Shale "a game changer": official

Interfax Natural Gas Daily says that a report prepared for DECC in the wake of the British Geological Survey estimate of shale gas resources in the UK will find that it and similar resources around Europe prove exploitable then gas prices could fall by 28%.

Following the release of a study by the British Geological Survey that shows there could be 40 trillion cubic metres of shale gas resources in England alone, the impact of these reserves on the UK’s gas prices has been a hot topic.

If the UK and continental Europe combine to produce around 100 billion cubic metres per year of unconventional reserves between 2020 and 2030, Navigant expects “a combination of local gas and readily available LNG puts sufficient pressure on oil price-indexed gas supplies that gas prices fall towards the long-run marginal cost, getting to 50 pence per therm [p/th] by 2030”.

Under this ‘low price scenario’, Navigant believes continued cost efficiencies could even “move prices downwards to somewhere between 35 p/th and 50 p/th”. The fall would mean prices have the potential to halve from 2012’s average trade price of 69 p/th, making the UK’s shale resources an undoubted ‘game-changer’.

David Kennedy of the Committee on Climate Change has of course declared that shale is not a game changer. But given his remarks on climate sensitivity I know who I am going to believe.

Comments

[tomo]

sherlock1

Of all he things the BBC patently is - *completely* stupid isn't one of them. For any bloated bureaucracy to remain bloated it has to pay assiduous attention to its sources of funding. You'd have to be a very, very dim bulb to realise that on some issues, a wholesale change of policy is going to be required in order not to alienate your funders.

I'd love to know what the instructions given to TV tax / licence doorknockers is. Although I sent the last one away with a flea in his ear, in contrast with several of his predecessors he was calm and civil - and asked a few questions about why I chose not to pay TV tax.

The BBC, as a propagandist outfit needs to "close the loop" and has I think a fair amount of resources allocated to measuring its effect - and keep an eye out for anything that will unequivocally show them up in the eyes of the majority of their audience.

Shale gas is a case in point - they can't ignore it , and the actual evidence runs almost 100% contrary to the tales they've been telling to date - so I think we can expect them to embrace it eventually and quite probably a disappearing of all the scaremongering activism/advocacy they've been hosing for the last several years - a process that's already started with the disappearing of a slew of regional anti fracking productions they pushed out in 2012.

I note they have not invited Phelim McAleer / the Frack Nation people in yet and I'd hazard a guess that they'll be quite noisy about how to spend the windfall (should there be one...)

That the BBC can't be trusted is not news to most people here - and if they are getting enthusiastic about fracking - what you are seeing is self preservation in action and not necessarily honest reportage.

[Entropic Man]

AlecM

Nice conspiracy theory.

[Dung]

Entropic Man

I doubt that you have read Agenda 21 but that is no problem because you don't have the brains to understand it. I suggest you go play in the junior playground and wait a few years before you try long trousers.