Tory grandees urge Boris Johnson to lift ‘unconservative’ ban on fracking

Boris Johnson is facing a Tory revolt over the Government’s ban on fracking, with Lord Frost among more than 30 MPs and peers declaring the policy unconservative and stating that shale gas production would allow Britain to avoid future energy crises.

In a joint letter to the Prime Minister, the former Cabinet Office minister joined 29 MPs, including John Whittingdale, the former culture secretary, and Bob Blackman, the 1922 committee executive secretary, insisting that it is “time to reverse this moratorium”, which has prohibited the mining of shale gas since 2019.

The intervention comes after it emerged that Cuadrilla, the energy company, had been ordered to seal up two of England’s only viable shale gas wells, despite the energy crisis and ministers’ insistence on the need for Britain to rely less on gas imports from abroad.

Writing in The Telegraph, below, Francis Egan, the company’s chief executive, said: “Using domestic shale gas should be a no-brainer.”

On Saturday night, Lord Frost, Mr Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator, declared that reversing the ban would herald a “British energy renaissance”, telling The Telegraph: “If our economy is to boom after Brexit, British industry needs a competitive and reliable source of energy which we hold in our own hands and brings investment into this country. Shale gas production achieves all this and more.

“If we don’t produce it here, as we have seen, all we do is import gas from elsewhere, and push up overall carbon emissions too. So let’s reverse the moratorium on shale gas and let a British energy renaissance begin.”

A moratorium on fracking has been in place since Nov 2019. Last week, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new minister for Brexit opportunities, called for the ban to be lifted to boost Britain’s energy independence.

However, the Prime Minister resisted the move, and a government source said: “The Prime Minister himself has made clear it is not something we will be reversing.”

A Whitehall source added that the controversial hydraulic fracturing method was banned because it had caused earthquakes and presented “unpredictable and unmanageable” risks to local communities. 

“Even if new scientific evidence emerged and we lifted the moratorium tomorrow, it would take approximately 10 years before sufficient quantities of gas could be produced for the market,” the source added, indicating that such gas would simply be sold for the “market price”.

However, the letter to Mr Johnson, organised by Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker, the chairman and deputy chairman of the Conservative Net Zero Scrutiny Group, stated that shale gas mining would “allow us to combat the cost of living crisis, level up, create jobs, opportunity and a renewed sense of community in the north, improve our energy security, reduce our reliance on imported gas, stabilise energy prices and achieve net zero without increasing the cost of living for already hard-pressed working families.”

The group, also including Lord Lilley of Offa, the former trade secretary, and Julian Knight, the chairman of the Commons culture committee, said that the Bowland Shale formation of gas under Lancashire, Yorkshire and surrounding counties “offers at least 50 years of cheap and sustainable gas”.

They added: “If levelling up is to mean anything it must be centred around empowering communities, rather than telling them what they can and cannot do... With the lack of public debate about our strategy to reach Net Zero, we have abandoned this fundamentally conservative principle... It’s time to reverse this moratorium.”

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “The development of domestic energy sources, including fracking, must be safe and cause minimal disruption and damage... 

“We ended support for fracking on the basis of scientific evidence, showing that it is not currently possible to accurately predict the probability and size of tremors associated with fracking. Shale gas remains unproven as a resource in the UK.”

A revived British shale gas industry will secure jobs and energy for generations

By Francis Egan, the chief executive of Cuadrilla Resources Limited

Using domestic shale gas should be a no-brainer. Instead, a rig will arrive in approximately one month to seal up with cement Britain’s only two horizontal shale gas wells. This is because the authorities have decreed that now is the right moment for Cuadrilla to “plug and abandon” the only wells which could demonstrate that shale gas can provide affordable, secure, and relatively clean energy.

In the US, where domestic shale gas production flourishes, wholesale gas prices are Roughly six times lower than in the UK. By contrast, UK and EU policymakers are constraining regional gas supply while global demand grows, spending billions annually importing it from all corners of the globe.

Now this might make some sense if we weren’t able to exploit our own gas resources. However, the very same gas that we are importing is sitting right under our feet in the Bowland Shale which stretches across the North of England – 37.6 trillion cubic metres of shale gas sits unused, when only 10 per cent of this could meet UK gas needs for 50 years.

Developing and producing this precious resource would create tens of thousands of well-paid jobs and empower local communities in the North. “Red Wall” councils would raise millions of pounds in local taxes, and tax on domestic gas production could generate revenue for the NHS. Otherwise, we will continue to fund one of the best national health services in the world – only in Norway, from where we import a third of our gas.

Leaving our gas in the ground is also hindering our ability to deliver net zero. Importing gas is estimated to produce double the pre-combustion carbon emissions of homegrown shale gas. 

But for some unfathomable reason, the Government’s net zero figures only count “territorial emissions”, meaning that we don’t hold ourselves to account for all the emissions created by the ever-increasing volumes of gas we import. If anyone takes tackling climate change seriously, as I do, a revived British shale gas industry is a more effective and honest way of achieving it.

Reducing foreign dependence on gas

The energy crisis has also shown how vulnerable some of our European allies are to Russian influence because of their gas import dependency. Russia’s LNG capacity has tripled between 2016-19 alone and the former Nato chief has warned that Russia is deliberately undermining attempts by Western countries to develop shale gas capacities, to maintain their influence.

Instead of abandoning our wells in Lancashire because one of them caused a two second vibration at around half the limit applied to construction sites, we should unleash the potential of a sustainable, safe and well-regulated approach to shale gas.

By reversing the shale moratorium and the requirement to plug Lancashire wells, we would be following the science not pressure groups, creating jobs and opportunity across the North, securing our gas supply for decades, reducing energy costs for hard-pressed families, and helping to clean up our planet.

I can’t think of a better opportunity for this country to seize.