The FT has a good review article on shale gas today. It's pretty balanced overall, but marred by the presence of Josh Fox, the director of Gasland. I wonder if the article's author, Sylvia Pfeifer, was unaware that his movie has been shown to be a fraud.
The article closes with this quote from Lord Browne, the former head of BP.
It is always a good idea to explore for and develop resources within national borders. It increases security, tax take, jobs and it might even reduce power prices,” says Lord Browne. “Nothing is perfect. This is pretty good.
Only might reduce power prices? Shale has caused power prices to crash in the US. It will be a stunning indictment of the political classes in the UK if they manage to engineer things over here in such a way that shale produces no changes in prices at all. I'm sure that is their intention though.