The UK government has placed a lot of hope on fracking to provide a “lower carbon” source of energy. However, John Richard Underhill, chief scientist & professor of exploration geoscience at Heriot-Watt University argues the scale of shale gas reserves has been hyped. While the debate about fracking so far has been about economic benefits vs harm to the environment, no one is paying attention to the geology he writes at The Conversation.
Gas is hugely important to the UK. The country uses more than 65 billion cubic metres to heat most of its 25m homes and generate around a quarter of its electricity each year. Despite efforts to move to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, demand for gas is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future.
Until 2004 all the gas the country needed was sourced from the UK, primarily from the North Sea and East Irish Sea. Since then, production has declined to the point where indigenous gas provides only 45 percent of the total. The shortfall comes from European pipelines (38 percent), particularly from Norway and Russia; and liquid natural gas (LNG) deliveries (17 percent), primarily from Qatar.
