Theresa May’s former fracking tsar claims ministers were more worried about Greta Thunberg than industry development

By Natascha Engel

This weekend I resigned from my role as the Government’s Commissioner for Shale Gas. It was a combination of frustration and exasperation that left me with no other real option.

Shale gas exploration, or fracking as it is more commonly called, has the potential to make the UK energy secure, to bring thousands of jobs to the UK and to reduce our carbon emissions.

But this exciting new industry is being prevented from developing because the very Government that once saw the huge benefits that shale gas could bring is listening to environmental campaigners rather than to the scientists and specialists who say we could be on the brink of a British energy revolution the like of which we haven’t seen since the discovery of North Sea oil.

And it’s arrived just in time. The North Sea is running out of gas while we’re still heavily dependent on it. 85% of us use it to heat our homes and over 60% cook on gas hobs. More than half of our gas is already imported and that’s going to rise to 70% in just ten years – more and more of it coming from Russia.

The further the gas travels, the greater its carbon footprint so if we really care about carbon emissions, we should get it out of the ground beneath our feet.

Yet the very campaigners who say they care about climate change are demanding an end to fracking saying it causes earthquakes.

These tiny tremors can hardly be felt on the surface and they’re nothing compared to quarry blasting, pile-driving or the ground shakes caused by other construction projects.

They are not what any normal person would call an earthquake. They are what the experts call “micro-seismic events”, small movements in the ground below a magnitude of 1 on the Richter scale that occur naturally 600 times a year in the UK.

You can’t really feel a tremor until it reaches level 2 and earthquakes don’t usually cause damage at anything under 4. Even at that level, “earthquakes” rarely make the headlines because they aren’t news. That’s until they were linked to fracking.

America has safely fracked over a million wells, become energy independent and has seen the largest reduction in carbon emissions on the planet all because of shale gas.

In America, though, fracking doesn’t have to pause unless it reaches 2 (in some States it’s up to 4.5) on the Richter Scale. In the UK, it’s 0.5. This ultra-low level was introduced to reassure people that this was being done belt-and-braces, but it was always intended to move the level once we got going. It was never meant to be cast in stone.

But that is what environmental lobby groups are now demanding and that is who Government seems to be listening to. They are refusing even to review the level at which fracking has to pause and without a review, as the Government knows, it will be almost impossible for the industry to develop.

When Cuadrilla, the shale gas company based in Preston, fracked at the end of last year, the highest magnitude they recorded was 1.5. It measured 0.7mm of surface movement per second, the measurement that’s used by the rest of the construction industry which stops work when they cause anything more than 15mm of movement.

Less than 1mm! If you applied that to any other industry, we wouldn’t be driving buses, trams, lorries, building houses, schools or hospitals.

Like so many other campaigns waged by green charities and pressure groups, a tiny fact is taken out of context, used to scare the living daylights out of people and then turned into a lucrative click-and-donate income stream – all in the name of stopping climate change.

But if environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion really want to reduce carbon emissions then they should campaign to get fracking going in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire rather than gluing themselves to trains and buildings in London.

Instead, activists and campaigners are doing everything they can to stop the industry. This isn’t just affecting the shale gas companies, but the many hundreds of small, local businesses that have invested heavily in getting ready for shale based on the Government’s previous support for it. These businesses are now facing an uncertain future.

As the man in charge of Business and Energy in the UK, Greg Clark, should really start listening to those people who care about our energy security and prosperity rather than groups that want jeopardise our future by shutting down our industry and manufacturing in the name of climate change.

VLADIMIR Putin’s Russia provided 20 per cent of all the liquefied natural gas shipped into Britain in 2018.

And the UK is even buying in the gas from as far way as Peru – as North Sea reserves run dry. Fracking chiefs said it made a mockery of campaigners demanding that fracking is killed off to tackle carbon emissions.

Cuadrilla chief Francis Egan said: “These ships create a far higher carbon footprint than if shale gas were to be extracted here in the UK and piped into the local grid.

“If the politicians really want to ban something they should start with LNG imports not domestic shale gas.”

Official figures show Russia delivered 1.8 billion cubic metres of LNG - gas which is supercooled for transport – in 2018, 21 per cent of the total amount of a up a fifth on 2017.

In all some 41 shipments of LNG came into the UK between January and March this year – compared with 8 over the same period last year.