barely registered on the Richter scale and Northern coal-mining areas have experienced worse for more than a century. They were cowed into submission by the propaganda of the green lobby, which hugely exaggerated the environmental dangers and spread scare stories when exploratory drilling produced the mildest of earth tremors in the Blackpool area. Our politicians - left, right and centre - simply didn’t have the gumption to go for it. In reality, we haven’t extracted a single cubic metre. There are plenty other places in our land brimming with shale - all of which could be mined to supply our own needs, with the surplus exported to a gas-hungry world. Even if we were to extract only 10 per cent of it - through a process called fracking - we’d have enough gas to be self-sufficient for 50 years. The Bowland Field in Lancashire harbours 37.6 trillion cubic metres of the stuff. Britain sits on some of the world’s richest reserves of shale gas. The solution has been under our feet for more than a decade. Prices have spiked and the extra cost is now showing up painfully in our domestic fuel bills. As the world economy has sprung back from the depths of the pandemic, there is, indeed, a global shortage of gas. Prices have spiked and the extra cost is now showing up painfully in our domestic fuel bills
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